Month: May 2019

Cooper
Diana (in the driver’s seat as usual) and Duff Cooper, who preferred American cars and drove the best of them, in this case a UK-market 1937 Packard. So I can almost forgive them for misfolding the top and using it for a pooch-perch.
“Darling Monster”: Diana Cooper and Her Remembrances of Churchill

“Darling Monster”: Diana Cooper and Her Remembrances of Churchill

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Dar­ling Mon­ster: The Let­ters of Lady Diana Coop­er to her Son John Julius Nor­wich 1939-1952, Chat­to & Win­dus, 2013, 520pp.

Lady Diana Duff Coop­er had a pen­e­trat­ing mind and bril­liant pen, capa­ble of cap­tur­ing a time when women con­sid­ered the world laden with oppor­tu­ni­ty for fulfillment.

She proved this with her famous sev­en-year per­for­mance in Max Rein­hardt’s “The Mir­a­cle.” Her “Win­ston and Clemen­tine,” first pub­lished in The Atlantic just after Sir Winston’s death, was as fine a trib­ute to the Churchill mar­riage as we are like­ly to encounter.Her col­lab­o­ra­tion with her husband’s ambas­sador­ship to France was notable.…

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Kaiser-Frazer
“Safety-Glo” taillights, a feature of the ’54 Kaiser, trumped every other car by being visible from virtually any angle, even from above. The full-perimeter bumper (a Brooks Stevens idea) comprised stainless steel panels running along the lower body sides. It’s 1954, of course, so she’s smoking a cigarette….
Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History, Part 2

Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History, Part 2

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Transcript of a speech to the Kaiser-Frazer Owners Club, 30 July 2015. Continued from Part 1. Delving in

While I received no extra pay for writ­ing the Kaiser-Fraz­er book, I did have the use of an expense account for trav­el. That was where Bill Tilden came through again. He helped me track down and inter­view many of peo­ple respon­si­ble for the cars Kaiser-Fraz­er built. Oth­ers were locat­ed through the deep ten­ta­cles of Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly, its many con­tacts in the indus­try. We also searched for archives, large and small.

Our great­est archival find was at Kaiser Indus­tries in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia: the Kaiser-Fraz­er pho­to files, placed on loan for AQ’s use.…

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contentions
Astronaut Scott Kelly who, when attacked by furious trolls on Twitter, folded like a five dollar suitcase. Really?!
Current Churchill Contentions: “The Invasion of the Idiots”

Current Churchill Contentions: “The Invasion of the Idiots”

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“Cur­rent Con­tentions” was deliv­ered at Hills­dale College’s Cen­ter for Con­struc­tive Alter­na­tives sem­i­nar on “Churchill and the Movies,” 27 March 2019. For the video, please click here.

Edit­ed tran­script: The orig­i­nal speech includ­ed cer­tain sub­jects cov­ered ear­li­er and else­where. These are sum­ma­rized below, and pro­vid­ed with links to the orig­i­nal texts. The video, which is unabridged, includes ques­tions and answers with the audience.

Churchill’s World of 1932

Eighty-sev­en years ago, Churchill was here in Michi­gan, in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, on a U.S. lec­ture tour. East, west, north, and south he rode the rails, “liv­ing all day on my back in a rail­way com­part­ment and address­ing in the evening large audi­ences.”…

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Kaiser-Frazer
Joe Ligo’s outstanding road test video of this 1954 Kaiser (link below) inspired this article. We both had exactly the same reaction to that car, at exactly the same age.
Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History, Part 1

Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History, Part 1

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Two Kids Hooked by the ’54 Kaiser

Joe Ligo of Auto­Mo­ments, who pro­duces high­ly pro­fes­sion­al YouTube videos on vin­tage cars, has pub­lished an excel­lent video on the 1954 Kaiser Spe­cial he’s admired since high school. No soon­er did I start watch­ing than I heard Joe say his lik­ing for the ’54 Kaiser was bol­stered by my book—as well as the car: “My ninth grade self thought it was beau­ti­ful…. In per­son, I still think the design is drop-dead gorgeous.”

Well, I too was in the ninth grade when a ’54 Kaiser (on the street, in 1957!)…

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white
“In durance vile”: Churchill (right), captured in South Africa, 1899, argued for native equality with his jailers: “British government is associated in the Boer farmer’s mind with violent social revolution. Black is to be proclaimed the same as white,” he wrote. “…nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect.”
Revealed Wisdom on the Campus: Churchill was a White Supremacist

Revealed Wisdom on the Campus: Churchill was a White Supremacist

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why­Be­gin­ning ten years ago with a flawed account of the 1943 Ben­gal Famine, and fanned by a small cadre of influ­en­tial writ­ers, Churchill has been slan­dered with the label of white suprema­cist. A col­league to whom I often turn for wis­dom has a thought­ful judg­ment on this and oth­er dubi­ous accu­sa­tions. “In a con­tro­ver­sial time, an under­stand­ing of Churchill is very dif­fi­cult to achieve. That is because the life of Churchill is an impor­tant thing. And every impor­tant thing is high­ly con­tro­ver­sial today.”

Excerpt­ed from an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text, click here.…

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Success
WSC with President Bowman Ashe of the University of Miami, which presented him with an honorary Doctor of Law degree, 26 February 1946.
Success: What Churchill REALLY Said

Success: What Churchill REALLY Said

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It is Com­mence­ment time across col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, and some speak­ers will be quot­ing Churchill on suc­cess in life. In the hope that they will quote him accu­rate­ly, here is a small selec­tion. At the bot­tom are two no-nos: things he nev­er said, but is always cred­it­ed as saying.

University of Miami, 26 February 1946:

I am sur­prised that in my lat­er life I should have become so expe­ri­enced in tak­ing degrees, when, as a school-boy I was so bad at pass­ing exam­i­na­tions. In fact one might almost say that no one ever passed so few exam­i­na­tions and received so many degrees.…

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