This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 10, 2020. |
Field Marshall Alexander of Tunis cannot have received the Order of Merit from King George VI in 1959 as the latter died in 1952. He either got it on that date from Queen Elizabeth II or from George VI on some other date. Can anyone advise? -- F Sykes 20:39, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
The box at top right may be removed, the information is either replaced by the boxes at the end of the article, or is in the main article. "In 1937 he was promoted to Major-General and joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)." - the BEF didn't exist until 1939, so what date? What rank, & what was his command? The fact that Alexander was the last British soldier to leave Dunkirk merits inclusion I think. Monty hadn't been knighted in August 1942, so the reference should be to 'General Bernard Montgomery'. Auckinleck hadn't been knighted in August 1942, so the reference should be to 'General Claude Auchinleck'. GrahamBould 14:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
There's some stuff on the Baltic period in the Nigel Nicolson biog (which I don't have to hand sadly) - it also mentions him briefly taking command of a brigade in March 1918, presumably in the retreat after "Michael".
The Cossack General Domanov was in the group of Cossack officers who were brutally betrayed by the British authorities. Gerenral Domanov was the one who received a letter for the British Field Marshal Harold Alexander. On the May 27, 1945 at 5 PM the British Major B.P. Davis arrived to the hotel "Gold Fish" where General Domanov was residing at that time. The Major delivered a special order to the General from Field Marshal Alexander. This order stated that all cossacks must arrive to the city of Spital (Austria) to participate in a conference "Present political and military situation and the POW cossacks". General Domanov passed the British order to all Cossack officers. Following this betrayal order, 14 Cossack generals, 2359 officers, 65 military clerks, 14 doctors, 7 feldshers and 2 priests arrived to the designated location. They were all placed into a prison camp. British took away from the cossacks pocket knives, lighters, whistles, etc. The prison camp was surrounded by the British army with 6 tanks. On the 28th of May 1945 it was announced that there will be no conference. It was announced that all cossacks will be given away to the Soviet authorities. General Krasnof wrote several petitions to the King of England, League of Nations, International Red Cross but hey all remained unanswered. Few officers who didn't want to be given to the Soviets, took away their lifes. On the 29th the Soviets came and the British forced Cossacks into the lorries. While forcing Cossacks into the lorries, the British soldiers and officers were brutally beating them. By 5 PM of the 29th of May 1945 all remaining alive 2426 Cossacks were given by British to the SMERSH (Russian acronym for "Death to the spies") group of the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front. This is a free-style and may be not of a very good quality abbreviated translation from: http://www.cossacks.info/war/repatriation/chapter_lenivov21.html
No indication if his marriage produced children. I'll do some research of my own.
GrahamBould 22:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: this sentence and unreferenced quote attributed to Montgomery:
Montgomery, who was both a long-time friend and subordinate of Alexander in Sicily and Italy, said of him, "Alexander....is not a strong commander...the higher art of war is quite beyond him." He advised his US counterparts, Mark Clark and George S. Patton, to ignore any orders from Alexander with which they did not agree.
A Google search on the phrase: "higher art of war is quite beyond him" results in only one hit - to this page. Doing the same through Google Book Search results in no hits. Isn’t it strange that, if true, such a historically significant event has not been mentioned in any of numerous published sources that have been fully indexed by Google Book Search or that is has never been discussed anywhere else on the internet?
Considering the inflammatory nature of this quote, unless it can be properly referenced and its accuracy verified, shouldn’t it be struck from the article? Psywar ( talk) 19:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's particularly inflammatory, as Monty said similar things about almost everybody apart from Alan Brooke (the only man in the world to whom he looked up AFAIK). IIRC Monty was Alexander's instructor at some stage in the interwar period, and was not impressed by his brains - that said Alexander clearly wasn't an idiot, given the high responsibilities he held, even if he had the sense to delegate a lot of the work to Harding, his chief of staff (who wrote Alexander's elegant despatches quoted so lovingly by Churchill in his "Second World War").
References
During the retreat to Dunkirk, Alexander's 1st Division was under 1 Corps but was transferred to II Corps on 18 May. Om 21 May the division received its only significant attack...On 28 May 1st was re-attached to I Corps and moved into the Dunkirk perimeter...On 31 May Alexander replaced Barker as commander II Corps i.e. after he arrived at Dunkirk. This all comes from Churchill's Lions: A Biographical Guide to Key British Generals of World War II. Alexander may well have been the last general officer off the beach at Dunkirk but was certainly not "instrumental in leading the retreat to Dunkirk". Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 00:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
The two PCs in the list of honours after Alexander's name are in different places in the infobox and the main article. There must be rules about this sort of thing, but I don't know what they are. Could someone please 'do the honours'. Cheers. GrahamBould ( talk) 06:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Does anybody know why he is earl of Tunis, I mean after all Tunis is not part of Britain —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.59.163.198 ( talk) 17:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Rettetast seems to have reformatted the article by removing any and all date links in the article, as well as, repositioning the [Image:AlexanderMacLeanJovanovic.jpg] image. The result is that the text is not positioned correctly and has a large gap in between paragraphs. Applied undo to article version prior to Rettetast’s edit. -- Gaston200 ( talk) 12:31, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
7 August 1942 – 18 February 1943: Commander-in-Chief Middle East
I have changed the date he was appointed and provided a source, do you have a source for the date he left this post as we could use it over on the Middle East Command page.-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 01:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I see there have been a couple of attempts to tidy up the references section (one by me) which have been reverted. I'd like to discuss this and establish a consensus. In WWII articles under the Military History banner it is becoming increasingly common for complex articles with a lot of citations to split the listing of books refered to, citations and footnotes. The logic is that the casual reader is generally not interested in a specific citation but may well be interested in identifying the books used as sources - this is made difficult if the book details are buried in a block of 50 or more citations. A successful format has been developed where the book details are listed under the References heading and the <ref> notes put under the Notes heading split into two groups: Footnotes ({{Reflist|group=nb}} etc. for added commentary) and Citations ({{Reflist|2}} etc for specific page refs. Generally simple <ref></ref> citation format is used - the non-professional reader gets confused by Harvard refs and they don't work well in a complex and multi-reffed article. There are many articles conforming to this style and examples can be found here and here. At the moment the Alexander article references are neither one thing nor the other. Details of Mead are buried in the citations, Playfair details are stuck at the bottom of the citations. At present the article is not particularly well referenced (except for the large number of London Gazette citations) in the sense that although there are quite a lot of citations, they come from a narrow range of sources. In due course more books should be added to the citations which will highlight this formatting issue further. I therefore propose we use the formats exampled in the links above. Any comments? Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The Sun is pretty big, [1] but the Moon is not so big. [2] The Sun is also quite hot. [3]
Footnotes
References
- Brown, R (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
- Miller, E (2005). The Sun, Academic Press.
