May 2012 | Richard M. Langworth

Unpunctuality: Churchill’s Vice

30 May 2012 Comments 0 Comments

I have been told that when Churchill arrived late for a meeting with the Queen, expressing his regret by saying, “My sincere apologies madam, I started too late.” But I haven’t found any reference to this. Can you help? —A.P.-H., England

This famous late show was not with the Queen but with the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII (1901-10). Robert Lewis Taylor, in Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness (New York Doubleday, 1952, 16) writes:

As a very young subaltern, he once kept the Prince of Wales and a dinner party of twelve waiting for nearly an hour.…

Churchill on Taxes

29 May 2012 Comments 0 Comments

Especially nowadays, politicians frequently quote Churchill as saying, “There is no such thing as a good tax.” Fastidioius searches of his published words reveal no such statement; and here at least is proof that he considered at least one tax a good one.

Perhaps the House may remember that only seven or eight years ago I got into some trouble myself about the Kerosene Tax. It was a very good tax. I was quite right about it. My Rt. Hon. Friend [Neville Chamberlain] slipped it through a year or two later without the slightest trouble and it never ruined the homes of the people at all.…

Churchill’s Religion: “Optimistic Agnostic”

28 May 2012 Comments 1 Comment

Although he had some very religious friends, like Lord Hugh Cecil, Winston Churchill was not a religious man. Introduced to religious diversity early, he was brought up “High Church,” but had a nanny “who enjoyed a very Low Church form of piety.” When in rebellious mood he would tell Nanny Everest “the worst thing that he could think of…that he would go out and ‘worship idols.’”

After his self-education as a young officer in India, when he read all the popular challenges to orthodox religion, like Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and William Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man, Churchill evolved into what we might term an “optimistic agnostic.” He spoke jocularly of the Almighty, suggesting that as a boy,

I accumulated…so fine a surplus in the Bank of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.…