Max Hastings’ diary: I love the British Army (but not the Blackadder version of it)

The looming centenary of the outbreak of the first world war offers an opportunity to break away from the Blackadder/Oh! What a Lovely War vision, which dominates popular perceptions. Nobody sane suggests a celebration. But, in place of the government’s professed ‘non-judgmental’ approach to commemoration, ministers could assert that although the war was assuredly ghastly, it was not futile. Whatever the shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles, a peace imposed by a victorious Germany would have been much worse. David Cameron often mentions with pride Britain’s role in resisting Hitler. In 2014, it would be good to hear him acknowledge that Britain, and those who died in her name, were also right to resist the Kaiser’s generals.

David Heathcoat-Amory is my only friend now deafer than me. He says he does fine at parties by deploying two questions to which he does not need to hear answers: ‘How’s the old complaint?’; and ‘How’s the book?’, the latter because everyone he knows is writing something.