Andrew David Stedman

Award-winning author and historian, LFC supporter, Alan Partridge fan, looks like an owl. Now writing fiction. Represented by:

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

Bravo to the awesome @jonesgarethp for this superb musical effort about my Chamberlain book! I can see Neville bobbing his head to it now... 🎶😆👏

[Gareth P Jones @jonesgarethp]

Today @ADStedman requested a "ska-inspired twenty-second elevator pitch" for his book about Neville Chamberlain. So I made this.

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips TGS is taught on many a university history module as a leading example of 'bad' history and myth-making ahead of objective deployment of evidence. If you're still defending TGS as being 'sound' you're more out of line with contemporay thinking than anyone who defends Chamberlain.

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips No, my Churchill responses are to *attempt* to indicate that fair minded historians can criticise others for mistakes and misjudgments in the 30s as well as abusing Neville Chamberlain over and over and over and over and over and over.

[Lauren Pattison🧣 @laurenpat96]

Bill Shankly🤍

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips 😂 I think we can all thank the esteemed prof Reynolds for demonstrating thoroughly what a selective, self-agrandising, distorted re-writing of 'history' The Gathering Storm is - even Churchill fans admit that. It IS well written, I grant - those bits that he *did* actually write

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips Again, we can compare our WW2 Prime Ministers on the issue of 'race' if you like? I don't find it pleasant waters to delve into, but I assure you that Chamberlain would come out of that better than certain others...

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips Great. Shall we do Churchill and Jews now? Churchill and his 'friend' Stalin? Churchill completely misjudging FDR?

You're rather proving my point here...

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips failings - almost as if that is the *point in itself*; to scapegoat; to attack one man and venerate others. It's the unbalanced out-of-date nonsense of The Gathering Storm, but expressed less eloquently than Churchill himself did. 5

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips think it is due. You cannot argue 'the buck stops here' with Chamberlain and ignore that there were other PMs in this period facing the same challenges, or that there was a wider foreign policy debate being waged. All I ever hear from you - and others - is *Chamberlain's* 4/5

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips Which is why he built a massive airforce...

I DO agree on the guarantees. In a sense, NC starts a war and then lets others fight it for him.😆 His 'interference' is good intentioned, however, though the most 'shameful' episode of the story is NC's reneging on his Munich promises

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips Thus speaketh 'CATO' - 85 years out of date. 😆

Good job he built all them planes though, eh?...

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips I totally and completely CAN - this is EXACTLY the point I am trying to make. 😆 It's clearly set out in detail under all the 4th arm of Defence evidence you simply choose to ignore. It wasn't an 'either-or' - arms and economics were two faces of the same 'defence' coin.

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@adriangphillips @allandray08 behalf of *Chamberlain alone*; so certain in your prior certainty that the man was rotten to the core that you then pick your evidence to support THAT contention and ignore all the other evidence. Doubtless, you would accuse me of similar pro-Chamberlain 'apologist fanaticism'.😆

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@adriangphillips @allandray08 Adrian, as you know, but I disagree with the subsequent position it then takes you to. MY position, if I may be so bold, is to understand the period better and the challenges GB faced. YOUR position, respectfully, *seems* to be to seek maximum culpability for everything on 4/

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips claim 'perfection'. I do not claim Chamberlain 'won the war', or anything like that. I DO suggest that 'keeping us in the war' owed as much to NC as much as WC, however - or, at the very least, we should acknowledge a few NC 'successes' if if we are to criticise everything else.

[Andrew David Stedman @ADStedman]

@allandray08 @adriangphillips suggest that Chamberlain's pre-war plan gets more 'right' about the shape of the war that came than he is ever given credit for. Germany lashed out foolishly for *economic* reasons as much as Hitler's racial ambitions. The Treasury foresees this before war begins. I do not 3/