London
This week has been spent in and around London, with no shortage of intellectual stimulation.
On Tuesday, I visited the 3rd Ranger Battalion in their barracks in Brookwood to present my book The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians to the personnel and allied partner units. It was a huge honour to meet the rangers and in the evening celebrate the Battle of Waterloo together.
It is a curious thing that everything that is despised in the rest of society—history, tradition, ritual—is celebrated in the military. Perhaps that is one reason I feel so at home in that world.
After waking up in the army base on Wednesday, I made my way back to London to start recording the audiobook version of The Stay Behinds for Bloomsbury. (Passing Woking on the way, I can believe that former Prince Andrew in 2019 actually remembered having been there on a particular night eighteen years earlier.) Finding anyone else who could both speak polished English and pronounce Swedish…
