"How did I manage to quote him repeatedly then?"
You have never at any time quoted anything that you haven't lifted directly from the internet - not ever!
You reject even what Hastings (your prize historian) says when it doesn't suit your case
His only response to a review of Hastings' book which said:
"Hastings hates British complacency about her military past, he hates British chauvinism, he hates Britain's patronising attitudes towards her allies, he hates Britain's love of turning retreats — Corunna, Dunkirk, Mons — into moral victories, he hates her continuing penchant for 'gesture politics', and he is damned sure that he is going to leave no treasured national myth unexploded. For the officers who only arrived in France in 1915 there already seemed something heroic about the men of the BEF; but in Hastings's hands even the old saw of lions led by donkeys is turned on its head, with the VCs they win 'soft' VCs, the battles they fight 'little battles' and even Mons — the jewel in the Old Contemptibles' crown — little more than a sideshow of a sideshow.
'Dodgy' battalions in the Ypres Salient, wholesale abandonment of weapons and positions, pusillanimous leadership, a reluctant showing at the Marne, a navy that couldn't fire, politicians who knew nothing of war, it all makes for chastening reading" was to describe it as "generous" and say about the suggestion that he hated the British military - "on the contrary, I have loved it all my life, but want its reputation to rest on its achievements, not on jingo legends."
This is a total acceptance of everything else the review said - nothing you have put up contradicts the review - which you described as "crap" and your tabloid historian describes as "generous".
You have never at any time shown eny evidence of ever having read a book on anything - your interest in all these subjects extends only to carefully extracted bits which you claim back up your pre-conceived jingoism.
You had to admit that you'd never read a book on Ireland and that the subject didn't interest you - 'bout time you did the same here.
Jim Carroll