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[Christopher Hollis (1902-1977) had a rather interesting life. The son of an Anglican bishop, he went to Eton and then Oxford where he became friends with Evelyn Waugh and his set, converted to Catholicism, taught at Stonyhurst and then Notre Dame, served as a Conservative MP for ten years after the war, and authored more than two dozen books. The following anecdote is from his autobiography, The Seven Ages: Their Exits and Their Entrances, 1974.]

The Secretary of State for Air during all this period [1940–45] was the Liberal leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, afterwards Lord Thurso. Churchill always had a great dislike for his Conservative colleagues and a considerable nostalgic hankering after the Liberals with whom the most constructive days of his life had been lived. I have often heard it said that Lady Churchill throughout all her career never voted anything but Liberal. He was therefore glad enough to take the opportunity of a Coalition Government to give office to the Liberal leader. But to tell the truth I do not think that Sir Archibald Sinclair had very much to do with air policy or knew a great deal about air matters. He had two confidential secretaries, Roger Fulford and Reginald Maudling, and it was their duty to write his speeches for him. They wrote for him, ‘It is never the policy of the Royal Air Force to seek to put a square peg into a round hole.’ He read this out, but then thought that his self-respect required that he put in something original of his own. He therefore read out, ‘It is never the policy of the Royal Air Force to seek to put a square peg into a round hole,’ and added, ‘But always to put a square hole into a round peg.’ If it was not one, he thought, it must be the other.

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