Lieutenant-Commander Tom Ladner DSC
QUOTE
Royal Canadian Navy officer who was one of the 'three musketeers' in motor gun boats.
UNQUOTE
MGBs tend mean close quarter operations. He was at close quarters and very effective.
Jo Jo Laine
QUOTE
Jo Jo Laine, who died on Sunday aged 53 after falling down a flight of stairs, led a fast-paced life which bore witness to the dangers of too much beauty combined with an almost total lack of self-restraint.Petite, wide-eyed and with waist-length dark auburn hair, Jo Jo Laine became famous as a model but notorious as a groupie who numbered among her conquests some of the most glamorous icons of the Sixties and Seventies rock scene........ Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, Jim Morrison, the Wings guitarist Denny Laine, Randy Rhoads, the Black Sabbath guitarist, with Peter O'Donohue, a builder who was jailed in 1988 for 11 years for his part in a £40 million armed raid on a safety deposit centre in Knightsbridge....
UNQUOTE
She lived. She died. One can envy the courage it takes to live for the day and the Devil take the consequences. It was the drugs that did for her.
Sir Freddie Laker
Freddie Laker brought us cheap travel and upset other airlines. He started with Halifax bombers after the war. The transatlantic run was where he made the money and got severely sabotaged by the expensive airlines. They threatened McDonnell Douglas and it worked.
Antony Lambton
Conservative defence minister who renounced his peerage to remain in the Commons but saw his career collapse in a sex scandal.
Lord Lane LCJ, AFC
He did a tour in Wellingtons then flew Dakotas on D Day and to Arnhem. As the Lord Chief Justice of England he was keen on longer sentences for violence and upholding the individual against the state. He did a lot of high profile cases but his career was marred by the Birmingham 6 job and vicious press commentary.
David Lange
Was a prime minister of New Zealand who would not let American war ships land if they were nuclear. This annoyed the Yanks. He was good on free trade which is odd from a socialist.
Major 'Joe' Langley MC
He got to Burma in 1945 and was out numbered by 10 to 1. This was challenging. He never did like Japs afterwards. He had nightmares about their viciousness.
Lt-Col David Laurie
Convert from horse borne cavalry to the new fangled sort, go to North Africa and never have quite the same feeling about sand and beaches.
Professor Paul Lauterbur
QUOTE
Chemist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his role in the development of magnetic resonance imaging.
UNQUOTE
Brains make all the difference. The army put him in a tank battalion by mistake but he rose above it.
Admiral Sir Horace Law
He pressed for more aircraft carriers at a time when the forces were shrinking. He lost, sadly but he had a lot of fun; excitement too.
Patricia Kennedy Lawford
Her old man and Kennedy's was a major criminal. One Kennedy the less makes the world a better place. She was Kennedy's sister who married an English drunkard, fornicator and drug addict.
Cdre Shorty Lawson
He commanded a destroyer and did nothing very much but he had fun doing it. The peace time Navy is just not the same.
Professor Harold Lawton
Was the last survivor of the First War to have been captured. It was during a German advance at Bethune. He was also an authority on French literature.
Kenneth Lay
He was the front man at Enron until it all went wrong. Then he was still the front man at the trial. Dying was a clever move. It kept him out of prison and might even keep his ill gotten gains intact. The papers wrote about Kenny, Bush's little mate but said very little about the master financial manipulator that set things up.
The Reverend His Honour Major Christopher Lea MC
Soldier, judge and priest in that order means versatile or just not sure of his real values. The MC implies that he got stuck in when things were happening. Some operations just do not go right.
Michael Leahy
QUOTE
... challenged the concept of animal rights which underlies campaigns such as those against animal experimentation and the use of animals for food...The animal rights movement, Leahy maintained, is based upon fundamental misconceptions about the basic nature of animals - beliefs which anthropomorphise animals and ascribe to them cognitive and emotional capacities that are, in fact, limited to (or most properly ascribed to) humans.... Leahy was not saying that cruelty can be morally justified.... Leahy was quietly fond of the family pet, an Irish Terrier called Tim,
In 1996 he co-edited, with Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Liberation Debate, a series of essays which subjected demands for rights for groups such as homosexuals, women, ethnic minorities, children (and animals) to critical scrutiny.
UNQUOTE
His basic point is quite simple but dealing with the lunatic fringe is like that.
The Earl of Lichfield
Was a better man than the gossip columns led people to think. He did his service with the Coldstreams. Photography got a quick commercial start at Harrow with the leaving pictures. He wrote some sound books. There was charity work too.
The Duke of Leinster
Eton, Sandhurst and the cavalry sound like a good start in life. With a family like that things were far from easy; bankruptcies, lunacy and suicide were all part of it. Wounded and invalided out after D Day but he hunted so it was not all bad.
Carlo Little
He was with the Rolling Stones but recommended Charlie Watts as his replacement. He made a good baker though.
Alexander Litvinenko
QUOTE
Former Russian intelligence officer who castigated the Kremlin and who died as mysteriously as he had lived.
UNQUOTE
He made it from private soldier to lieutenant colonel then joined the KGB. He blamed the Russian government which is run by Lieutenant Colonel Putin, late of the KGB. They both knew about covert operations e.g. murdering irritating people in foreign countries.
Sir Ian Lloyd
Flew Spitfires with the South African Air Force then became an MP in England. He had entirely reasonable views of Nelson MANDELA, Joe Slovo and other communist subversives. He got Mugabe bang to rights too. For his pains he was hated by the left and the BBC. The Daily Telegraph's obituarist does not approve either.
Major Vanessa Lloyd-Davies
A medic who made it the Balkans and back. She rode to hounds. She went at 44 after a divorce. A pity.
Colonel Sir Walter Luttrell MC
QUOTE
Soldier, sportsman and landowner whose family occupied Dunster Castle in Somerset for six centuries.
UNQUOTE
He had an interesting life.
Susan Lydon
Was a Jew with message of hate. In other words a typical feminist. They have an agenda. She was part of it. Sadly, their propaganda is plausible enough to wreak enormous damage on the family and civilization. That is why they do it. She was also a drug addict, thief and whore. She liked knitting.
