Churchill by Himself, my encyclopedia of Winston Churchill’s most quotable remarks, is to be republished. (If the publishers can ever agree about what form and substance they will allow each other to produce.) To the the original 4000 quotes I’ve added so far 600 new ones.

The “Red Herrings” appendix of misquotes has also grown apace. That, however, is always kept up to date online. You can look it up:

All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said

Misquotes Part 1: Accepting Change to European Union

Part 2: Fanatic to Liberty

Misquotes Part 3: Lies to Sex

Part 4: Sexism to Ypres

A trove of misquotes

The original “Red Herrings” appendix (2008) contained about 80 misquotes. Since then, with new discoveries it has more than doubled to 175. This is not surprising, since Churchill continues to engage the public interest. A browser search for “Winston Churchill” yields 87 million hits. (Abe Lincoln still comfortably leads with 144 million.) Since 2008, 270 new books about Churchill have been published, never under 14 per year. The recent record is 34 in 2015. So we should not be surprised that misquotes have grown apace.

Verification methods have never varied, although the research tool is improved. This is a digital file constantly expanded by new publications by and about Churchill. Yes, there are still “new books by Churchill”—if you consider his private letters and writings. These comprise The Churchill Documents, published through 2019 by Hillsdale College Press. The last half-dozen of these giant references add another five million words to the 20 million-word Churchill canon. Add another 80 million words about him by historians, biographers, contemporary diarists and memoirists. Of course, this is not every word he ever uttered. But if we can’t find a quote there, or in a valid source elsewhere, we file it as “unattributed.”

Ear-witness: “Every time you see something big….”

New research sometimes causes us to change a quotation’s status. Long regarded among misquotes, is this famous exchange of urinal humor: Clement Attlee, in a House of Commons washroom, as Churchill shuffles away from him: “A bit stand-offish today, are we, Winston?” Churchill replies: “Every time you socialists see something big, you want to nationalize it.”

This was long regarded as sheer fiction. But we finally noticed that a former Churchill private secretary, David Pitblado, claimed to have been an ear-witness. Pitblado’s account, to William Manchester, is in The Last Lion, vol. 1, page 35. Manchester oftentimes played fast and loose with facts, but Pitblado was not known for embroidering them. So we moved this exchange to the ranks of the genuine.

Among the misquotes: “Bring a friend, if you have one…”

Alas, a world-famous exchange between Churchill and Bernard Shaw has now joined the ranks of misquotes.

Shaw supposedly writes WSC: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Churchill supposedly replies: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”

Alas for quoters, Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, blew the story apart. In the Churchill Papers he found a set of letters (CHUR 2/165/66,68) in which both Shaw and Churchill denied the exchange. The play in question was “Buoyant Billions” (1948).

Fresh fodder for misquotes…

…constantly appears in new Churchill quote books. Most entries lack attribution, even a date—which makes them immediately suspect. A recent example is The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill (2017). Hilariously, even the title is not original: The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill (2001) was another highly inaccurate compilation.

Reviewing the former, William John Shepherd found 28 entires, 11% of the book, unrelated to anything Churchill said by all the resources we could muster. A dozen were credited to other persons, like: “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst is that half of them are true.” (Churchill said this, crediting a “witty Irishman.”)

Smart Words furnished another 20 brand new misquotes for our “Red Herrings” department. They range from the banal (“You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer”) to the vulgar (“At Harrow they taught us not to piss on our hands”)  to Yogi Berra-style (“It is never necessary to commit suicide, especially if you live to regret it”).  They contain a number we wish Churchill had said, but cannot verify: “If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be Mrs. Churchill’s second husband.”And: “A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality.”

All of these add to the growing store of Churchill non-quotations. The misquotes industry—what Nigel Rees called “Churchillian Drift“—is going strong.

(Any reader bored by pedantic, picayune, obscure meanderings about nothing of importance should stop reading now. For my review of Paul’s book see: “Book of the Year.”)

