History Is A Lie Agreed Upon

So said, famously, Napoleon.

Richard North's superbly researched and informative account of the Battle of Britain is blogging at its best, and it also confirms what the short man said. The history of the Battle of Britain is, and was, far more complicated than 'The Few' narrative suggests.

In order to graduate at university at history I had to essentially unlearn everything I had been previously been taught at GCSE and A-Levels. One basic principle of history is that large chunks of it are motivated by one thing - sex. I lost count of the number of 19th century European summits whose conclusions where shaped by the ability of some politicians to get close with other country's leaders' wives.

There's a fascinating book on my shelf from a lady who grew up in a Welsh mining village in the 1920s. She recounts how every lunchtime at school half of her class of 11 and 12 year old girls would wander off into the woods with married men and come back with their knickers missing. Unsurprisingly most of them ended up pregnant. Shocking!

The good old days eh? They never existed.