Joseph Lynch, GC
Sailor who risked his life to save a comrade from drowning. Seas round the Falklands are seriously cold. It took courage. It wasn't just a one off either.
Professor Oliver Lyne
Latin poetry was his subject at Balliol so he knew something about casting pearls before swine. As the NATO Visiting Professor charged with studying the militia amoris, the metaphor of warfare in Latin love poetry, he found himself followed everywhere by a small red East European car. You have to hand it to the KGB.
Ronnie Lyon
He also went bankrupt, for £52 million and then another 8 mill. He bounced back and still lived life to the full.
Terry Major-Ball
QUOTE
Terry Major-Ball, who has died aged 74, first came to the attention of the nation in November 1990 on the night that his younger brother John became Prime Minister.... He would later recall how furious he was about some of the things the commentators were saying that evening about his father, a former circus clown and garden gnome manufacturer. Yet, when he went outside to speak to ITV's News at Ten in a dazzling pool of light, it was a disaster.
UNQUOTE
He cheered us up and helped the media denigrate Her Majesty's Prime Minister, one who was not the worst. That of course is Blair.
Vice-Admiral Sir Ged Mansfield
Was Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic. He served on the heavy cruiser Sussex which looked for Graf Spee. He was the son of Vice-Admiral Sir Jack Mansfield, KCB, DSO, DSC which pretty much decided his career for him.
Senator Eugene McCarthy
Was not Joe McCarthy being a leftie and much brighter. He was also sufficiently honest to walk away from politics when it bored him. He knocked Johnson out of the running for President.
Major-General 'Mac' Macdonald DSO
Made it through North West Europe from D Day on, commanded three battalions and was with Bill Slim afterwards.
Sergeant 'Scruff' McGough
Of the SBS, served in Afghanistan. There is not a lot of water in Afghanistan but there is plenty of fighting and plenty of courage. He was one who showed Americans and locals how it is done. Then sadly he copped it hang gliding.
Flight Lieutenant Wallace McIntosh DFM
QUOTE
Flight Lieutenant McIntosh,... joined the RAF to escape acute poverty, and survived 55 bombing operations; by the end of the war he had shot down eight enemy aircraft and was recognised as Bomber Command's most successful air gunner....McIntosh did not learn about Christmas until he was seven, and never celebrated a birthday until he joined the RAF. But he could steal, kill and skin a sheep before he was 12; he could snare anything that could be cooked; and he could pull salmon from a river with the skill of a master poacher.
UNQUOTE
Poverty was for real. So was his shooting. Deflection shots are not easy when they are shooting back.
The Very Reverend Fraser McLuskey MC
Jumped with 1 SAS after D Day near Dijon then followed through to Norway. Being in the officers' mess meant some long nights.
The McGillycuddy of The Reeks
The McGillcuddys lived in Kerry from time immemorial, becoming Anglo-Irish en route. Fighting on both sides is helpful when politics are involved. They fought on the right side against Adolf. Marrying well helps too. Now they have left Kerry.
James MacKeith
QUOTE
.... It was through his clinical casework in the late 1970s, many years before the Criminal Cases Review Commission was established, that MacKeith became concerned about cases of wrongful conviction arising from false confessions under police interrogation..... and their joint research studies and thorough casework were crucial in demonstrating, in the face of substantial initial scepticism, the existence of false confessions: how they arise, and the potential unreliability of criminal convictions based on uncorroborated confessions alone.
UNQUOTE
When they start with the bright lights and the rubber truncheons say nothing except number, rank and name. See Resistance to Interrogation
Digby McLaren
He believed in global warming but was too bright to be dismissed as a loon. Sound on population growth albeit he didn't recommend en masse nuclear strikes.
Paul MacCready
QUOTE
Aeronautical engineer whose ingenious designs set new records in the field of human-powered flight.
..... on August 23 1977 MacCready's Gossamer Condor - piloted (or rather pedalled) by Bryan Allen - made the first sustained, controlled flight powered solely by a human [ NB not a humaness ].Kremer then offered another prize, of £100,000, for the first human-powered crossing of the English Channel, and it took MacCready less than two years to claim it, with his Gossamer Albatross.
UNQUOTE
Commitment and competence came together.
Captain Robert MacWhirter
He flew the Walrus, an amphibious biplane in 1940 and found a tanker refuelling a sub at sea. This was sunk. He got a German supply ship too. The Spitfire turned out to be much more fun. He flew 64 types.
HRH Sheikh Maktoum Al Maktoum
Was an effective ruler who held the United Arab Emirates (UAE) together. He was big in racing as an owner and breeder of racehorses. Dubai is a better place because of him.
Kapitän-Leutnant Reinhold von Malapert
QUOTE
Kapitän-Leutnant Reinhold von Malapert, who has died aged 93, witnessed the last hours of the Australian light cruiser Sydney, which vanished off the coast of Western Australia in 1941; the fate of the ship has remained a source of fascination to the Australian public for more than six decades.
UNQUOTE
That was his one big action.
Peter Malkin
Mossad man ie a member of the most dangerous criminal organization in the world. He captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. They learned all too much from him and they are putting it all into practice on Palestinians.
Bernard Manning
QUOTE
"Jackanory stuff," Manning liked to say, "is for wimps.... What they wanted, in Manning's view, was racism, sexism, generous lashings of the F-word and bawdy personal abuse of jaw-dropping nastiness. Almost no individual or minority was immune from Manning's wicked barbs. He laid with equal gusto into Jews, Aborigines, Pakistanis, gypsies - and everyone in France. Eighteen stones in weight and with the sartorial style of the darts player from hell, Manning was crass, callous, and deeply shocking to the liberal spirit - so, naturally, the punters loved him.
UNQUOTE
The lefties hated him. That is a good start. The Telegraph does not mention that his people were Jews from Sevastopol - see Bernard Manning: His own obituary, in his own words
Achille Maramotti
A business man who made his luck. Brains are the basis. Then it is hard work. Luck does no harm; it just a matter of using it. That is where the brains come in.
