Year: 2019

Secretarial Masterpiece: A Churchillian Reader by Cita Stelzer

Secretarial Masterpiece: A Churchillian Reader by Cita Stelzer

Cita Stelz­er, Work­ing with Win­ston: The Unsung Women Behind Britain’s Great­est States­man. New York, Pega­sus Books, 2019, 400 pages, $28.95, Ama­zon $19.35, Kin­dle $14.99. Excerpt­ed from a review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the full text, click here.

Grace Ham­blin came to Chartwell in 1932 and served as sec­re­tary to both Churchills. After Sir Winston’s death she became Chartwell’s first Nation­al Trust admin­is­tra­tor. Through all those years she nev­er “wrote.” Nor, with one excep­tion, did his oth­er office sec­re­taries. The excep­tion was Eliz­a­beth Lay­ton Nel. Her love­ly book, orig­i­nal­ly  Mr.…

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Origins of Churchill Phrases: “Special Relationship” and “Iron Curtain”

Origins of Churchill Phrases: “Special Relationship” and “Iron Curtain”

Pregnant Phrases

The his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Har­mon capa­bly answers a ques­tion on the ori­gin of these famous expres­sions, and kind­ly asks me to con­firm his find­ings. They are right as usu­al. (Dr. Har­mon wrote a fre­quent­ly cit­ed mono­graph, “Are We Beasts?” Churchill on the Moral Ques­tion of World War II “Area Bomb­ing.” His five books include the grad­u­ate-lev­el text­book Ter­ror­ism Today .)

Special Relationship

Chris Har­mon writes:

“Spe­cial rela­tion­ship” appears sev­er­al times (and in sur­pris­ing ways) in Churchill’s 1946 Ful­ton speech, “The Sinews of Peace.” It is impor­tant nev­er to say that it was coined there. …

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Churchill, Leslie Howard, Vivien Leigh and “Gone With the Wind”

Churchill, Leslie Howard, Vivien Leigh and “Gone With the Wind”

“I am a long­time Gone With the Wind col­lec­tor and researcher, and give pre­sen­ta­tions at GWtW events. I’ve also been the GWtW Answer Lady on sev­er­al web­sites. Did Churchill and Roo­sevelt read Gone With the Wind? some­one asked. It seems that FDR read quite a bit of the nov­el, but I couldn’t come up with any­thing about Churchill. I hope you don’t mind me toss­ing you this ques­tion. Maybe you’ve run across a men­tion of it. I assume that Churchill did see the film as FDR did on 26 Decem­ber 1939, after the movie opened in Wash­ing­ton.…

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Garfield, “The Paladin” (or: Christoper Creighton’s Excellent Adventure)

Garfield, “The Paladin” (or: Christoper Creighton’s Excellent Adventure)

The Pal­adin, by Bri­an Garfield. New York: Simon & Schus­ter, 1979; Lon­don, Macmil­lan 1980; Book Club Asso­ciates 1981, sev­er­al tarns­la­tions, 350 pages. (Review updat­ed 2019.)

Garfield’s gripping novel: fictional biography?

The late, pro­lif­ic Bri­an Garfield wrote this book four decades ago, yet I am still asked about it—and whether it could be true.

The sto­ry Mr. Garfield tells seems impossible—fantastic. An eleven-year-old boy named Christo­pher Creighton leaps a gar­den wall in Kent one day. He finds him­self face to face with the Right Hon­or­able Win­ston Churchill, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. He will lat­er know the great man by the code-name “Tig­ger.”…

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Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (2)

Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (2)

“Ran­dolph Churchill: Present at the Cre­ation,” is tak­en from a lec­ture aboard the Regent Sev­en Seas Explor­er on the 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019. Con­tin­ued from Part 1.

Randolph Churchill Postwar

Out of the Army and Par­lia­ment in 1945, and divorced from Pamela in 1946, Ran­dolph Churchill led a “ram­pag­ing exis­tence,” his sis­ter Mary wrote. “He always had lances to break, and hares to start.” He was loy­al and affec­tion­ate, but he “would pick an argu­ment with a chair.”

