Last December's "Cheriegate" affair did little to abate the rampant public cynicism reserved for politicians - a mistrust evidenced in the turnout at the 2001 general election, which was the lowest for more than 80 years. In this documentary, Michael Cockerell talks to figures including Edwina Currie, Max Clifford, Geoffrey Robinson and Neil Hamilton in an effort to see if spin, sleaze and ministerial failure is to blame, or whether the media's sneering political coverage is most at fault.

Trust Me - I'm a Politician

Thirty years after the Falkland's War, journalist and military historian Max Hastings explores the conflict's impact and its legacy.  Hastings, who sailed with the Task Force in 1982 and reported on the Falklands campaign first-hand, looks at how victory in the South Atlantic revived the reputation of our armed forces and renewed Britain's sense of pride and its image abroad after years of decline as an imperial and military power.  Hastings examines how the Falklands provided a model of a swift and successful war that was matched by other conflicts Britain fought at the end of the 20th-century. In contrast, the long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the British public sceptical about sending our armed forces in large numbers to war again.  The Falklands could well be the last popular war Britain fights, and certainly the country's last imperial hurrah.

The Falklands Legacy

Max Hastings, who himself worked on the landmark series The Great War (1964) 50 years before, argues the case that his and many other ancestors did not die in vain in The First World War.

The Necessary War

On 25 June 1950 the invasion of South Korea by the Communist North launched one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last century. The seemingly limitless power of the Chinese-backed North was thrown against the ferocious firepower of the UN-backed South in a war that can be seen today as the stark prelude to Vietnam. Max Hastings drew on first-hand accounts of those who fought on both sides to produce this vivid and incisive reassessment of the Korean War, bringing the military and human dimensions into sharp focus. Critically acclaimed on publication, with a brand new introduction, The Korean War remains the best narrative history of this conflict.
 
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Korean War

In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no longer be fed. Churchill made a personal decision that at all costs, the ‘island fortress’ must be saved. This was not merely a matter of strategy, but of national prestige, when Britain’s fortunes and morale had fallen to their lowest ebb. The largest fleet the Royal Navy committed to any operation of the western war was assembled to escort fourteen fast merchantmen across a thousand of miles of sea defended by six hundred German and Italian aircraft, together with packs of U-boats and torpedo craft. The Mediterranean battles that ensued between 11 and 15 August were the most brutal of Britain’s war at sea, embracing four aircraft-carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers, scores of destroyers and smaller craft. The losses were appalling: defeat seemed to beckon. This is the saga Max Hastings unfolds in his first full length narrative of the Royal Navy, which he believes was the most successful of Britain’s wartime services. As always, he blends the ‘big picture’ of statesmen and admirals with human stories of German U-boat men, Italian torpedo-plane crews, Hurricane pilots, destroyer and merchant-ship captains, ordinary but extraordinary seamen. Operation Pedestal describes catastrophic ship sinkings, including that of the aircraft-carrier Eagle, together with struggles to rescue survivors and salvage stricken ships. Most moving of all is the story of the tanker Ohio, indispensable to Malta’s survival, victim of countless Axis attacks. In the last days of the battle, the ravaged hulk was kept under way only by two destroyers, lashed to her sides. Max Hastings describes this as one of the most extraordinary tales he has ever recounted. Until the very last hours, no participant on either side could tell what would be the outcome of an epic of wartime suspense and courage. About the Author Max Hastings is the author of twenty-eight books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor in chief of the Daily Telegraph, then as edi­tor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes, for both his journalism and his books, the most recent of which are the bestsellers Vietnam, The Secret War, Catastrophe, and All Hell Let Loose. Knighted in 2002, Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King’s College London, and a Bloomberg Opinion colum­nist. He has two grown children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife, Penny, in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.
 
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