Year: 2020

Margaret Thatcher 1923-2013: A Churchillian Remembrance

Margaret Thatcher 1923-2013: A Churchillian Remembrance

“Margaret Thatcher”: excerpted from a tribute, 2013

Every­one is famil­iar with Mar­garet Thatcher’s career. Every­one depend­ing on their pol­i­tics will have their own vision. It is left to say here what she meant to the mem­o­ry of Win­ston Churchill, the prime min­is­ter she revered above all. More than any­one who lived at 10 Down­ing Street, she had real appre­ci­a­tion for him. She read his books, quot­ed him fre­quent­ly, even host­ed a din­ner for his fam­i­ly and sur­viv­ing mem­bers of his wartime coalition.

In 1993 she was in Wash­ing­ton to coin­cide with a Churchill Con­fer­ence host­ing 500 peo­ple, includ­ing 140 stu­dents, a dozen lumi­nar­ies, and ambas­sadors from Britain and the Com­mon­wealth.…

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Downing Street Annexe and Churchill Secretary Ellizabeth Layton Nel

Downing Street Annexe and Churchill Secretary Ellizabeth Layton Nel

Excerpt­ed from “Down­ing Street Annexe and War Rooms,” answered in full on the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

Who were John Evans and Tom Leonard?:

Ques­tion: In the 2017 film Dark­est Hour, on Churchill in May 1940. I am puz­zled by two char­ac­ters. There is a young man who is seen near Churchill at Chartwell and the under­ground War Rooms. The Dark­est Hour cast names him “John Evans.” The name of anoth­er man in the cast, “Tom Leonard,” sug­gests noth­ing. He is the dri­ver of Churchill’s car when the PM abrupt­ly bolts and heads for the Under­ground.…

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Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars

Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars

Excerpt­ed from “Great Con­tem­po­raries: T.E. Lawrence,” writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text and more illus­tra­tions, please click here.

Churchill and Lawrence

If the Almighty dab­bles in the cre­ation of indi­vid­u­als, He must have chor­tled when He con­jured up Lawrence of Ara­bia. For here was the ide­al advis­er, foil and friend of Win­ston Spencer Churchill. To para­phrase WSC’s apoc­ryphal quip, Lawrence pos­sessed none of the virtues Churchill despised, an all the vices he admired.

He was “untram­meled by con­ven­tion,” Churchill wrote, “inde­pen­dent of the ordi­nary cur­rents of human action.”…

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Absent Friends: Ashley Redburn 1914-1996: “England Hath Need of Thee”

Absent Friends: Ashley Redburn 1914-1996: “England Hath Need of Thee”

This trib­ute to an extra­or­di­nary Churchillian was writ­ten twen­ty-three years ago in 1997. Please par­don ref­er­ences to con­tem­po­rary events no longer in the news, though it would seem that some oth­er Red­burn thoughts are star­tling­ly relevant.

Ashley Redburn, Anglo-American

Cyn­ics some­times sug­gest that West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion needs a war every few gen­er­a­tions to main­tain its sense of val­ues and faith in itself. Ash­ley Red­burn was a man who believed it. “Eng­land,” he declared grim­ly, “needs to be con­quered in war and occu­pied by a venge­ful ene­my before its spir­it can be revived. Ger­many and France between them have ruined Europe for two cen­turies.…

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Get Your History Right: Reply to Reader Hasan in “The Blade” (Toledo)

Get Your History Right: Reply to Reader Hasan in “The Blade” (Toledo)

NPR advances the Zeitgeist; The Blade responds

On a radio talk show dis­trib­uted by Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, one Aliyah Hasi­nah said World War II had been start­ed by a Eugen­ics-besot­ted Win­ston Churchill. On August 8th, the Edi­to­r­i­al Board of The Blade replied: “NPR gave air­time to an activist who has a clear ax to grind against Churchill, yet it couldn’t find a schol­ar or biog­ra­ph­er to give us a depic­tion of the whole man? …. Churchill was not a per­fect human being. He was often wrong and some of his fail­ures were spec­tac­u­lar, But for the most part, he epit­o­mizes elo­quence, courage and love of coun­try.…

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James Humes 1934-2020: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence

