The focus should always have been on how the combined genius of Churchill and Roosevelt brought the world from the desperate summer of 1940 in five years to the Western occupation and reorientation of Germany, Italy, Japan and France to be prosperous democratic allies, while leaving Russia, which took over 90 per cent of the casualties fighting the Germans, comparatively inferior strategic assets in the east, an astounding achievement that leaves plenty of credit for everyone. Max Hastings may be some years collecting the credit he deserves for his Dunkirk-like evacuation of British history from its previous Americophobic fabulism.

Hastings is headstrong but honest and forceful, and could have a golden after-burner in his career as a revisionist journalist and historian. Undismayed that he did not follow my last piece of career advice to him (not to leave the Daily Telegraph for the Evening Standard), I suggest that he consider a serious reassessment of all the piffle that he and others have written about Israel and the Palestinians, as if Israel had not already demonstrated a perfect willingness to hand over settlements (in Sinai and Gaza) to the Arabs as part of a real peace agreement. He might start from a recognition of Britain's substantial responsibility for this open sore by selling the same real estate twice in 1917, and give more emphasis than he was ever willing to do graciously when he was with us, that the Palestinians have been used as cannon fodder by the corrupt Arab governments for 60 years, and could have peace tomorrow if they would accept as they promised to do at Oslo, the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (which Abbas recently renounced at the United Nations) and stopped agitating for a right to swamp Israel with allegedly returning Arabs.

After that, Max might revisit the glories of ANC government in South Africa, a cesspool of corruption and incompetence. Max is, at his best, a capable historian, and might now wish to explore the interesting question that British military historians of World War II have tended to dance around, of whether Montgomery's escapade in Market Garden caused the suspension of the advance of Patton, Simpson and Hodges in the Central Army Group to the point that the Ardennes offensive was rendered possible, and whether, if the northern offensive had not been launched, the Western Allies could have crossed the Rhine in strength in 1944.

Max Hastings in pursuit of current or historical facts is a vehement and implacable force. He could render great service far beyond the inspiriting and liberative pleasures of confession.