There's nothing like an intellectual spat to liven up a Sunday morning. Later this week we are publishing Lloyd George and Churchill by the Cambridge historian Richard Toye.
During the course of his research for the book he discovered a previously unpublished 1937 document by the soon-to-be British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The document can be interpreted as suggesting that he was less sympathetic to the Jewish predicament than future events would have suggested. In any event the world's most famous Churchill scholar, Martin Gilbert, has come out fighting on behalf of Churchill and the press are having fun - The Observer, The Independent and The Times have all run stories and I'm sure there's more to come. Google News has already found 31 stories. Of course, if you want the really definitive biography of Churchill there is nothing better than Roy Jenkins's Churchill which is underpriced at £9.99 for a 1000-page paperback!
Whilst on the political theme, I attended a launch on Friday at the German Information Centre in London of Palgrave Studies in European Politics Series. The drinks and speeches were preceded by a day-long seminar on current and future agendas for the European Union. I must confess that I'd rather the EU had no agenda but that's clearly a personal and narrow-minded view. What is much more important is that we publish freely and participate in the debate. If you click here you'll be able to see Palgrave Macmillan's voluminous politics catalogue and get some idea of the contribution we are making. This is publishing of the highest importance.