Captain Victor Marchesi
QUOTE
Officer who patrolled the South Atlantic during the Second World War to safeguard Britain's Antarctic interests.
UNQUOTE
He protected the Falklands from the Argies back then.
Warrant Officer Antoni Markiewicz Polish Cross of Valour
He got the first kill of the war, a Henschel 126 when the Luftwaffe invaded Poland in 1939 and the war was an hour old. He got a Stuka the day after. Then there was the French air force and a Dornier. The RAF and an Me 109 followed. Hate aids courage and clarity of purpose. They gave him reason.
Archbishop Marcinkus
Contributed to the gaiety of nations and conspiracy theories worldwide by his running of the Vatican Bank. Holy Mother Church was not amused. He was involved with the Banco Ambrosiano scandal which cost the Vatican around $500 million. Ambrosiano's chairman, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in June 1982, shortly before Italy's largest private bank went bust with debts of $1.3 billion. Marcinkus went on the run in 1987.Embarrassingly for Marcinkus, the Pope's bank, the Institute for Religious Works, had been an active partner in Calvi's hazardous financial adventures.
The fallout from the scandal lasted for more than a decade. In 1984 the Vatican agreed to make a $240 million goodwill payment to creditors of the Banco Ambrosiano, while denying any responsibility for the fraudulent collapse of the Milan-based bank. The payment did little to salvage the Holy See's reputation, and Marcinkus himself consistently opposed it. It also failed to mollify the Milan magistrates investigating the case, who issued a warrant for Marcinkus's arrest in 1987. It went down like a cup of cold sick with the Faithful.
Anna Marly
She wrote Le Chant des Partisans, the anthem of the resistance in France and the most famous piece after La Marseillaise. She did it in Russian for the partisans who were at Adolf's tender mercies. She also wrote La complainte du partisan (The Lament of the Partisan), which was sung by Leonard Cohen.
Brigadier Leslie Marsh MC
He made it through Italy, Korea, Suez, Aden, Iraq, Borneo and the twilight of the Empire. The MC came in Korea. Collaboration with the Americans did not always work though.
Bill Marshall DFC
Was a horse man who ran away to sea rather than go to school at Rugby. He learned to fly his own Tiger Moth and flew it to England from South Africa. With the RAF he got two kills and seven V2s.
Captain 'Pug' Mather
QUOTE
Fighter pilot who became a prisoner of war in Korea and was tortured for refusing to renounce the Crown.
UNQUOTE
Koreans were not nice.
Wing Commander Dickie Martin DFC
He flew Hurricanes and Tomahawks for real. Being a test pilot in the Javelin came later.
Aslan Maskhadov
Was a guerrilla leader and then the head man in Chechnya. He was killed by the Russians. There were two previous near misses.
Douglas Mason
He was the twerp who invented the Poll Tax. Left wing councils used it as an excuse to waste even more money and blame the Tories. Getting rid of Maggie was a bonus for them.
Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Masters MC
Being born in Woolwich Arsenal meant being born with the guns and he stayed with them through North Africa, Italy and North West Europe.
Sir Carol Mather MC
Was a man and all man, name notwithstanding. He was also with L Detachment which was the very beginning of the SAS, did some escaping and was 17 years an MP. He was a real Tory with sound views on hanging and flogging unlike the present shower of communist subversives, time servers and place men.
Group Captain Roy Max DSO, Croix de Guerre
QUOTE
Group Captain Roy Max,.. travelled from New Zealand to join the RAF as a pilot... already a veteran at 24, he was made a wing commander and appointed to command No 75 (NZ) Squadron, the first Commonwealth squadron in Bomber Command.
UNQUOTE
The Fairey Battle always looked third rate and it was. He had a hair raising time but made it.
Capt John Maxwell MC
He rescued 500 New Zealanders who had been captured in North Africa. He also proved that wars have a cost by losing a leg.
Group Captain Dick Maydwell DSO
Was a pre-war big game hunter and a war time, bigger game hunter using Marauders in the Aegean. His mines got two ships so he succeeded. After it was wood pigeons and roe deer which make good eating.
Ernst Mayr
Another German but different. He was a bird watcher who built on Darwin's theory. He made it to 100 so he must have lived clean.
Commander Peter Meryon DSC
He boarded a submarine in the Med as it was being scuttled and got the code books without the crew realising. He was also attacked on D Day by an unmanned Luftwaffe flying bomb which was controlled from a near by aircraft. It was an experimental type.
George Millar DSO, MC
Captured twice, escaped twice. Got back to Blighty, joined SOE, jumped back into France. An interesting life and not just war time.
Vice-Adml Sir Charles Mills
Fine staff officer who commanded a destroyer in the Korean War. He ran the naval college in Greenwich too which must have been good for morale [ his ].
Slobodan Milosevic - Slob for short
The Telegraph does not admire him. Nor do a lot of people and some of them know what they are talking about. We never were told what was going on in Yugoslavia but we are only the peasants. Agendas were operational. The truth came last and a lot of people got killed. He had fans among his own though so we really did not get told the truth.
Norman Miscampbell
QUOTE
Lawyer and long-serving Conservative MP who rejected Margaret Thatcher's stance on social issues
UNQUOTE
A man to the left albeit he served for real with the 4th Hussars.
Maj-Gen Lord Monckton of Brenchley MC
Had a lively war, whence the MC. He was born in Ightham Mote which was a superb start to life. It is still there and lovely. He was a water diviner too.
Air Vice-Marshal Charles Moore
Philip Morrison
Was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and went to Tinian Island to assemble the bomb before it went out in Enola Gay. He thought that they were nasty, dangerous things and should be banned. Tom thought they were great but then Tom had a one way ticket to Japan provided by His Majesty's Government. Doc Morrison was a lefty and implicated in treason by the VENONA decrypts but he went clear and lived to teach. Tom went clear too and did medicine.
Howard Moseley
Proved that good teaching makes a big difference at Eton and anywhere else. He was good on charitable works too.
