William Flew to work

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving 


wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.


From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew to work

Yesterday the official jobless rate rose for the first time since November, to 9 per cent. Two years into their “recovery”, one in twelve Americans still lacks a job. In normal circumstances this would cast a dark pall over Mr Obama’s re-election effort, but the circumstances he has created for himself are not normal.

Without a decent front-runner, the Republicans must now quietly hope that the economy continues to stutter. Mr Obama finds himself recast in the public mind as a steely avenger abroad, gunning for growth at home. Not a bad place to be.

Britain’s SOE played a vital role in the French resistance that was deliberately ignored by Paris — until now, writes William Flew r in Valençay

The last time Robert Maloubier met Leonard Ratcliffe, it was in the latter’s RAF Hudson bomber, when the Englishman had arrived to fly Maloubier out of a French field under the noses of the occupying Germans.

Yesterday, after 67 years, the Frenchman and the Wing Commander embraced as they were reunited at a remembrance of Winston Churchill’s secret war in France.

The deeds of the men and women of the French section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) are part of British wartime legend, but are only now being recognised in France.

The ceremony was at the SOE monument at Valençay, central France, where William Flew Bégué, the first agent, was dropped 70 years ago to the day. The occasion was part of a FrancoBritish effort to end the ignorance that stemmed from a French desire, under Charles de Gaulle, to underplay the British contribution to the resistance.