The uses and abuses of history’s heroes
I must allay Nigel Pike’s fears that I have succumbed to the malign influence of political correctness.
The purpose of my letter (“The time Churchill built a mosque”) was to highlight the sly and possibly deceitful attempt by JC Wilcox to portray Churchill as a lifelong hater of Islam simply by quoting comments he made in the first edition of his 1899 “bestseller” “The River War”. What Mr Wilcox did not tell us (perhaps because he doesn’t know: I will give him the benefit of the doubt) is that these comments were at Churchill’s request deleted from the second edition of the book, published just over a year later, and from all subsequent editions.
Churchill’s great legacy is often co-opted by those who wish to give the ring of authenticity to their particular “cause celebre”, and the selective and misleading use of his comments and writings is a common tactic. Churchill was a complex character, but a hater of Islam he most certainly was not.
Robin Grant
Bangkok
