Letter: Churchill's wartime rights and wrongs

Sir: Professor Donald Cameron Watt's review (16 January) of John Charmley's 'revisionist' study of Churchill is welcome.

In March 1943, at the age of 17, my late twin brother and I volunteered for service with the Royal Navy. Like thousands of others, we felt that the destruction of Nazism was an end in itself.

It is possible to believe that fighting Hitler was right in 1939 but wrong in 1941, although this smacks of inconsistency. Others maintain that going to war was wrong all along. This is the essence of appeasement that Churchill fought in vain in the mid-Thirties.

Perhaps Dr Charmley will give a clear answer to a simple question: was it right, or was it wrong, for Britain to go to war with Nazi Germany in the first place?

Yours faithfully,

NORRIS McWHIRTER

London, SW7

18 January