The book is about clashing fundamental values, which then had to be mediated through a more conventional policy optic, in which morality often seemed to have had little to do with it. These were not decisions made at the leisurely pace of a university philosophy seminar, but by men under enormous hourly pressures that visibly aged them in a remarkably rapid time.

At what point do you abandon diplomatic compromise with predatory dictatorships, and what tactics can be legitimately used to combat them, including in this case a western democratic alliance with a Soviet totalitarian dictatorship as evil as Nazism? How were entire societies galvanized for total war? Once the conflict had begun in earnest, what considerations guided politicians and commanders as they despatched men into battle, on land, at sea and in the air? What sort of moral considerations operated on the world’s battlefields, and in the minds of men exposed to the stresses of combat?

While western forces generally respected internationally recognised laws of war, except in the Pacific, this was not the case with the Nazis, who unleashed a ferocious racial rampage on the Jews and others. Although this often had psychopathic aspects, it is important to understand that it was underpinned by its own aberrant moral framework, in which an historic mission allegedly outweighed law or considerations of good and evil.

Of course, Nazism forced moral choices not just on the perpetrators but on those few who resisted them, and indeed, on their victims. Were resistance movements ever justified in deliberately causing mass casualties in order to provoke German reprisals and to increase their own support base? What dreadful choices were forced on the poor Jews whose options were so drastically limited. Was it ever justified to sacrifice parts of a community to save the whole?

A moral choice was also made by the Allies when they decided to concentrate their bombing raids on a combination of industrial and urban civilian targets, consciously sidelining the apparatus of mass murder. What arguments were used to flatten entire German cities, and how convincing were the objections raised at the time and subsequently by opponents of this strategy? Finally, how justified were the Allies in trying their defeated opponents, and how did this contribute to the restoration of Germany, Italy and Japan to the ranks of civilised nations?

These are some of the questions and themes that challenged me as I thought about how to shape MORAL COMBAT, for surely there was more to the war than merely a succession of military encounters outside any deeper philosophical framework. I guess my overriding concern was to show how people who are not professional philosophers grappled with all these issues in real time and without the luxury of profound reflection. In that sense, History still seems to me the best way of understanding these events, especially if it involves suspending one’s own propensity to make moral judgements with the benefits of hindsight.

Michael’s Moral Combat is currently available from Amazon for £15. Read a review of it on TimesOnline.

Last Christmas friends gave us Caroline Clifton-Mogg’s Secret Gardens of London (Thames and Hudson). I’ve leafed through it several times this year, in the hope that it might help transform our very small back yard.

Maybe some kind soul will give us Alexandra D’Arnoux’s Secret Gardens of Paris this year, although I fear the back yard will remain a yard throughout 2010.

I love reference books so perhaps another generous friend will poney up for the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary? At £250 they will have to be quick since the price rises to £275 after 31st January.

Finally, I’ve been slowly and selectively repurchasing memorable books which I sold during a rough patch. Things like Gregory of Tours History of the Franks (Penguin).

I’ve always been interested in late antiquity/the early Middle Ages, so any sources from those times would be very welcome, since I plan to revisit them in my dotage.

I’d also like the several volumes of the Pentagon Papers which I need for a future project…..should anyone have a set hanging idly around.

Click here to read other author’s wishlists.

We need realistic and regular assessments of where we are in combating global jihadist terrorism by a range of methods that go beyond the strictly military rather than generalised expressions of anxiety that support a purely military response. Do we need still to talk about a ‘war on terror’, a notion that may have been useful in the wake of 9/11 but which does not suit the altered circumstances of today?

Talk of friends and foes, with us or against us, also tends to aggregate what are myriad problems with terrorist groups, failed and rogue states, rather than seeking to discriminate between them with a view to their disaggregation and destruction. Are all terrorist demands equally non-negotiable? Surely some can be encouraged to transform themselves into political parties?

