Month: June 2018

“A Sun that Never Sets”: Churchill’s Autobiography, “My Early Life”

“A Sun that Never Sets”: Churchill’s Autobiography, “My Early Life”

Win­ston S. Churchill, My Ear­ly Life: A Rov­ing Com­mis­sion. (Lon­don: Thorn­ton But­ter­worth, 1930; New York: Scrib­n­ers, 1930.) Numer­ous reprints and edi­tions since, includ­ing e-books. Excerpt­ed from the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the full arti­cle, click here.

Connoisseur’s Guide

My Ear­ly Life appeared a year before the last vol­ume of The World Cri­sis. The sub­ti­tle, “A Rov­ing Com­mis­sion,” is from the first chap­ter of Churchill’s Ian Hamilton’s March. It seems he took it from an ear­li­er nov­el by G.A. Hen­ty, one of his favorite authors. The titles changed places in the first Amer­i­can edition.

A won­der­ful treat is in store in this most approach­able of Churchill’s books. …

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Desert Island Books: Charles Krauthammer’s “Things that Matter”

Desert Island Books: Charles Krauthammer’s “Things that Matter”

Charles Krauthammer’s Things That Mat­ter: Three Decades of Pas­sions, Pas­times and Pol­i­tics (388 pages, Crown Forum, 2013). In remem­ber­ing Dr. Krautham­mer, I said this book was one of a score I’d take with me if con­fined to a desert island. Here’s why. 

The read­er will ask: why am I plug­ging to a Churchill audi­ence a set of essays by a polit­i­cal colum­nist? Answer: because many are not polit­i­cal, yet reflect Churchillian thought. More­over, Dr. Krauthammer’s essay about Churchill is one of the best sum­maries of the man I’ve ever read. By any­body. Anywhere.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in a book of over near­ly nine­ty columns and essays, the Churchill arti­cle ranks second—in Part I (enti­tled “Personal”)—after a piece on the author’s beloved broth­er, Mar­cel, who also died young after an hero­ic strug­gle.…

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“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster”: Charles Krauthammer 1950-2018

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster”: Charles Krauthammer 1950-2018

“CK,” Churchillian

The best edi­tor I ever had wrote: “There is noth­ing to be said when a friend dies, even among peo­ple whose trade is words.” Much nev­er­the­less is being said about Charles Krautham­mer. That is fit­ting, and it is what we have the Inter­net for. (Some of the most touch­ing trib­utes are linked below. Fox News pro­duced a very fine trib­ute, “Krautham­mer in His Own Words” click here.)

My edi­tor meant, rather, that for some, words are inad­e­quate against “a big, emp­ty hole where there was once some­one you loved. And all the talk in the world won’t change that.…

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Roosevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

Roosevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

A col­league asks whether Win­ston and Clemen­tine Churchill’s pri­vate name for  Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt was “Don Quixote.” Also, who com­pared Roo­sevelt and Churchill to Don Quixote and San­cho Pan­za? This offers an inter­est­ing trawl through the sources.

So far as I can learn, the Quixote – Pan­za anal­o­gy for Roo­sevelt and Churchill (also FDR and his devot­ed advis­er Har­ry Hop­kins) occurred only dur­ing the 1943 Casablan­ca Con­fer­ence (SYMBOL). Roo­sevelt pro­posed those code names, and I rather think Churchill had dif­fer­ent image of them than FDR. (Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary: “Quixote: Enthu­si­as­tic vision­ary, pur­suer of lofty but imprac­ti­ca­ble ideals.”)…

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The Music Winston Churchill Loved (with audio links)

The Music Winston Churchill Loved (with audio links)

Don Cusic, Win­ston Churchill’s Love of Music: Churchill Didn’t Have a Tin Ear (Nashville: Brack­ish Pub­lish­ing, 2018), 122 pages, $21. Audio links can eas­i­ly be pro­vid­ed online. Excerpt­ed from a review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the full review, click here.

Music by Cusic

Cusic’s text traces Churchill’s life and career, track­ing every ref­er­ence the author found to music and song. We range from the march­es, dit­ties and Gilbert & Sul­li­van Churchill loved to the pow­er­ful­ly inspi­ra­tional. Which lyrics are pre­sent­ed is pure­ly arbi­trary, but once cho­sen, we get every word. Churchill’s youth­ful encoun­ters with the ’cel­lo and piano are duly not­ed.…

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Motor On: Churchill Thwarted (Or: For Once, the Authorities Prevailed)

Motor On: Churchill Thwarted (Or: For Once, the Authorities Prevailed)

The dis­tin­guished his­to­ri­an Paul Addi­son sends along a minor but amus­ing tale of a Churchill motor car (prob­a­bly his new Napi­er). Churchill didn’t get his way, because he him­self wasn’t behind the wheel. Had he been dri­ving, he would like­ly have pro­ceed­ed to get round the obstruc­tion by dri­ving on the pave­ment (side­walk).  This per­ilous endeav­or was wit­nessed first­hand lat­er on by WSC’s body­guard, Detec­tive-Inspec­tor Wal­ter Thomp­son.

Turned Back: The Home Secretary and his Motor

Dai­ly Her­ald, 10 April 1911— Mr. Win­ston Churchill had a curi­ous expe­ri­ence on Sat­ur­day while motor­ing to Banstead.…

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