Frank Johnson

In the spring of 1916, the young French officer Charles de Gaulle was captured at Verdun. The French demanded from the British a diversionary offensive to prevent the entire French army from collapsing. Most British troops were not yet trained for such an effort. Nonetheless, they opened an offensive on the Somme. There, the young British officer, Harold Macmillan, was almost fatally wounded. Twenty-seven years later, the Anglo-Americans intrigued against that same de Gaulle in North Africa, and he intrigued back against the same. Churchill sent that same Macmillan from London to help resolve the dispute. De Gaulle survived as Free French leader, partly as a result of Macmillan’s diplomatic skills.

Nr Pézenas, Departement de L’Hérault Random thoughts from mid-August abroad; not that they should be all that random. Now that BBC News 24, Sky and CNN can be viewed in the deepest Midi, where we are, and several British newspapers print ‘same day’ editions in Marseilles, which are on sale at 8.30 a.m. in our nearest village, most of us should be as in touch with events as we would be in London. But somehow, in deepest August, in Mediterranean lands, we cannot be. The sun and the wine make us think we are out of touch, that they know more in London. ‘Just ringing to find out what’s happening about [say] Ken Clarke reneging on the euro after all his years as a Brussels agent,’ we tell some London answering machine.

Dept d’Hérault Our TGV, slipping through La France Profonde from Lille to Montpelier three days before the referendum, would now end its journey earlier, at N.

Two weeks ago, quite a few of us in London were at a religious occasion. On the face of it, this was unsurprising since it was just before Christmas. But few competing religious occasions would have had this one’s air of reverence. It was the first night of the first part of what will become a new production of Wagner’s Ring at Covent Garden. Many of us arrived early just so that we could stand around and experience the mass expectation. Over the throng in the bars there was a sense that we were about to be admitted to something sacred. The seats had sold out within hours of going on sale months before. The sense of occasion was all around us. What would the production be like? What would be its ‘concept’?

If only the assassination attempted 60 years ago last Tuesday had succeeded, we have heard all this week. But what was the conspirators’ idea of success? In particular, what did the awesome man whose sonorous name we have heard this week really believe? Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg was of his time and his class, we are told. What then was his attitude to, say, Slavs and Jews? But first, to recount what happened 60 years ago last Tuesday. It is untrue that Stauffenberg and the other leading conspirators resolved to kill Hitler only once they knew that Germany was going to lose the war. They had long been anti-Hitler. By 1944, Stauffenberg, aged 37, was chief of staff to Colonel-General Fromm, head of the reserve army.

Ronald Reagan fascinated me from the moment he became governor of California in 1966. He was a right-winger who had won office. In those days right-wingers never won anything. Every office-holder or potential office-holder in every democracy — Labour, Tory, Democrat, Republican — seemed to be a liberal or a centrist. All the authorities said that that was the only way democracies could be governed. I had only just become interested in politics, and was bored by the subject already. If no one could do anything differently from anyone else, when would I witness any of the great clashes that I had just started reading about in books? Then came Reagan.

Writing from the Commons for the Daily Telegraph this week, though alluding to him, I went to tortuous lengths not to name the MP whom a Sunday newspaper had exposed as the subject of the latest 'gay sex scandal'. Why should I have mentioned him in the first place? Because only the day after the Mail on Sunday had made him famous, he strolled into a committee's proceedings as if nothing untoward had happened to him. In my line of work, it was therefore impossible not to mention him. He did not say a word, but his presence distracted all of us. We were at the standing committee on the inter-governmental conference on the European Union's proposed constitution.

For a party which all agree is unlikely to win a general election in the foreseeable future, the Conservatives arouse disproportionate interest. For weeks, an unprecedentedly open dispute between Mr Blair and Mr Brown has racked what has long looked like becoming the natural party of government. But hardly anyone is really interested. Nearly everyone assumes that an unprecedentedly open dispute between Mr Blair and Mr Brown always racks the natural party of government. But the Conservatives? Now there is an interesting situation, everyone seems to agree. Not just what is going to happen but will having a ‘big beast’ of a leader make all the difference, and so on? People still seem to be interested in what happened. What brought about the fall of the little beast?

Nr Pézenas, L'Hérault The British who reach here – the Midi – from the pas de Calais through la France profonde at this time of the year think of the history through which they drive as cathedrals, abbeys and ch.

He may have been born British in the London suburb of Eltham; but the humour of.