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Times
2 days ago
- General
- Times
Brian Bond obituary: pioneering academic at war studies school
English and geography once struggled to gain acceptance as degree subjects but war studies struggled longer. In 1966 Brian Bond joined the newly formed department at King's College London (KCL) as a lecturer, giving up his more 'respectable' post in the history department at Liverpool. A department of military science had existed at KCL since the college's early years in the 19th century but it was not until 1962 that a separate, permanent department was established for the study of war and its impact on the world. Sir Michael Howard (obituary, December 2, 2019) was its founder and, thanks in the main to his support, Bond would go on to become reader and then professor of military history, writing numerous books and papers specialising in the late 19th century and the two world wars. He was first encouraged in the subject by no less a figure than Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the former Great War soldier, interwar strategist and apostle of 'the indirect approach', although perhaps studied more in Nazi Germany than in Britain. While reading history at Worcester College, Oxford, in the late 1950s, Bond met Liddell Hart at home in Buckinghamshire, where the latter had recently settled and Bond's father had become his gardener. At Oxford, Bond had elected to take the special subject paper on Napoleonic military history taught by Norman Gibbs, Chichele professor of the history of war. Liddell Hart, impressed by his gardener's son's scholarship, gave him access to his library and private papers and introduced him to visiting prominenti including Howard, who encouraged him to take an MA in war studies. This he completed in 1962 while lecturing at Exeter and then Liverpool. Brian James Bond was born in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, in 1936 to Edward Bond and Olive (née Sartin). He was an early beneficiary of the 1944 (Butler) Education Act, gaining a free place at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in 1947. Leaving school in 1954 he elected to do his two years' National Service first, rather than deferring it to take up his place at Oxford, and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery. Although hardly the same as Howard's decorated active service in Italy with the Coldstream Guards, it did at least give him an insider's understanding of military culture and some credibility with serving officers looking to KCL for professional development. In 1962 he married Madeleine Joyce Carr. She died in 2023. They had no children. Bond's first book, as the editor of Victorian Military Campaigns, with each campaign written by a different historian, including Sir John Keegan, was published in 1967. Next came a serious study of the Victorian army and the staff college before two books on the Second World War and a highly regarded study of British military policy between the wars. He was disappointed not to be Liddell Hart's official biographer, the job going instead to one of his former doctoral students. Evidently Liddell Hart's widow, Kathleen, had wrongly believed that Bond had said that her husband had been a fascist. To an extent, honour was satisfied when, with the diplomatic intervention of Howard, he was allowed to write an interim study of Liddell Hart's ideas, but not touching on his life as a whole: Liddell Hart: a Study of His Military Thought (1977). Unfortunately, two reviews focused not on the book but on Liddell Hart himself — and disobligingly — which further upset his widow. Bond then turned, as eventually all British military historians must, to the First World War and in particular to the Western Front, which meant Field Marshal Haig. Undoubtedly the pendulum had swung beyond all balance with the publication in 1961 of Alan Clark's The Donkeys, a book that Howard dismissed as being almost entirely worthless. Some rebalancing was needed but Bond's revisionism was considered by many to be almost as unbalanced as Clark's diatribe. It was ironic, too, that Bond's revisionism disputed Liddell Hart's own assessment of the British high command in the First World War. One review of Haig: A Reappraisal said that Bond wrote with blinkers on: '[His] Haigiography testifies to the power of British patriotism and loyalty into which, as a British general, Haig tapped. Bond's defence of Haig's asininity horsed cavalry convictions is only exceeded by defence of Haig when he was faced by the evidence that his major push into the Somme had failed.' A later book, The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History (2002), which tried to unpick the myth, as he saw it, from the 'reality', brought a sharp retort from the other side of the Atlantic that Bond was trying to 'set up traditional military history in the mansion while relegating art to the little shed out back'. Disappointed not to have become head of the war studies department, Bond knew that his strength lay principally in teaching, which he did at KCL for 35 years. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Western Ontario, visiting lecturer at the US Naval War College, visiting fellow at Brasenose and briefly at All Souls colleges, Oxford, and for 20 years was president of the British Commission for Military History. In 2001 he retired to Buckinghamshire to watch cricket, a lifelong passion, to tend his garden and to visit country houses. He was, too, a strong supporter of wildlife conservation, especially of foxes, not a species usually thought to require protection, unlike Field Marshal Haig. Brian Bond, pioneering war studies academic, was born on April 17, 1936. He died on June 2, 2025, aged 89
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Social justice groups sue to block Trump executive order restricting care for transgender children