In 1948 he mar­ried June Osborne and fathered his sec­ond child, Ara­bel­la.…

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Fateful Choices, by Ian Kershaw: Japan, Germany, USA (updated 2019)

Fateful Choices, by Ian Kershaw: Japan, Germany, USA (updated 2019)

Fate­ful Choic­es: Ten Deci­sions that Changed the World, 1940-1941, by Ian Ker­shaw. New York: Pen­guin, 600 pp., $35. At a time when Churchill’s war lead­er­ship is vil­i­fied in lop­sided paeans to Roo­sevelt, Sir Ian’s clas­sic World War II study reminds us that FDR wasn’t per­fect either.

A recent arti­cle sug­gests that Japan’s deci­sion to sur­ren­der in 1945 was by no means unan­i­mous. A few years ago, Sir Ian Ker­shaw said the same thing about Japan’s deci­sion to go to war in the first place. Long before the war, Win­ston Churchill mused:

“What a sto­ry!…

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Johnson, Trump…can we stop comparing everybody to Churchill?

Johnson, Trump…can we stop comparing everybody to Churchill?

Politi­cians, most often Boris John­son and Don­ald Trump at the moment, are often com­pared to Win­ston Churchill. In a way it’s nice PR for Sir Win­ston. Half a cen­tu­ry since his death, the Great­est Briton still dom­i­nates media. His Google hit count is 100 mil­lion. (Franklin Roo­sevelt, the West’s oth­er great war leader, is at 72 million.)

Right­ly or wrong­ly, every day on the Inter­net, Churchill is praised, lam­pooned, quot­ed and mis­quot­ed. But com­par­isons to mod­ern politi­cians have worn thin. They may emu­late him, but should not be com­pared to him.

Johnson’s Day in the barrel

On 15 June the Wall Street Jour­nal focused on British prime min­is­ter in wait­ing Boris John­son.…

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Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (1)

Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (1)

“Ran­dolph Churchill: Present at the Cre­ation,” is tak­en from a lec­ture aboard the Regent Sev­en Seas Explor­er on the 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019.

Most every­body has an inkling of who Win­ston Churchill was. But how many know of his son Ran­dolph? How many British school­child­ren do you think have heard of him? Do they know that Arthur Conan Doyle cre­at­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who some think was a real per­son? They should, Sir Arthur was a great writer. Like Ran­dolph Churchill, who found­ed the longest biog­ra­phy ever writ­ten. In the words of Dean Ache­son, he was “present at the creation.”…

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Boris, Racism, Imperialism, and “The Road to Mandalay”

Boris, Racism, Imperialism, and “The Road to Mandalay”

Prime Min­is­ters are always pop­u­lar tar­gets. Boris John­son, Britain’s new PM, wears the bulls­eye over there now. For every­thing from domes­tic squab­bling to “insen­si­tiv­i­ty” in recit­ing “The Road to Man­dalay” on a vis­it to Myan­mar (for­mer­ly known as Bur­ma). In the immor­tal words of Richard Nixon, let us say this about that.

* * * * * “I appoint­ed [Lord Roberts‘s] Com­man­der-in-Chief in India when I was Sec­re­tary of State. That was the year I annexed Bur­ma. The place was in utter anar­chy. They were just butcher­ing one anoth­er. We had to step in, and very soon there was an ordered, civ­i­lized Gov­ern­ment under the vig­i­lant con­trol of the House of Com­mons.”…

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“The Respectable Tendency” and the New PM, 1940-2019

“The Respectable Tendency” and the New PM, 1940-2019

Anent the new PM

My friend Steve Hay­ward had the wit to para­phrase, in reac­tion to the arrival of Boris John­son at 10 Down­ing Street, some com­ments about anoth­er incom­ing PM, eighty years ago next May. “Cam­bridge Cute,” says anoth­er friend of Steve’s good piece.

Speak­ing of Cam­bridge Cuties, I imme­di­ate­ly thought of what Andrew Roberts described as “The Respectable Ten­den­cy,” the British estab­lish­ment, in his great book, Emi­nent Churchill­lians.  So I dug into the sources to find more of what they said back then about the new Prime Min­is­ter. (Light­ly paraphrased.)

“Coup of the rabble…”

“Even whilst the new PM was still at Buck­ing­ham Palace kiss­ing hands, the junior pri­vate sec­re­tary and Chamberlain’s PPS, Lord Dun­glass [Alec Dou­glas-Home] joined Rab But­ler and ‘Chips’ Chan­non at the For­eign Office.…

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