Page 6, 6th April 1973

6th April 1973

Page 6

Page 6, 6th April 1973 — Crass stupidity, high tragedy
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Crass stupidity, high tragedy

The Archer-Shees against the Admiralty by Rodney M. Bennett (Hale £2.50)
The Deadly Stroke by Warren Tute Neither the'attack on the French Atlantic Fleet at Mers el Kebir nor the expulsion of George Archer-Shee from Osborne 12 years earlier shows the Admiralty in a favourable light.
Here, however, the similarity between these episodes ends, for the battle of Mers el Kebir was a far more important and decisive event than the expulsion and vindication of ArcherShee.
Indeed vindication is not the right word in this case made famous by Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy. The case was
never proven because of the crass stupidity and twofaccdness of the Admiralty.
Mr. Bennett's hook is a lucid account of the three years tribulation of the A rcher-Shees. Yet one never feels personally involved with them, or indeed even interested in their fate. Only during the final battle between Carson and Isaacs does the book really grip the imagination or interest.
Not so Mr. Tute's book, for he has a much easier task. It is the description of high tragedy, of a seemingly inexorable fate driving former allies to war and then destruction. It is a plot worthy of Shakespeare.
It is, therefore, all the more remarkable that Mr. 1 utc's deScription of the 12 hours or so before the attack is totally devoid of the unbearable tension that must have been felt throughout the day. The vacillation of both Admiralties is conveyed by a peculiarly vacillating style.
As Mr. Tate says. his is not a book with the answers: a justification or otherwise for Mers el Kebir. Nor, unfortunately does ithelp one to be sympathetic to those involved, One feels only wonder at the way in which what need not have happened did, while all who could have stopped it stood by convinced of their own helplessness.
G.L.




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