The threat from Al-Qaeda seems diminished. Since 9/11 the operational capacity of Al-Qaeda has been massively impaired. Thousands of its ‘mufsidoon’ (the Arabic for ‘evil-doers’) have been killed or captured, including the two men who brought the ‘Bojinka’ plot- to down aircraft over the Pacific- to Osama bin Laden who then modified it as 9/11.

Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri may still be able to smuggle out videos with bizarre commentaries on world affairs, but their ability to communicate or move funds around electronically has been terminated. 9/11 is coming to seem like an unrepeatable one-off ‘spectacular’. Luck, money, and intelligence will sooner or later result in the death or capture of terrorist leaders (as happened in the case of Abdul al-Zarqawi who was probably fingered by the Iranians via the Jordanians) reduced to remote jihadist ideologues who periodically drone from our screens.

Part of any terror campaign is the predictability of the response. Here we are in more difficult territory, which is more important than that of the legitimacy of invading Iraq. Do the political costs of intervening in failed states, such as Afghanistan or Somalia, outweigh what is gained by preventing them become terrorist havens?

Since only one country (the US) is capable of such intervention, it means that the US risks being easily caricatured as a trigger- happy global bully, even when it acts to protect Muslims as it did in Kosovo. More effort needs to be made to show the cost to ordinary Muslims of living in the anarchy of failed states, or what life for them would be like under Sharia law. Compared with the Cold War, US public diplomacy seems very poor, seeming largely reactive to what terrorists do rather than focused on the many benefits of life in the Free World.

The local picture is more depressing. The main opposition party seems to have abdicated its role of thinking deeply about these issues in favour of the fatuity of hug a tree or a hoodie. The government, many of whose MPs are in hock to voluble Muslim constituencies, seems caught between the popular hardline represented by John Reid, and the outmoded multicultural approach represented by Ruth Kelly, whose official remit begs a number of questions. A few clear principles need to be outlined. No minority, no matter how influential or vociferous, determines this country’s foreign policy, which is the sole responsibility of the democratically elected government. They can demonstrate or lobby, but they cannot issue veiled threats of domestic violent consequences.

We should not accept the insidious presumption that our society consists of discrete ‘communities’ represented by their so-called leaders, a recipe- surely- for atomisation and conflict, especially when these community leaders voice ambivalent responses to terrorism against the US or Israel. This is little more than a multi-culti version of the imperialist tactic of dealing with tribal elders updated for the 21st century. Anti-Americanism threatens this country’s basic strategic interests. In everyone’s interests we need clarity about the numbers of migrants coming to Britain, and assurances that our borders are tight, together with clear information regarding the cost-benefits and long term consequences of mass migration. We need to stop the proliferation of foreign financed mosques, regardless of how many weapons contracts we loose with Saudi Arabia, and to put in place the means to disbar or expel foreign imams who cross the line of what is publicly acceptable. As the case of Abu Hamza demonstrated these are not harmless clowns but people who actively foment discord and violence.

Any policy which impedes assimilation of the migrants we already have – commencing with official documents being issued in foreign languages so as to de-necessitate learning English – should be reconsidered and then abandoned according to whether or not it serves a common goal, which is that we are not a Moslem country, but a secular liberal democracy with culturally Christian roots going back two millenia. If that means thinning out the overstocked ranks of local government and ‘community’ workers then so be it. If the present educational Establishment is unwilling to abandon an outmoded multiculturalism – with universities disgracefully letting their greed for overseas fees outweigh national security – then it is time we found ways of encouraging a greater plurality of views in those tax-funded institutions.

Likewise, we need a public discussion about whether human rights laws have outstripped the corresponding need for duties and obligations, or whether they have become a form of legal-political activism which serves the interests (and propaganda campaigns) of terrorists. After all, that is precisely what happened to many of the Baader-Meinhof defence attorneys in the 1970s and 1980s. Above all, perhaps, we need the courage to say that some beliefs/views are fundamentally irreconcilable with our civilisation, although they may be perfectly acceptable in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, whence such people are entitled to relocate should they find the decadence too burdensome here.”