Michael Howard

Michael Howard is Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford and the author of Clausewitz on War and War in European History, among other books. A memorial to the poets of the First World War was unveiled at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey on 11 November. Michael Howard spoke on this occasion and the words of his address appear in this issue.

Letter

Useless Eaters

14 July 2011

‘The phrase “useless eaters",’ according to Alex Lockwood, ‘was first used by German advocates of eugenics’ (Letters, 25 August). But the term ‘bouches inutiles’ was in general use in 18th-century warfare to describe the civilian population of besieged fortresses, and probably goes back a long way before that.
Letter

The Korean War

26 November 1987

SIR: Mr Halliday obviously feels strongly about the Korean War (Letters, 18 February), but his odium academicum engenders more heat than light. I can only advise your readers to consult my review and see what I actually wrote about the three books concerned: in particular, the reasons I gave for supporting the judgments of Max Hastings on the merits of the war. Whatever the legal situation, the 38th...

The Forty Years’ Peace

Keith Kyle, 21 October 1993

Early in 1983, when the newly founded Social Democratic Party was acquiring policies by holding study groups, one of these was devoted to East-West relations. At its first session a musty-looking...

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Desolation Studies

Edward Luttwak, 12 September 1991

I still recall my acute disappointment with Michael Howard’s The Franco-Prussian War, published some thirty years ago. The subject was exciting – what with the desperate German...

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Righteous Turpitudes

Basil Davidson, 27 September 1990

Ever since the Trojan Horse, the telling of lies in wartime has been found honourable, along with the bedevilment of enemies and the invocation of gods, and has been practised more or less...

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Boom

Arthur Marwick, 18 October 1984

‘With others of my own contemporaries,’ Denys Hay once wrote, ‘I certainly found myself in the years after 1945 still preoccupied with aspects of warfare in other times (in my...

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Rules of the Game

Jon Elster, 22 December 1983

Raymond Aron died of a heart attack on 17 October, a few weeks after the publication of his memoirs. He died on the steps of the Paris courthouse where he had been testifying on behalf of his...

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