Year: 2021

Burke
“A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds'” by D. George Thompson (1822-1892). L-R: James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Pasqual Paoli, Charles Burney, Thomas Warton and Oliver Goldsmith. Collin Brooks said Churchill would have been welcomed in the company of Burke and Johnson, although the dining society they had founded (“The Club”) blackballed him in 1911. Churchill and fellow reject F.E. Smith then formed “The Other Club,” which still meets at the Savoy. “The Club” also continues, meeting at Brooks’s. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchill and Burke: “Spontaneous Humour, Unparaded Erudition”

Churchill and Burke: “Spontaneous Humour, Unparaded Erudition”

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1. Roberts on Burke

Reprised below are my small con­tri­bu­tions on Churchill and the great Irish states­man and thinker Edmund Burke (1729-1797). It was eclipsed in 2019 in a bril­liant speech by Andrew Roberts which the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project offers here. Dr. Roberts spoke after receiv­ing The New Cri­te­ri­on 7th Edmund Burke Award for Ser­vice to Cul­ture and Soci­ety. He also dis­cuss­es Churchill on Burke in a video inter­view with James Panero.

2. Churchill on Burke

A read­er writes:

I’d like to con­grat­u­late you on Churchill by Him­self, but I could not find any Churchill com­ments on Edmund Burke in the index.…

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bed
A Toby lookalike. Pondering his adored pet, Churchill asked: “…how is each feather clever enough to know that it should grow green, yellow or black so precisely according to its position on Toby’s anatomy?” (Photo by Asivechowdhury, Creative Commons)
Did Churchill Conduct Business in Bed? (Or: “Toby’s Roost”)

Did Churchill Conduct Business in Bed? (Or: “Toby’s Roost”)

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“Busi­ness in Bed” is excerpt­ed from the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal text includ­ing end­notes, please click here. Sub­scrip­tions to this site are free. You will receive reg­u­lar notices of new posts as pub­lished. Just fill out SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW (at right). Your email address will remain a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

Q: Did Churchill conduct business in bed?

“I am a crim­i­nol­o­gist cur­rent­ly research­ing my next book and I need to know some­thing about Churchill brief­ing col­leagues from his bed. Is this true?  Did Churchill work from his bed?…

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Intrepid
The statue of William Stephenson in First World War military aviator uniform near Memorial Boulevard in Winnipeg Manitoba. (Photo by David Nyjof, Creative Commons)
How Genuine was William Stephenson (Cable Address Intrepid)?

How Genuine was William Stephenson (Cable Address Intrepid)?

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Q: A man called Intrepid?

I just read William Stevenson’s A Man Called Intre­pid. One of the cen­ter­pieces recounts the “secret war,” includ­ing espi­onage and covert action, was Ultra/Enigma and Bletch­ley Park’s activities.

Above all, the book states, Churchill meant to keep the Ultra secret. It claims Churchill knew the Nazis’ plan to car­pet-bomb Coven­try in Novem­ber 1940—and did noth­ing. He says Churchill feared giv­ing away the fact the the British were read­ing Ger­man codes.  Have you read this account?  I think you found that claim to be false. Was Stephen­son the British super-spy his biog­ra­ph­er insists he was?…

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Parker
Best pals by 1942: Ambassadors to the United States Lord Halifax and Maxim Litvinov chatting at the New Zealand Legation, Washington. (Photo by Marjory Collins, U.S. National Archives, public domain)
Alistair Parker Presents a Balanced, Scholarly Cambridge Seminar

Alistair Parker Presents a Balanced, Scholarly Cambridge Seminar

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Review of Park­er excerpt­ed from the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal text includ­ing more images and end­notes, please click here. Sub­scrip­tions to this site are free. You will receive reg­u­lar notices of new posts as pub­lished. Just scroll to SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW. Your email address guar­an­teed to remain a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

* * *

Alis­tair Park­er, ed., Win­ston Churchill: Stud­ies in States­man­ship. Lon­don: Brasseys, 2003, 282 pages, paper­back, Ama­zon $32; hard­bound copies also available.

“There are times,” wrote a great Cam­bridge schol­ar, Sir Geof­frey Elton, “when I incline to judge all his­to­ri­ans by their opin­ion of Win­ston Churchill: whether they can see that no mat­ter how much bet­ter the details, often dam­ag­ing, of man and career become known, he still remains, quite sim­ply, a great man.”…

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Magnanimity
Kampala, 1907: Colonial Undersecretary Churchill and King Daudi Chewa II watching a Bugandan war dance. (Wikimedia Commons)
Winston Churchill, Magnanimity and the “Feeble-Minded,” Part 2

Winston Churchill, Magnanimity and the “Feeble-Minded,” Part 2

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Con­tin­ued from Part 1…

Youthful discretions

Churchill was born into a world in which vir­tu­al­ly all Britons, from the Sov­er­eign to a Covent Gar­den gro­cer, believed in their moral supe­ri­or­i­ty. They preached it to their chil­dren. All learned that the red por­tions of the map showed where Bri­tan­nic civ­i­liza­tion had tamed sav­agery and cured pan­demics. Churchill’s asser­tions, espe­cial­ly as a young man, were often in line with this. And yet he con­sis­tent­ly dis­played this odd streak of mag­na­nim­i­ty and lib­er­tar­i­an impulse.

