Month: March 2009

“If you will not fight…when you can easily win…”

“If you will not fight…when you can easily win…”

I remem­ber a quip: “When will we fight. When we have no hope.” Can you help me iden­ti­fy the source?

Those words do not track among Churchill’s 15 mil­lion  pub­lished words.. You may be think­ing of:

…if you will not fight for the right when you can eas­i­ly win with­out blood­shed; if you will not fight when your vic­to­ry will be sure and not too cost­ly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a pre­car­i­ous chance of sur­vival. There may even be a worse case.…

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“This great country…mooing dolefully…”

“This great country…mooing dolefully…”

21 March 2009 (Asso­ci­at­ed Press):

Iran’s supreme leader, Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, today dis­missed over­tures to his coun­try from the U.S. pres­i­dent, Barack Oba­ma, say­ing Teheran did not see any change in pol­i­cy under the new U.S. admin­is­tra­tion. “They chant the slo­gan of change but no change is seen in prac­tice,” Khamenei said in his speech, broad­cast live on state tele­vi­sion. In his video mes­sage, Oba­ma said the US want­ed to engage Iran and improve decades of strained relations.

 This remind­ed me of Harold Nicolson’s let­ter to his wife, Vita Sackville-West, 1 March 1938 (Nicol­son Diaries, I, 328):

Win­ston spoke of “this great coun­try nos­ing from door to door like a cow that has lost its calf, moo­ing dole­ful­ly now in Berlin and now in Rome—when all the time the tiger and the alli­ga­tor wait for its undoing.”…

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Lectures and Book Signings

Lectures and Book Signings

Churchill by Himself

LECTURES AND BOOK SIGNINGS

10 May 2010: Toron­to. Annu­al Din­ner, Inter­na­tion­al Churchill Soci­ety of Canada.

11 Sep­tem­ber 2009: Churchill For Today: “Shall We All Com­mit Sui­cide?” and Churchill’s oth­er futur­ist essays: pan­elist and mod­er­a­tor. 26th Inter­na­tion­al Churchill Con­fer­ence, West­in St. Fran­cis Hotel.

7 May 2009, Boston: Eng­lish-Speak­ing Union and New Eng­land Churchillians, Union Club, 6PM.

3 May 2009, Detroit: Win­ston Churchill Soci­ety of Michi­gan, Dear­born Inn, 5:30PM.

2 May 2009, Chica­go:  Churchill Friends of Greater Chica­go, Fair­mont Hotel, 6PM.

30 Novem­ber 2008, Dal­las: “Churchill by Him­self.” North Texas Church­llians, Pap­padeaux Seafood Kitchen. Pre­sen­ta­tion and book signing.

30 Novem­ber 2007, Boston: “Churchill and Ire­land: Notable Pro­nounce­ments on Ire­land, 1901-1948.” New…

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Definition of “Fanatic”

Definition of “Fanatic”

 

Can you ver­i­fy whether or not Churchill said: “A fanat­ic is some­one who won’t change his mind and won’t change the sub­ject”?  —T.M., Ontario, Canada

 

Sor­ry, it’s not Churchill. From Churchill by Him­self, the “Red Her­rings” appen­dix (unat­trib­uted quotes), page 574: “Often attrib­uted to Churchill or Pres­i­dent Tru­man. Ralph Keyes, edi­tor, The Quote Ver­i­fi­er, writes: ‘It’s a quo­ta­tion I see often, but with­out a source. I doubt that it’s Tru­man, or, if he ever said it, that the quo­ta­tion orig­i­nat­ed with him.'”

 …

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“Where does the family start?”

“Where does the family start?”

We would like per­mis­sion to use the fol­low­ing quo­ta­tion in a fam­i­ly his­to­ry book we are pub­lish­ing in the sum­mer. “Where does the fam­i­ly start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl – no supe­ri­or alter­na­tive has yet been found.” The book will be pub­lished in Hebrew and Eng­lish, hard­back, 40 pages, colour, ini­tial print run 1,500 in each lan­guage. —J.B.

