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Barnaby Phillips follows the life of one of the forgotten heroes of World War II.

David Cameron: Britain caused many of the world's problems Britain is responsible for many of the world’s historic problems, including the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, David Cameron has said. By James Kirkup, in Islamabad and Christopher Hope The Prime Minister appeared to distance himself from the imperial past when he suggested that Britain was to blame for decades of tension and several wars over the disputed territory, as well as other global conflicts. His remarks came on a visit to Pakistan, when he was asked how Britain could help to end the row over Kashmir. He insisted...

London, England (CNN) -- It was the world's first multinational company, a trading giant during the colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent. This week, The East India Co. is being reborn as a luxury brand -- under Indian ownership. Sanjiv Mehta, an Indian-born importer and entrepreneur, bought the intellectual property rights to the company in 2005, after they had lain dormant for a century. His goal was to create a global luxury brand. His dream is realized in a new store off London's high-end Regent Street, where the new East India Co. now sells gourmet tea, chocolate, coffee and gifts....

Debt can become a real liability for a superpower. Recall what happened to postwar Britain. The dollar's sharp drop over the past few weeks has led to considerable anxiety about the status of the United States as the dominant force in the global economy. Closely related to this fear is constant worry about the rise of China and the evermore complicated relationship between Beijing and Washington. Most people are now aware that China is the largest creditor to a heavily indebted U.S. government. It holds close to a trillion dollars of U.S. Treasurys and has invested hundreds of billions more...

Russia joins the war in Afghanistan By M K Bhadrakumar Jun 25, 2008 Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union's nine-year adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the implications for regional security could be far-reaching.

The new British empire? UK plans to annex south Atlantic Owen Bowcott Saturday September 22, 2007 The Guardian Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields, the Guardian has learned. The UK claims, to be lodged at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, exploit a novel legal approach that is transforming the international politics of underwater prospecting. Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN...

At some point in the Second World War, R.A. Butler came to see Churchill to voice his anxiety about the failure of the education system to instill patriotism in the nation's youth. He wondered what could be done about it. "Tell the children that Wolfe took Quebec," advised the Prime Minister. It remains good advice, with the qualification that "the children" should now be interpreted to cover the entire population. In a poll of 2,000 adults conducted two years ago, more than 60 per cent did not know in which war D-Day occurred. They probably know even less about Wolfe,...

As the midnight hour approached for India 60 years ago on Aug. 15, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister designate, took to the podium to address India's Constituent Assembly in session in New Delhi. Nehru said: "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom." Freedom came with a cost as British India was partitioned to create Pakistan on the basis of...

UK Citizens Abandoning the UK in Greater Numbers July 25, 2007 - Press Dispensary - Increasing numbers of people are taking the decision to move overseas as a result of the UK’s current immigration policy, according to www.globalvisas.com, a specialist immigration consultancy that provides immigration advice and visa services. As numbers of immigrants to the UK from the new European Union Accession states continue to grow, more and more people in the UK are choosing to take their experience and skills overseas. The consultancy caters for immigrants to the UK as well as British people who wish to emigrate to...

The Queen, La Reine By Caroline Davies Last Updated: 2:29pm GMT 15/01/2007 Zut alors! Such is the antipathy today, it is hard today to imagine two nations less likely to form a union than Great Britain and France. Or, indeed, what of the prospect of our Queen as the first regal head of this avowedly republican country since the previous royal occupants of the post literally lost theirs.Guy Mollet (l), Sir Anthony Eden, and Christian Pineau, the French foreign minister, meet in Paris But documents housed at the National Archives at Kew show not only was this seriously considered by...

If somehow a group of Britons from 100 years ago were brought to life and turned loose on the streets of modern London, they would barely recognize the place. The Britain of their day bursted with imperial pride—a sense that the empire was a gift to the world. Over the three centuries Britain built and sustained its globe-straddling kingdom, its extensive contact with all manner of foreign cultures was governed by a sense of duty, of mission. The British sought to strengthen the peoples of other races, religions and creeds with a specific, potent instrument: the civilizing influence of Britishness....