James Humes 1934-2020: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence

James Calhoun Humes … has died at 85. From his celes­tial perch, he is prob­a­bly won­der­ing about this lit­tle trib­ute. He was con­vinced, I heard, that he had giv­en “mor­tal affront” by his imper­son­ations of Sir Win­ton Churchill. Or, in my case, by pub­lish­ing a book of Churchill quotes, many of which he man­gled, some of which he made up. I guess in lat­er life, he thought we’d writ­ten him off. Not quite. = Humes was born in Penn­syl­va­nia to Samuel Hamil­ton Humes and Elenor Kathryn Gra­ham. He was descend­ed from ear­ly set­tlers of Vir­ginia and Ten­nessee.…

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Petition Response to Churchill High School: Please Keep Your Name

Petition Response to Churchill High School: Please Keep Your Name

This is a reply to a July peti­tion to rename Win­ston Churchill High School, Bethes­da, Mary­land. Found­ed in 1964 as Potomac High School, its name was changed the fol­low­ing year to mark Sir Winston’s pass­ing. It is a dis­tin­guished school whose alum­ni include two sons of the late Jack Kemp, both of whom pur­sued their famous father’s sport. Jef­frey Allan Kemp (’77) was an NFL quar­ter­back; his broth­er Jim­my Kemp (’89) played in the CFL and is pres­i­dent of the Jack Kemp Foun­da­tion. State Sen­a­tor Cheryl Kagan (’79) serves in the Mary­land leg­is­la­ture.…

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Churchill Quotes: “Action vs. Inaction….Religion of Blood and War”

Churchill Quotes: “Action vs. Inaction….Religion of Blood and War”

N.B. We do not see Churchill in Woodville’s dra­mat­ic paint­ing above. He had drawn his pis­tol not his sword, in def­er­ence to his weak right shoul­der. For the skill and dex­ter­i­ty it took to sheath his sword and aim his pis­tol, see my review of Brough Scott’s Churchill at the Gal­lop (with Ben Bradshaw’s paint­ing of Churchill in the charge.)

Action and inaction

Q: Could you ver­i­fy the cor­rect word­ing for the Win­ston Churchill state­ment:  “I nev­er wor­ry about action, but only inac­tion.” There are var­i­ous iter­a­tions among the sources. —S.D.

From Churchill by Him­self, page 190 (note he placed quotemarks around “wor­ry”): “I nev­er ‘wor­ry’ about action, but only about inaction.”…

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“Fascists of the future will call themselves Anti-Fascists” Churchill’s words?

“Fascists of the future will call themselves Anti-Fascists” Churchill’s words?

“Fas­cists of the future” appears unabridged in the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, July 2020. For the com­plete text, please click here. Sub­scribe free to the Churchill Project and join our 60,000  read­ers. Reg­u­lar notices of new posts appear as they are pub­lished. Sim­ply click here,  scroll to bot­tom, and fill in your email in the box enti­tled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email is nev­er shared with anyone.

Question

“Is this quo­ta­tion is attrib­uted to Win­ston Churchill?: ‘The fas­cists of the future will call them­selves anti-fas­cists.’ There does not seem to be cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion on the inter­net link­ing those words to him, but I would appre­ci­ate your input.”…

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Churchill’s Racist Epithets are Remarkably Rare (Hearsay doesn’t Count)

Churchill’s Racist Epithets are Remarkably Rare (Hearsay doesn’t Count)

Extract­ed from “Hearsay Doesn’t Count: The Truth about Churchill’s ‘Racist Epi­thets,'” for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal arti­cle, please click here. Read­ers please note: a foot­not­ed ver­sion of this arti­cle was pub­lished in Grand Alliance, a Hills­dale jour­nal of Churchill Stud­ies, in 2022.

Epithets and expressions

In recent weeks Win­ston Churchill has become a tar­get of igno­rance. “Racist,” read the spray-paint­ed label of the mob on his Lon­don stat­ue. He should be knocked from perch, plinth and promi­nence. Some his­to­ri­ans claim he used all the racist epi­thets we abhor, from the n-word  to nation­al­i­ties: “As the great trib­al leader of 1940,” read one account, “his glo­ri­ous speech­es were pep­pered with ref­er­ences to the British race.”…

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