Category: FAQs

Life
“A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted.” Proving his point, this is what one sees from his Dining Room window, looking across the garden out over the Weald of Kent. (Photo by Gareth Williams, Creative Commons)
Q&A: Churchill’s Philosophy of Life and Living

Q&A: Churchill’s Philosophy of Life and Living

“What was Churchill’s Phi­los­o­phy of Life and Liv­ing?” was first pub­lished by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal arti­cle with end­notes, click here. To sub­scribe to free week­ly arti­cles from Hills­dale-Churchill, click here and scroll to bot­tom. Enter your email in the box “Stay in touch with us.” No adver­tis­ing: Your iden­ti­ty remains a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

Q: On life and living

If I want to under­stand Sir Win­ston Churchill’s phi­los­o­phy of life and liv­ing, what books would you rec­om­mend? —B.A., via email

A: Lengthy sources

At first your ques­tion remind­ed us of the old fra­ter­ni­ty ini­ti­a­tion tech­nique: ask­ing pledges an unan­swer­able ques­tion.…

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alcohol
Wendy Reves, hosting the Churchills at La Pausa, the Cap Martin home of his agent Emery Reves, 1957. (Photo presented to the author by Mrs. Reves)
Updates: Was Churchill an Alcoholic? Spirits, Pipes, Cigarettes

Updates: Was Churchill an Alcoholic? Spirits, Pipes, Cigarettes

In eary youth, Churchill found whisky repugnant. Then, in Sudan in 1899, “there was nothing to drink, apart from tea, except either tepid water or tepid water with lime juice or tepid water with whisky. Faced with these alternatives I ‘grasped the larger hope’.… Wishing to fit myself for active service conditions I overcame the ordinary weaknesses of the flesh. By the end of those five days I had completely overcome my repugnance to the taste of whisky.”

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half-breed
Churchill and Butler were rarely photographed together. Here they are with WSC’s last Cabinet, 1955: L-R Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Sir Winston, Leader of the House of Lords the Marquess of Salisbury, Chancellor of the Exchequer R.A. Butler, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Philip Cunliffe-Lister. (HMSO, Crown copyright expired)
When Rab Called Churchill a “Half-Breed American”

When Rab Called Churchill a “Half-Breed American”

“Rab said he thought that the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history.... He believed this sudden coup of Winston and his rabble was a serious disaster and an unnecessary one: the “pass had been sold” by Mr. C[hamberlain], Lord Halifax and Oliver Stanley. They had weakly surrendered to a half-breed American whose main support was that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type...” —Jock Colville, May 1940

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Lalique
The large Lalique cockerel (circled behind the sofa) has enjoyed pride of place at Chartwell since de Gaulle presented it to Clementine Churchill during the Second World War. (Photo by Ciaran McKrickard, National Trust Collections with thanks to Katherine Carter)
French Magnanimity: De Gaulle’s Gift of a Lalique Cockerel

French Magnanimity: De Gaulle’s Gift of a Lalique Cockerel

“The conversation turned to the French Fleet, and Clementine said she hoped that its ships and crews would carry on the fight with us. De Gaulle curtly replied that what would really give the French Fleet satisfaction would be to turn their guns ‘On you!’ (meaning the British). Winston tried to mediate but Clementine interrupted him, and said in French: ‘No, Winston, it is because there are certain things that a woman can say to a man which a man cannot say, and I am saying them to you—General de Gaulle!’” After this verbal fracas, the General was much upset, and apologised profusely, and later presented her with the Lalique.

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Lenin
Lenin haranguing Muscovites, May 1920. (Photo by Grigory Petrovich Goldstein, public domain)
Lenin as Typhoid Culture. Or: To Russia With Love

Lenin as Typhoid Culture. Or: To Russia With Love

The German plan, Churchill wrote, “worked with amazing accuracy. No sooner did Lenin arrive than he began beckoning a finger here and a finger there to obscure persons in sheltered retreats in New York, in Glasgow, in Bern, and other countries, and he gathered together the leading spirits of a formidable sect, the most formidable sect in the world, of which he was the high priest and chief. With these spirits around him he set to work with demoniacal ability to tear to pieces every institution on which the Russian State and nation depended. Russia was laid low. Russia had to be laid low. She was laid low to the dust.”

