![]() Roberts is eloquent on the great moments of courage and defiance by Presidents and Prime Ministers and by many other now forgotten men - except for Margaret Thatcher, there is scarcely a woman mentioned - in the desperate circumstances of his grand narrative. His account is peppered with arresting might-have-beens if the Treaty of Versailles had dismembered Germany in 1919, would Nazism have taken root? If the Ottoman Empire had not been similarly dismembered, would the Middle East be the mess it is today? Roberts writes with all the popular verve of the best narrative historian. The greatest threat has always been the rot within - liberals, churchmen, intellectuals, whose introspection tempts right-minded people to doubt their own moral worth. Roberts's message is simple: when the English-speaking peoples stand side by side, history has a happy ending when they do not, civilisation is threatened. ![]() This is the sort of history that makes Arthur Bryant read like an academic monograph. The English-speaking peoples are invoked against the unreliability of everybody else. ![]()
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