QUESTION: Aside from Winston Churchill, have any British prime ministers fought in a battle?
The obvious answer is Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (Tory, 1828-1830, 1834).
Wellington was a celebrated military hero before entering politics, and his extensive battlefield experience shaped his leadership style.
He fought numerous campaigns in the Peninsular War (1808-1814), including the battles of Salamanca and Vitoria and became a national hero following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 where he finally vanquished Napoleon Bonaparte.
Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan all served on the front line in the First World War.
Attlee (Labour, 1945-1951) was, at first, turned down for war service on account of his age; he was 31 in August 1914. Eventually, he was commissioned as a temporary lieutenant in the 6th South Lancashire Regiment.
He served during the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. A severe bout of dysentery probably saved his life as most of his company was killed while he was convalescing in Malta.
Attlee then served in the Mesopotamian campaign in modern Iraq where, in April 1916, he was badly wounded by shrapnel and returned to England.
Having fully recovered from his injuries, Attlee, now a major, arrived in France in June 1918 to serve on the Western Front before being injured again in August.
Anthony Eden (Conservative, 1955-1957) volunteered for service in the British Army in 1915 at the age of 18, and was commissioned as a temporary lieutenant in the 21st Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He saw extensive service on the Western Front, fighting in the Battles of the Somme, Messines, and Passchendaele.
He was awarded the Military Cross for rescuing his wounded platoon sergeant in no-man’s land during the Somme. Eden had an elder brother, John, who was killed in action in 1914, and a younger brother, 16-year-old Nicholas, who died when the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
Harold Macmillan (Conservative, 1957-1963) was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in November 1914. Four months later he transferred to the Grenadier Guards.
He first saw action at the Battle of Loos in autumn 1915 where he was wounded in the head and the right hand. By April 1916 he was back to fight at Ypres. At the Somme, in mid-September 1916, he was seriously wounded in the pelvis and left thigh.
His life was saved by one of the bullets hitting his water bottle. He sat for a day in a shell hole in no-man’s land reading Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound in Greek. He spent the rest of the war in and out of hospital and was unable to return to France.
The war left Macmillan with ‘a limp handshake, a dragging gait, and sporadic pain.’
Richard Manners, London SW16
QUESTION: Which countries have the smallest proportion of female members of parliament?
Q: Was James Cagney in any Shakespearean productions?
Ken Hobbins, Birmingham
Q: What proportion of the world’s snakes are venomous? What proportion of those are deadly?
Mary Taylor, Droitwich, Worcs
Q: Which is the world’s longest subterranean river? Which is the longest in Britain?
Chris Carver, Macclesfield, Cheshire
There are 20 countries where women account for less than ten per cent of parliamentarians, including three with none at all in their lower chamber: Tuvalu, Oman and Yemen.
The worst performing major countries are Nigeria with just 14 female MPs out of 358, Iran with 14 out of 290, and Algeria with 32 out of 407.
In the UK, 263 out of 650 MPs in the Commons are female, and in the Lords it is 228 out of 785.
The top-ranked country in the world is Rwanda where 51 out of 80 MPs are women. Six others boast 50 per cent or more women in parliament: Cuba, Nicaragua, Namibia, Mexico, Andorra and the UAE.
Penny Marsh, Bridgnorth, Shrops
QUESTION: What is the most inappropriate piece of product placement spotted in a film?
I’d go for the Dunkaccino rap by Al Pacino in Adam Sandler’s woeful comedy Jack And Jill (2011).
Dunkaccino was a real drink available at Dunkin’ restaurants. In the film, Sandler plays advertising executive Jack, as well as his twin sister, Jill.
When Pacino falls for Jill, Jack senses an opportunity and gets Pacino to star in a commercial which begins: ‘Something’s brewing at D’n’D / Wow! / Al Pacino! / It’s not Al any more, it’s ‘Dunk’! / Dunk Accino? / Don’t mind if I do!’
For his performance as himself, Pacino earned the Worst Supporting Actor Razzie.
Others will point to some of the overt advertising in the Daniel Craig Bond films. The nadir is a scene in Casino Royale where Eva Green’s Vesper asks Bond if he’s wearing a Rolex, only for him to simply reply, ‘Omega’. In the books, Bond always wears a Rolex.
Mr J. S. Finch, Lincoln