Weekly Editorial by David Akenhead, CEO Akenhead crosswords every Sunday

Sunday, 20th April 2025. Lest We Forget:

My support for Israel, and Netanyahu remains undiminished. Trump is right about one thing alone, radical changes are needed in systems of government both in the UK and USA if we are to remain competitive in a free market economy. But I fear both he and Musk have completely discredited themselves with fanaticism bordering on hysteria by having the effrontery to suggest that both are above the rule of law and decent law-abiding citizens suddenly marginalised in a ruthless gameshow based on fiction. Their words overnight have become meaningless. Of course, Trump wants to first demonize the Fed Chair, so that later when the proverbial hits the fan he can blame him for not listening to him over interest rates. As I say utter fiction. When Trump says lower, what he secretly yearns for is the opposite, and more money and adoration. He is fast learning, however that even Musk has his limits with his token one day grovel. Once one’s credibility is blown, well Homage to Catalonia becomes a far cry! I suppose there’s always the circus to fall back on for the broken-hearted clown. Bring back Boris, Carie and his family, I say. The only unit I still have any time for as well as the late Pope Francis, who understood his own failings and tried to put them right. Those sort of people I have time for, in sharp contrast to the modern day Croesuses and Midases.

We must be firm and fair with Russia, according Ukraine immediate Nato membership to show the Kremlin we mean business and my patience with Trump and Musk is challenged with two crazy men who make it up as they go along and then wonder why it all goes suddenly pear-shaped! However, If Nato is to remain a credible entity, all members need to pay an equal percentage contribution to the plate, and those in default cannot expect membership or protection. Indeed Zelensky goes further in suggesting a European army is urgently needed if western Europe wishes to offer a democratic ideal to counter Putin’s Soviet expansionism.

This should have been done the moment Ukraine was invaded by Putin but vested interests actually among NATO members themselves, prevented it, to their eternal shame.

Let’s instead ensure the wisdom of our late beloved, Dame Vera Lynn from World War 2 in the following:

The shepherd will tend his sheep. The valley will bloom again And Jimmy will go to sleep, In his own little room again. There’ll be blue birds over The white cliffs of Dover Tomorrow Just you wait and see.

Elon Musk and I, although he supports the HCFs in society, and I the LCMs, we both recognise as techies, that we need each other if the free market economy is to survive and prosper. Thank goodness for hybrids, is all we can both conclude finally!

In support of which your memory never diminished either. Vivat! Vivat! Regina! We sorely miss you, 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 and the Princess Royal. People who serve their country have my admiration, as does the Princess of Wales at this challenging time for herself and her family. Prince William too has my sympathies. The King, who is not perfect himself, should start supporting Prince Andrew and his family who is innocent until proven guilty of any misdemeanours. The so-called evidence appears to be becoming shakier by the day, and those alleging impropriety on Prince Andrew’s part will need to be called to account, and maybe the King himself.

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, 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!

I still seek recognition of the Forgotten Few in Greece earlier promised to me by the King, whilst Harris and Bomber command are rightly admired for their sacrifice too. 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 to a man. Where’s the justice to our Royal Air Force in the Peloponnese? my Australian uncle, Ape Cullen DFC and Bar and his South African buddy Pat Pattle also DFC and Bar being just two who gave their lives to help save Britain from the axis advance and by whose selfless sacrifice and the whole of what remained of our air force 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 into an Albanian mountain off Corfu defending a Royal Navy escort against similar odds. We need to be alongside Bomber Harris and his crew, 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.

I believe in loyalty, and my first loyalty lies with Lachlan Murdoch and The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun crossword publications.

To my readership: if you want both value for your money, and an organisation still able to uphold traditional values of quality and service, look no further. Our products will not disappoint, and for no extra charge you will have the added advantage regardless of currency fluctuations, of embracing AI too, strictly regulated in the cause of promoting superb crossword products, or any other products we may embark on.

I’m in the business of supplying my loyal global following with enjoyment from the rich crossword legacy to which I have become the sole living guardian.

My weekly/monthly crossword competitions courtesy of Linked-in, Facebook and Instagram are increasingly popular, promoting digital crossword works from either The Times or Sunday Times during the first 75 crossword years of each newspaper within the limits of a crossword grid of whatever size or type, a recent welcome spur to these aspirations being courtesy of Microsoft and AI applications.

Winners of my crossword competitions will receive a lifetime subscription to my digital crossword products with any enhancements gratis in the interim all conditional on my own lifetime joint copyright agreement, with Times Newspapers UK Limited, they owning the Newsprint 100% and I the Digital crossword products 100%.

With the leading service provider in the USA, the best domain platform on the market and impeccable references from 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.

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 200 countries stands at 396,450 with just 2 enlightened 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 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 Phil Bloomberg! Médecins Sans Frontières both 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 my family! 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 earlier. Instead of a VC for what he 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 my ancestor such love to the safety of his Carrick in Belfast post Culloden Moor.

Meanwhile the Manchesters (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.

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 through his grandmother Myrtle MacGregor and great grandmother, Helen Grant, Sept of Gordon MacGregor 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 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 396,450, almost double.

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.

My daughter Charlotte did this delightful impromptu aria earlier from Handel’s Rinaldo, Lascia ch’io pianga.

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, 20th April, 2025