In praise of Mussolini

One tends to do a lot of reading on board a boat while sailing far from the madding yobs. Mostly books, thank God, as newspapers are hard to find until they’re ready to wrap fish. The Spectator, of course, is sent to wherever I am by my nice personal assistant, who buys it first thing Thursday morning and has it delivered by special messenger to the nearest marina. When times are good it comes even faster, with sweet young London things doing the delivering.

Last week I read David Gilmour’s review of The Force of Destiny, by Christopher Duggan, and a very interesting review it was of a book I hope to buy soon. Except for one thing. Gilmour links us Greeks with the Ethiopians in both having defeated the Italians. Well, for one thing the Ethiopians did not. We, however, kicked the hell out of the Italians in the Albanian campaign and broke their spirit to such an extent that they were useless for the rest of the war.