If you disagree with the simplifed model that we have been using - merging the footnotes and notes section together - the style articles state the following is the way to do it: Augustus-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 15:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I saw a request for opinions at WT:CITE.
IMO, what we have now is not good. The ==Notes== section is fine. The ==Citations== section, however, contains some short citations and some full citations, which is odd. If the point of separating short and full citations is to help the reader who wants to know more or less what sources were used to create the article, then we're failing to meet the goal. The reader should not have to read through both ==Citations== and ==References== to find that information.
The two solutions are:
If there are more short refs than full refs, I'd pick the first option. If there are more full refs than short refs, I'd pick the second. The current mixed-up approach really doesn't work for me. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
As all previous governors general of Canada had been members of the peerage, and as a reward for his leadership in North Africa and Italy, Alexander was created by King George VI on 1 March 1946 as the Viscount Alexander of Tunis and Errigal in the county of Donegal.
To me that reads somewhat awkward should it be something like:
As all previous governors general of Canada had been members of the peerage, and as a reward for his leadership during World War Two, on 1 March 1946 King George VI made Alexander the Viscount Alexander of Tunis and Errigal in the county of Donegal.
or something to that effect?-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 12:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
That particular edition announces as of 1 January the elevation to Viscountcies of Alanbrooke, Alexander, Montgomery and Portal; to Baronies Fraser, Tedder, Tovey and Wilson. The wording is "The KING has been graciously pleased to signify His Majesty's intention of conferring Peerages of the United Kingdom _on the following military war leaders:" No coincidence I think! Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 13:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Kirrages, you stated in your edit summary that the position of grand master of the Order of St. Michael and St. George carries no alternate post-nominal letters. However, the London Gazette shows two previous grand masters, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, and Alexander Cambridge, Earl of Athlone - as holding the post-nominals of GMMG ( [1] [2]). Was the practice altered before Alexander was appointed to the position? -- Miesianiacal ( talk) 13:59, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
There's a little to and fro-ing going on about whether Alexander was an AdC(P). He wasn't. This is usually given to someone much more senior or in the Royal family. If you look at the final paragraph in the Personal Aide-de-Camp article you will see
There are several other categories of senior aides-de-camp; most are serving military, naval, and air officers, usually of colonel or brigadier rank or equivalent.
This is what he was (being a colonel, temp brigadier) and why he relinquished his position on promotion to major-general. You will note that in the London Gazette during the period of his aideship he has the post nomials ADC not ADC(P) for example here and here. You will see there is a distinction between the Personal AdC, the Air ADC (equivalent to AdC General in the army) and ordinary AdCs (Air Commodores and Group Captains, equivalent to brigadiers and colonels) at this link. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Re the above - shouldnt all these be in the 'See also' section as none of them are links to external websites.-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 13:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
What was the reason for changing this? As far as I can see the replaced one is a) used in practically every other earl's page b) Is in the preferred svg file format (uses less storage space) rather than the reviled png and c) Has a straightforward "own creation" GNU Free Documentation License (the new image has a restricted copyright requiring permission from the copyright holder for usage - has this been done?). Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 16:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
At present Alexander's second and third post-nominals are PC PC - which shows in blue two the same: PC PC. Looking up the wikipedia page for "Queen's Privy Council for Canada" I found this abbreviated to QPC, so, with I hope understandable logic, I changed the second PC to QPC. Can someone please explain why these two should be PC PC and not PC QPC ? Two the same does not make sense to me, which is why I investigated and changed. P0mbal ( talk) 21:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Whilst I wouldn't claim my edit was perfect, it reads really weirdly to me to say when he stepped down as GG of Canada before saying when he took up the post. Please read WP:R2D when it comes to redirects, there is no point piping a link when the redirect takes you to exactly the same place. Names of Honours should be capped-up, and it's all one honour, so it makes sense to me to link the whole name, rather than just the name of the order. I had made sure that we had consistenet capitalisation of Governor General, now we're back to a rather random seeming mixture of cases. David Underdown ( talk) 16:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I havent made any changes incase this is intential; in the lead it states "the king of Canada", should this not be King - with a capital K?-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 19:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
I was surprised to see no reference of this book, which Harold Alexander published in 1962 (Cassell & Componay Ltd). I found it in a charity shop recently. Should someone who knows more than me add it in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjinkerson ( talk • contribs) 20:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Due to a misunderstanding of Canadian copyright laws, material was incorporated into this article from [3]. Since the terms of that website are not available under license consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use, I have removed or revised material that I found that remained derivative of that source. The article has been heavily edited, but some content remained too close. If there are passages I've missed, please revise or remove those as well. Contributors are welcome to reuse the facts from that source, but please make sure that the text is completely rewritten and restructured. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:36, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
Demophon recently made some changes to the chronology of Alexander's titles. This caused a few problems: 1) It added post-nominal letters, which are not titles and repeated what is listed just below; 2) it obliterated his titles as Governor General of Canada; 3) it made the list inconsistent with those on all other Governors General of Canada. I've tried to meld some of his edit into the list and, at the same time, trimmed out the military positions Alexander held during WWII, as I don't think those were actual titles. -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 17:18, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
These are different animals altogether, not two species in a genus. "The Right Honorable Lord Alexander" indicates that he is (was) a member of the Privy Council. Most current British cabinet ministers get this title, and formerly governors-general of Canada and Australia and some Commonwealth prime ministers were also Privy Council members.
