Editorial by David Akenhead, CEO Akenhead crosswords

Sunday, 18th January 2026. As you will see from my Home Page, I find myself in recovery mode, but I reiterate my feelings with the rest of this page. Members of the Royal Family who have served our armed forces, at home and abroad, I will always respect, veterans foremost.

Lest We Forget:

My response to the Zelensky Referendum and my subsequent challenge to Messrs Trump and Putin as printed courtesy of The Times UK. If they suffer, who’s next? Is my over-riding question.

In this vein, I recommend the BBC film, Dad’s Army, my own Dad in fact, on which that film was based, all brought about through a collaboration between my mother, an actress in Rep pre-war, and her great friend, Anne Head of the BBC who was noted there for her Wednesday Play in the 60s, my mother by this time a Guild of Drama Adjudicator, and I have his remarkable Pilot’s Log book to prove it, since the similarities to the BBC Film are striking. As you will see from my father’s pictures on this website he adds to Captain Mainwaring the distinction of an Airman as well as a boots-on-the-ground-man, and whereas the threats and counterthreats in the film turned out to be a giant bluff on both sides, in my father’s case preceding The Rhine crossings, 50 miles inside enemy lines, and his troop of highly trained men, there was no bluff.

Your peace plan, Mr Putin, is no such thing. You have made that crystal clear. I’m sure you have a nice family like anyone else. Spare them a thought please, was all I was conveying earlier, (citing the recent movie, Nuremberg, singularly lacking the arch protagonist, the German Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop, or keyhole Joachim as he was known at Buck House!), particularly at Christmas. I put it to you that you are both living in a fictional generalised world of your own which seems subject to adjustment when the toys in the pram aren’t Just So! Sir David Attenborough cites our delicate fragile world literally on the brink and suddenly divide and rule spells global catastrophe. Pope Leo agrees. Grow up all of you. I am entered for next year’s London Wheelchair Marathon, for St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney, but as things stand I’m beginning to doubt if it will even materialise.

Meantime, reflect on my words and enjoy your Christmases with your families. I shall do the same. It could well be our last!  Bob Dylan is right, the answer is blowing in the wind. Well this proud family of resistance fighters is not for blowing or turning, and never has been.

Elon Musk and I, although he supports the HCFs in society, and I the LCMs, along with the Bloombergs and Microsoft, and The Times under Lachlan Murdoch, bless him, we all recognise that we need each other if the free market economy is to survive and prosper. Thank goodness for hybrids, is all we can conclude finally!

In support of which your memory never diminished either. Vivat! Vivat! Regina! We sorely miss you too, another World stabiliser!

I have nothing but admiration for Prince Harry’s wonderful initiatives for Invictus. I also have admiration for Prince Andrew and his family who adore their father, and Princess Anne. People who have served their country, including the King, have my admiration, as does the Princess of Wales at this challenging time for herself and her family. Prince William too has my sympathy with his positive aspirations. The King, should start supporting Prince Andrew who is innocent until proven guilty in a British Court of Law plus jury, and minus David Lammy preferably, of any alleged misdemeanours. King Charles is not perfect, and he could have been kinder to his mother, after his father died, as well as steering clear of his scandalous cash-for-honours to Middle Eastern plutocrats, and his very public adoration of his uncle, the Duke of Windsor who worshipped Hitler’s boots as did von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign minister, listening in on Churchill and the King’s father’s weekly audience, a simple call to Paris and Germany was forewarned and forearmed.

I liked my Australian uncle, Richard Cullen too, before his short life was ended and that of his great friend, Pat Pattle, both resisting the Axis advance in Greece in the skies in the Spring of 1941 with precious little acknowledgment prior to their confirmed deaths, apart from their DFCs and Bars apiece, but only delivered by King George post war thanks to the destruction of their records by the War Office, no less, and the usual alerts from Buck House and Paris, being conveyed to Hitler to annihilate the RAF in Greece at Piraeus. Sympathy simply won’t do, Sir. A little Public remorse might. My father was down as an RAF pilot, for the first wave of Arnhem, but being party to intelligence, knew it was tantamount to suicide but sworn to remain silent. My grandfather, decorated with honour in World War I, always mindful of his responsibility towards the 5th Manchesters, from the beginning of the Great War until the Armistice, was the exception to my father’s oath of silence, and took his own life to assure his beloved son, and heir, gained, reluctant compassionate leave. That’s War in all its ugliness.