Mo Mowlam
A loose cannon with a foul mouth. She told the Reverend Ian Paisley to fuck off which sounds like a good idea. Hated by Blair, Scargill and Benn so she was not all bad.
Toby Nash MC
He held a bridge in Burma against Japanese attacks. His father also got an MC with the guns. He got patents after the war. Intelligence and drive make a good combination.
Rev James Nelson
Beat his mother to death with a police bludgeon then went the other way. There were doubts about his sincerity.
Norman Newell
He made it from poverty in the East End to music producer and showed that brains matter more.
Adrian Nicholas
He lived for adventure. He died for adventure. He had fun doing it.
Melita Norwood
Fools and rogues exist. At least rogues are straightforward. They act for themselves. Fools are far more dangerous. They act for others or think that they do. They have swallowed the propaganda fed at them by the BBC, the media or education racket. She was unrepentant to the last. MI6 knew about her and let her get away with it which makes one wonder what use they are. She believed that capitalism was ultimately doomed to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. She may well be right but it will be fools of her calibre who will cause it.
Saunders Mac Lane
Was an original mathematician who did great things and if you understand his work you are a better man than most. The life of the mind does not make for exciting reading though.
Alan Maclean
Was a diplomat until his brother, a traitor did a runner. Then it was publishing and he dealt with some well known authors. He was on the Rhine Crossing with the 11th Hussars.
Veronica Lady Maclean of Dunconnel
A cousin of David Stirling, married to Fitzroy Maclean. It all made for interesting times. She met John Kennedy and thought him a third rater. Not a bad judge.
Theodore Maiman
QUOTE
Physicist who developed the world's first working laser but had to fight to win recognition.
UNQUOTE
Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan. It was a race between Hughes, the Pentagon and Bell Laboratories.
Arif Mardin
Arif Mardin was one of the most successful producers in the history of pop music. He did Aretha Franklin's Respect and the Bee Gees' Jive Talkin'. There were lots of other big names too. He was from Turkey whence the name.
Frank Marsden
A Labour MP of the old guard and a genuine socialist. He flew with Bomber Command as a gunner and left politics to take an ordinary working job unlike the light fingered rogues who are today's politicians.
Albert Marshall
Served with the Essex Yeomanry and the 19th Hussars when cavalry meant boots and spurs. He saw the Ox and Bucks charge in Flanders and saw the few that came back. One of the very last of the very few. More from http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/news.htm. The Telegraph missed him; a pity.
Sir Arthur Marshall
QUOTE
Was an aviation engineer who trained pilots for the Battle of Britain. He remembered the first crossing of the English Channel by Louis Blériot in 1909. Then it was for flying. His school produced flying instructors and if the RAF had followed his line there would have been no shortage of fighter pilots in 1940.
UNQUOTE
A rather good man. Engineers don't usually get praises.
Sir Peter Masefield
He was an aviation reporter who flew on USAF operations in Fortresses as co-pilot or gunner. He was seriously interested in flying and wound up running BAA, the British Airport Authority having run most things in aviation and even making BA profitable.
Tony Meehan
Was the drummer with The Shadows and Cliff. The Young Ones are The Old Ones now.
George Melly
QUOTE
The jazz singer, author and raconteur leched, drank and blasphemed his way around the clubs and pubs of the British Isles and provided pleasure to the public for five decades.
UNQUOTE
Jew. Public school man. Took it both ways.
Why have we never honoured man who invented the Spitfire?
Because he was an engineer. He did not live to see his aircraft save England but without him the course of the war would have been very different. An American, billionaire Sidney Frank who was in the aircraft industry is making a difference. A difference is that Mr. Frank is a marketing man, not an engineer. Selling booze is a way to make money. Saving England is not. See R.J. Mitchell
Ismail Merchant
An Indian film maker who worked with James Ivory. His output cost millions less than other outfit's operations.
Hugh Merewether
QUOTE
Test pilot who pioneered the flying techniques which led to the development of the Harrier
UNQUOTE
Engineer, pilot, sailor and art dealer means versatile. A man should be versatile.
Lord Merlyn-Rees
Made it from a poor home in Wales to squadron leader in the RAF then politics. He was the Northern Irish Secretary, a thankless task, and one of the better politicians.
Professor Donald Michie
QUOTE
Professor Donald Michie, who died in a motor accident on Saturday aged 83, was a pioneer in the creation of artificial intelligence; during the war he worked on breaking German codes at Bletchley Park and later, as Professor of Machine Intelligence at Edinburgh University, helped to bring about the world of robots, computer games and search engines.
UNQUOTE
I fancy that his ideas on artificial intelligence did not really pay off.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Miller MC, DSO
It was Eton, Sandhurst and the Welsh Guards. It all sounds nice but after D Day it was for real; whence the medals. He was the Crown Equerry which means managing the Queen's horses.
Major Alastair Morrison MC
QUOTE
Tank officer who won the MC for his devastating use of high explosives in Holland and later led battlefield tours in Normandy.
UNQUOTE
Edna Morris
The last war was not a men only affair. Some of the nurses got up near the sharp end too.
Commander John Morris-Jones
QUOTE
Naval airman who led a series of critical raids without taking a single casualty during the Suez campaign
UNQUOTE
He did well.
General Sir David Mostyn
QUOTE
Adjutant-General who as a young officer led his company of 'Marauders' to help quell a rebellion in Brunei.
UNQUOTE
This was when the British Empire meant something. It was not the worst of them. Consider the Soviet version for example and the current Israeli operation with its American satellite and shameless evil.
Air Vice-Marshal Leslie Moulton DFC
He flew Wellesley bombers and did 80 operations. A tour in bombers was 30. Only one other man survived with him.
Professor Helen Muir
She proved that arthritis is not the result of wear and tear but genetic and environmental causes. This is a step forward.
David Murray
Was seriously versatile. Running a night club with show girls, some times naked and some times not quite sounds like fun. War years with the SOE due to being bilingual was interesting but the degree in genetics and practical contributions to research mark him out as someone - not just any one.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Was a Palestinian in a brotherhood of hate caused by the Jewish take over of Palestine. With a price of $25 million on his head he was wanted but nobody babbled. The hate was sincere and widely shared.