"The Honorable," on the other hand, is a hereditary courtesy rank (not strictly a title). It is granted to children of peers who do not have a real courtesy title to use. (Courtesy titles are accorded to the heir of a peer who has a secondary title in reserve to extend to his eldest son during his own lifetime.) When a person known as "the Honorable" is granted or succeeds to a title, I believe it is universally customary that he or she (usually he, of course) drops "The Honorable." Hence, after 1942 when the general was knighted but before he was ennobled as Viscount Alexander, he should be known simply as Sir Harold Alexander (without The Honorable), with, of course, his military rank before his name and the letters of his orders and decorations after it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Luke Line ( talk • contribs)
Sorry, while there were one or two good changes, the completely non-standard use of "small" around ref tags, and over-rigorous lower-casing menat that this needs discussion before going ahead. Every other article treats specific honours such as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath as proper nouns - the whole thing is the honour, not just the order part, and there were inconsistencies between having Governor General of Canada in the lead and governor general of Canada elsewehre (though I tend to agree that when just referring to the governor general or similar it should be downcased), Minister of Defence is again normally treated as a proper noun (with the possible exception of in The Guardian), likewise for Supreme Allied Commander, it's a post, not a rank. David Underdown ( talk) 19:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Can someone help? The article and the London Gazette record that Alexander received the Polish Virtuti Militari 5th class. Most graded awards (eg Order of Suvorov) have 1st as the highest and the next as 2nd and so on. This would mean he received the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. This seems surprising given the role he had, particularly in Italy with a significant Polish contingent. Italian wiki records he was awarded the Knight Grand Cross, ie class 1. Which is right? Has someone at the Gazette confused the sequence? I have seen other examples with the Virtuti Militari gradings. Folks at 137 ( talk) 15:22, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
For a long time, the article disambiguated between Alexander's post-nominals as an appointee to the British Privy Council and his post-nominals as an appointee to the Canadian Privy Council by rendering the former as PC(UK) and the latter as PC(Can). The UK version was altered by an anonymous editor to read PC, with the given explanation for the edit being "pc(uk) is not used". Though it was explained that the "UK" and "Can" qualifiers were there as disambiguators, the anon reverted again, leaving the British post-nominals as PC and the Canadian post nominals as PC(Can), justifying that move with the explanation "(can) for canada and without qualification for the uk". That is, of course, completely random and biased; since the opposite - "UK" for the British and without qualifier for the Canadian - is entirely possible, the anon has simply chosen the British post-nominals as the "norm" and the Canadian ones as the oddity requiring clarification, which is counter to WP:NPOV. Both should continue to be treated the same; either both have a disambiguating qualifier, or neither do. -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 19:53, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
As stated in the latest edit summary (not mentioned in your post): "While the [1867] Canadian Privy Council is specifically 'for Canada', the [ancient] Privy Council is not 'for the United Kingdom'."
I think you will find that Privy Counsellors (as opposed to Canadian Privy Counsellors) are entitled to the style Rt. Hon. As members of the House of Lords already use this style, the post-nominal letters PC are used to distinguish peers who are Privy Counsellors (such as the late Earl Alexander of Tunis) from those that are not.
You come across as having an agenda and, if you don't mind me saying so, a bit of an inferiority complex. You might equally argue that it is unfair on the UK to specify only Canada, but this is not a matter of "balance" or "prejudice" and to argue on those grounds here is a fallacy. It is sufficient to distinguish the later and more specific Council, to distinguish both is superfluous and over-fussy. Alexander was, in any case, British not Canadian.
I also noticed that the article referred to the "king of Canada" when there has never been such a thing. In 1946, the Canadian head of state was the King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas. In 1953, this was amended to "Queen of the United Kingdom..." (which has precedence and) when representing the UK and "Queen of the United Kingdom and Canada ... " in Canadian affairs alone.
In terms of the 3RR warning you placed on my talk page: You reverted my edits at (1) 17:30, (2) 17:54 (with the note "previous edit summary") and (3) 18:19; I reverted you at (1) 17:33, (2) 17:57 and (3) 18:38 (after your third revert), so you are also a bit of a hypocrite if you think this is a "pointy edit".
