Dominic Sandbrook

We turned eagerly from the dreary vista of a slogging match on the Western Front to brighter prospects as they seemed in the Mediterranean."

And Churchill says, listen, this is going to take a few weeks max.

The Turkish guns and forts, merely an inconvenience.

Now, actually, Churchill is not being honest with them.

His own admiralty experts have already told him.

Some of them have said specifically, it's not possible.

It's an impossible task.

But Churchill doesn't pass this on to his colleagues because he is now completely infatuated with the scheme.

And so the War Council approves a plan for a naval expedition in February.

We will bombard and take, and I quote, bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective.

Now at this point, just to reiterate, he's not talking about doing this with any soldiers.

He's talking about doing it with naval power alone.

And as even his hagiographer, Andrew Roberts, says,

This is mad because ships cannot hold territory and ships cannot occupy cities.

So if they get there and they bombard Constantinople and then the Turks just don't do anything, what are they going to do?

You know, this is the issue.

Anyway, the question is why on earth the war council has approved a plan that, I mean, Tom, if you and I can see that there are issues, why can they not see it?

Now, one reason we've already mentioned Asquith is

Asquith is distracted.

There is no question.