In the meantime, I’ve had enough of the scapegoating as a Vet, and ex-serviceman myself. I understand that the Legion in Newfoundland does not recognise my family’s World War 1 efforts alongside the Newfoundlanders in Gallipoli, Egypt, and the British under Haig on the Western Front, and the aftermath of World War 2, as well, despite War Records and high decorations to the contrary. Clearly their archiving and subsequent invention is as a result of inadequate gaping gaps of information on their part!

The RAF in Greece in 1941 continue to be remembered with great love in the Adriatic annually by Greece as well as their opponents in the skies to their immense credit, the Italians, since the massacre of their officers, and cessation of hostilities in 1945, but from the Realm not a word, whilst Malta got the George Cross, where’s the justice to our Royal Air Force in the Peloponnese? Germany today is equally respectful. Odd man out, King Charles. Your Falklands record was commendable according to Tim Kelly, as was your brother’s in my book from other members of The Fleet Air Arm. I do not deny either your considerable foolhardy courage, on Baffin Island in 1975; whereas I was happy and stupid enough to swim round icebergs minus wetsuit in marginally warmer conditions in northern Newfoundland, as one only slightly younger than me, you decided to go one step further swimming under the blasted thing, in what looked like an extremely inadequate red wetsuit! where the glacial erosion was already in full swing; and in hindsight, I concede your assessment today is spot on. Glacial erosion and the corresponding rise in sea levels will increase the likelihood of flooding disasters for all global coastal cities. So what do we propose to do about it? We can drop these senseless global wars for starters, I feel sure you will agree. Oppenheimer proved that the nuclear threat must always remain bluff if we value our existence, and eliminating those who don’t must be a priority for all sane humans.

Your mother, too, fondly remembered by my family as Princess Elizabeth, one of the girls, no frills, taught Ambulance mechanics and maintenance in 1944/5 by my own late mother Captain Angela  Akenhead and my Godmother, Staff Sergeant Stella (later) Cody acquainting our future Queen in the art of driving in the blackout! She had the same sense of balance as you do, with her Commonwealth tree planting initiative. So, you have your good points, Sir, over glacial erosion, I’ll give you that!

My Australian uncle, Richard Nigel ‘Ape’ Cullen DFC and Bar joined the RAF on 24th August 1937. On 31st December 1939 he was promoted to Flying Officer. He was sent to the Middle East as a ferry pilot and incorporated into 167 Squadron in August 1940. Cullen managed to get a posting to 80 Squadron a month later to fly fighters. On 9th October he was on a lone flight in his Gloster Gladiator south of Sidi Barrani when he met 6 Breda 65s. He attacked all in succession who hastily retired from the fray, and saw one go down.

80 Squadon then moved to Greece alongside his South African buddy Pat Pattle also DFC and Bar, just two who gave their lives to help save Britain from the axis advance in the Adriatic and by whose selfless sacrifice and what remained of the RAF in Greece, helped change the entire tide of the war and convinced the Americans after the sinking of the Bismarck soon afterwards, to help us in earnest very soon after the evacuation from Piraeus where Pattle met his end in Spring 1941, 10/1 odds against in that harbour a few fleeting weeks after my uncle smashed his Hurricane V7288 into an Albanian mountain off Corfu attacking five Italian warships, consisting of two cruisers, and three destroyers alongside Pat as two of the “pair” hunters together on that sad day, 4th March 1941.

Flight Lieutenant Cullen DFC and Bar

We need to be alongside Bomber Harris and his crew at Westminster, plain and simple, and we will not cease to strive until our honours are equal. How about it, King Charles? A promise is a promise in my book. Just one extract before my uncle’s demise should right matters: 28/02/1941 ‘B’ Flight of 80 Squadron at Yanina Greece, Sergeant Casbolt, Sergeant Barker, Sergeant Gregory, Pilot Officer Vale, Squadron Leader Pattle DFC and Bar, Flight Lieutenant  Cullen DFC and Bar all of whom together shot down more than 100 enemy aircraft all featuring in a picture together. Just a handful of the Forgotten Few. Wake up, King Charles, and wake up Westminster! If the Poles can honour their airmen, so can we! The presiding situation is unacceptable.

I believe in loyalty, and my first loyalty lies with Lachlan Murdoch and The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun crossword publications. Lachlan’s values, I admire. Fair do’s for all, which is what the Times has traditionally stood for, and proved the envy of her competitors.

Meantime, I’m in the business of supplying my loyal global following with enjoyment from the rich crossword legacy to which I resolutely adhere.

A recent welcome spur to these aspirations being courtesy of Microsoft and AI applications. Latest being my Shakespeare challenges, set on embracing the entire works using my own independent masthead, unless or until I am notified otherwise.

Winners of my crossword competitions will receive a choice of extracts from my own approved Digital Times Jumbo Crossword 27×27 publications with any enhancements gratis in the interim, conditional on my enduring lifetime contract with Times Newspapers UK Limited.

