Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 May 12

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May 12

What did G. M. Young write that upset Churchill and Beaverbrook?

Our article on G. M. Young mentions his 1952 biography of Stanley Baldwin and says "both Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook threatened to sue if certain passages in the biography were not removed or altered. With the help of lawyer Arnold Goodman an agreement was reached to replace the offending sentences, and the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis had the "hideously expensive" job of removing and replacing seven leaves from 7,580 copies". I would like to know what those passages said. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:25, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Williamson, Philip (2004). "Baldwin's Reputation: Politics and History, 1937-1967". The Historical Journal. 47 (1): 155. also here. Does not enumerate all of Churchill's complaints, but you might find that whole article useful. You may need to look here from fn 124 for anything further. Cambridge also holds the drafts and proofs. fiveby(zero) 05:05, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Oops, missed fn 123, for Churchill Prime Minister Office Records 11/239 and Cabinet Office 21/4476 at Kew, The Beaverbrook Papers at the House of Lords Records Office. Nothing digitized. fiveby(zero) 13:15, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fiveby: Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 15:02, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

US federal court rulings

Do the actions of district courts get published, and if so, do they get published electronically? And do the circuit court rulings routinely get published electronically? Burger King (Mattoon, Illinois) is known primarily because of its significance in a federal lawsuit; our article links the circuit court ruling, but it's located at https://web.archive.org/web/20031020072818/http://www.law.uconn.edu/homes/swilf/ip/cases/burger.htm (looks like it's part of a collection, not a systematic database of circuit court rulings), and I don't know where I'd look for district. I'm guessing that district wouldn't get published (no need to spend staff time publishing the court's action in an ordinary federal drug case, for example), but if I'm wrong, I'll be happy to learn it. Nyttend backup (talk) 12:41, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Have you tried LexisNexis? AFAIK, they are the industry standard for publishing electronic versions of publicly-available court documents. --Jayron32 15:32, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

See PACER (law) and its controversial partial mirror Recap (software). 2601:648:8202:96B0:3567:50D5:8BFF:4588 (talk) 04:23, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Kashmir–USSR border

I was reading Hunza (princely state) and saw that in 1947, Jammu and Kashmir was described as bordering the USSR by both Maharaja Hari Singh and Jawaharlal Nehru. Even disregarding the question of whether Hunza was part of Kashmir, this is not making sense to me from a geographic standpoint: from what I can see, Chapursan, which would have been the closest part of the region to the USSR, is about 36km from the former Tajik SSR, and there is no common border between the two. What am I missing? Thanks, M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 16:40, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I suspect this is perhaps due to the disputed status of the Durand Line and the Wakhan Corridor, which was decided mutually by Russia and Britain at the conclusion of their carving up of Central and South Asia in the 19th century; the status of the borders drawn was not often recognized by local authorities on the ground. To this day the Durand Line remains disputed on both sides of the border, and it was likely even more so during the tumultuous times at the end of the Raj. I'm not wondering if the speakers at the time were believing that the Wakhan Corridor was not part of Afghanistan at the time, and instead belonged to the local princely state(s) that bordered it. If you do that, then there's a clear border with the Tajik SSR. This seems the most logical explanation to me. --Jayron32 17:56, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I suppose that makes sense. Thanks, Jayron32! M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 00:09, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I read somewhere or other (in passing) that Beijing was not aware until 196x that China had a border with Afghanistan. —Tamfang (talk) 01:34, 17 May 2020 (UTC)