Finally, may I suggest that it's not healthy to obsess too much about these silly little things and that you get out a bit more. 2.27.90.175 ( talk) 19:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
The Privy Council has no national qualifier, the Privy Council for Canada does. As for "misrepresentation of reverts", the diffs are there for everyone to see. 2.27.90.175 ( talk) 13:58, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Leave the PC in his list of post-nominals, do not wikilink it if there is no agreement where it should point. His appointments to the the respective Privy Councils are listed under the Honours section. Unless there is a reliable source for the precedence of using PC(Can) then it should not be used. We try not to just make things up as we go along, right?. I have unlinked it until consensus established where, if anywhere, the wikilink should point. Cheers. EricSerge ( talk) 15:35, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Don't want to get into a row here but there is no need to give anybody's full name in this article except that of the subject of the article (Alexander). Winston Churchill is mentioned in a huge number of articles but never as Winston Spencer Churchill - he is generally recognized as Winston Churchill or Churchill. If you really want to know his full name just follow the link! Similarly, King, as I understand it, never used William or Lyon as his given name only Mackenzie. He signed himself as W.L. Mackenzie King in much the same way as Churchill signed himself as Winston S. Churchill. Currently he is referred to in this article as 1. William L. Mackenzie King (makes it sound like he has a double-barrelled surname!) 2. Mackenzie King 3. William Lyon Mackenzie King. Might I suggest that he be consistently referred to as Mackenzie King (the name he commonly used and was known by) throughout with wikilink in header para and first mention in body text for the curious.? Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 16:26, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
So Bill Clinton is never referred to in Wikipedia articles as William Jefferson Clinton except in the summary para in his own article (same point as my Winston Churchill one above and indeed, nowhere in Wikipedia is Alexander referred to as Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander except on his own page). I am suggesting (from my limited bibliography) that on this basis "Mackenzie King" is what should be consistently used in this article because I have been led to believe it is the most common ("frequently used") style - and that used by King himself. His full glorious name can still be found by the curious in the Mackenzie King article - which I note contravenes WP:UCN by being named William Lyon Mackenzie King! Yeah, yeah I know....in Wikipedia there are no rules. (PS There is no consistency in the info box on untitled names: Vincent Massey is actually Charles Vincent Massey....PS2 If you were to demonstrate that William Lyon Mackenzie King is the "most frequent" style in "reliable sources" then my argument would collapse) Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 00:18, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[Wikipedia] prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources
The use of King's full name appears unique to King in this article and indeed as far as I can see in any article (except the special case of biographical articles where there are rules about the use of the bio subject's full name at the first mention in the header para (see WP:NAMES)). The Wikipedia-wide accepted practice for mentioning people in an article which is not the biography of that person is to use the "most commonly used name" in the first instance and thereafter use surname. Where it is the biography of that person then the practice is to give the person's full name in the first sentence of the header paragraph and use only the surname thereafter (see WP:NAMES). It is therefore for you either to 1) justify the use of the aberrant full-name form (see WP:CONLIMITED) or 2) establish that his full name is the "most commonly used name" or 3) accept the edits I have proposed. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 15:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.
The guidelines you pointed to relate to naming biography articles and the use of the rendering of the name of a subject of a biographical article in said article. None forbid the use of an individual's full name in an infobox or upon first mention in any article.
If you're not going to accept "W.L. Mackenzie King" in the infobox and for first mention of the man's name in the article lead and body (and "Mackenzie King" from there on), then we're both bound to just repeat ourselves henceforth. This is why I strongly suggest you seek others' input, so that some kind of consensus can be found. -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 00:50, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
I would like to have a go at getting this article up the assessment scale. It is already in pretty good shape but is only assessed as "c" at the moment. The main section that needs further work is the section entitled "Titles, styles, honours, and arms" where quite a bit of the information is unsourced. Does anybody have any objections to me giving it a good clean up per WP:SOURCE and removing the unsourced material? I am also not sure that all the little flags add anything and would propose removing them in the interests of standardisation. Dormskirk ( talk) 19:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
An editor has added "king of Canada" to the sentence saying Alexander "was in 1946 appointed as governor general by George VI, king of Canada, on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada...." The curious phrase "king of Canada" is redundant and jarring, and therefore I will remove it. TFD ( talk) 02:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
According to the Orange Lodge of BNA he was a member http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CAN-ORANGE/2004-04/1081898239 not certain how to cite it within the article as I am not certain it is important enough to be mentioned in the main article. But obviously he should be in the Members category in this case.
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 09:21, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
The content of Alexander's radio speech of 13th November 1944 is known in Italy as the "Proclama Alexander" (Alexander Edict, as bad as that sounds...), see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclama_Alexander. It announced what had already taken place since Operation Dragon: a diminished Allied focus on partisan war in Italy. Is it worth mentioning it? 83.219.35.163 ( talk) 15:05, 22 June 2018 (UTC) Klod (not logged at the moment)
The only source I could find that Alexander was appointed to the Imperial Privy Council is a biography that says he became a member when he was appointed defence minister in the British government. But ministers in the UK are not appointed to the Privy Council and there is no record in the UK Gazette of his appointment. The book does not say where it got this information. Unless someone can show he was appointed, I will remove it. TFD ( talk) 11:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Almost all the articles about British people on Wikipedia have the person's post-nominal letters after the person's name at the very beginning for the article. For example: Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA.
Why did someone remove the post-nominal letters from after Harold Alexander's name at the beginning of this article? It's very annoying, since many people use Wikipedia to quickly see what knighthoods, awards, and other honours a British person has received, and it is easy to obtain this information simply by looking at the post-nominal letters after a person's name (as in the example of Winston Churchill which I mentioned above).
