Year: 2016

“The Crown”: A Not So Crowning Achievement

“The Crown”: A Not So Crowning Achievement

The inaccuracies would be boring to catalogue. Is it really so big a deal? Not in itself. The trouble is, it advances ignorance. It's only drama, people will say. But as a result we will soon read on the web how Churchill’s stroke was kept from the Queen. How he "forced" the Royal Couple to move from Clarence House. And how he painted a scene repeatedly in his Black Dog of despair. Why do producers distort the past and expect people to believe it? Because most will? Because the screenwriter may appear at a Churchill event, praised for his achievement in selling a million copies?

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Pearl Harbor +75: All in the Same Boat. Still.

Pearl Harbor +75: All in the Same Boat. Still.

A slight­ly extend­ed ver­sion of my piece on Pearl Har­bor: “How, 75 years ago today, we were saved,” in The Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor, 7 Decem­ber 2016….

Sev­en­ty-five years ago today, Win­ston Churchill was pon­der­ing sur­vival. Hitler gripped Europe from France to deep inside Rus­sia. Nazi U-boats were stran­gling British ship­ping; Rommel’s Afri­ka Korps was advanc­ing on Suez. Britain’s only ally beside the Empire/Commonwealth, the Red Army, was fight­ing before Moscow. Amer­i­ca remained supportive…and aloof.

Eigh­teen months ear­li­er he had become prime min­is­ter. No one else had want­ed the task. “God alone knows how great it is,” he mut­tered, his eyes fill­ing.…

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Cockran: A Great Contemporary

Cockran: A Great Contemporary

Q: How impor­tant was Con­gress­man Bourke Cockran’s influ­ence on the young Churchill? 

A: Very. The late Curt Zoller was the first to write in depth about Bourke Cock­ran. This man played a vital but lit­tle under­stood role in form­ing young Churchill’s polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. In 1895, Zoller wrote, when young Churchill trav­eled to New York on his way to Cuba,

…he was greet­ed by William Bourke Cock­ran, a New York lawyer, U.S. con­gress­man, friend of his mother’s and of his Amer­i­can rel­a­tives. Winston’s Aunt Clara was mar­ried to More­ton Frewen. (The peri­patet­ic “Mor­tal Ruin” would lat­er bad­ly edit Churchill’s first book, Sto­ry of the Malakand Field Force.)…

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Justice Thomas on Antonin Scalia

Justice Thomas on Antonin Scalia

He spoke to us about Win­ston Churchill in San Fran­cis­co in 2009. Ever since, I have sought out the uncom­mon speech­es of Jus­tice Clarence Thomas. Invari­ably I find them mov­ing, elo­quent, and instruc­tive on things I haven’t con­sid­ered sufficiently.

Such was his Novem­ber 2016 trib­ute to Antonin Scalia, giv­en to the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. He began with exam­ples of the late Justice’s wit (beloved alike by Jus­tice Thomas and Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg. Respec­tive­ly, they agreed with Scalia most of the time—and lit­tle of the time.):

In PGA Tour vs. Mar­tin [Scalia] wrote: “I am sure that the framers of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scot­land, pro­hibit­ing golf because it inter­fered with the prac­tice of archery, expect­ed that soon­er or lat­er the paths of golf and gov­ern­ment, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this August Court would some day have to wres­tle with the age-old jurispru­den­tial ques­tion for which their years of study in the law have so well pre­pared them: Is some­one rid­ing around a golf course from shot to shot real­ly a golfer?”…

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Churchill on the Broadcast

Churchill on the Broadcast

The ques­tion aris­es, has any­thing been writ­ten on Churchill’s radio tech­nique? Did he treat radio dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er kinds of pub­lic speak­ing? How quick­ly did he take to the broadcast?

“The Art of the Microphone”

An excel­lent piece on this sub­ject was by Richard Dim­ble­by (1913-1965), the BBC’s first war cor­re­spon­dent and lat­er its lead­ing TV news com­men­ta­tor. His “Churchill the Broad­cast­er” is in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by his Con­tem­po­raries (Lon­don: Hutchin­son, 1953). Old as it is, the book remains a com­pre­hen­sive set of essays of the many spe­cial­ized attrib­ut­es of WSC.