With the leading service provider in the USA, the best domain platform on the market and impeccable references from friends at Harper Collins, VIP status at The Times and a licence for my digital crossword software for life, and formidable provenances for the goods in my care, your privacy and protection are assured along with the high standards demanded by News Corp and News UK.

Let it be known that I am the first to sing the praises of books old as well as new, and crossword books in particular in line with my passion, as is witness to my extensive archive.

On 26th April 2023 Book Depository announced they were closing, a living example of a worthy venture going to the wall, unable or unwilling to embrace the new technology.

I’ve never let down either the Firm or our Publishers, and the correspondence below speaks for itself. I also recommend as its sole extant Times crossword senior guardian, that the Times Archive including its crosswords is brought up to date including the missing years between January 1986 and October 2000 and beyond to the present day.

Thankfully, I have a learned younger brother supporting me, his school motto from Rugby, Orando Laborando, liberally translated: (your prayer answered through work), reflecting mine from Dover College, Non Recuso Laborem, (no rest from work).   

On that happy note, I draw comfort from one of my most precious possessions, The French Revolution (2 volumes) by the distinguished historian, H. Morse Stephens, Balliol College Oxford 1891, where he recounts in volume 2, King Louis’s actual demise at the celebrated Place where there was indeed a scaffold, attended by Sanson, his loyal executioner! but the myth begins there, the truth seemingly, conflicting with the gruesome sanitised glorious version handed down! curiously some of the modern persuasion seem to dismiss their elders, and occasionally betters these days. Yet here are Stephens’s own words, judge for yourselves.

“But there was no effort made, and Louis found it necessary to mount the scaffold, from which he attempted to say a few words to the people. The drums were at once beaten, and while they rolled, Sanson the executioner seized upon the king, and at twenty minutes past ten Louis XVI was offered up as a sacrifice to the Revolution.”

Such enlightenment that, even at the last, like our own Charles I, Louis XVI was permitted to exercise his Divine Right of Kings and spared Lucy Worsley’s dreaded mythical machine, (sorry Lucy, but you are plain wrong on this one), which was nowhere to be seen! His fate, was like Anne Boleyn’s, accomplished by a master swordsman, again a Frenchman, Sanson at the Place, minus machine and with breathtaking alacrity!

King Charles’ demise, by contrast turned initial mockery to silent respect for his bravery and wit, adjusting his beard, before the gruesome expert’s axe that ended his life commanding his own end signalled to his executioner for the axe to fall at his bidding, resulting in his immediate decapitation by another master craftsman (Richard Brandon, an Englishman this time), and heralding Oliver Cromwell’s downfall in a trice before its hushed and appalled witnesses in the spectacle and aftermath.

Proof, if any were needed, that old retainers like me are still backbone medicine, worth retaining, and worth the candle! I am not, Mr Murdoch, as my kind friend, Alastair Brett, once remarked to me, ‘like Guy Fawkes in your back yard!’ Far from it, I have great respect for my most impassioned advocate of The Times crossword, which passion I share! I will continue to serve you and my readers, if permitted so to do, in a manner becoming to them all, and hopefully in a continued spirit of goodwill to your own vested interests, with a delightful blend of old with new.

The correspondence below and above speaks reams for myself, my father and Barbara Hall MBE former Sunday Times Crossword Editor, deceased.

Below an illustration of the free publicity I used to receive in all Times Books crossword publications in gratitude for my proof editing services.

Since March 28th last year (under my renewed contract with Times Newspapers Limited) our viewing figures below tell their own story. These are still superb British crosswords and something to be rightly proud of.

Our following today spanning over 210 countries or states, stands at 503,271 with just 2 individuals myself and one other, now way in excess of TOL with 500 times more people, and strengthening by the day. High time Lachlan Murdoch acknowledged the massive progress I have initiated this past year and we found a way to pool resources, now that my independence is recognised and respected by Go-Daddy internationally as well as Microsoft with me as an independent AI developer, my cousin-in-law Mike Evans preceding me as the original developer of X-Box and highly complimentary of my last work using Microsoft AI  to eventually encompass the entire works of Shakespeare to produce regular Digital Crossword challenges of the same to the entire world in a 27×27 Times Jumbo crossword grid copyrighted by my late father Edmund Akenhead and myself.