But in this article about Harold Alexander, someone has removed the post-nominal letters from after his name at the beginning of the article. Thus, the only was to determine what honours he received is to scroll down to the section concerning his honors, which takes much longer. Can someone please restore the post-nominal letters after his name at the beginning of the article, just like how almost every other article about a British person has their post-nominal letters after their name at the beginning of the article. 69.138.243.14 ( talk) 04:07, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 10, 2020. |
Field Marshall Alexander of Tunis cannot have received the Order of Merit from King George VI in 1959 as the latter died in 1952. He either got it on that date from Queen Elizabeth II or from George VI on some other date. Can anyone advise? -- F Sykes 20:39, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
The box at top right may be removed, the information is either replaced by the boxes at the end of the article, or is in the main article. "In 1937 he was promoted to Major-General and joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)." - the BEF didn't exist until 1939, so what date? What rank, & what was his command? The fact that Alexander was the last British soldier to leave Dunkirk merits inclusion I think. Monty hadn't been knighted in August 1942, so the reference should be to 'General Bernard Montgomery'. Auckinleck hadn't been knighted in August 1942, so the reference should be to 'General Claude Auchinleck'. GrahamBould 14:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
There's some stuff on the Baltic period in the Nigel Nicolson biog (which I don't have to hand sadly) - it also mentions him briefly taking command of a brigade in March 1918, presumably in the retreat after "Michael".
The Cossack General Domanov was in the group of Cossack officers who were brutally betrayed by the British authorities. Gerenral Domanov was the one who received a letter for the British Field Marshal Harold Alexander. On the May 27, 1945 at 5 PM the British Major B.P. Davis arrived to the hotel "Gold Fish" where General Domanov was residing at that time. The Major delivered a special order to the General from Field Marshal Alexander. This order stated that all cossacks must arrive to the city of Spital (Austria) to participate in a conference "Present political and military situation and the POW cossacks". General Domanov passed the British order to all Cossack officers. Following this betrayal order, 14 Cossack generals, 2359 officers, 65 military clerks, 14 doctors, 7 feldshers and 2 priests arrived to the designated location. They were all placed into a prison camp. British took away from the cossacks pocket knives, lighters, whistles, etc. The prison camp was surrounded by the British army with 6 tanks. On the 28th of May 1945 it was announced that there will be no conference. It was announced that all cossacks will be given away to the Soviet authorities. General Krasnof wrote several petitions to the King of England, League of Nations, International Red Cross but hey all remained unanswered. Few officers who didn't want to be given to the Soviets, took away their lifes. On the 29th the Soviets came and the British forced Cossacks into the lorries. While forcing Cossacks into the lorries, the British soldiers and officers were brutally beating them. By 5 PM of the 29th of May 1945 all remaining alive 2426 Cossacks were given by British to the SMERSH (Russian acronym for "Death to the spies") group of the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front. This is a free-style and may be not of a very good quality abbreviated translation from: http://www.cossacks.info/war/repatriation/chapter_lenivov21.html
No indication if his marriage produced children. I'll do some research of my own.
GrahamBould 22:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: this sentence and unreferenced quote attributed to Montgomery:
Montgomery, who was both a long-time friend and subordinate of Alexander in Sicily and Italy, said of him, "Alexander....is not a strong commander...the higher art of war is quite beyond him." He advised his US counterparts, Mark Clark and George S. Patton, to ignore any orders from Alexander with which they did not agree.
A Google search on the phrase: "higher art of war is quite beyond him" results in only one hit - to this page. Doing the same through Google Book Search results in no hits. Isn’t it strange that, if true, such a historically significant event has not been mentioned in any of numerous published sources that have been fully indexed by Google Book Search or that is has never been discussed anywhere else on the internet?
Considering the inflammatory nature of this quote, unless it can be properly referenced and its accuracy verified, shouldn’t it be struck from the article? Psywar ( talk) 19:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's particularly inflammatory, as Monty said similar things about almost everybody apart from Alan Brooke (the only man in the world to whom he looked up AFAIK). IIRC Monty was Alexander's instructor at some stage in the interwar period, and was not impressed by his brains - that said Alexander clearly wasn't an idiot, given the high responsibilities he held, even if he had the sense to delegate a lot of the work to Harding, his chief of staff (who wrote Alexander's elegant despatches quoted so lovingly by Churchill in his "Second World War").
References
During the retreat to Dunkirk, Alexander's 1st Division was under 1 Corps but was transferred to II Corps on 18 May. Om 21 May the division received its only significant attack...On 28 May 1st was re-attached to I Corps and moved into the Dunkirk perimeter...On 31 May Alexander replaced Barker as commander II Corps i.e. after he arrived at Dunkirk. This all comes from Churchill's Lions: A Biographical Guide to Key British Generals of World War II. Alexander may well have been the last general officer off the beach at Dunkirk but was certainly not "instrumental in leading the retreat to Dunkirk". Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 00:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
The two PCs in the list of honours after Alexander's name are in different places in the infobox and the main article. There must be rules about this sort of thing, but I don't know what they are. Could someone please 'do the honours'. Cheers. GrahamBould ( talk) 06:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Does anybody know why he is earl of Tunis, I mean after all Tunis is not part of Britain —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.59.163.198 ( talk) 17:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Rettetast seems to have reformatted the article by removing any and all date links in the article, as well as, repositioning the [Image:AlexanderMacLeanJovanovic.jpg] image. The result is that the text is not positioned correctly and has a large gap in between paragraphs. Applied undo to article version prior to Rettetast’s edit. -- Gaston200 ( talk) 12:31, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
7 August 1942 – 18 February 1943: Commander-in-Chief Middle East
I have changed the date he was appointed and provided a source, do you have a source for the date he left this post as we could use it over on the Middle East Command page.-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 01:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I see there have been a couple of attempts to tidy up the references section (one by me) which have been reverted. I'd like to discuss this and establish a consensus. In WWII articles under the Military History banner it is becoming increasingly common for complex articles with a lot of citations to split the listing of books refered to, citations and footnotes. The logic is that the casual reader is generally not interested in a specific citation but may well be interested in identifying the books used as sources - this is made difficult if the book details are buried in a block of 50 or more citations. A successful format has been developed where the book details are listed under the References heading and the <ref> notes put under the Notes heading split into two groups: Footnotes ({{Reflist|group=nb}} etc. for added commentary) and Citations ({{Reflist|2}} etc for specific page refs. Generally simple <ref></ref> citation format is used - the non-professional reader gets confused by Harvard refs and they don't work well in a complex and multi-reffed article. There are many articles conforming to this style and examples can be found here and here. At the moment the Alexander article references are neither one thing nor the other. Details of Mead are buried in the citations, Playfair details are stuck at the bottom of the citations. At present the article is not particularly well referenced (except for the large number of London Gazette citations) in the sense that although there are quite a lot of citations, they come from a narrow range of sources. In due course more books should be added to the citations which will highlight this formatting issue further. I therefore propose we use the formats exampled in the links above. Any comments? Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The Sun is pretty big, [1] but the Moon is not so big. [2] The Sun is also quite hot. [3]
Footnotes
References
- Brown, R (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78).
