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THE TITLE OF this regular department of BRITISH HERITAGE reflects our intent to look back on great moments in history and on the men and women who shaped it, and from the comfort of our editorial offices, unashamedly pass judgment on them. It’s great fun, providing we avoid the pitfall of taking ourselves too seriously.
In this issue we bring you two stories that are tailor-made for those of us who enjoy looking into the past and second-guessing our intellectual superiors. Both are tales of men of genius whose wits momentarily let them down. One, Isambard Kingdom Brunei, was a brilliant engineer whose vision of how to build a better mousetrap—or railway in this case—proved an embarrassing failure.
The legendary heroes of the past were as prone as any of us to the quirks of human nature.
The other, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a literary giant whose powers of reasoning often matched those of his fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes—but who on one occasion was duped by two mischievous little girls.
While we focus on these two cases, they are certainly not the only examples in British history of larger-than-life persons who blundered. One of the most consistent lessons to be learned by studying the past is that the legendary heroes of yesterday were as prone as any of us to the quirks of human nature. This should not make them seem less worthy in our eyes, but rather more worthy of sympathy, and all the more endearing.
Among the many other examples of such lapses in judgment that we might have featured in this issue, surely Winston Churchill’s role in promoting the Dardenelles Campaign during World War I has to be included. The resulting bloody defeat led to a diminishing of Churchill’s prestige that was not fully restored until the corresponding victory in the Battle of Britain a quarter of a century later.
Or how about Sir Richard Woolley, Britain’s Astronomer Royal in 1956. The distinguished Sir Richard, commenting on the feasibility of space flight, famously insisted that: “Space travel is utter bilge.” The following year the Soviets put the first satellite into orbit.
What other examples can you think of? Let us know; there must be plenty of such wry cases of genius gone astray to amuse those of us whose intellects are more modest.
In the meantime, it would be less than fair to leave you all with such uncomplimentary appraisals of Brunei and Conan Doyle. For two additional tales that show these renowned men in a better light, visit BritishHeritage.com to read about a pair of their great successes—Brunei’s Great Western Railway and Conan Doyle’s righting of a tragic miscarriage of justice in the arrest of George Edalji. Here are Britain’s heroes at their very best.
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