Romano Mussolini
Was the son of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and a much nicer man than George, son of George Bush. He never murdered anyone or wasted BILLIONS but he did play the piano - only jazz but nobody is perfect.
Yuval Ne'eman
Developed the Zionist nuke, the one that is so awful that Iranians must not be allowed to have them. He also discovered quarks [ don't ask ] and was keen on murdering them before they murdered him. Attempts were made but they failed, sad to say. He was a battalion 2 i/c, scientific director of the Israeli Atomic Energy Establishment, founder-director of the School of Physics and Astronomy and an adviser to the head of military intelligence while developing nuclear bombs. A man should be versatile. He was.
Eric Newby MC
Was one of the better travel writers who got about. He was with the Black Watch, SBS and MI9. The latter dealt with escape and evasion, unlike MI5, internal security and MI6, espionage.
Brigadier David Nicholls
Was a Marine and a mountaineer. There was a lively action in Oman but he was likely to be in the Falklands and other cold places. He died youngish too, a mere 57.
Air Marshal Sir John Nicholls
QUOTE
Outstanding post-war fighter pilot who was the first from the RAF to down a MiG and later tested the Lightning
UNQUOTE
The RAF was a lot of fun for the best men.
Squadron Leader Ron Noble DFC
He flew his Hurricane from an aircraft carrier thence 600 miles to Malta. It was their first time from a carrier and the start of six frenetic months. The Ark Royal was sunk a day after they left. Interesting times. Would he bother today with a traitorous ruling class at the helm?
Lord Nolan — a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 1994-98
QUOTE
Within minutes of his appointment by John Major as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Lord Nolan left no one in any doubt that he, and he alone, would determine how the committee would conduct its business. Responding to the Prime Minister’s Commons declaration that the committee would probably sit in private, Nolan pronounced that he had always sat in public and intended to continue doing so.
UNQUOTE
Heath was one that didn't like his ideas regarding standards. Heath liked little boys and brown envelopes.
Brigadier Eileen Nolan
It doesn't take a sergeantess to make tea for the boss far less a brigadier. Women have wormed their way into modern society in a most undesirable fashion. Giving them pistols makes sense though, especially in the American army.
Lt-Cdr Freddie Nottingham
Atlantic convoys could be interesting. Russian convoys were guaranteed to be cold. The Med and Far East came later. He married once and married well.
Helen O'Brien
Running a night club off Regent Street sounds like fun. Having lovely girls and a very select clientele sounds excellent. Being a branch of the Foreign Office and MI6 sounds improbable. Having a bishop make off with one of your dancers sounds amusing. I always hear about these things too late. She got a friendly write up in the Independent too - see Soho in the Sixties - All about Eve
PS Another and better obit is on line at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/HELEN%27S+HOUSE+OF+SIN%3B+review-a0112526706 by courtesy of the Mail.
Group Captain Peter O'Brian DFC
QUOTE
Battle of Britain pilot who sometimes flew five sorties a day and was later awarded two DFCs as a fighter leader.
UNQUOTE
He went operational after ten training flights in fighters.
Jack Odell
QUOTE
Engineer responsible for the die-cast models which made Matchbox toys an international success.
UNQUOTE
A good man it seems.
Lieutenant Frank Ogden
Took a miniature submarine into Bergen to attack a supply ship. It worked - just. Interesting but not fun.
Richard Ogden
A jeweller in the Burlington Arcade is at the top of the trade and gets to meet well known people. He was with Intelligence during the war. Speaking French was not a great help in Burma but knowing people is.
Sir Angus Ogilvy
Married Princess Alexandra, who at one stage had to be the pick of the bunch. He was tainted by dealings with Tiny Rowland but he was clean. Made all of the right moves unlike too many.
Flight Lieutenant Pat O'Hara
The navigator does not normally get a mention in obits but he is just as committed as the pilot. Doing a 100 operations, over three tours meant that he was living on borrowed time and after an exciting run to Bremen, he knew it.
Major Peter Oldfield
Was with 1 SAS in the North African desert which meant deep penetration and raiding. Attacking aircraft on the ground has much to commend it. Being a POW was not much fun. Nicer things came later.
Brigadier General Robin Olds
QUOTE
The US Air Force's most charismatic pilot who was a Second World War ace and the best fighter leader in Vietnam.
UNQUOTE
Leading from the front is the way to go. 152 sorties over Vietnam is not like flying a desk.
Francis Ona
Was the King of Bougainville. Copper miners took over and didn't bother about the land or the locals. The locals struck back. Their inspiration came from Jesus and Rambo: First Blood Part II an odd combination but it worked. The government of Papua New Guinea was not amused. They had been paid off by the mining mob. There is a lesson here for all of the oppressed.
Michael O'Riordan
Michael O'Riordan, who has died aged 88, fought with the British battalion of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and, as general secretary of the Irish Workers' Party 30 years later, asked the Kremlin to send him arms.He spent his honeymoon visiting prisoners in Parkhurst which proves a degree of sincerity. Castro gave him Cuba's Medal of Friendship which proves something too.
Lieutenant-Colonel Monty Ormsby MC
Led a company attack by the 2nd Gurkha Rifles at Monte Cassino. The Wehrmacht had good defensive positions and there were lots of casualties. He was in when the Army got about so it was Greece, India, Malaya, England etc.
Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway DSO
Commanded 9 PARA on D Day. They had to take a battery at Merville which was on the eastern flank of the front. It was guarded by 130 men, mine fields, barbed wire etc. He did what it took with a quarter of his men. The rest were scattered to the four winds.He did not feel able to forgive the Germans who shot his men as they hung in with their parachutes in trees.
Lieutenant-General Sir Rollo Pain MC
Was with the Reconnaissance Corps when the Wehrmacht attacked east of the Weser. He was there when it mattered and led from the front. Being a cavalry man he hunted with the Fallingbostel Hounds. Diplomacy was another venture as the Head of the British Defence Staff in Washington at a time when the Americans were losing in Vietnam and not very happy.
