The Weekly Telegraph, No. 396, February 24 - March 2, 1999
OBITUARY: Kenneth de Courcy, who has died aged 89, led a life as rich in vicissitude as in the fantasies which sustained him.
In the 1930's de Courcy was a confidant of Cabinet ministers and a dining companion of the Duke of Windsor. By the 1960's he was an intimate only of the spy George Blake, with whom he was sharing a table in Wormwood Scrubs. In 1934 de Courcy became secretary of the Imperial Policy Group, which favoured appeasement as the best means of preserving the Empire.
In this capacity he travelled the Continent in the years before Munich, being received by Mussolini and Eduard Benes, president of Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain regularly asked for de Courcy's reports of these interviews, much to the annoyance of the Foreign Office.
In 1938 de Courcy began to write and publish Intelligence Digest, a private subscription newsletter that served as a platform for his well-informed, if defeatist, analysis of the drift to war.
After the war de Courcy continued for 30 years to publish Intelligence Digest and The Weekly Review.
As they enriched him, he began to slip into a life of fantasy. He bought a flat in the Empire State Building and had his Rolls-Royce waterproofed for underwater driving. Things began to go awry in the early 1960's, when de Courcy's scheme to build a garden city in Rhodesia failed and he was unable to return 1 million (pounds) put up by investors. He resorted to fraud and forgery and was sentenced in 1963 to seven years' jail.
In later lifed he styled himself Duc de Grantmesnil. No one appeared to dispute his right to the title. Equally straight-forward was its omission from the Almanach de Gotha.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 396, February 24 - March 2, 1999
Church studies 'customers'
The church is to conduct market research with New Labour-style focus groups to find out what its "customers" want. Jayne Ozanne, 30, a marketing strategist who worked for Fairy Liquid, has been appointed to run the research.
COMMENT: Time was, when the thrust of the Church was to ascertain what The LORD wants!

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 396, February 24 - March 2, 1999
Napoleon 'had Scots ancestor' - by Richard Savill
GREAT Scot! The family of Napoleon Bonaparte may have come from a tiny Scottish community, according to new research. Evidence that his grand-father came from Balloch, near Crieff, Perthshire, has been uncovered by a local historian, Robert Torrens. He believes that Napoleon's grandfather may have been a soldier. Mr. Torrens stumbled across the link in a dusty book called Crieff: Its Traditions and Characters. He said that, according to the book, a labourer named William Bayne decided to leave Balloch after the collapse of the 1745 Jacobite uprising. It says: "With this intent he and his family and others set sail. A storm came on and they were driven on to Corsica, where they were hospitably received. "They were known as Bayne or Buon and his party. In course of time his sons were called Buon-de-party. "His grandson was named Buon-de-parte or Buonaparte and now figures in history as the great Napoleon."

COMMENT: Others disagree. See letters commenting on this below.

Follow-up to the Bonaparte news item -
The Weekly Telegraph, March 3-9, 1999:
Letters to the Editor: -
Nelson's clan connection
Sir - As a historian of the Clan Glenell, I was very interested in the suggestion that Napoleon was a third-generation Scot (Issue 396). The name Bain is connected with the Glenells, and it could be that Napoleon was connected to the clan. But if that were the case it would be ironic, since Nelson is also a name associated with the clan. Admiral Horatio Nelson was extremely proud of his Scottish ancestry, which dated back to the 13th century. It might also be pointed out that during the Hundred Years' War many Scots mercenaries married into the French aristocracy, and there is a good possibility that the name de Gaulle originated from the Scots Dougal.
M. W. BRANDER
Haddington, East Lothian

Sir - While wishing Robert Torrens well with his research, the genealogists and historians are content to know that Napoleon Bonaparte had a direct male lineal descent from the family of that name recorded in the libra d'oro of the city of Treviso from the end of the 12th century. It is well documented that Napoleon's branch moved to Corsica from Florence at the end of the 15th century.
C. R. HUMPHERY-SMITH
Canterbury, Kent