Thanks for ask­ing, but you don’t need per­mis­sion from the Churchill lit­er­ary inter­ests to reprint a sin­gle brief quo­ta­tion. How­ev­er, your punc­tu­a­tion is a lit­tle off. It should read (with excla­ma­tion mark)…

“Where does the fam­i­ly start?…

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Churchill in New Orleans

Churchill in New Orleans

I’m doing research for a video tour book on less­er known places in New Orleans. I recent­ly heard that Win­ston Churchill made a vis­it here in 1932.  Is this true? -B.K.

Yes, Churchill was in New Orleans on his 1932 lec­ture tour, between 16 Feb­ru­ary and 11 March, dur­ing the last hec­tic leg of his abbre­vi­at­ed sched­ule. (In Decem­ber he was near­ly killed by a car in New York and had recu­per­at­ed in the Bahamas through 22 Jan­u­ary.) On 11 March he board­ed the Majes­tic in New York and sailed home. His New Orleans appear­ance would like­ly have been around Feb­ru­ary 18th-22nd, or just after the 23rd when he was in Atlanta, since train sched­ules would have had him in both cities with­in a day or so of each other.…

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Churchill’s Collected Works

Churchill’s Collected Works

Can you direct me to a set of the “Col­lect­ed Works” of Win­ston Churchill? If, as I sus­pect, this is a pricey and lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion, how can I build a com­plete col­lec­tion of his works with­out spend­ing a for­tune? —G.S., Maine, USA

You refer to the Col­lect­ed Works of Sir Win­ston Churchill, 40 vol­umes includ­ing four vol­umes of Col­lect­ed Essays, pub­lished by the Library of Impe­r­i­al His­to­ry in Lon­don in 1974-75. (The Diner’s Club pro­duced anoth­er col­lec­tion of Major Works, but they were not complete.)

These books were dis­cussed in my Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Win­ston Churchill.

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The Churchill Copyright

The Churchill Copyright

To answer fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions, here are the rules gov­ern­ing copy­right to the books, arti­cles, speech­es and papers of Win­ston S. Churchill:

1. Non-Com­mer­cial Use

The copy­right in Sir Win­ston Churchill’s papers, lit­er­ary works and those papers of which he was the author, did not form part of the 1995 pur­chase by the British Gov­ern­ment, but remains (under the terms of Sir Winston’s will) the prop­er­ty of his fam­i­ly, except where it has been sep­a­rate­ly assigned. No charge is made in the case of repro­duc­tion for aca­d­e­m­ic research. Cer­tain edu­ca­tion­al or non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions such as the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project are grant­ed the right to repro­duce (with acknowl­edge­ment) copy­right mate­r­i­al with­out charge.…

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Depression or “Black Dog”

Depression or “Black Dog”

What is the truth about Churchill suf­fer­ing from depres­sion, which he referred to as his “black dog”? —A.L. Kansas

Churchill him­self makes a few ear­ly men­tions of his “black dog,” but the expres­sion is much old­er than he was. It was fre­quent­ly used by Vic­to­ri­an nan­nies, like Churchill’s Mrs. Ever­est, when their charges were in a dark mood. One ref­er­ence dates it to Boswell’s Life of John­son. Vis­it the Churchill Cen­tre search engine and enter “Black Dog”; you will be led to numer­ous illu­mi­nat­ing ref­er­ences. The first one is by his daugh­ter Lady Soames, who I think has it right:

A lot has been made of the depres­sive side of his char­ac­ter by psy­chi­a­trists who were nev­er in the same room with him.…

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More Obama and the Churchill Bust

More Obama and the Churchill Bust

Thanks for the amus­ing “Oba­ma, Cal­houn and the Churchill Bust-Out.” What do you say how­ev­er about the Dai­ly Telegraph’s spec­u­la­tion that Obama’s rejec­tion of Churchill was based on the British jail­ing and tor­ture of his grand­fa­ther, Hus­sein Onyan­go Oba­ma, between 1949 and 1951, “dur­ing the Mau Mau rebel­lion in Kenya”?  —R.P.

First, the Dai­ly Tele­graph did not con­nect Obama’s grandfather’s jail­ing with the Mau Mau rebel­lion. The Tele­graph report is very care­ful on this point:

It was dur­ing Churchill’s sec­ond pre­mier­ship that Britain sup­pressed Kenya’s Mau Mau rebel­lion. Among Kenyans alleged­ly tor­tured by the colo­nial regime includ­ed one Hus­sein Onyan­go Oba­ma, the President’s grandfather.…

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