- Miller, E (2005). The Sun, Academic Press.
If you disagree with the simplifed model that we have been using - merging the footnotes and notes section together - the style articles state the following is the way to do it: Augustus-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 15:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I saw a request for opinions at WT:CITE.
IMO, what we have now is not good. The ==Notes== section is fine. The ==Citations== section, however, contains some short citations and some full citations, which is odd. If the point of separating short and full citations is to help the reader who wants to know more or less what sources were used to create the article, then we're failing to meet the goal. The reader should not have to read through both ==Citations== and ==References== to find that information.
The two solutions are:
If there are more short refs than full refs, I'd pick the first option. If there are more full refs than short refs, I'd pick the second. The current mixed-up approach really doesn't work for me. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
As all previous governors general of Canada had been members of the peerage, and as a reward for his leadership in North Africa and Italy, Alexander was created by King George VI on 1 March 1946 as the Viscount Alexander of Tunis and Errigal in the county of Donegal.
To me that reads somewhat awkward should it be something like:
As all previous governors general of Canada had been members of the peerage, and as a reward for his leadership during World War Two, on 1 March 1946 King George VI made Alexander the Viscount Alexander of Tunis and Errigal in the county of Donegal.
or something to that effect?-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 12:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
That particular edition announces as of 1 January the elevation to Viscountcies of Alanbrooke, Alexander, Montgomery and Portal; to Baronies Fraser, Tedder, Tovey and Wilson. The wording is "The KING has been graciously pleased to signify His Majesty's intention of conferring Peerages of the United Kingdom _on the following military war leaders:" No coincidence I think! Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 13:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Kirrages, you stated in your edit summary that the position of grand master of the Order of St. Michael and St. George carries no alternate post-nominal letters. However, the London Gazette shows two previous grand masters, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, and Alexander Cambridge, Earl of Athlone - as holding the post-nominals of GMMG ( [1] [2]). Was the practice altered before Alexander was appointed to the position? -- Miesianiacal ( talk) 13:59, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
There's a little to and fro-ing going on about whether Alexander was an AdC(P). He wasn't. This is usually given to someone much more senior or in the Royal family. If you look at the final paragraph in the Personal Aide-de-Camp article you will see
There are several other categories of senior aides-de-camp; most are serving military, naval, and air officers, usually of colonel or brigadier rank or equivalent.
This is what he was (being a colonel, temp brigadier) and why he relinquished his position on promotion to major-general. You will note that in the London Gazette during the period of his aideship he has the post nomials ADC not ADC(P) for example here and here. You will see there is a distinction between the Personal AdC, the Air ADC (equivalent to AdC General in the army) and ordinary AdCs (Air Commodores and Group Captains, equivalent to brigadiers and colonels) at this link. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
Re the above - shouldnt all these be in the 'See also' section as none of them are links to external websites.-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 13:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
What was the reason for changing this? As far as I can see the replaced one is a) used in practically every other earl's page b) Is in the preferred svg file format (uses less storage space) rather than the reviled png and c) Has a straightforward "own creation" GNU Free Documentation License (the new image has a restricted copyright requiring permission from the copyright holder for usage - has this been done?). Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 16:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
At present Alexander's second and third post-nominals are PC PC - which shows in blue two the same: PC PC. Looking up the wikipedia page for "Queen's Privy Council for Canada" I found this abbreviated to QPC, so, with I hope understandable logic, I changed the second PC to QPC. Can someone please explain why these two should be PC PC and not PC QPC ? Two the same does not make sense to me, which is why I investigated and changed. P0mbal ( talk) 21:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Whilst I wouldn't claim my edit was perfect, it reads really weirdly to me to say when he stepped down as GG of Canada before saying when he took up the post. Please read WP:R2D when it comes to redirects, there is no point piping a link when the redirect takes you to exactly the same place. Names of Honours should be capped-up, and it's all one honour, so it makes sense to me to link the whole name, rather than just the name of the order. I had made sure that we had consistenet capitalisation of Governor General, now we're back to a rather random seeming mixture of cases. David Underdown ( talk) 16:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I havent made any changes incase this is intential; in the lead it states "the king of Canada", should this not be King - with a capital K?-- EnigmaMcmxc ( talk) 19:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
I was surprised to see no reference of this book, which Harold Alexander published in 1962 (Cassell & Componay Ltd). I found it in a charity shop recently. Should someone who knows more than me add it in? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjinkerson ( talk • contribs) 20:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Due to a misunderstanding of Canadian copyright laws, material was incorporated into this article from [3]. Since the terms of that website are not available under license consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use, I have removed or revised material that I found that remained derivative of that source. The article has been heavily edited, but some content remained too close. If there are passages I've missed, please revise or remove those as well. Contributors are welcome to reuse the facts from that source, but please make sure that the text is completely rewritten and restructured. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:36, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
Demophon recently made some changes to the chronology of Alexander's titles. This caused a few problems: 1) It added post-nominal letters, which are not titles and repeated what is listed just below; 2) it obliterated his titles as Governor General of Canada; 3) it made the list inconsistent with those on all other Governors General of Canada. I've tried to meld some of his edit into the list and, at the same time, trimmed out the military positions Alexander held during WWII, as I don't think those were actual titles. -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 17:18, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
These are different animals altogether, not two species in a genus. "The Right Honorable Lord Alexander" indicates that he is (was) a member of the Privy Council. Most current British cabinet ministers get this title, and formerly governors-general of Canada and Australia and some Commonwealth prime ministers were also Privy Council members.