Dim­ble­by offers four areas of dis­cus­sion: the tech­ni­cal back­ground, the dra­ma of World War II, the fac­tu­al mate­r­i­al, and Churchill’s meth­ods of delivery.…

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Mosul and Churchill’s Wisdom: Put a Lid on It!

Mosul and Churchill’s Wisdom: Put a Lid on It!

Churchill’s wis­dom speaks to us across the years. Take the con­tro­ver­sy of whether we blab too much in advance about mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, like Mosul.

In the Octo­ber 19th pres­i­den­tial debate, Mr. Trump said the U.S. and Iraqis for­feit­ed “the ele­ment of sur­prise” in pub­li­ciz­ing the com­ing offen­sive against Mosul. This, he insist­ed, allowed Islam­ic State ring­lead­ers to remove them­selves from the dan­ger zone: “Dou­glas MacArthur, George Pat­ton [must be] spin­ning in their graves when they see the stu­pid­i­ty of our coun­try.” Ear­li­er in the week he had asked: “Why don’t we just go in qui­et­ly, right?…

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Churchill on the Century

Churchill on the Century

Who here is in their For­ties? Are you as pes­simistic as he was?

Win­ston Churchill was 48 when he penned some “Reflec­tions on the Cen­tu­ry,” which may arrest you with their prescience—and their eerie relevance.

His words below are in his orig­i­nal “speech form.” This is the way they were set out on the notes he car­ried with him, how­ev­er well he mem­o­rized his lines. They appear in this style in my col­lec­tion of quo­ta­tions, Churchill by Him­self, but dif­fer from the way you may have encoun­tered them in oth­er books:

 

What a dis­ap­point­ment [this] cen­tu­ry has been.……

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Nightmare Scenario by Norman Longmate

Nightmare Scenario by Norman Longmate

Nor­man Long­mate, If Britain Had Fall­en: The Real Nazi Occu­pa­tion Plans. Pub­lished 1972, reprint­ed 2012, avail­able from Ama­zon in hard­back, paper­back and Kin­dle editions. 

A recent ker­fuf­fle over drap­ing Nazi ban­ners on beloved British icons reminds me that this has been going on a long time and is per­fect­ly accept­able in exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal pos­si­b­li­ties. Take the late Nor­man Long­mate, who offered a grip­ping pas­tiche about what might have hap­pened in 1940. As a result, we have a glimpse of a pos­si­ble alternative.

Longmate’s Yarn on the Worst Possibility

Lat­er that after­noon with the Ger­mans already in Trafal­gar Square and advanc­ing down White­hall to take their posi­tion in the rear, the ene­my unit advanc­ing across St.…

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Nazi Banners Drape Blenheim for “Transformers” Film

Nazi Banners Drape Blenheim for “Transformers” Film

 

Trans­form­ers: Blenheim Palace bedi­zened with Nazi Swastikas? File this in the over­flow­ing cat­a­logue of much ado about nothing.

Blenheim Affront

On Sep­tem­ber 25th, sev­er­al Churchill writ­ers received an email: “Urgent Media Request—the Sin.” (A typo for the Sun news­pa­per, though iron­i­cal­ly appropriate.)

“I’m a jour­nal­ist with the Sun,” we were told by a mem­ber of their staff. “I’m work­ing on a sto­ry in our paper tomor­row about a dis­gust­ing act which tar­nish­es Sir Win­ston Churchill’s mem­o­ry.” He didn’t say what, but it was easy to guess.

The dis­gust­ing act, already blast­ed around via the Inter­net, was to drape Blenheim (“Churchill’s home” accord­ing to reports) with huge Nazi ban­ners.…

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Zürich +70: Churchill on Europe

Zürich +70: Churchill on Europe

Zürich, 19 September 1946

Scarce­ly more than a year since fight­ing had end­ed in Europe, Churchill spoke at Zürich Uni­ver­si­ty. There he stunned his audi­ence with words that per­haps only he was able to say at that time:

I am now going to say some­thing that will aston­ish you. The first step in the re-cre­ation of the Euro­pean fam­i­ly must be a part­ner­ship between France and Ger­many. In this way only can France recov­er the moral lead­er­ship of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe with­out a spir­i­tu­al­ly great France and a spir­i­tu­al­ly great Germany. Zürich, 19 September 2016 Sev­en­ty years to the day after Churchill’s Zürich speech, Zürich Uni­ver­si­ty spon­sored a dis­tin­guished sem­i­nar.…

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