In Praise of Neville Chamberlain

18th March 1940: British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) walking across the Horse Guard’s Parade, Buckingham Palace on his seventy-first birthday. Photo: Davies/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

Neville Chamberlain, it is fair to say, does not receive a good press these days. The War Party – on both sides of the Atlantic – sees Munich popping up every six months or so and, for reasons that escape one, presumes that it is always better to fight a war as soon as possible. All of subsequent human history is seen through the lens of Munich. This is a baffling virus but one that is, I fear, ineradicable.

To take a pair of recent examples: Obama’s decision to relocate missile batteries from Poland and the Czech Republic to the mediterranean is, accoring to our old chum Con Coughlin, rank appeasement, (Brother Korski offers a more sensible appraisal here, incidentally) while Sister Philips bitterly complains that the prospect of a mid-level meeting between Iran and the United States, demonstrates that Chamberlain was a far-sighted hero compared to Barack Obama.