Year: 2019

Portland
“Like giants bowed in anxious thought….”
Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (3): Portland, 1914

Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (3): Portland, 1914

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The King’s Ships: “We may now pic­ture this great Fleet, with its flotil­las and cruis­ers, steam­ing slow­ly out of Port­land Har­bour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigan­tic cas­tles of steel wend­ing their way across the misty, shin­ing sea, like giants bowed in anx­ious thought. We may pic­ture them again as dark­ness fell, eigh­teen miles of war­ships run­ning at high speed and in absolute black­ness through the nar­row Straits, bear­ing with them into the broad waters of the North the safe­guard of con­sid­er­able affairs.”

Irish Sea to Portland: Churchill Connections, 8-12 June 2019

The 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain was a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to recall the Churchill saga by pass­ing or vis­it­ing key places.…

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Scotland
WSC with his daughter Mary on a later visit to Scapa Flow. (Orkney Library)
Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (2): Scotland, 1939

Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (2): Scotland, 1939

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“It was like the oth­ers a love­ly day….On every side rose the pur­ple hills of Scot­land in all their splen­dour…. I felt odd­ly oppressed with my mem­o­ries…. No one had ever been over the same ter­ri­ble course twice with such an inter­val between. No one had felt its dan­gers and respon­si­bil­i­ties from the sum­mit as I had, or, to descend to a small point, under­stood how First Lords of the Admi­ral­ty are treat­ed when great ships are sunk and things go wrong.”

Northern Britain: Churchill Connections, June 4th to 7th

The 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain offered a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to recall the Churchill saga by pass­ing or vis­it­ing key places, start­ing with Eng­lish Chan­nel and North Sea venues from Southamp­ton to York­shire to Edin­burgh and the north of Scot­land.…

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Yorkshire
The German High Seas Fleet at Kiel. From Southampton to Norfolk, Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow, the enemy’s powerful navy focused Churchill’s strategic planning in the First World War.
Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (1): Yorkshire, 1914

Churchill Remembered on the Hillsdale College Cruise (1): Yorkshire, 1914

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"Outrage in Yorkshire fell hard against Churchill, who vowed to force the Germans back out if he had to dig them out “like rats in a hole.” There was indignation, he wrote, "at the failure of the Navy to prevent, or at least to avenge, such an attack upon our shores. What was the Admiralty doing? Were they all asleep?... We had to bear in silence the censures of our countrymen."

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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 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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The two things Joe Frazer was most proud of said a lot about him. The first was that at peak, they had 20,000 people working. The second was that 100,000 cars bore his name. He also said something about the auto industry I will never forget: “There’s so much money going out the window every day in this business, that if you’re not careful you’ll lose your shirt.” That, of course, is exactly what happened to Kaiser-Frazer.

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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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Churchill said much about success in life and politics, but he is frequently misquoted. But genuine expressions also exist. Here are some of the things that he actually said, confirmed in Churchill By Himself --in chronological order, with citations. (1: “You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success.”)

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butterflies
Gardener Stephen Humphrey at the butterfly house at Chartwell. Mr. Humphrey took charge of the reinvigorated butterflies in 2009 and reported they were soon flourishing. (BBC)
Churchill’s Butterflies Continue to Flourish at Chartwell

Churchill’s Butterflies Continue to Flourish at Chartwell

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But­ter­flies are back in force at Sir Win­ston Churchill’s Chartwell. In 2009, the Nation­al Trust rebuilt the but­ter­fly hut and gar­den­er Stephen Humphrey took charge of rais­ing but­ter­flies. Nigel Guest, a Chartwell vol­un­teer, imme­di­ate­ly report­ed “a ter­rif­ic year for but­ter­flies.” For his report and col­or pho­tos of Churchill’s favorite species see BBC Radio Kent, “Churchill’s But­ter­fly House at Chartwell.”

David Rid­dle, a Nation­al Trust vol­un­teer at Chartwell, gave me the back­ground of the “But­ter­fly House” Churchill estab­lished to prop­a­gate the insects on the grounds of his home:

The But­ter­fly House was first used as a game larder between 1869 and 1889 by the Colquhoun fam­i­ly, who owned Chartwell between 1830 and 1922, when Churchill bought the estate.…

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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