The forgotten hero who helped save England in World War II
Harry Hopkins entered my life in my final year at St. Andrews University in Scotland when my tutor, who was from Texas, wanted me to assess the reputation of a man who had fallen “through a trapdoor in history.” I had never heard of Harry Hopkins before and nor, as my tutor remarked sadly, had anyone else in the United Kingdom. Yet, he told me that Britain’s wartime survival in the face of the Nazi onslaught owed a great deal to a man whom Winston Churchill had called “ a lighthouse from which there shone the beams that led great fleets to harbour.” The memory of that conversation has stayed with me. Forty-five years later, I hope I have thrown…