Besides, I’m sitting here doing all this work gratis on The Times crossword archive, and several other Times and Sunday Times crossword publications, and there’s Instagram being run by 15 billionaires and The Times still can’t recognise their limited books market compared with the potential of our added global reach with my digital alternatives, to support the ailing books market still knocking on the door for admission? Is there anybody there said the traveller, knocking on the moonlit door? Walter de la Mare knew a thing or two as did C.E. Holt’s ‘Our Ernie – Mrs Entwhistle’s Little Lad’, the finest comic strip ever created (Knock-out 1939), always ended with grandad saying, ‘Daft, I call it‘. Well, I echo grandad on this one! – DA

AI too is finally being put to good use too at TOL with a recent halving of their workforce to compensate even if per capita I’ve still already colonised Mars and returned to Terra nostra!

Times given quite enough warning in advance, my shout echoes! (3,7) (FOR E)+X+AMPLE

I share the philanthropy of both Phil and Michael Bloomberg! Médecins Sans Frontières all of us! We have no time for terror merchants either or vengeful types, but we have all the time in our delicate world for those who try to encourage peace and harmony in our terror and greed-stricken world with actual positive progress towards that goal. We have the tools to do it with AI, if the blind will permit us!

We owe it to those who fought and died for us as witnessed by my own family contributions below in the Great War and since.

LEST WE FORGET – WE WILL REMEMBER THEM – MY FAMILY AMONG COUNTLESS OTHERS

What a day for us! Alice went on to supervise an army hospital for the 6th Lincolnshires in the grounds of Lincoln Cathedral in the vicarage adjoining and the home of my great grandfather, Laird Edmund Akenhead, rural Dean of Lincoln and his wife, Lucy Collingwood Montagu Taylor Corbett. Lovely, brave Alice, honoured for her courage at Courcelette quiet and modest like her younger brother, David, and a super water colour painter too both upholding the best traditions of nursing on fields of battle with St John’s Ambulance and the Royal Red Cross, 1914 until Flers Courcelette, 15th September 1916, appalling casualties on both sides emulating Beaumont Hamel and July 1st all over again. David, the court-martialled surgeon at Suvla Bay, grievously wounded at Courcelette doing what he did before, disobeying orders, again trying to save his comrades in the last functional tank by forming a shield with the first tank rendered motionless amid the mire on No-Man’s Land remaining functional against the withering fire from the lower Sugar trench which in the afternoon had fallen prey to the German 2nd Bavarian Corps after Haig’s orders to evacuate most British and allied troops earlier from the lower trench. Instead of a VC for what Great Uncle David did, death by firing squad was commuted to dishonourable discharge without pension from the British Army, and when he was dying in 1978 with a glass eye and shrapnel still residing in his body he related this sad tale to me. I will strive to my last breath to have him pardoned and awarded a posthumous VC with all the medals he should have received as a surgeon in Gallipoli and at Courcelette in his rightful rank as fearless Captain, 6th Lincolnshires, Lincoln UK. Greater Love Hath No Man Than He Lay Down His Life For His Friends. Fergus gave another Akenhead ancestor such love to him and his 3 boys to the safety of his Carrick in Belfast post Culloden Moor.

Meanwhile the 5th Manchesters (now part of the 42nds) along with my grandfather, Francis, had been recuperating in Alexandria after abandoning the Heights of  Krithia along with the Newfies and ANZACS and the French, all sustaining severe losses but after briefest recuperation soon re-engaged defending the Suez Canal against the Ottoman empire, then sent to Belgium in early 1917, all again to the toughest places from the beginning to end, when they were finally demobilised just before Christmas 1918, my grandfather being at Charleroi, by now as Captain Francis Akenhead, now lame, whither he had gone, so almost invariably had the Newfoundlanders and ANZACS and the French, and their war record together is quite incredible.

I have it all, and the list of battles runs to half a page, starting with Krithia Vineyard In Gallipoli where the Newfies largely had to chance their luck as messengers between the various groups in the Heights of Krithia and High Command below, and ending with the final encounter at The Battle of the Selle! and for the few that lived to tell the tale, it was one of unsurpassed valour and instinct for survival! Let’s put the fairy stories to rest, please, war is brutal and ugly, regardless of which side you are on, as good Ukrainians and Russians are presently experiencing, saved only presently by their dignity and love of neighbour, hope for a better world for their children, and little else. Their leaders have let them down since Gorbachev, plain and simple.

And I haven’t even started on the movie, Nuremberg and although Russell Crowe is commendable in portraying Hermann Goering, half the story is missing. What about Ribbentrop, Buck House’s mole who sparked it all in the first place, eavesdropping on Churchill’s weekly audience with King George? Who tipped off Arnhem? And how was my father spared the first wave? As an Officer Cadet flyer myself, I know, but my lips are sealed. Suffice it to reveal however,  I knew the Mosquito pilot, here in Wells, Somerset, another George, now sadly late, who flew Joachim von Ribbentrop, to face his own justice at Nuremberg. Our own British Foreign Minister saved America, Goering’s ridicule, but what about his counterpart in UK and Germany? The first to be hanged after Goering’s suicide, doesn’t crack a mention, and neither of the two Georges, let alone the Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII who seemed to adore Adolf, yet King Charles adores his uncle as I adore mine, I suppose!

