To understand the true nature of history, let us start with the question of Napoleon’s piles
Cometh the hour, cometh the piles? Well, Wellington called Waterloo ‘the closest run thing you ever saw in your life’, and on the morning of battle, Napoleon was too exhausted and distracted by pain from his haemorrhoids to focus or to ride out. So did piles cost Napoleon that winning edge?
Is Alaska part of the United States because in 1867 Tsar Alexander II had overspent on a big naval expedition and was temporarily but acutely short of cash? Is our belief in the potency of spinach due entirely to the misplacing of a decimal point when in 1870 a German scientist assessed the vegetable’s iron content? Would Hitler have risen as he did if, a generation earlier, relatives had not manoeuvred his father into abandoning their real surname, Schicklgruber? Heil Schicklgruber? Cometh the hour, cometh surely not a Schicklgruber?
All these speculations I owe to Phil Mason: a Whitehall civil servant who for years has been feeding me with information.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in