Churchill by Himself, my encyclopedia of Winston Churchill’s most quotable remarks, is to be republished. (If the publishers can ever agree about what form and substance they will allow each other to produce.) To the the original 4000 quotes I’ve added so far 600 new ones.
The “Red Herrings” appendix of misquotes has also grown apace. That, however, is always kept up to date online. You can look it up:
All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said
Misquotes Part 1: Accepting Change to European Union
Misquotes Part 3: Lies to Sex
A trove of misquotesThe original “Red Herrings” appendix (2008) contained about 80 misquotes.…
November 27th— Writing in the Daily Beast, Mr. Marlow Stern praises Kristin Scott Thomas (“Clementine Churchill” in the new movie Darkest Hour) and announces: “Donald Trump is No Winston Churchill.” (Past doubt, but who is?)
Mr. Stern himself offers only one Churchill quote and gets it right: “A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.” (Colliers, 28 December 1935.)
Bingo! That’s an obscure one. Forgive him for vastly exaggerating Churchill’s alcohol intake. (WSC’s “six whisky sodas” were described by his private secretary as “scotch-flavored mouthwash.”…
The Huffington Post reports that the National Memo’s Joe Conason criticized Joe Scarborough’s ambivalent attitude toward the Clintons by misquoting Churchill: “It’s what he said about the Hun, which is, ‘They’re either at your feet or at your throat.'”
“You just used a Winston Churchill quote to compare me to a Nazi because you don’t like the facts,” Scarborough replied.
“No, I didn’t compare you to a Nazi,” said Conason. “He wasn’t talking about the Nazis, he was talking about World War I. [The Huns] were not Nazis.”
Ah, all Huns are not Nazis, but in Churchill’s context, most Nazis were Huns!…
Alistair Cooke addressed this question over thirty years ago. I’ve quoted his words repeatedly over the years. A recent comment (reprised below), encouraged this revision from 2011. Mr. Cooke’s full speech is available by email. RML
Back in the 1930s, who all denounced and criticized Churchill for his beliefs in the radical Nazi Germany? Who specifically mocked him? Obviously Churchill was right about Hitler and his plans but who in the political, intellectual, or entertainment arenas vilified him? —A.H.
The answer to your question, I think, is “just about everybody,” from the Royal Family to ordinary citizens, most of the media, his own party, the Labour and Liberal parties, and certainly most intellectuals and entertainment personalities.…
Churchill and Attlee: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace, by Leo McKinstry. New York: London, Atlantic Books, 736 pages, £25, Amazon $25.66. Excerpted from a book review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text, click here.
The McKinstry EpicLeo McKinstry’s book 738 pages—twice the size of the previous Attlee-Churchill book and is riveting from cover to cover. Scrupulously fair, McKinstry tells the story, backed by a voluminous bibliography, extensive research and private correspondence. Thus he captures Churchill’s generosity of spirit, and Attlee’s greatness of soul.
“Sometimes turbulent, often fruitful, theirs was a relationship unprecedented in the annals of British politics,” McKinstry concludes.…
It is frequently asked: What did Churchill say about those who trade honor for peace having in neither in the end?
“War and Shame”There are two quotations. The first was Churchill in a letter to Lloyd George on 13 August 1938, just before the Munich Conference, which led to World War II a year later.
I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very little doubt what the decision will be.
Reference is Churchill by Himself, page 256, quoting Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol.…
Red Herrings: Quotes not by Churchill (or things he said quoting someone else), continued from Part 2. Compiled for the next expanded edition of Churchill by Himself.
A reader suggests that the list of “Red Herring” fake Churchill quotes be subdivided. We should separate quotes he actually said, but borrowed from someone else, from quotes simply invented out of whole cloth. Not sure we have much to learn from that. First, while I try to name the originator of a quotation not by Sir Winston, I don’t always succeed. Second, my brief extends only to disproving that the words originated with Churchill.…
This review was first published by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For remarks on Darkest Hour by Hillsdale President Larry Arnn, and excerpts from Gary Oldman’s appearance at the College, click here.
Hour of Trial, and TriumphDarkest Hour, a film by Focus Features, directed by Joe Wright, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill, 2hrs 5 min, December 2017.
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods…”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay
I finally saw Darkest Hour on February 16th.…
Scott Johnson of Powerline (“Why We Dropped the Bomb,” 13 April) kindly links an old column of his quoting an old one of mine with reference to President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima and the atom bombing of Japan.
Johnson links a lecture by Professor Williamson Murray, which is worth considering, along with Paul Fussell’s classic essay in The New Republic, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” which makes you think, though some consider it a rant. Fussell wrote:
John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion.…