Patrick Pakenham
Son of Lord Longford, the one who tried to get Myra Hindley out of prison. He was part barrister and part lunatic. Telling a jury that the judge was a senile old fool and that they weren't much better was not a good career move but he cheered people up.
Kerry Packer
Was the richest Australian and a gambler. He was famous for not murdering his bank manager. Doubtless the fellow deserved what was coming to him. Newspaper men think that newspaper men matter. See Kerry Packer II A sporting man who did it in serious style. He was generous too from time to time.
Sir John Page
Showed that you can serve in the RAF without hearing a shot fired in anger and even have fun.
Maurice Papon
QUOTE
Maurice Papon, who died on Saturday aged 96, was the former French cabinet minister convicted in 1998 of having helped the Nazis to deport Jews to concentration camps during the wartime occupation of France.Papon's trial was the overdue calling to account of one prominent collaborator, but he stood in the dock as the representative of the thousands of French men and women who had actively served the Vichy state, and of the millions who had quietly acceded to German rule and its consequences.
UNQUOTE
Mitterrand had a far uglier track record but got away with it. Luck helps. So does power. We have our very own criminals in politics too but the system is not going to do them.
Vice-Admiral Sir John Parker
Murmansk convoys were his thing. Limping in with torpedo holes was part of it. Hong Kong was different and warmer.
Rosa Parks
She was a black who refused to give up a seat on a bus in Alabama as required by law. She was used as a front man by subversives who "just happened" to be there because the other guilty were dead beats. The fuss was used to leverage Martin Luther King into prominence by encouraging black dissidents. Follow the link to find out about his hobbies [ fornication and beating whores ], fraud and Jewish handlers.PS, Parks was a communist agitator being used to incite trouble. See Rosa Parks See also nationalist.org They are not fans either. She was trained as a subversive at the Highlander Folk School for Communist-activists and revolutionaries, at Monteagle, Tennessee, where she met and conspired with others dedicated to the Africanization, Communization and downfall of America. Parks survived into old age, but never was able to parlay her notoriety into wealth, as other opportunists did. She had been used, in later years, as a "poster-girl" for fund-raising by pro-minority activist Morris Dees, who erected a monument to Communist-agitators and amassed a $100-million nest-egg from Hollywood-backers to integrate the country. But, Dees lined his own pockets, not hers, leaving Parks to live out her years in poverty and obscurity.
PPS Judicial-Inc does her in pictures at http://judicial-inc.biz/rosa_parks.htm and tells us about her Jewish handlers.
Wally Parr
Made it to Pegasus Bridge on D Day with the Oxs and Bucks. He was in the first of six gliders and landed 60 yards away from the objective. Surprise helps. 7 PARA jumped in and reinforced them until Lord Lovat arrived. This was just a beginning. Men don't get the write ups normally. Wally was fairly special.
Arthur Paton MC
Born in Korea, had a Russian governess in Vladivostok, Oxford, Harlequins, commissioned into the 11th Hussars, MC in North Africa, joined SOE in Cairo, smuggling into Greece - speaking Russian didn't help that much. Kenya and Borneo came after the war. He got around.
Floyd Patterson
Took over from Rocky Marciano as the world champion but lost the title to Ingemar Johansson and permanently to Sonny Liston. Sonny was better thief too.
The Rev Sir Derek Pattinson
QUOTE
Leading figure in the General Synod criticised for his role in the 'Crockford affair' of 1987.
UNQUOTE
Very influential adulterer. Lived in sin with a pervert which does not make for a feeling of sincerity.
Professor David Pearce
The pen is mightier than the sword we are told. This man proved that the sword is needed. Economists are dangerous when they get taken seriously. Think of Greenspan destroying the American economy. This twerp invented the land fill tax and the congestion charge. Having a left wing government lets his sort get away with it.
Terry Peck
QUOTE
Terry Peck, who has died aged 68, played a dashing role in the Falklands war when he first spied on the enemy in Port Stanley, then escaped to become a scout for the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, with which he fought at the Battle of Mount Longdon. Although, at 43, he was twice as old as many of their men, they then gave him a rifle and combat gear, and asked him to join a 60-strong patrol charged with going ahead of the main force to establish the enemy's whereabouts. He was buried with the maroon beret he had as an honorary member of the Parachute Regiment on his chest.
UNQUOTE
Sir John Peel
John Peel, who died on Saturday aged 101, was Surgeon-Gynaecologist to the Queen from 1961 to 1973 and was present at a number of royal births which has to be as good as it gets in that line.Wing Commander David Penman
He got a run to Augsburg at low level in day light. He even survived. A tour with bombers then it was Dakotas in Burma. Some men are lucky.
Sir Charles Pereira
He had it all, brains, brawn and courage. The science of water in agriculture matters. He was part of it. Finding water in North Africa and building bridges in Italy was his work during the war years. He got to be a major thereby. Hydrology in Africa was useful for a while but turns out to be casting pearls before swine. He made the desert bloom. Now it is desert. He was at East Malling working on fruit trees latterly. A man of parts.
Major-General Frantisek Perina
After the Czech air force he saw action with the French air force and the RAF. In England it was Hurricanes then Spitfires. He got at least twelve kills in three years of action. He was married for 66 years. Do it once. Do it right.
Penny Phillips
QUOTE
Ambulance driver awarded the Croix de Guerre for her intrepid service during the Fall of France in 1940.
UNQUOTE
She did well.
Lt Col John Pine-Coffin
Served with the Devonshires and the King's Africa Rifles which had some odd moments. Commanding 1 PARA and Suez came later. Landing on a tractor was not a good idea.
General Augusto Pinochet
QUOTE
President of Chile who seized control in a military coup and faced extradition from Britain in 1998.
UNQUOTE
The left hated him which means that he was far from being all bad. Governments in South America vary from mediocre to dreadful. His was far from being the worst. The extradition nausea was an act of pure left wing malice. Sundry left thugs came and went without a murmur. The Jew, Begin was one such with murder warrants outstanding.
