Jerry Brotton - "historian"

I blogged recently about Trevor Phillips' quoting Dr Jerry Brotton's theory that the defeat of the Armada in 1588 was due to the Turks distracting the Spanish in the Mediterranean and this was because of a letter sent some years earlier by Elizabeth 1 ordering the ambassador, William Harborne, to incite the Turks to harry the Spanish navy. This theory has been fairly comprehensively demolished not least in the aforementioned article of mine, in Laban's post at Biased BBC and at .UK Commentators.

Now I read that Jerry Brotton is at it again, this time he has "told the Guardian Hay literary festival that a hitherto unnoticed letter from George's war chief and Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to his ambassador in Istanbul showed that it was Turkish air power rather than the RAF's swashbuckling pilots which delivered the fatal blow to the Nazi invasion plans.
The letter, which ordered the ambassador, Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, to incite the Turks to declare war on Hitler, was written in 1940 and has been buried in archives ever since because it did not apparently relate to any major historical event.
But Mr Brotton told the festival: "Churchill's plan was ultimately successful. Turkish air movements in the eastern Mediterranean fatally split Hitler's Luftwaffe. So alongside all the stories we're told at school about why Hitler failed to conquer Britain and destroy county cricket, we should add another reason: the Anglo-Turkish alliance brokered by George VI, Churchill [and others]."

"Asked about his previous discovery that the Turks stopped the Armada, Dr Brotton said "It's amazing really. The evidence for the Turks defeating Hitler is just as strong as it is for them defeating the Armada"."


Hmm, I think I smell a rat, this article may in fact be a hoax. But that makes the point rather well, the "PC" view of history is so absurd that almost any claim could be made and believed by gullible students of history and desperately PC journalists.