Month: August 2015

Urinal Humor: Churchill & Attlee

Urinal Humor: Churchill & Attlee

Syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist Charles Krautham­mer cit­ed an amus­ing encounter between Churchill and social­ist Prime Min­is­ter Clement Attlee in the Mem­bers’ uri­nal at the House of Com­mons, cir­ca 1951. Attlee is stand­ing over the trough as Churchill enters on the same mis­sion. Observ­ing Attlee, Churchill shuf­fles as far away as possible.

Attlee: “Feel­ing stand­off­ish today, are we, Winston?”

WSC: “That’s right. Every time you see some­thing big you want to nation­alise it.”

I labeled this an unat­trib­uted quip in the “Red Her­rings” appen­dix to my quo­ta­tions book, Churchill by Him­self.  I am hap­py to say that I was wrong, thanks to the help of colum­nist Chris­t­ian Schnei­der, who also recent­ly pub­lished the quote in the Mil­wau­kee Jour­nal-Sen­tinel.  …

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Viking’s Danube Waltz (7): The Pleasures of Prague

Viking’s Danube Waltz (7): The Pleasures of Prague

June 7-9th: Prague, Czech Republic “You Must Remember This…”

con­clud­ed from part 6…

Two full days in Prague, an option­al extra on the Danube Waltz Tour, costs an addi­tion­al $1500 per cou­ple, and includes three nights at the very hand­some new town Hilton. Break­fasts there are the same com­pre­hen­sive assort­ment from nuts to soup that we encoun­tered aboard ship. The coach ride from Pas­sau, Ger­many, takes four hours through the his­toric Sude­ten­land, the dis­pute over which end­ed in the fate­ful Munich Agree­ment of 1938, last stop on the road to World War II.…

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Churchill on Horses

Churchill on Horses

“We need a horse­man for our next pres­i­dent,” writes Gary Hodg­son in the Fort Mor­gan Times, who then goes on to quote “the famous rein­ing cham­pi­on, team rop­er and all around cowboy…Sir Win­ston Churchill,” who alleged­ly said: “There is some­thing about the out­side of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

Unless Mr. Hodg­son has found a new attri­bu­tion, that charmer is not Churchill’s. It’s list­ed in the “Red Her­rings” appen­dix in Churchill by Him­self, page 575, with this note:

​​Repeat­ed­ly attrib­uted to every­one from Woodrow Wilson’s physi­cian to Ronald Rea­gan. “Cler­gy­man Hen­ry Ward Beech­er (1813–87) is one per­son to whom the thought was attrib­uted in his time.…

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A Fresh Look at the Churchills and Kennedys by Thomas Maier

A Fresh Look at the Churchills and Kennedys by Thomas Maier

When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys, by Thomas Maier. New York: Crown Pub­lish­ers, 784 pages, $30, Kin­dle Edi­tion $11.99. Writ­ten for The Churchillian, Spring 2015.

The most touch­ing and durable vision left by Mr. Maier comes toward the end of this long book: the famous White House cer­e­mo­ny in April 1963, as Pres­i­dent Kennedy presents Sir Win­ston Churchill (in absen­tia) with Hon­orary Amer­i­can Citizenship—while from an upstairs win­dow his stroke-silenced father, Joseph P. Kennedy, watch­es close­ly, with heav­en knows what reflections:

What­ev­er thoughts raced through the mind of Joe Kennedy—the ran­cor of the past, the lost oppor­tu­ni­ties of his own polit­i­cal goals, and the trag­ic for­got­ten dreams he had once had for his old­est son, could not be expressed.…

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