Year: 2010

Provide for Your Library

Provide for Your Library

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“BILL’S BOOKS”

“What shall I do with all my books?” Churchill asked in Thoughts and Adven­tures. It is a ques­tion we should all ponder—while there is still time.

In the Novem­ber 1st issue of Nation­al Review, Neal B. Free­man writes a touch­ing and sen­si­tive appre­ci­a­tion of the library of the late William F. Buck­ley, Jr.: an eclec­tic mix, from tomes on the harp­si­chord to biogra­phies of Elvis Pres­ley, from books inscribed to him to fever­ish­ly marked-up books relat­ing to Buckley’s own writ­ing, to the clas­sics he admired. Because he had not thought to leave spe­cif­ic instruc­tions, his library was bro­ken up, scat­tered to the winds—and not every­thing in it reached an appre­cia­tive owner.…

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Translations of “The Second World War”

Translations of “The Second World War”

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I‘m work­ing on an arti­cle and there are some details I need to know: (1) The num­ber of lan­guages into which Churchill’s Sec­ond World War mem­oirs were trans­lat­ed and (2) The num­ber of lan­guages into which the 1959 abridged one-vol­ume edi­tion was trans­lat­ed. —G.A., Spain

Accord­ing to Ronald I. Cohen’s Bib­li­og­ra­phy of the Writ­ings of Sir Win­ston Churchill (Lon­don: Con­tin­u­um, 2006, 3 vols., I: 729-30), The Sec­ond World War was trans­lat­ed into nine­teen lan­guages: Czech, Croa­t­ian, Dan­ish, Dutch, French, Ger­man, Greek, Hebrew, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Kore­an, Nor­we­gian, Pol­ish, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Ser­bian, Span­ish, Swedish and Turkish.…

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World War II Official Histories

World War II Official Histories

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Does Eng­land have an offi­cial His­to­ry of WW2 like the “Green Books” that are print­ed in the US as their offi­cial his­to­ry of WW2 and where might find them?  —L.L.

Yes: sev­er­al spe­cial­ized mul­ti-vol­ume series, under the umbrel­la title His­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, were pub­lished by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Sta­tionery Office, since 2006 part of the Office of Pub­lic Sec­tor Infor­ma­tion with­in the UK Nation­al Archives, for­mer­ly the Pub­lic Records Office).

There are five sub-series, for exam­ple, Llewellyn Wood­ward, British For­eign Pol­i­cy in the Sec­ond World War (five vols.,…

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Robert Hardy at 85: The Greatest “Churchill”

Robert Hardy at 85: The Greatest “Churchill”

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Writ­ten for a birth­day trib­ute in Octo­ber 2010….

We have all heard about the art of Tim­o­thy Robert Hardy, even though we don’t need to do so, since it is self-evi­dent. But that real­ly doesn’t mat­ter, does it? His three-decade involve­ment with the Churchill saga pro­vides a bal­sam­ic reit­er­a­tion of what we know, are glad that we know, pity those who do not know, and are proud to be asso­ci­at­ed with.

It began with his peer­less por­tray­als of Sir Win­ston in the 1981 “Wilder­ness Years” TV doc­u­men­tary; David Susskind’s 1986 “Lead­ers” series; a Lon­don stage play; the mini-series “War and Remem­brance”; and—just this August 20th—a bril­liant read­ing from Churchill’s trib­ute to “The Few” on its 70th annniver­sary.…

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Churchill, Obama, and the Sacking of Generals

Churchill, Obama, and the Sacking of Generals

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“It is dif­fi­cult to remove a bad Gen­er­al at the height of a cam­paign: it is atro­cious to remove a good Gen­er­al.” —Churchill

What can we learn by com­par­ing Pres­i­dent Obama’s dis­missal of Gen­er­al McChrys­tal to Churchill’s dis­missals of Gen­er­als Wavell and Auchin­leck, two dis­tin­guished com­man­ders in World War II? I hope it will not be anoth­er reminder of how stan­dards of con­duct have deteriorated.

Dif­fer­ences first. Churchill’s gen­er­als were removed for not suf­fi­cient­ly oppos­ing Irwin Rommel’s Afri­ka Korps. McChrys­tal was not under­per­form­ing, and his sit­u­a­tion bears more resem­blance to that of Gen­er­al Dou­glas MacArthur, the Kore­an com­man­der relieved in 1951 by Pres­i­dent Tru­man for insubordination.…

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“Jennie” with Lee Remick Revived on CD

“Jennie” with Lee Remick Revived on CD

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We are hap­pi­ly informed that one of the finest-ever films about Win­ston Churchill, fea­tur­ing the late Lee Remick as his moth­er in Jen­nie: Lady Ran­dolph Churchill, is now avail­able on CD from Ama­zon. It was orig­i­nal­ly a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary, “The life and loves of Jen­nie Churchill,” broad­cast on ITV in Britain and PBS in the USA in 1974.

On 4 May 1991 the Inter­na­tion­al Churchill Soci­ety held a din­ner for Lee, then dying of can­cer, on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, to present her with our Blenheim Award for notable con­tri­bu­tions to our knowl­edge of the life and times of Win­ston Churchill.…

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Churchill and the Baltic

Churchill and the Baltic

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Wal­ter Rus­sell Mead in The Amer­i­can Inter­est Online fine­ly describes the Muse­um of the KGB, estab­lished in the Lithuan­ian cap­i­tal of Vil­nius to doc­u­ment the vic­tims of Sovi­et occu­pa­tion of the Baltic States from 1940 through 1991:

Yet those poor Lithuan­ian par­ti­sans who fought a hope­less guer­ril­la cam­paign against the Sovi­et occu­pa­tion after 1945 kept wait­ing for us to show up,” Mead cointin­ues. “Appar­ent­ly they made the mis­take of believ­ing all those fine words that Franklin Roo­sevelt and Win­ston Churchill wrote in The Atlantic Char­ter.

I have no doubt that Roo­sevelt and Tru­man were right to avoid war with the Sovi­et Union after World War Two…But war over east­ern Europe in 1945 was unthink­able; con­tain­ment was the best we could do.…

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Winston S. Churchill 1940-2010

Winston S. Churchill 1940-2010

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You can read about Win­ston Churchill’s career else­where. I’d like rather to indulge in the remem­brance of a friend.

We met through the post forty-two years ago, when he became the third hon­orary mem­ber of the Churchill Study Unit, after his grand­moth­er and his father. The lat­ter had only just sent a let­ter of encour­age­ment to our lit­tle group of stamp col­lec­tors when he him­self died. It was June, 1968. In send­ing con­do­lences, I asked Win­ston to take his father’s place. He accept­ed, adding, “It is con­sol­ing to know so many share my loss.”…

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Jack Le Vien’s “The Valiant Years”

Jack Le Vien’s “The Valiant Years”

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Would you hap­pen to have any inside infor­ma­tion on when, if ever, the BBC will release “The Valiant Years” doc­u­men­tary in DVD for­mat? Var­i­ous rumors con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late on the Inter­net but there doesn’t appear to be any source with defin­i­tive infor­ma­tion. —H.A.

It has been in the thoughts of many to repro­duce Jack Le Vien’s famous doc­u­men­tary. Although a short­er pro­duc­tion, “The Finest Hours,” nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, has been repro­duced on a com­mer­cial CD (left), the mul­ti­ple-part “Valiant Years” was not until just recent­ly. It is now avail­able on DVD from MediaOutlet.com.…

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

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