"The Honorable," on the other hand, is a hereditary courtesy rank (not strictly a title). It is granted to children of peers who do not have a real courtesy title to use. (Courtesy titles are accorded to the heir of a peer who has a secondary title in reserve to extend to his eldest son during his own lifetime.) When a person known as "the Honorable" is granted or succeeds to a title, I believe it is universally customary that he or she (usually he, of course) drops "The Honorable." Hence, after 1942 when the general was knighted but before he was ennobled as Viscount Alexander, he should be known simply as Sir Harold Alexander (without The Honorable), with, of course, his military rank before his name and the letters of his orders and decorations after it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Luke Line ( talk • contribs)
Sorry, while there were one or two good changes, the completely non-standard use of "small" around ref tags, and over-rigorous lower-casing menat that this needs discussion before going ahead. Every other article treats specific honours such as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath as proper nouns - the whole thing is the honour, not just the order part, and there were inconsistencies between having Governor General of Canada in the lead and governor general of Canada elsewehre (though I tend to agree that when just referring to the governor general or similar it should be downcased), Minister of Defence is again normally treated as a proper noun (with the possible exception of in The Guardian), likewise for Supreme Allied Commander, it's a post, not a rank. David Underdown ( talk) 19:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Can someone help? The article and the London Gazette record that Alexander received the Polish Virtuti Militari 5th class. Most graded awards (eg Order of Suvorov) have 1st as the highest and the next as 2nd and so on. This would mean he received the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. This seems surprising given the role he had, particularly in Italy with a significant Polish contingent. Italian wiki records he was awarded the Knight Grand Cross, ie class 1. Which is right? Has someone at the Gazette confused the sequence? I have seen other examples with the Virtuti Militari gradings. Folks at 137 ( talk) 15:22, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
For a long time, the article disambiguated between Alexander's post-nominals as an appointee to the British Privy Council and his post-nominals as an appointee to the Canadian Privy Council by rendering the former as PC(UK) and the latter as PC(Can). The UK version was altered by an anonymous editor to read PC, with the given explanation for the edit being "pc(uk) is not used". Though it was explained that the "UK" and "Can" qualifiers were there as disambiguators, the anon reverted again, leaving the British post-nominals as PC and the Canadian post nominals as PC(Can), justifying that move with the explanation "(can) for canada and without qualification for the uk". That is, of course, completely random and biased; since the opposite - "UK" for the British and without qualifier for the Canadian - is entirely possible, the anon has simply chosen the British post-nominals as the "norm" and the Canadian ones as the oddity requiring clarification, which is counter to WP:NPOV. Both should continue to be treated the same; either both have a disambiguating qualifier, or neither do. -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 19:53, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
As stated in the latest edit summary (not mentioned in your post): "While the [1867] Canadian Privy Council is specifically 'for Canada', the [ancient] Privy Council is not 'for the United Kingdom'."
I think you will find that Privy Counsellors (as opposed to Canadian Privy Counsellors) are entitled to the style Rt. Hon. As members of the House of Lords already use this style, the post-nominal letters PC are used to distinguish peers who are Privy Counsellors (such as the late Earl Alexander of Tunis) from those that are not.
You come across as having an agenda and, if you don't mind me saying so, a bit of an inferiority complex. You might equally argue that it is unfair on the UK to specify only Canada, but this is not a matter of "balance" or "prejudice" and to argue on those grounds here is a fallacy. It is sufficient to distinguish the later and more specific Council, to distinguish both is superfluous and over-fussy. Alexander was, in any case, British not Canadian.
I also noticed that the article referred to the "king of Canada" when there has never been such a thing. In 1946, the Canadian head of state was the King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas. In 1953, this was amended to "Queen of the United Kingdom..." (which has precedence and) when representing the UK and "Queen of the United Kingdom and Canada ... " in Canadian affairs alone.
In terms of the 3RR warning you placed on my talk page: You reverted my edits at (1) 17:30, (2) 17:54 (with the note "previous edit summary") and (3) 18:19; I reverted you at (1) 17:33, (2) 17:57 and (3) 18:38 (after your third revert), so you are also a bit of a hypocrite if you think this is a "pointy edit".
