“A few curmudgeons have flamboyantly abstained from joining in this birthday greeting; but they are so few that their action merely emphasises the fact that personal respect and friendship habitually survive and transcend political conflict in the Mother of Parliaments. It is particularly appropriate that these all-party tributes on his birthday should be paid to one, the outstanding fact of whose character and career is that he has never been happier than when leading men of all parties and men of no party in some great national cause. He has never ceased to combine zeal for reform with reverence for tradition.
“And as in home affairs so in world affairs he has within him the stuff of which fertile cooperation is woven. The man to whom the Old World owes so much of its survival himself belongs by blood half to the New—he is, as has been neatly said, ‘half American and all English’—and this great citizen of an island realm has always had an unusual comprehension of Continental nations. Where he has loved them, he has marched loyally with them through dark hours. Where he has fought them, his hate has died with their surrender.
“Let us not forget that a birthday which has been made a national and indeed an international event is in its essence a family event. For half a century of sunshine and storm he has had in Lady Churchill as today, a stimulating and sensible companion, charming the magic casements of his life. Of all the birthday presents, none can be more precious than the sum of those years of undemanding and undeviating affection.
“He has some personal dislikes—which of us has not? He is the personal dislike of some—which of us is not? But on this day sinks the fever of all the emotions save those evoked by the knowledge that our mighty compatriot in his long journey has made himself the architect of imperishable achievements and the symbol of inexpugnable courage.”
The Daily Telegraph, London, Tuesday, 30 November 1954
Great website! I am a psychologist writing a book manuscript on the biological basis of self-confidence. Long an admirer of Churchill, I would like to use a quote from the film The Gathering Storm to demonstrate Churchill’s tremendous confidence. Can you help me find Churchill’s statement (in the film) to Ralph Wigram, that when he was a boy, a feeling had come to him that one day Britain would be in great danger, and it will fall to him to save London? —B.J.S.
Thanks for the kind words. Privately the Churchill of early World War II was not so confident as in his speeches proclaimed. In May 1940 he said to his bodyguard, Walter Thompson, “I hope I’m not too late.” Later he confided to Roosevelt that the Germans might well invade Britain and install a puppet government. While assuring FDR that such a government would not be run by him, he suggested they might install the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley “or some such person.”
As France was falling in May 1940, Churchill did not favor seeking an armistice with Germany. But Neville Chamberlain’s diary for the end of May records Churchill as saying that “if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies, he would jump at the chance.” Of course, he may have just been throwing a bone to Lord Halifax, who was arguing for an approach to Hitler through Mussolini’s “good offices.” (The mind boggles.)
Nevertheless, the brilliant dialogue in The Gathering Storm about foreseeing the future has its origins in fact. It came when Churchill was 17 years old, as quoted in Sir Martin Gilbert’s In Search of Churchill, page 215:
…I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world; great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger—London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London. I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. This country will be subjected somehow, to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster.…dreams of the future are blurred but the main objective is clear. I repeat—London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital and save the Empire.
Sir Martin explains that he was given this quote by Churchill’s Harrow schoolmate Muirland Evans, who recalled their conversation “in one of those dreadful basement rooms in the Headmaster’s House, a Sunday evening, to be exact, after chapel evensong.…We frankly discussed our futures. After placing me in the Diplomatic Service…or alternatively in finance, following my father’s career, we came to his own future….”
See also my review of The Gathering Storm on this website.