PS A more sympathetic and balanced view comes from Perspective On Pinochet
Gene Pitney 1941 - 2006
Was born in Hartford, Connecticut - the home of the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company. Singing and writing came after. So he did a stint of electrical engineering which meant that he was able to do his own dubbing. He lived clean even though he mixed with the Rolling Stones and others. He died suddenly but then it is the good who die young. The Telegraph is not so kind but sheds more light. An ancestor was a marine on the Victory at Trafalgar. He liked trapping and fishing too.
Stanley Peters
An interior designer who had the oddity of being married for a while.
Canon 'Ferdie' Phillips MC
The Padre doesn't usually get a gong but he was a medic with the Sussex Regiment in North Africa. Being a padre in Harrietsham and Faversham had to be a doodle and a rather pleasant one too. Being the Almoner of Canterbury Cathedral was not bad either.
Sir George Pinker
Gynaecologist to the Queen who assisted at the births of nine royal babies, including Princes William and Harry.
Barrie Pitt
His war time service was a secret. He kept telling different stories about it but he was in 21 SAS after and wrote some rather good books about the war years and other operations.
Major Tommy Pitman MC
Eton, Sandhurst, 11th Hussars when cavalry was not a euphemism. Action in Palestine. It was Arabs being a pain then. Captured in North Africa and a PoW which was not much fun. He married once and married right.
Tom Pocock
QUOTE
Accidental war correspondent and military historian who became an authority on Nelson.
UNQUOTE
He was a rather good author too it seems, one who did things for naval history. A man in the mould of George MacDonald Fraser
Jacques Poirier SOE DSO [ 28 November 2005 ]
The French thought that he was English. The Germans wanted him whoever he was. Escaping to England through Gibraltar, getting weapon supply drops, showing his face to new Maquisards, destroying railway lines - all made him seriously busy.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Michael Pollock DSC
QUOTE
Gunnery officer who won the DSC at the Battle of North Cape and later served as First Sea Lord.
UNQUOTE
He was the head buyer and got in the carrier that served us well in the Falklands. He also did convoys to Malta and the hunt for the Scharnhorst. Being the Bath King of Arms and Gloucester King of Arms, a ceremonial officer of the Order of the Bath with jurisdiction over Wales was different and rather fun.
Gergely Pongratz
He fought the Russians in Hungary in 1956 when it was rifles against tanks. They needed courage and luck. He had both.
Major Michael Pope
Was a cavalry man when it meant horses not tracks. Racing and training came later.
Major John Pott MC
Jumped at Arnhem with 156 PARA, was wounded, captured and escaped. Fighting half tracks with Sten guns is not the way to go. Later it was the Persian Gulf and a lot warmer.
Maj-Gen Sir John Potter
Was in logistics which is important but not very thrilling. He was at Dunkirk so he may even have fired a shot in anger.
Sir Leslie Porter
Husband of Old Mother Tesco and an effective businessman but he fled the country when Shirl was ordered to pay millions as a result of electoral shenanigans in Westminster. They lived in Israel until her assets were found. Then she got away with paying £12.3 million.
Colonel Geoffrey Powell MC
He commanded what was left of 156 PARA at Arnhem and got the remnants out over the Rhine fifteen strong. India was before. Kenya and MI5 came after.
Brigadier John Platt DSO
QUOTE
Officer who won a DSO commanding a battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry in the Italian campaign.
UNQUOTE
John Profumo
Was big in politics until he got involved with Christine Keeler and Randy Mandy but he brightened up our lives and nearly brought Her Majesty's Government down. It was a miserable time for Harold Macmillan. In 1939 he joined the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry and was there on D Day. Ask how many men in the House this day have ever served, far less for real. As for a sense of honour, don't bother.
Senator William Proxmire
Bill hated government waste unless it happened to be wasted on the Wisconsin dairy industry. The technical phrase is pork barrelling. We could all do with a lot more enemies of waste.
George Psychoundakis
Was big in the resistance in Crete. He got a good education by local standards. He learned to write as well as read. Patrick Leigh Fermor translated his book of those times. He then did The Odyssey. After the war he as imprisoned for desertion which was most unfair.
Cyril Quantrill
Turning your hobby into your life's work can make sense. He went by way of Tobruk and Baghdad from dispatch rider to founder of Motor Cycle News.
Bill Rae-Smith MC
Served with the Black Watch in Sicily and North West Europe - D+5 through Holland. He wound up with malaria and gun shot wounds which are an unhealthy combination in China during the communist era. The war was a good training for that time and place.
Lieutenant-Commander Dick Raikes
He launched the Cockleshell Heroes who went up the Gironde by canoe to sink shipping with limpet mines. His uncles got eight DSOs and four MCs - a real military family.
Prince Rainier III of Monaco
Was very successful in running Monaco. The casino was a very nice little earner. The tax position paid off big time but his greatest move was marrying Grace Kelly, an American actress. She brought the punters in droves. Advertising and the media have huge power. This was the idea of Onassis who put Marilyn Monroe up for it but she thought that the principality was in Africa. The Grimaldi story makes the Queen's brood sound quite boring.
Taha Yassin Ramadan
QUOTE
Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was hanged in Baghdad yesterday, probably aged 68, was for more than two decades Saddam Hussein's enforcer, foreign envoy, principal cheerleader and the deputy president of Iraq.
UNQUOTE
He is no great loss but a nicer man than Bush.
Murray Ramsay
Was part of the very early work on fibre optics which have made an enormous difference to telecommunications. I happen to know that his firm were buying the very pure glass that they needed from Carl Zeiss in Jena when it was in the DDR, that is Germany under the Russians.
Lt-Col Donald Ramsay-Brown MC
Officer who took a key position before Alamein and killed two Germans with a kukri in Tunisia.
Andrew Raven
Big in Scottish land management. Background of self righteous lefties. Liked venison but did he shoot his own? He died young which was probably not a bad thing.
General Alain Le Ray Croix de Guerre, Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur
QUOTE
French army officer who made the first successful escape from Colditz and later fought with the Resistance.
UNQUOTE
The boy done good. It was in the early days and the Hun never did work out how he got away.