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Bust
Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama admiring “Epstein #1,” the Churchill bust that’s been in the White House since 1965. (Official White House photo.)
It’s Baaaack! The Epstein Churchill Bust Kerfuffle, Round 4

It’s Baaaack! The Epstein Churchill Bust Kerfuffle, Round 4

Since 1965 has been an Epstein Churchill bust at the White House, uninterrupted now for six decades. Current media confusion surrounds the SECOND Epstein, which makes regular visits on loan from the British Embassy, where it is in the Embassy’s art collection. Epstein #1 is part of the permanent White House collection. Epstein #2 is an “optional extra” at the White House, depending on the whim of the occupant. Every President is entitled to the totems of their choice.

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Diesel
Meeting of great minds: Rudolf Diesel (left) with Thomas Edison (seated) in Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, with (from left) Ellen Rice, Edison engineer J.W. Lieb Jr. and Martha Diesel, 1912. (U.S. National Park Service, public domain)
Unanswered Questions: Churchill and Rudolf Diesel

Unanswered Questions: Churchill and Rudolf Diesel

It is known that Rudolf Diesel boarded the “Dresden” that fatal October in 1913 intending to meet with the British about licensing his invention. By then Churchill and Fisher were well along on the conversion from coal to oil for capital ships, and WSC had secured an oil supply through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. How far Diesel developments had affected designs for submarines or Churchill’s “landship” (the tank) bears further investigation. 

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Second World
Pickering, Yorkshire, 31 March 1944: WSC inspects “Blenheim,” a Cromwell Mk IV tank of No. 2 Squadron, 2nd (Armoured Reconnaissance) Battalion, Welsh Guards. With him is Squadron Commander Major John Ogilvie Spencer, who was killed in Belgium on 9 September 1944. (Photo by Capt. Horton, War Office, public domain)
Questions on Books: The Second World War

Questions on Books: The Second World War

Not all translations spanned the complete six volumes. The Turkish Edition contained only the first two volumes. Wendy Reves, wife of Churchill’s literary agent, Emery Reves, told me that the publishers refused to pay for the rest! The first Russian edition (1956-58) contained only the first three volumes, though Ronald Cohen also lists a later, complete Russian edition published in 1997-98. There were also eight translations of Churchill’s one-volume abridged edition, first published in 1959.

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Young
Detail from the cover of Levenger’s “The Happy Warrior,” 2008.
Best Churchill Books for Young Readers

Best Churchill Books for Young Readers

Fiona Reynoldson’s “Leading Lives: Churchill,” is targeted at the young (ages 8-15). Now a quarter century old, it is still the best “juvenile” ever published, anywhere, by anybody. The “Leading Lives” series mixes Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Arafat with Roosevelt, Kennedy and Gandhi. I know nothing about the others, but Reynoldson’s Churchill is a masterpiece. So much wisdom and fair understanding is attractively wedged into sixty-four pages.

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charter
The White House, 25 June 1954. L-R: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, WSC, President Eisenhower, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. (Photo by Thomas O’Halloran, Library of Congress)
The Second Atlantic Charter? A Seventieth Anniversary

The Second Atlantic Charter? A Seventieth Anniversary

“We will continue our support of the United Nations and of existing international organizations that have been established in the spirit of the Charter for common protection and security. We urge the establishment and maintenance of such associations of appropriate nations as will best, in their respective regions, preserve the peace and the independence of the peoples living there. When desired by the peoples of the affected countries, we are ready to render appropriate and feasible assistance to such associations.” Eisenhower & Churchill, 1954    

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


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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