Thousands of people across the UK are joining demonstrations against Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

A major part of the history of India is characterized by two major foreign rules: the Islamic invasion and the British occupation. The Islamic invasion started with the assault of Muhammad bin Qassim in 712 on the order of Hajjaj, the governor of what is now Iraq, and it took until 1690 for the Muslim rulers to conquer India completely. The fall of Islamic rule started with the British East India Company's capture of Bengal in 1757, during the days of Industrial Revolution in Europe. The British rulers took almost 150 years to capture the entire sub-continent from the hands...

NEW YORK - A draft of the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 document in which Britain expressed support for a Jewish state, is to be auctioned next month. The draft was handwritten by Leon Simon, an English Zionist leader, at a meeting on July 17, 1917, of the Zionist Political Committee at London's Imperial Hotel, Sotheby's auction house said Tuesday in a news release. It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of the declaration, Sotheby's said. Written on hotel stationery and using some abbreviations, it reads: "H(is) M(ajesty's) G(overnment) accepts the principle that P(alestine) should be reconstituted as the Nat(ional)...

Alexander Hamilton wasn't the only major American political figure to take part in a mortal duel. Two years after Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in Weehawken, N.J., Andrew Jackson stood 10 paces from a lawyer named Charles Dickinson after Dickinson had said something unflattering about Jackson's wife. The first shot struck Jackson in the shoulder, breaking two ribs before lodging close to his heart. Losing blood but still standing, Jackson took steady aim and shot Dickinson dead. Jackson would live for another four decades with that bullet in his chest, personally taking part in some of America's bloodiest Indian wars, leading...

In "To Rule the Waves," Arthur Herman explains the central role of sea power, particularly for Britain, over nearly half a millennium. His excellent history combines thrilling accounts of battles... with a terrific strategic analysis. Herman reminds us that the sea unites distant and far away lands, and today over 95 percent of international trade is by sea.... To Herman, the decisive moment for the British came when they realized that, far from being vulnerable filaments connecting the home country and its colonies, the sea united the two. As long as the Royal Navy ruled it, Britain could prosper. The...

It lived for centuries, covered a quarter of the world's landmass and radically shaped modern-day Britain, yet schools have tended to sidestep the thorny history of the British Empire. Now, slowly, that's changing. The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, like the very institution it was set up to commemorate, did not happen without a fight. Katherine Hann, one of the museum's founders, recalls the hostility she encountered when trying to whip up enthusiasm for the project in the mid 1990s. "Empire was a dirty word. You almost felt you were going to be spat at when you mentioned it in...

George Soros George Soros, the billionaire currency speculator, has set aside $15 million just to help defeat George W. Bush's re-election efforts. Soros, originally from Hungary, believes the Bush administration is dangerous and is leading us into perpetual war. He's spreading the money to various organizations committed to working against Bush's re-election. I don't know if he will get what he wants, but I tend to agree with him that the Bush administration seems committed to perpetual war. Bush has so loosely defined both terrorism and his war on terrorism that there is absolutely no way anyone will be able...

George Woodrow Carter Posted: November 12, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Reading President Bush's address to the National Endowment for Democracy, one wonders: Have the neocons captured him totally? For, though he is being hailed as Reagan's true heir, Bush has begun to sound like a clone of Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter. Foreign policy is, in Walter Lippman's phrase, the "Shield of the Republic." Its purpose: protect our independence and freedom. "We do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy," said John Quincy Adams. Traditional conservatives believe in the Eisenhower formula of Peace...

Bureaucracy on the Wires The British Empire was a massive entity: It was truly global in its proportions. Communication was therefore one of the keys of successful administration. From the middle to late nineteenth century onwards it would lie to the telegraph to make this communication possible. However, even the speed of this form of communication could be slowed down immeasurably in the mass of bureacracy and form that characterised the day to day running of the empire. This amusing example is taken from an extract in The Leisure of an Egyptian Official by Lord Edward Cecil. An Official Correspondence:...