Hello and welcome to this special arms this day episode of epox where we shall be talking about

World War I and I'm joined by the brilliant Mr Godfrey Bloom.

How are you sir?

I'm very well and thank you very much for inviting me.

No no it's an honor and a pleasure to have a conversation with you it really is and so

today we're going to be talking about your thoughts and feelings on the run-up to

World War I and perhaps whether Britain should ever have got involved in the first place?

Well, I think it would be good if I just started, rewind as it were were right back to the beginning so we when I get to my

bit my hypothesis we've got some background to go on sure please please do. And that is the British view has always been to maintain

the balance of power of course in in Europe that was the in my in my view totally

flawed view of maintaining the balance because that's a very difficult

thing to do and it's very expensive thing to do. And so you go back to the war if you will of the Spanish

succession, you go back there you go right back to the 18th century

so you can go back to battles of Blenham and Malpean all that kind of thing and and John

Churchill you can go right back there which we fought but we didn't fight it right

the way through because all we wanted to do was clip the Sun King's wings and so moving on from

there which we did quite effectively and then we moved on there but which we did quite effectively.

And then we moved on there, but we didn't back that up

because we didn't want it to swing the other way.

We were quite happy with a sort of Mexican standoff,

as it were.

And then you go forward to the Napoleonic Wars and that was another thing which

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