Naval power and pride Sir: Since I stated in the
preface to my study of The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery that I expected that my questioning of traditional British assumptions about the influence of sea-power would be controversial, it came as no surprise to find the `navalist' historian, Richard Hough, fulminating against the book (Spectator, 1 May). But if he disagrees with my main themes (which he never adequately describes), he would have done far better to seek to disprove them than to fall back upon the ancient art of wrenching quotations out of context in an effort to deride my work.
The problem for Mr Hough, I suspect, was that I have not written (as he does) about dashing admirals or glorious naval victories; that I have not shown a 'pride in British maritime history'; and, worse still, that I have argued that the efficacy of the Royal Navy in the twentieth century was not what its admirals and their historians imagined it to be. Recognising a threat to his own values and assumptions, Mr Hough has blasted away indiscriminately; but I am certain that less emotionally-involved historians who read the book will perceive how wide of the target his salvoes really fall. Paul M. Kennedy
University of East Anglia
The great divider Sir: Surely Mr Abse is wrong when he writes (in his review of St Paul by Michael Grant on 17 April) that it was 'the arch apostle Paul' who inflicted the still unhealed wound of dividing the Christian from the Jew. The division between those Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and believed in his resurrection and those who did not, had taken place before St Paul became a Christian. In fact at first he rejected the claims made by Christ's followers and was foremost among their persecutors.
From then on he fought to break down the strict barriers which separated the Jews from gentiles (the rest of the world) and wrote to the Colossians that Christians be" came new men 'where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all'. Surely 'the great divider' ?
E. T. Maddox
High Beeches, Wych Cross, Forest Row, Sussex
Previous page
