PMarione Site Admin
Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 883
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Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 2:54 pm Post subject: Very loosely related to naval history |
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Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872 – 1930), best known to history as F. E. Smith, was a British Conservative statesman and lawyer.
He was a skilled orator, noted for his staunch opposition to Irish nationalism, his wit, pugnacious views, and hard living and drinking, and Winston Churchill's greatest personal and political friend.
A 1924 entry in Evelyn Waugh’s diary states that an English High Court judge presiding in a sodomy case sought advice on sentencing from Lord Birkenhead. "Could you tell me," he asked, "what do you think one ought to give a man who allows himself to be buggered?" Birkenhead replied without hesitation, "Oh, thirty shillings or two pounds; whatever you happen to have on you." |
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