What makes the movie an abject failure are the teeming omissions and as a historical record, sadly laughable. Hamnett too has done the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon few favours either!

I could suggest to Russell Crowe, a fellow Australian, as a followup to this movie, an interview with me at my establishment in Wells, where many a historical tale is woven! A bit like the start of Titanic, though my love affair, with horses and medics and dare I say magic, dad was a member of the Inner Magic Circle (which you can’t apply for), goes back to our roots through the Norman conquest as Master of Horse, Sir Hugh Corbet at Battle, and my Saxon heritage, where we were revealed as the magical rainmakers of Thor and when he split his Oak apart, they redeemed him by accompanying the lightning bolts with a gentle rain from heaven! If you don’t believe me our Celtic and Druidic family crest confirms, Rupto Robore Nati, we are born from a split oak! That’s what our world needs today, the gentle rain from heaven for all who suffer, be they man, woman, hybrid, or beast! As Medecins Sans Frontieres we do our best, and the sappers historically among us did and still do their best too, either laying charges or removing them!

Despite its glaring omissions, this movie Nuremberg right up to the final credits, and the eventual suicide by identical means of the only friend Hermann Goering was able to muster for himself, the magician from whom he learnt in his final days, how to cheat a public lynching and ensure his family would earn a reprieve at the very least, this movie is nevertheless, witness to the limits we face today, in the attempts of a foe to eradicate Ukraine as a freedom-loving nation, and that foe must be firmly put in its place, as living witness to the precipice from which there will be no reprieve this time round. Therefore I urge everyone to see Oppenheimer instead, to witness first-hand the eventual apocalypse of an atomic bomb today with a magnification to an extent to eradicate the existence of life on planet Earth. The only saving grace for Nuremberg is Hermann Goering’s delightful family. I conclude: there must be good as well as evil in all of us somewhere, even the unstable ones, but it is the triumph of the lightbulb over the darkness that enables me to write this.

My Salute to the fallen:

David Akenhead, teacher, journalist and eldest son of his late father Edmund Akenhead, head of Clan Aikenhead, Sept of Gordon and his own grandfather, Laird Edmund and his loyal esteemed wife, Lady Lucy Collingwood Montagu Taylor Corbett, and through my grandmother Myrtle MacGregor and great grandmother, Helen Grant, MacGregor sept of Gordon, former surgeons to the Hanoverians and loyal servants to Royal Stewart. Arms of Akenhead gifted and restored by Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, via amnesty Culloden QV & QE 31st October 1989. Duly assigned by York Herald, 12th December 1989.

Below find:

My father’s memorable contribution in 1984, (published 1st January 1985) for the memorial illustrated tribute The Times Past – Present – Future  to celebrate the Bi-Centenary of The Times ( Akenhead Article) and a copy of the First Edition under the name of The Daily Universal Register of 1st January 1785 (beneath) complete with a clue of mine to fit another 1 across! preceded some 60 odd Years earlier by my ancestor, Robert Akenhead’s Newcastle Mercury which he founded with his printing presses on The Olde Tyne Bridge, in Newcastle on July 10th, 1722. The Newcastle Mercury was one of the earliest broadsheets of its kind. And on this same memorable day in 2023, his descendant proudly celebrated over 200,300 loyal followers globally on this cloud website since its very recent inception! That figure has now risen to 503,271 going on triple!

My prime mandate on this website remains that of upholding, and indeed expanding my role as guardian of The Times crossword archive, a voluntary role which I am devoted to, and am at present expanding with The Times crosswords published between 1930 and 1985 including the Second World War, hitherto largely untouched and a thoroughly intriguing exercise it is proving! In addition, introduced is a new feature entitled the Akenhead Years, gradually retracing the history of the Times crossword during my father’s eventful stewardship with his small team and myself (our styles at variance!) to the final record of the Times crossword from the existing Times archive culminating in December 1985. I would like that archive extended to the present day, please, Mr Murdochs twain.

Plus her earlier riveting solo, Ave Maria:

This was Charlotte’s and her gifted young accomplice’s Christmas and New Year 2025 tribute to our fragile World

Kind regards, David Akenhead, former Crossword Consultant to The Times and inventor of The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun Computer Crosswords and Games

Sunday, 18th January 2026

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