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 396, February 24 - March 2, 1999:
"Prince saved from 'badge of bastardy'", by Robert Hardman
Under the above headline, the article explains that the birth of The Duke of York prompted a ministerial row and a change of royal surname in order to shield him from the "badge of bastardy." It seems that in 1952, the Queen had declared that Windsor would be the family name of her descendants, but, had he taken the surname "Windsor", it would appear illegitimate because that name would carry the mother's maiden name. The problem did not arise in the case of Charles and Anne, who were born prior to the declaration and were thus called Mountbatten . And so, just 11 days before Prince Andrew's birth, the Queen made a Declaration in council that "Mountbatten-Windsor" would be the surname of any descendants not entitled to the style Royal Highness or the title Prince or Princess or who were female descendants and had married.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 396, February 24 - March 2, 1999:
A group of items in the same paper shows that concern over genetically altered foods (GM foods) still motivates the purchasing public in Britain. It seems that a survey turned up some interesting statistics. More than half of those surveyed were opposed to GM products with 57 per cent saying they would not buy them. In addition, 47 per cent of those sampled said they avoided factory farmed produce, an increase on last year's 44 per cent. Some 71 per cent of shoppers questioned in the Europe-wide Where People Shop 1999 survey said they bought fresh rather than frozen foods. The survey was conducted on 500 shoppers in 11 European countries in October, last year. It found that 49 per cent of food shoppers said they tried to buy organic fruit and vegetables compared with just 23 per cent in 1998.
COMMENT: Again, we see that people are becoming wary of Scientific benefits where "Big Money" is pushing the cart!

Intelligence Digest 19 February, 1999 mentions the following item:
Golan settlement taken as message to Syria.
The revelation that a new Jewish settlement - called Nimrod - is being created in secret on the Golan Heights 4 km from the Druze village of Majdal Shams is being interpreted as a message to Syria that Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of leaving the Golan Heights.
A Golan source has been quoted in Israeli papers as saying that Nimrod is "an important community because its location, in the very heart of an area with a relatively large Druze population, has strategic significance as well as significance for the entire settlement agenda."
COMMENT: The very name, "Nimrod" also has great significance. It might surprise those unfamiliar with ancient Middle-Eastern ethnicity to realise that the generations of Nimrod produced true Israel's enemies! It is not a name taken from the generations of Shem, we note, but of Ham. The "land of Nimrod" (Mic 5:6) is a designation of Assyria or of Shinar, which is a part of it. Assyria captured and deported Northern Israel and most of Judah, while Babylon captured and executed the sons of Zedekiah, the last of David's line to rule in Judah, blinded that monarch, and took him in chains, along with most of the Jerusalem remnant of Judah, away to captivity in Babylon (II Kings 25:6-7). Hebrew for "captive" or "exile" is "galah" or "golah", incidentally - and the settlement is to be developed in the Golan Heights! Genesis 10 (listing the generations of the sons of Noah), states of Ham's son, Cush:

8. And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
9. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.
10. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
11. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah,
12. And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.

Toronto Globe And Mail, 27 February, 1999:
British were there first
DUBLIN. Dublin was occupied by the British before the Vikings arrived more than 1,100 years ago, an archeological dig in the city has discovered. The find rewrites the Irish capital's history.
Until now, it had been thought that Norsemen founded the city in 841, when they built a defended settlement by the Black Pool on the river Liffey.
Now a team led by archeologist Linzi Simpson has made "revolutionary" finds that show the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in about 780. The excavation in the Temple bar area led to the discovery of a rectangular Anglo-Saxon house below the three-century layers of Viking inhabitation.
COMMENT: We are almost daily discovering new facts concerning the history of our people. We look forward to the day of general discovery of "who we really ARE!" For the majority of our people of Israelitish descent, that will truly be a day of revolutionary historical discovery!

The Weekly Telegraph, March 3-9, 1999:
Nuclear-proof network fails
A KEY British part of the Internet, designed to withstand nuclear attack and claimed to be impervious to failure, has collapsed, severing links with the US. The Joint Academic Network (Janet), largest computer network in the British Isles, was unable to route e-mail and other information after a cable deep below the Atlantic failed.
COMMENT: - Another glitch to be fixed before the "Y2K" comes!

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