It was Churchill, the aris­to­crat­ic Vic­to­ri­an, who argued that Dervish ene­my in Sudan had a “claim beyond the grave…no less good than that which any of our coun­try­men could make.”…

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Eugenics
Men of the Day No.1269: Caricature of The Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, by Frederick Drummond Niblett (1861-1928), in “Vanity Fair,” 8 March 1911. (Public domain)
Winston Churchill, Eugenics and the “Feeble-Minded” (1)

Winston Churchill, Eugenics and the “Feeble-Minded” (1)

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I pub­lished in 2010 an account of Churchill’s youth­ful (cir­ca 1910-12) fling with Eugen­ics, a pseu­do-sci­ence pop­u­lar at the turn of the cen­tu­ry. Eugen­ics favored ster­il­iz­ing or con­fin­ing the “fee­ble-mind­ed” to “main­tain the race.”

This drew an irate let­ter from a read­er who said he will nev­er think the same of Churchill, know­ing that he could have sup­port­ed such hor­ren­dous ideas:

No tru­ly edu­cat­ed intel­li­gent per­son, even in those ear­ly years, can have bought into Eugen­ics. Churchill’s was not just a fling of youth or imma­tu­ri­ty but the decid­ed opin­ion of a near­ly mid­dle-aged man. His sup­port of Eugen­ics could only lead to the extrem­i­ties prac­ticed to by the Nazis.…

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chicken
Addressing the Canadian Parliament, 30 December 1941. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchill’s “Wrung Like a Chicken”: Who Said It First?

Churchill’s “Wrung Like a Chicken”: Who Said It First?

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“Wrung Like a Chick­en” is excerpt­ed from an essay for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal text includ­ing more images and end­notes, please click here. Sub­scrip­tions to this site are free. You will receive reg­u­lar notices of new posts as pub­lished. Just scroll to SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW. Your email address is nev­er giv­en out and remains a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

Ottawa, 30 December 1941

In his first and as it proved only address to the Cana­di­an Par­lia­ment, Win­ston Churchill brought down the house in words which will live as long as his sto­ry is told:

The French Gov­ern­ment had at their own sug­ges­tion solemn­ly bound them­selves with us not to make a sep­a­rate peace….…

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Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Territory was organized on 7 August 7 1789. Congress accepted North Carolina’s cession of its western lands in 1790. (User:Golbez, Creative Commons)
How the Northwest Ordinance Promoted a Just Society

How the Northwest Ordinance Promoted a Just Society

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“The great title deeds” In an illu­mi­nat­ing inter­view on the North­west Ordi­nance, Hills­dale Col­lege Pres­i­dent Lar­ry P. Arnn explains one of America’s key found­ing doc­u­ments.  This is not a usu­al sub­ject here. Indeed Churchill’s His­to­ry of the Eng­lish-Speak­ing Peo­ples doesn’t even men­tion it. Nonethe­less— the North­west Ordi­nance of 1787 qual­i­fies as one of Churchill’s “great title-deeds of Anglo-Amer­i­can liberties.” . The inter­view didn’t answer all my ques­tions but taught me things I didn’t know. I doubt that many Amer­i­can school­child­ren know them either. Nev­er­the­less, the North­west Ordi­nance deserves broad­er familiarity. Northwest Ordinance Provisions Dr. Arnn’s remarks need lit­tle elab­o­ra­tion here.…

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Zionism
“Arabs should share in the benefits and the progress of Zionism.” Churchill speaking at tree planting ceremony on the site of Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 28 March 1925. (G. Eric & Edith Matson Photo Collection, Library of Congress, public domain)
Zionism, Bolshevism, Enemies of Civilization: What Churchill Said

Zionism, Bolshevism, Enemies of Civilization: What Churchill Said

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Churchill’s article was an attack on Bolshevism (“a sinister confederacy”) not Zionism, which Churchill mainly (but not always) supported. Churchill mentioned—accurately—that many Bolsheviks were Jews—and also gave a reason: They were people "reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race." He then named names.

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AQ
“The drone of the engine went on as a background of gigantic sound….The song of the car bayed over wide spaces of country, was bruised and battered between the walls of startled village streets, was flung back in echoes from the walls of hills.” —Leslie Charteris, from an AQ tribute to “The Saint’s” fabulous, fictional Hirondel. (Painting by Ted Lodigensky, author’s collection)
Automobile Quarterly: The Memories (AQ Vol. 10, No. 1, 1972)

Automobile Quarterly: The Memories (AQ Vol. 10, No. 1, 1972)

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If I have written anything worthwhile over 50 years it's thanks to my five years as a minor player at Automobile Quarterly. Between Don Vorderman and Beverly Rae Kimes, I learned things that couldn't be acquired in a school of journalism. The foregoing began with an email to a friend who acquired an old issue. I just wanted him to know the treat he was in for.

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

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