Lord Rawlinson of Ewell
Lord Rawlinson held every important legal office in government except that of Lord Chancellor. He was talented it seems but he did not tell Heath that endorsing the Maastricht Treaty was treason. He did not care enough about England. See Treason at Maastricht: Destruction of the Nation State on the point.
Geoffrey Rees-Jones
Join the Army and see the world. Join the Marines and learn to swim - or drown.
Janet Reger
If you wanted to buy seriously expensive undies for someone, she was the someone to sell them to you.
William Rehnquist
Bill was essentially the Lord Chief Justice of America and rather sound. The Trots hated him. He told the world in 1957 that judges were perverting the Constitution for political reasons. He was right and it has gotten worse.He was a racist too it seems. He claimed that people in the South didn't like coloured people. Post Katrina we can see why but the author of this self righteous little homily Rehnquist the Racist might not agree.
Liz Renay
QUOTE
who died on Monday aged 80, was by turns a Las Vegas showgirl, gangster's moll, convicted felon, cult actress, stripper, streaker and charm school instructor. Convicted of perjury in 1959 when her boyfriend, the racketeer Micky Cohen, was tried for tax evasion, she spent 27 months in prison, a sentence she always regarded as fatal to her career prospects as a budding film star.
UNQUOTE
She lived. She got about. She had fun. Do I sound envious? I hope not but.....
Captain 'Flaps' Rendall
He was flying over Denmark to Sweden in those interesting years of the war but high enough not to get into trouble. Ball bearings and Neils Bohr came out that way.
Professor Charles Rees
QUOTE
His academic reputation lay in the field of heterocyclic chemistry, a branch of organic chemistry dealing with the synthesis, properties and applications of compounds that contain a ring structure of atoms in addition to carbon, such as sulphur, oxygen or nitrogen, as part of the ring. Many heterocyclic compounds have applications which are vital to drug design, and Rees was involved in the synthesis and chemistry of new heterocyclic rings. He had approximately 450 scientific papers published and he co-edited several major reference works in the field.
UNQUOTE
His work mattered although most of us will not understand how.
Paul Ricoeur
Was a philosopher of the sort that give the business a bad name. His summation at the end of this piece shows why but as a PoW the standards in his prison were those of a decent university.
Rear-Admiral Andrew Richmond
He flew Gannets and Whirlwinds from carriers, which was fun. Otherwise he did nothing much.
Jocelyn Rickards
Was a theatrical costumier with some very well known friends. It seems that not all actors are homosexuals after all.
Dame Betty Ridley
Feminist and fool but brains enough to effective and dangerous She had the charm that made her even more dangerous. The Church of England is being broken by homosexuals, women and other undesirables. This is a pity.
Leading Aircraftman William Roberts
Of the Royal Flying Corps left us for a better place. He joined the RAF on Day One, to wit April Fool's Day 1918 but did his service in England. There were still some near misses. They used him as ballast when they were testing aircraft because it was easier to get men in and out. Flying machines were much less predictable then. He got out of prison to find that he been made a corporal. He was a good fencer too, which might not have been as irrelevant as it sounds now. He volunteered after his father was killed on the Western Front. He met T E Lawrence when he was an aircraftman too.
John Robertson MC
QUOTE
Indian Army officer who won the MC tackling the Vichy French in Syria, and a Bar in North Africa
UNQUOTE
Eric Roll
Born in a part of Austria which became Romania meant becoming bilingual. Then he learnt French, came to England becoming quadrilingual and an economist. He was a boss at Warburgs, the bankers and did many important admin things.
Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat
Was a Jew from Poland, on the Manhattan Project and unique in leaving it because it was intended to put the frighteners on Russia. He went back to Liverpool and got a Nobel Peace Prize.
Baron Guy de Rothschild
QUOTE
Banker who restored his famous family's fortunes in France after the war.
UNQUOTE
Rothschild was good at whining about his problems and making lotsa money. He was fairly thick so it was not talent but it did involve close relationships with rising politicians. This biography does not explain how he got himself hated. Jews are good at causing hate. He is unusual for a Jew. He served.
J L Hunter 'Red' Rountree
A business man who diversified into robbing banks at 87. Versatile, or what?
Major-General Roger Rowley DSO
QUOTE
Officer who won an immediate DSO for the speedy and daring capture of Boulogne, and a second five weeks later.
UNQUOTE
A lively man. He did things before and after.
Major Dick Rubinstein MC, Croix de Guerre
An aeronautical engineer who joined SOE and jumped into France, ran guerrilla operations then did it all over again in Burma. Kills were proven the old fashioned way; by taking ears. He was a convert to Christianity.
Sir John Ruggles-Brise, Bt
QUOTE
Essex stalwart who restored his family estate and co-founded the Country Landowners' Association's annual Game Fair.
UNQUOTE
A sound man. He served with the guns.
Anton Rupert
Was a business man operating in South Africa. He colluded with the WWF and Nelson Mandela.
Prince Dado Ruspoli
Any fool can be uncomfortable. He was decidedly not. Knowing everyone, doing everything. He had the time of his life and became a father at 73.
Professor Sir Peter Russell
was his thing but during the war years MI5 sent him Jamaica searching for German spies. Accra came next. Then it was Ceylon. He made it to lieutenant colonel without hearing a shot fired in anger. He had a good war.
Lieutenant-Commander John Russell DSC
His father was at the relief of Khartoum and he was a beach master at Anzio, like Dennis Thatcher, losing a leg thereby. Earlier as a gunnery officer he got two submarines off Madeira when they were attacking a convoy. Afterwards he carried on sailing but in smaller craft.
Thady Ryan MFH
Was the hunting man par excellence. His pack was in the family for centuries. He didn't go to the colours at 18 because he had to keep the farm going. An Anglo-Irishman or vice versa and liked by all.
Captain Piers St Aubyn MC
Captain Piers St Aubyn, who died on May 24 aged 85, was one of only three officers of 156th Parachute Battalion to emerge unscathed from the battle of Arnhem. He jumped on the second day when the Germans had been alerted and never made it to the bridge. It was stock broking and hunting after.