I don’t think anyone is going to be very keen to be associated with this book, but I still need to thank those without whom I couldn’t have written it. None of them, well almost none of them, bear any responsibility for its awkward, melancholy and unpopular tone, let alone for the deliberate misunderstandings it will predictably attract.
Firstly I must mention my parents, Commander Eric Hitchens RN, and Yvonne Hitchens, late of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, brought together by the tempest of World War II and marked by it for the rest of their lives. Both have gone on ahead of me, too far ahead to know of this work.
If only I had known the half of what they endured for me and my generation, we might have understood each other better. But I could never forget that my father, the only person I knew well who had seen active service in World War II, was never wholly sure who had won it. He neither felt he was living in a victorious country, nor (though very modest about his part in the conflict) felt it had rewarded him justly. To him, I owe the original idea. To my mother, I owe my melancholy understanding that for many people the peacetime of victory was a disappointment, into which the ghosts of a more inspiring past sometimes intruded, quite a lot. I was also much influenced and helped by Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, though I continue to reject many of the conclusions he drew.
Unlikely thanks go to Denis MacShane, who is in a way this book’s godfather. Because of a debate in which Denis and I clashed on the European issue, I had the good fortune to meet Joanna Godfrey of I.B.Tauris. Joanna rashly asked me if I had any ideas for a book – and did not flinch even slightly when I offered her this one. She has not flinched since, either. Sarah Terry, who took on the prickly and unenviable task of editing my manuscript with amazing calm, patience and good humour, likewise deserves special thanks. And my great thanks to Alex Billington who, in the final fretful stages of preparing this text, patiently endured and indulged my incessant minor changes and panics.
To my wife, Eve, once again my limitless gratitude for enduring the making of yet another book, and the loss of all the precious time stolen from us by it.
As ever, I must also express my perpetual admiration for the librarians of the London Library, a paradise of research, without which this book would have been impossible. If there is any credit, they should have a large share of it. But with more emphasis than usual, I should say that if there is any blame, it is entirely mine.