On 18th January 1936 the "Little Princesses" left Sandringham. Their grandfather, King George V, was gravely ill and they had seen him for the last time. Princess Elizabeth born in 1926 and Princess Margaret Rose born in 1930 were the daughters of the Duke of York and his wife Elizabeth. As their uncle Edward, Prince of Wales, was unmarried they ensured the line of succession and attracted enormous public interest. They were the future of the monarchy in the eyes of the public and those in the know about their uncle's passionate devotion to a married American woman would have suspected that this was not going to change. As their nickname suggests, the Princesses were surrounded by a fairy tale aura. Together with their uncle they were probably the most glamorous faces of the monarchy at the time. In one of his novels Grahame Greene mocked the adulation they attracted.
Eighty years ago, Churchill christens his second battle of the war and the Blitz claims a famous victim
Churchill christened his second battle of the war and it may well have been the more important one. In the Battle of Britain the Germans had failed to gain air supremacy over England; had they won it would have made an invasion possible, but not necessarily inevitable or inevitably successful. If the Germans had won the Battle of the Atlantic, as Churchill named the conflict between German U Boats and long range bombers on one side and merchant shipping to Britain and its air and sea escorts on the other, Britain would have been unable to go on fighting. Unlike the very public designation of the Battle of Britain, the term Battle of the Atlantic first appeared in a confidential directive, which Churchill signed as Minister of Defence. The Directive gave full priority in supplies of anti-aircraft weapons to the ships and promoted catapult-armed merchant vessels to provide air cover, but otherwise it was light on detail. One public result of the directive was to give the Admiralty fo
A promising start - Good Luck with this!
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