Several social justice groups said Tuesday that they are suing the Trump administration over its new restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for children. On January 28, Trump signed an executive order called 'Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,' which instructed federal agencies to take immediate steps to deny federal funding to any institution that provided gender-affirming medical care for people under the age of 19. Gender-affirming care is considered medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known. For children, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises doctors to provide developmentally appropriate, nonjudgmental treatment in a safe clinical space. The care is individualized and based on peer-reviewed scientific studies that show what is effective. Providers and counselors will often work with the child, and may also work with their family, their school and the community. More than two dozen states have passed laws restricting access to such care, but nearly every major medical association considers gender-affirming care to be gold-standard treatment. After Trump's executive order, many children's hospitals told CNN that they were trying to determine the effects on patients and care and that their current approach to clinical care remained the same. The organization that represents these hospitals, the Children's Hospital Association, said it was also trying to determine what the legal impact would be on care. One organization, Transhealth in Massachusetts, said on its website that it will continue providing care: 'We are not going anywhere, and we will not stop fighting for you and our communities.' However, PFLAG, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ people and their families and one of the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, said it has received calls from parents across the country whose children's appointments are being canceled. 'Those families and countless other families are being harmed right now by this executive order, whether because they had an appointment for scheduled care canceled or their health care providers have been coerced through threat of federal funding loss to preemptively shut down gender-affirming care services,' Brian Bond, PFLAG's chief executive officer, said Tuesday. Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, and Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU in Richmond, Virginia, said that while they would continue to support patients with mental health counseling and other care, they would immediately pause the part of gender-affirming care that offered medication to some patients, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Children's Hospital Los Angeles also told CNN that it was 'pausing the initiation of hormonal therapies for all gender affirming care patients under the age of 19' as it evaluated the order and continued to provide mental health and social support services. Some people receiving gender-affirming care choose to use puberty blockers, medications that can delay puberty, a developmental phase that can be distressing for someone who is transgender. Studies show that transgender adolescents who used puberty blockers were less likely to have suicidal thoughts than those who wanted the treatment but did not get it. The medications are the same that are used when someone goes through precocious puberty, which is when a child's body changes into that of an adult too soon. Pubertal suppression is reversible. Surgery can be another approach included in gender-affirming care for adults, but few surgeries are performed on children in the US. VCU Children's said it was suspending surgical procedures for people under the age of 19, and Children's National said it never offered a surgical option for children. The new legal challenge was filed by groups including the ACLU, Lambda Legal and GLMA on behalf of two young transgender adults, five transgender adolescents and their families whose health care has been disrupted by the executive order. Many of the plaintiffs are not named. One parent who is identified, Kristen Chapman, says she moved to Richmond so her child Willow could have access to a gender-affirming care program that accepted the family's Medicaid insurance. The family had lived in Tennessee, which passed a law that banned gender-affirming medical care for minors starting in 2023. The US Supreme Court is considering whether that law is constitutional. Chapman said she tried to get her 17-year-old an appointment at VCU Children's for months and was finally able to get a spot for January 29. It was the day after Trump signed the executive order. On the day of the appointment, VCU Children's told the family that it would no longer be able to provide care for Willow. 'I thought Virginia would be a safe place for me and my daughter. Instead, I am heartbroken, tired and scared,' Chapman said at a news conference Tuesday. 'I've had to leave the only home my children ever knew to build a new one entirely from scratch and even separate my family just to get the health care my daughter needs.' Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA, which represents LGBTQ+ health care professionals, said his group has spoken with dozens of members trying to navigate the 'chaos' that the executive order has caused. One nurse, Sheldon said, said they had to cancel a patient's appointment, and the child's mother said it would be the nurse's fault if the child were to die by suicide. 'They called me in tears, realizing that their career had been dedicated to caring for people and they were no longer able to do so because of the fear that this instilled in their institution,' Sheldon said. 'Providers are scrambling to handle hundreds of calls from terrified families,' Sheldon added. 'They are under immense unwarranted scrutiny. They worry for their futures and the futures of their patients.' The lawsuit was filed in federal District Court in Maryland and will be followed by a request for an immediate restraining order against the enforcement of the executive order. On Monday, New York state Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to health care providers and other organizations warning that despite the executive order, they needed to follow state laws that protect against discrimination based on several categories, including sexual orientation or gender identity. 'Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law,' the letter said. CNN's Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.
