Month: May 2009

Baseball: The Summer of 1960

Baseball: The Summer of 1960

As a sequel to 1960, let’s take 2019. See “Nats Win!

Until 2019 I was a frus­trat­ed fan of the Wash­ing­ton Nation­als, as I was the old Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors. As a New York school­boy in the Fifties, I’d go up to Yan­kee Sta­di­um to root for the Sen­a­tors when they were in town. Always wore my navy blue cap with the white block “W.” Big, scary Bronx voic­es would shout: “Hey, kid—the Wash­ing­ton section’s in the bleachers.”

The Sen­a­tors were peren­ni­al heart­break­ers, although in mid-1952 they were only five games out of first place and con­sid­ered to be pen­nant con­tenders.…

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Bulldog Not: Say it isn’t So

Bulldog Not: Say it isn’t So

“The clas­sic British bull­dog, a sym­bol of defi­ance and pugnac­i­ty, may now dis­ap­pear. A shake-up of breed­ing  stan­dards by the Ken­nel Club has sig­nalled the end of the dog’s Churchillian jowl. Instead, the dog will  have a shrunk­en face, a sunken nose, longer legs and a lean­er body. The British Bull­dog Breed Coun­cil is threat­en­ing legal action against the Ken­nel Club. Chair­man Robin Sear­le said: ‘What you’ll get is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent dog, not a British bulldog.’

I referred this one to long­time col­league, promi­nent motor­ing writer and bull­dog par­ti­san Gra­ham Rob­son, who writes:

As a long-time bull­dog own­er (you have met var­i­ous of my much-loved mutts) I am at once delight­ed and appalled by what is being pro­posed.…

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Black Swans Return to Chartwell

Black Swans Return to Chartwell

 

“All the black swans are mat­ing, not only the father and moth­er, but both broth­ers and both sis­ters have paired off. The Ptole­mys always did this and Cleopa­tra was the result. At any rate I have not thought it my duty to inter­fere.”  —Churchill to his wife, Chartwell, 21 Jan­u­ary 1935

Sev­en­ty-five years ago Lady Diana Coop­er observed that Chartwell’s birds “con­sist of five fool­ish geese, five furi­ous black swans, two rud­dy shel­drakes, two white swans—Mr. Juno and Mrs. Jupiter, so called because they got the sex­es wrong to begin with, two Cana­di­an geese (‘Lord and Lady Beaver­brook’) and some mis­cel­la­neous ducks.”…

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Jack French Kemp 1935-2009

Jack French Kemp 1935-2009

“Dash of greyhound, slipping thongs…”

On Eleuthera, where we spent many win­ters, there was fas­ci­na­tion with U.S. Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. A virtue of island is that racism, in the sense we all know it, doesn’t real­ly exist. Our easy-going trop­i­cal strand fea­tures smiles of wel­com­ing locals and friends who have known each oth­er for years. It just doesn’t seem to mat­ter whether the face in front of you is black or white.

So it was per­fect­ly nat­ur­al for the wife of our local gro­cer to ask me in 2008: “Is it pos­si­ble for a non-white to be elect­ed President?”……

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O’Reilly, Churchill and “Poison Gas”

O’Reilly, Churchill and “Poison Gas”

A famous quote from the Viet­nam War, alleged to have been made by a U.S. pilot but actu­al­ly uttered by jour­nal­ist Peter Arnett, was: “…it became nec­es­sary to destroy the town to save it.” I was remind­ed of it when Bill O’Reilly on Fri­day May 8th destroyed Churchill in order to save him.

Intent on dis­prov­ing Barack Obama’s non-quote of Churchill (“We don’t tor­ture”; see “Oba­ma, Churchill and Tor­ture”), the Fox News Chan­nel com­men­ta­tor, con­duct­ed an “inves­ti­ga­tion,” which turned out to be a phone call to a pro­fes­sor at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, whose name I for­get.…

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Re-Rat Awards to Senators Gregg, Specter

Re-Rat Awards to Senators Gregg, Specter

In Finest Hour 142, Spring 2009, I proud­ly pre­sent­ed the Churchill Re-Rat Award (issued infre­quent­ly) to Sen­a­tor Judd Gregg (R.-NH), who accept­ed nom­i­na­tion as Pres­i­dent Obama’s Sec­re­tary of Com­merce but then with­drew, say­ing he could not bal­ance “being in the Cab­i­net ver­sus myself as an indi­vid­ual doing my job.” Gregg’s nom­i­na­tion had sewn fear among con­ser­v­a­tives who learned that NH’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor, John Lynch, would appoint a lib­er­al Repub­li­can in his place. 

On 26 Jan­u­ary 1941 Win­ston Churchill, who had desert­ed the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty for the Lib­er­als in 1904 but oozed back into the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty in 1925 (after being appoint­ed Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer the pre­vi­ous year by Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Stan­ley Bald­win) remarked to his pri­vate sec­re­tary John Colville: “Any­one can rat, but it takes a cer­tain amount of inge­nu­ity to re-rat.”…

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Printed Signatures and “Painting as a Pastime”

Printed Signatures and “Painting as a Pastime”

I recent­ly acquired Paint­ing as a Pas­time, reprint­ed 1965.  Across  from the title page is the mem­o­rable pho­to of Mr. Churchill at an easel.   Under this pho­to is his sig­na­ture.  The sig­na­ture seems authen­tic,  how­ev­er I am not an expert and am unsure.  For this edi­tion, is there a  sig­na­ture that has been print­ed under the pho­to?  —W.R.

Yes; it’s a print­ed sig­na­ture, present in every copy of the book. When Churchill actu­al­ly signed copies, it would usu­al­ly be on the first free end­pa­per, or occa­sion­al­ly on the title page. 

Paint­ing as a Pas­time, Churchill’s charm­ing essay on his chief hob­by (and oth­er hobbies—he is also big on books) was first pub­lished in The Strand mag­a­zine in 1921, reprint­ed in Thoughts and Adven­tures, and final­ly pub­lished as a vol­ume in its own right in 1948.…

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