“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect,” WROTE TOM STOPPARD: If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”
The Brendon Bestiary: Churchill’s Animal Friends and Analogies
“An enormously agreeable side of his character was his attitude toward animals,” Sir Anthony Montague Browne, his last private secretary, said of Winston Churchill. “Although a Victorian—and they were not notably aware of animal suffering—he had a sensitivity well in advance of his time.” Ever since Sir Anthony said that we’ve been waiting for a good book on the subject, and historian Piers Brendon has obliged.…
Grace Hamblin came to Chartwell in 1932 and served as secretary to both Churchills. After Sir Winston’s death she became Chartwell’s first National Trust administrator. Through all those years she never “wrote.” Nor, with one exception, did his other office secretaries. The exception was Elizabeth Layton Nel. Her lovely book, originally Mr.…
“Special relationship” appears several times (and in surprising ways) in Churchill’s 1946 Fulton speech, “The Sinews of Peace.” It is important never to say that it was coined there. I believe Churchill coined the phrase in a private letter to Clement Attlee in early October 1945.…