Finally, may I suggest that it's not healthy to obsess too much about these silly little things and that you get out a bit more. 2.27.90.175 ( talk) 19:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
The Privy Council has no national qualifier, the Privy Council for Canada does. As for "misrepresentation of reverts", the diffs are there for everyone to see. 2.27.90.175 ( talk) 13:58, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Leave the PC in his list of post-nominals, do not wikilink it if there is no agreement where it should point. His appointments to the the respective Privy Councils are listed under the Honours section. Unless there is a reliable source for the precedence of using PC(Can) then it should not be used. We try not to just make things up as we go along, right?. I have unlinked it until consensus established where, if anywhere, the wikilink should point. Cheers. EricSerge ( talk) 15:35, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Don't want to get into a row here but there is no need to give anybody's full name in this article except that of the subject of the article (Alexander). Winston Churchill is mentioned in a huge number of articles but never as Winston Spencer Churchill - he is generally recognized as Winston Churchill or Churchill. If you really want to know his full name just follow the link! Similarly, King, as I understand it, never used William or Lyon as his given name only Mackenzie. He signed himself as W.L. Mackenzie King in much the same way as Churchill signed himself as Winston S. Churchill. Currently he is referred to in this article as 1. William L. Mackenzie King (makes it sound like he has a double-barrelled surname!) 2. Mackenzie King 3. William Lyon Mackenzie King. Might I suggest that he be consistently referred to as Mackenzie King (the name he commonly used and was known by) throughout with wikilink in header para and first mention in body text for the curious.? Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 16:26, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
So Bill Clinton is never referred to in Wikipedia articles as William Jefferson Clinton except in the summary para in his own article (same point as my Winston Churchill one above and indeed, nowhere in Wikipedia is Alexander referred to as Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander except on his own page). I am suggesting (from my limited bibliography) that on this basis "Mackenzie King" is what should be consistently used in this article because I have been led to believe it is the most common ("frequently used") style - and that used by King himself. His full glorious name can still be found by the curious in the Mackenzie King article - which I note contravenes WP:UCN by being named William Lyon Mackenzie King! Yeah, yeah I know....in Wikipedia there are no rules. (PS There is no consistency in the info box on untitled names: Vincent Massey is actually Charles Vincent Massey....PS2 If you were to demonstrate that William Lyon Mackenzie King is the "most frequent" style in "reliable sources" then my argument would collapse) Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 00:18, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[Wikipedia] prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources
The use of King's full name appears unique to King in this article and indeed as far as I can see in any article (except the special case of biographical articles where there are rules about the use of the bio subject's full name at the first mention in the header para (see WP:NAMES)). The Wikipedia-wide accepted practice for mentioning people in an article which is not the biography of that person is to use the "most commonly used name" in the first instance and thereafter use surname. Where it is the biography of that person then the practice is to give the person's full name in the first sentence of the header paragraph and use only the surname thereafter (see WP:NAMES). It is therefore for you either to 1) justify the use of the aberrant full-name form (see WP:CONLIMITED) or 2) establish that his full name is the "most commonly used name" or 3) accept the edits I have proposed. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 15:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.
The guidelines you pointed to relate to naming biography articles and the use of the rendering of the name of a subject of a biographical article in said article. None forbid the use of an individual's full name in an infobox or upon first mention in any article.
If you're not going to accept "W.L. Mackenzie King" in the infobox and for first mention of the man's name in the article lead and body (and "Mackenzie King" from there on), then we're both bound to just repeat ourselves henceforth. This is why I strongly suggest you seek others' input, so that some kind of consensus can be found. -- Ħ MIESIANIACAL 00:50, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
I would like to have a go at getting this article up the assessment scale. It is already in pretty good shape but is only assessed as "c" at the moment. The main section that needs further work is the section entitled "Titles, styles, honours, and arms" where quite a bit of the information is unsourced. Does anybody have any objections to me giving it a good clean up per WP:SOURCE and removing the unsourced material? I am also not sure that all the little flags add anything and would propose removing them in the interests of standardisation. Dormskirk ( talk) 19:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
An editor has added "king of Canada" to the sentence saying Alexander "was in 1946 appointed as governor general by George VI, king of Canada, on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada...." The curious phrase "king of Canada" is redundant and jarring, and therefore I will remove it. TFD ( talk) 02:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
According to the Orange Lodge of BNA he was a member http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CAN-ORANGE/2004-04/1081898239 not certain how to cite it within the article as I am not certain it is important enough to be mentioned in the main article. But obviously he should be in the Members category in this case.
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 09:21, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
The content of Alexander's radio speech of 13th November 1944 is known in Italy as the "Proclama Alexander" (Alexander Edict, as bad as that sounds...), see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclama_Alexander. It announced what had already taken place since Operation Dragon: a diminished Allied focus on partisan war in Italy. Is it worth mentioning it? 83.219.35.163 ( talk) 15:05, 22 June 2018 (UTC) Klod (not logged at the moment)
The only source I could find that Alexander was appointed to the Imperial Privy Council is a biography that says he became a member when he was appointed defence minister in the British government. But ministers in the UK are not appointed to the Privy Council and there is no record in the UK Gazette of his appointment. The book does not say where it got this information. Unless someone can show he was appointed, I will remove it. TFD ( talk) 11:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Almost all the articles about British people on Wikipedia have the person's post-nominal letters after the person's name at the very beginning for the article. For example: Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA.
Why did someone remove the post-nominal letters from after Harold Alexander's name at the beginning of this article? It's very annoying, since many people use Wikipedia to quickly see what knighthoods, awards, and other honours a British person has received, and it is easy to obtain this information simply by looking at the post-nominal letters after a person's name (as in the example of Winston Churchill which I mentioned above).
But in this article about Harold Alexander, someone has removed the post-nominal letters from after his name at the beginning of the article. Thus, the only was to determine what honours he received is to scroll down to the section concerning his honors, which takes much longer. Can someone please restore the post-nominal letters after his name at the beginning of the article, just like how almost every other article about a British person has their post-nominal letters after their name at the beginning of the article. 69.138.243.14 ( talk) 04:07, 5 June 2023 (UTC)