A fascinating article by German historian Frank Thadeusz in Der Spiegel.

Today is the 70^th anniversary of one of Winston Churchill’s greatest speeches, ‘The Few’. There is a nice tribute here.

Meanwhile, in the catalogue for the forthcoming Woodstock Literary Festival, sponsored by the Independent newspaper, a talk by the ubiquitous literalist Richard Dawkins is listed. He’s talking about Darwin, apparently. According to the blurb, ‘anti-evolutionary thought is flourishing in Britain’ (where? I can’t say I have come across it) and so Darwin’s Jack Russell is delivering ‘an intellectual call to arms’. In perhaps the most inappropriate comparison of recent times, Dawkins is described as ‘the Henry V of 21^st century rational debate’. I wonder what the pious, God-fearing, brutal military genius of the Hundred Years War has in common with the best-selling, peace campaigning atheist? A haircut?