X-Nico

unusual facts about Eastern Approaches


Randolph Churchill

In both the Western Desert Campaign and Yugoslavia, Churchill crossed paths with Fitzroy Maclean, who wrote of their adventures, and some of the problems Churchill caused him, in his memoir Eastern Approaches.


Emirate of Bukhara

Fitzroy Maclean recounts in Eastern Approaches how Charles Stoddart and Arthur Conolly were executed by Nasrullah Khan in the context of The Great Game, and how Joseph Wolff, known as the Eccentric Missionary, escaped their fate when he came looking for them in 1845.

Hans von Herwarth

Fitzroy Maclean, then a young diplomat in the British Embassy, states in his memoir Eastern Approaches that Herwarth condemned the appeasement of the Munich Agreement, predicted a Soviet-German commitment to non-aggression (which came to pass as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), and saw ahead to what he called "the destruction of Germany".

Treaty of Vis

The signing of the agreement was pushed by Winston Churchill, who had his people watching over the negotiations, "on hand but hands off", as described in Eastern Approaches: Ralph Stevenson, ambassador to the government in exile, and Fitzroy Maclean, the soldier-ambassador liaison to Tito.

Trial of the Twenty-One

Fitzroy Maclean's autobiography Eastern Approaches has a chapter devoted to this trial, which he witnessed while working in Moscow for the British Foreign Office.


see also

Plasticulture

The eastern approaches to Almería, north of the airport, are densely covered, as is a large area further north-east, surrounding the towns of Campohermoso, Los Pipaces and Los Grillos (close to Níjar).

Tsar Cannon

It is known to have been mounted on a special frame with a fixed inclination angle in Red Square near the Place of Skulls in order to protect the eastern approaches to the Kremlin, indicating that it originally did have a practical application.