Giles Milton > Quotes

“The local natives were particularly curious to know why the English required such huge quantities of pepper and there was much scratching of heads until it was finally agreed that English houses were so cold that the walls were plastered with crushed pepper in order to produce heat.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“In the Banda Islands, ten pounds of nutmeg cost less than one English penny. In London, that same spice sold for more than £2.10s. – a mark-up of a staggering 60,000 per cent. A small sackful was enough to set a man up for life, buying him a gabled dwelling in Holborn and a servant to attend to his needs”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“He was the first to admit that he had been singularly ill-qualified for all his previous jobs. Just a few months earlier, he had accepted the editorship of Gardening Magazine. ‘Nobody could know less about gardening than me,’ he said. But it didn't stop him dispensing advice for his readers. ‘I would solemnly give them my views on whether it were better to plant globe artichokes in September or March.’18 Now, at last, he had fallen into a job for which he was extremely well qualified, one in which the only seeds to be planted were those of wholescale destruction.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“His system is a combination of ferocious blows, holds and throws, adapted from Japanese bayonet tactics, ju-jitsu, Chinese boxing, Sikh wrestling, French wrestling and Cornish collar-and-elbow wrestling, plus expert knowledge of hip-shooting, knife fighting and use of the Tommy gun and hand grenade.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“The Duchessa d’Aosta had been placed under the command of Geoffrey Appleyard and a skeleton crew, who were so delighted with their prize ship – and their Italian prisoners now locked below decks – that they hoisted a skull and crossbones from the mainmast. March-Phillipps exploded when he saw it fluttering in the dawn breeze. ‘We all got a rocket and we were told we weren’t to fly the Jolly Roger,’ recalled Leonard Guise. ‘He was a great stickler for etiquette, old Gus.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“The Queen coined new money specifically for the Company {East India}. Minted at the Tower of London and bearing her arms on one side and a portcullis on the other, it soon became know as the portcullis money. She also granted the merchants a new flag which, with its blue field and background of thirteen red and white stripes, prefigured the one adopted by the Thirteen Colonies of America some 175 years later.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors offered him a six-figure sum in recognition of his pioneering wartime inventions. Jefferis was gratified but turned it down. ‘His Edwardian principals of right and wrong were very strong,’ said his son John.16 He did not believe he should profit from having helped to defeat Hitler.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“In the summer of 1914, he had headed to France in the company of his only son, Alistair. They were driving at high speed through woodland in Northern France when Alistair lost control of the wheel. The car spun into a roadside tree and flipped upside down. Alistair was flung from the vehicle and landed on his head. Cumming was trapped by his leg in a tangle of smouldering metal. ‘The boy was fatally injured,’ wrote Compton Mackenzie in his account of the incident, ‘and his father, hearing him moan something about the cold, tried to extricate himself from the wreck of the car in order to put a coat over him; but struggle as he might, he could not free his smashed leg.’ If he was to have any hope of reaching his son, there was only one thing to do. He reached for his pocket knife and hacked away at his mangled limb ‘until he had cut it off, after which he had crawled over to the son and spread a coat over him.’ Nine hours later, Cumming was found lying unconscious next to his son’s dead body. His recovery was as remarkable as his survival. He was back at his desk within a month, brushing aside any outer shows of mourning for his son. Cumming had the ramrod emotional backbone that so typified the gentlemen of his social class and era. Just a few months after his accident, one of his operatives visited him at his offices on the top floor of Whitehall Court. Cumming, who had not yet received his artificial leg, was inching his substantial frame down six flights of stairs: ‘two sticks, and backside, edging its way down one step at a time.’ Little wonder that his friends described him as ‘obstinate as a mule.”
― Giles Milton, Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution

“merchants who financed this expedition viewed it as a reconnaissance mission rather than a trading venture and little cargo was loaded on board the ships. Instead, all available space was converted into living space for the large number of men on board, a necessary feature of long voyages into the unknown. Many would die on the outward trip and for those that survived there was a cornucopia of tropical diseases awaiting them on their arrival in the East”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“Difficulties existed only to be surmounted, and there was no setback that a little thought and determination could not overcome.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“He penned a letter to the Company in London, a letter whose unfailing spirit would become legendary among the sailors of the East India Company. 'I cannot tell where you should looke for me.' he wrote, 'because I live at the devotion of the winds and seas.'
(Written by/about Captain James Lancaster, on the ship Red Dragon, during a terrible storm, 1603)”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“desk simply to say: “Would you be willing to be parachuted into Greece next week?”’ Woodhouse thought about it for a moment. ‘There seemed no reason to say No, so I said Yes.’5 He reasoned that it would be a good opportunity to practise his Greek.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“Juet's journal frequently records how only a tiny quantity of alcohol was needed to get the Indians drunk, 'for they could not take it'; and tales of the drunkenness that greeted Hudsons' arrival persisted among the native Indians until the last century. Indeed Heckewelder claims that the name Manhattan is derived from the drunkenness that took place there, since the Indian word 'manahactanienk' means 'the island of general intoxication'.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“At one point, so many people had assembled on the bridge that linked the ship to the shore that the timbers began to creak and groan. Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack and a hundred or more people were plunged into the muddy river. Wiser heads might have seen this as a warning that Elizabethan technology did not always match its enthusiasm.”
― Giles Milton i Samurai William i

“a most Gallant Company of Gentleman Adventurers’.32”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“Hawkins was annoyed but placed his trust in tact and diplomacy. He sent a polite but firm letter to the Portuguese commander reminding him that their two countries were at peace and asking that ‘he release my men and goods, for that we were Englishmen.’ The commander was in no mood to be lenient and sent Hawkins a return letter ‘vilely abusing His Majesty [King James I] terming him King of Fishermen, and of an island of no import’.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History

“antagonist having one hand strapped behind his back and the other”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History

“Setting sail from Tidore, his next port of call was the island of Celebes, where he found himself royally entertained by the King of Butung.... This island unknown to the English but Middleton (Captain David Middleton) enjoyed his stay here and found the King a curious fellow who was only to keen to entertain his guests with banquets and sweetmeats. Some meals were novel affairs; the ship's purser found himself eating in a room whose interior decor consisted entirely of rotting human heads, dangling from the ceiling.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“Realising that Mauritius could be a valuable port of call for Dutch ships Heemskerck put a rooster and some hens ashore and planted orange and lemon seeds, invoking 'the Almighty God's blessing that He may lend His power to make them multiply and grow for the benefit of those who will visit the island after us'.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“Not many weapons could relieve a man of his underwear.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“The voyage had proved a human and financial disaster. Of the 198 men who rounded the Cape, only 25 returned alive. Worse still, two of the three ships had been lost and the one that did manage to limp into port was carrying not spices but scurvy. Lancaster had proved--if proof was needed--that the spice trade involved risks that London's merchants could ill afford. It was not until they learned that the Dutch had entered the spice race, and achieved a remarkable success, that they would consider financing a new expedition to the islands of the East Indies.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“Yet they are unmoved when told of the cruel blow that fortune has dealt them, happy to see out their days on this unknown and unspoiled atoll. They will tell you that the view from their windows is infinitely more magnificent than Manhattan's glittering skyline.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History

“COLIN GUBBINS’S DECISION to attack the Pessac transformer was at one level blindingly obvious. Deprive the U-boat base of power and you deprive the enemy of his ability to function. But it was also a clever piece of lateral thinking, one that opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Military factories, aerodromes and industrial docks: suddenly, the Nazis’ soft targets looked enticingly vulnerable”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“At your arrival at Run,’ he had been told, ‘show yourself courteous and affable, for they are a peevish, perverse, diffident and perfidious people and apt to take disgust upon small occasions.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History

“the men were offered extra supplies of pemmican, a gumlike mixture of animal fat and protein. At its best, it tasted like salt-pork chewing gum. At its worst, it was like rancid whale blubber.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“the whole art of guerrilla warfare lies in striking the enemy where he least expects it and yet where he is most vulnerable”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“We really believed in our hearts that this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for and talking about for so many years. We were absolutely certain that we had won the first great victory of the peace—and, by ‘we,’ I mean all of us, the whole civilized human race.”
― Giles Milton, Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World

“He complained to his superiors at ‘being shot at from behind hedges by men in trilbys and mackintoshes and not allowed to shoot back’. But those men in trilbys taught him a lesson he would never forget: irregular soldiers, armed with nothing but homespun weaponry, could wreak havoc on a regular army.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“one cannot defy nature, but must adapt and accommodate oneself to her. Nature will not change; it is man who must change if he is to live in conditions where nature is dominant.’6 Adaptability and confidence were two of the key elements in the psychology of survival.”
― Giles Milton, Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

“geography. In those days, Run was the most talked about island in the world, a place of such fabulous wealth that Eldorado’s gilded riches seemed tawdry by comparison.”
― Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History