![Manchester](https://richardlangworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/attlee_churchill.jpg)
Churchill in Manchester: Clem in the Gents, Huns at Your Throat
Manchester on Churchill
William Manchester was a lyrical writer who brought more fans to Churchill than anyone save Martin Gilbert (and, nowadays, Andrew Roberts). It was my privilege to know him and even to work with him, vetting his manuscript for the second volume of his trilogy, The Last Lion. (The third and final volume was completed by Paul Reid.)
Bill made many detail mistakes, but nobody could top him for magisterial prose. Except possibly Sir Winston himself. We also have him to thank for confirming with a reliable witness a famous quotation long considered apocryphal. (And, for perpetuating another one, which Churchill didn’t originate, but definitely used with relish.)
Clem and Winston in the Gents
The late great columnist Charles Krauthammer liked to cite the amusing encounter between Churchill and socialist Prime Minister Clement Attlee in the Gentleman’s Convenience in the House of Commons, circa 1951. Attlee is standing over the trough as Churchill enters on the same mission. Observing Attlee, Churchill shuffles as far away as possible.
Attlee: “Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?”
WSC: “Every time you socialists see something big you want to nationalise it.”
I labeled this a misquote, consigning it to the “Red Herrings” appendix in my quotations book, Churchill by Himself. But Christian Schneider of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel led me to a reliable attribution. Mr. Schneider advised that he had the quote from William Manchester’s The Last Lion, vol. 1, Visions of Glory 1874-1932, page 35.
The reference is to a 21 October 1980 interview Manchester conducted with Sir David Pitblado (1913-1997). A civil servant, Pitblado was principal private secretary to both Attlee and Churchill. Moreover, he was a reliable source. So, with great delight, we may restore this one to the ranks of the genuine.
Huns at your throat or feet
Bill Manchester had an eye for the stellar quotation, and many famous Churchill lines bedizen his biography. One of these—only six pages into his first volume, was about the Germans. “The Hun,” exclaimed WSC, “is always either at your feet or at your throat.”
That has been around a long time. Some time ago the National Memo’s Joe Conason criticized Joe Scarborough’s ambivalent attitude toward a certain politician by misquoting Churchill: “It’s what he said about the Hun, which is: They’re either at your feet or at your throat.”
“You’ve compared me to a Nazi,” Scarborough retorted. “No, I didn’t,” said Conason. “Churchill wasn’t talking about the Nazis, he was talking about The First World War. [Those Huns] were not Nazis.”
Now it’s true that all Huns were not Nazis. (The original Huns go back to the Fourth Century.) But Churchill often referred to Nazis as Huns. What a joyful combination of Red Herrings this is!
Scarborough and Conason were both wrong. Churchill first quoted the line during the Second, not the First World War. It occurred in his second speech to Congress, 19 May 1943. But by identifying it as a “saying,” it was clear he was crediting it to somebody else:
The proud German Army has once again proved the truth of the saying, “The Hun is always either at your throat or your feet….”
A great line, but no cigar for originality. So this one remains among the “Red Herrings” in the upcoming expanded edition of Churchill in His Own Words, working subtsitle, An Encyclopedia of His Greatest Expressions. It is coming in 2024 from Hillsdale College Press.
Further reading
“All the Quotes Winston Churchill Never Said”: An up-to-date list, 2024.
“An Empty Taxi Arrived and Clement Attlee Got Out,” 2012.
“Clement Attlee’s Noble Tribute to Winston Churchill,” 2018.
“Manchester and Reid: The Last Lion, Defender of the Realm,” 2023.
“McKinstry’s Churchill and Attlee: A Vanished Age of Political Respect,” 2019.