Month: July 2016

Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (2) Daimlers…

Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (2) Daimlers…

Hav­ing writ­ten about cars and Win­ston Churchill for fifty years, I final­ly pro­duced a piece on them both. From exot­i­ca like Daim­ler, Napi­er and Rolls-Royce to more pro­sa­ic makes like Austin, Hum­ber and Wolse­ley, the sto­ry was three decades in com­ing. I am sat­is­fied that it is now complete.

Part 2, con­tin­ued from Part 1: Excerpt only. For foot­notes,  all illus­tra­tions and a ros­ter of Churchill’s cars, see The Auto­mo­bile, (UK), August 2016. A pdf of the arti­cle is avail­able upon request: click here.

Wolseley to Austin

In the ear­ly 1930s Churchill switched from Wolse­ley to Austin cars: small fours and big six­es.…

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Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (1) Mors the Pity

Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (1) Mors the Pity

“You fool!” the policeman shouted. Then he “swore most richly for some seconds.” Churchill’s head hung. “He did have the civic sense to say he was sorry,” Thompson continued. “...the matchless voice of the man identified him at once to the constable.” ‘Sorry, Mr. Churchill,’ the policeman apologised. "Then the majesty of the constable’s office and the disgusting guilt of the violator brought forth, in gentle sarcasm, a caution that withered Churchill and kept him silent clear to the Channel. ‘Do try to stay in the road, sir.’”

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The Real Churchill’s London (Part 2)

The Real Churchill’s London (Part 2)

Lon­don: The Evening Stan­dard pub­lished an arti­cle on Churchill’s “favourite spots in the cap­i­tal” (16 June 2016). It offered only Pol Roger cham­pagne, the Nation­al Lib­er­al Club, Romeo y Juli­eta cig­ars, a Churchill bar, Pax­ton & Whitfield’s cheese shop, Austin Reed’s menswear and Brown’s Hotel. With the excep­tion of the Nation­al Lib­er­al Club this assort­ment would more apt­ly be enti­tled “Churchill’s house­hold staff’s favourite shop­ping places.” The real Churchill’s Lon­don, “Spin­ning Top of Mem­o­ries,” is that offi­cial biog­ra­ph­er Sir Mar­tin Gilbert. The text is online. There you may read “of Ungrand Places and Moments in Time.”…

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