“Paintatious” was artist Churchill’s word for a scene worthy of his brush. He found many such venues on the French Riviera, which Paul explores so well. But this is a tricky question because “paintatioius” not a real word. It’s a “Churchillism.” (My book, Churchill by Himself, Chapter 3, is full of them.) So the answer to how you spell is: Any way you like!

We thought we could establish his spelling if Churchill used “paintatious” in writing. So we plumbed all his 20 published million words in the Hillsdale College digital archive. Alas, like other famous invented Churchillisms, he mainly used it in conversation. Like “Admiralissimo, Bottlescape, Cantellopolus, Destrigulate, Namsosed, Non-undisinflation” and “Unsordid,” they were mainly in speech or conversation, not in print.

Version 1: “Paintatious”

This was my choice, following WSC’s daughter, Lady Soames. In Churchill by Himself I list as a “passim” this quote: “This is a most paintatious place!” (41) Reference is to Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (1979), 204 (U.S. edition 268). She writes of a holiday in 1921:  “…he continually felt drawn to “paintatious” (his own adjective) places, where the sun might be expected to shine brightly and continuously.” She uses it again on page 407 (English edition):

In the summer of 1948, Winston and Clementine stayed for several weeks in Aix-en-Provence; I had married Christopher Soames in 1947, and we were both included in this lovely holiday. We all stayed in the Roi René Hôtel at Aix, the weather was perfect, and almost every day we used to set out, equipped with a delicious picnic, to spend the day in some lovely and “paintatious” place.

Lady Soames continues the use of “paintatious” in her Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter (1990). Dr. Capet thought Churchill might have spelled it thus when writing to the British Consul in Madeira, looking for a suitable hotel in 1949. Alas not: he only asked for a “paintable” location.

Version 2: “Paintaceous”

I spelled it thus several times in old articles, but only one other author did: Barbara Leaming, in her superb account of his years after 1945, Churchill Defiant. (We rated that the “Book of the Year” in 2010. Haven’t issued another such bouquet until Rafferty’s, although there were some deserving titles.)

Ms. Leaming wrote of WSC’s Lake Como painting holiday in 1945: “They drove along the lakefront while Churchill scouted for what he liked to call a “paintaceous” scene.” (40) Of his sojourn in Miami Beach before his “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, she added: “Seated beside a bed of red poinsettias near the pink brick seaside house his wife had arranged to borrow from a friend, Churchill contentedly scanned the coconut palms overhead in search of a ‘paintaceous’ angle.” (60)

Version 3: “Paintacious”

We finally hit upon the one and only instance where Churchill actually spelled the word in print—introducing a third variation! It was in a letter to Clementine from Marrakesh—yet another painting holiday—on 19 December 1950. (Martin Gilbert, Never Despair, page 577; The Churchill Documents vol. 22, Leader of the Opposition, August 1945-September 1941, page 1976. Speaking of painting destinations he wrote:

Alas Timbuktoo is 1500 miles, so it cannot be considered. However the British Consul at Casablanca, a young man, who met me at the airfield here and came to dinner afterwards, says there is a far better trip the other way—left-handed instead of right. When you go through the mountains you come to two lovely native cities with extraordinary springs of blue water and rocky gorges, which seem by all accounts to be most paintacious.

Madelin Evans at the Churchill Archives Centre kindly answered our request to look at the letter itself (Baroness Clementine Spencer-Churchill Papers 2/38). She confirms the spelling. But this was a typed letter, and they were dictated—so a secretary did the spelling! Still, Churchill himself signed the letter. If he didn’t approve, he would likely have corrected it—as he did the odd word in typed letters. He did so in this one, Madelin says, but did not correct “paintacious.”

Which is Correct?

To be absolutely pedantic, WSC’s only written occurrence, “paintacious,” is correct. But this appeared exactly once, so I don’t think it is dispositive.

Mary Soames’s strikes me as the most melodious version. Also with her spelling, I don’t have to modify my entry in Churchill by Himself.