Back in the day I invented my own argument, the 'argumentum ad Shirley Williams' (although Roy Hattersley would have been an equally good alternative), for why I was in favour of retaining the constitutional monarchy. In effect it is that a figurehead 'President' who... 1/ ...had emerged as a second- or third-rate politician from the British parliamentary system - as they almost inevitably would have done - would have been unable to resist the impulse to demonstrate why they would actually have been 'Britain's Greatest Prime Minister' if they... 2

Here's a quick thread on David Irving. Firstly, there seems to be something of a myth that he 'turned to the dark side' in the 1980s. This is not correct; he was always an admirer of Hitler. He got into trouble for this at Brentwood School and at Imperial College. 1/ My father knew Irving at Imperial (dad taught there) and thought him an interesting but somewhat strange character. Irving did a course intended to convert him from Arts Levels to a science degree but didn't finish it. Instead, he went to work in a steel mill in the Ruhr. 2/