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. I remember mine personally: “Tell us your philosophy for living among men.” This was an intentional red herring. Whatever you answered, it obviously would never satisfy the questioner!

But in pondering the thought, there very definitely is a body of work that helps answer your query. Please use the Hillsdale Churchill Project’s online annotated bibliography for details and notes on books mentioned,  or to search for others in the same field. Search for key words like “philosophy.”

Churchill Style by Barry Singer

The book to start with is Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill. Author Barry Singer owns Chartwell Booksellers and will sell you an inscribed copy—along with copies of other books below, many of them inscribed by the authors.

Churchill Style expertly discusses Churchill’s philosophy of life and how he lived it. Mr. Singer has a unique approach. He considers nine facets of Churchill that were the essence of his style: autos, books, cigars, dining, fashion, friendships, home, imbibing and pastimes. (I”m glad he included cars—there are amusing stories there.)

The publisher, Harry Abrams, is well known for elegant productions, so Churchill Style is an heirloom, finely printed and bound and laden with full color illustrations, including rare first editions of Churchill’s books. It is a book readers will refer to often. Mr. Singer’s Hillsdale lecture on the subject is accessible here.

No More Champagne by David Lough

Churchill (or his friend F.E. Smith) was known to have declared, “Winston is a man of simple tastes. He is quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.”

With no inherited wealth, WSC had to earn enough to finance his pleasures, remarking, “I lived from mouth to hand.” The standard work on his finances is David Lough’s No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money. Reviewing this book for Hillsdale, Michael McMenamin wrote:

Ploughing fresh ground, Lough offers a well-written, deeply researched text about Churchill’s finances, and how they affected his politics. As private as some may regard personal finances, the book does not detract from Churchill’s greatness or humanity. It is an absorbing story about an extraordinary man ensuring his financial survival with one hand, while warning about the danger to, and then leading the fight for, Western Civilization with the other. Uniquely, Churchill did both.

Churchill’s Bestiary by Piers Brendon

Animals were important in Churchill’s life. He was always surrounded by pets—or, at least, animals he thought of as pets. He was fiercely loyal to those he “knew personally,” and liked to use animal analogies in his speeches. Fortunately for students of his life, 2019 brought us a comprehensive book devoted to the subject: Piers Brendon’s Churchill’s Bestiary reviewed here. From my review:

This is an encyclopedic account of Churchill’s life with animals, starting with “Albatross” and ending in “Zoos.” That spans only a fraction of Piers Brendon’s comprehensive book. He avoids repeating material in previous accounts, and goes much deeper into the subject.

Most of the anecdotes have not appeared previously and are thus quite valuable. Mr. Brendon deeply investigates each species. The text is sprightly and readable, “unputdownable.” Anyone interested in this aspect of Churchill’s life owes it to themselves to buy a copy.

In his own words

For Sir Winston’s own comments on his philosophy of life, see the chapters “Personal Matters” and “Tastes and Favorites” in my book, Churchill by Himself aka Churchill in His Own Words. Here are quotations relating to Churchill personally: his character, habits and family, and his prescriptions for living life to the full, which he certainly did.

Many quotations speak to his political and personal characteristics, some with a high degree of frankness. Reactions to election results, and thoughts about his being variously a Conservative and a Liberal, are pithy and pointed. Of course his domestic existence always came second after politics. But family life was a rousing, warm affair, except for his occasionally tempestuous relationship with his son Randolph.

WSC’s comments to and about his wife Clementine, the best of which I trust are here, would make a perfect series of greeting cards for any husband wondering how to express himself. Their daughter Mary gave testimony to her father’s favourite maxim describing his marriage: “Here firm though all be drifting.”

What strikes me about these quotations as a group is what one of his secretaries said about Churchill: “He was so human, so funny—that always saved the day.” Marshal Tito, a most perceptive man, was once asked what most struck him about WSC. “His humanity,” Tito said immediately. “He is so human.”

Philosophy of politics

If your interest extends to political life there are three chapters in Churchill by Himself containing quotations on war and the two World Wars. Another chapter covers “Political Theory and Practice.” Also, there are at least two powerful scholarly studies of his political philosophy that should be part of the serious library.

Sir Martin Gilbert’s Churchill’s Political Philosophy (1981) is rare but worth seeking out. (Try bookfinder.com,) It is based on a Gilbert lecture which uniquely captured Churchill’s attitudes toward politics and government. WSC’s overriding doctrine, Gilbert says, can be summarized in five words: “His quarrel was with tyranny.”

Likewise excellent on political philosophy is Larry Arnn’s Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Survival of Free Government. As a bonus, this book contains WSC’s essay, “Mass Effects in Modern Life.” From the book review by Justin D. Lyons:

Churchill studies reveal important lessons that remain powerfully relevant for the leaders and citizens of free societies. This notion is itself founded on the belief that though the threats to civilization may have altered since Churchill’s day, there is consistency between his challenges and ours—that he is a good guide to follow in the cause of defending freedom.

Such a belief must lie behind any conception of history as providing guidance. If these commonalities do not exist, neither Churchill’s story, nor history in general, has anything to say to us now. This is a unique and important work on Churchill’s political thought.

Addenda

These books focus closely on your question, though we could go on naming specialized studies. For example, who were the mentors who made Churchill what he was in life? For three such individuals, see Michael McMenamin’s “Churchill’s Mentors,” Part 1 of which is posted here, with links to two more parts.

Churchill’s life was long and occupies the authors of over 1200 books, not including the thirty-one volumes of Official Biography. Many contain exaggerations, and it is well to look out for them. For just one such example see “On Churchill’s ‘Sybaritic’ Lifestyle” (2016).

We hope this answers your question and provides at least a start on a complicated but intriguing subject.

“Blood, Sweat and Gears”: Churchill as Motorist

1: “Mors the Pity,” 1900s-1920s.

2: “Daimlers and Austins,” 1930s.

3: “There’s Safety in Humbers,” 1940s-1960s.

“Driving Miss Nancy: Nipped in the Astor Bar,” 2022.

”Winston could not possibly be an alcoholic. No alcoholic could drink that much.” —C.P. Snow

Alcoholic rambles

Updates from 2009-2010. A reader asks whether William Manchester was being factual or just cute when he wrote that Churchill was not an alcoholic, despite the quantities WSC is alleged to have consumed. Manchester wrote:

The legend that he is a heavy drinker is quite untrue. Churchill is a sensible if unorthodox drinker. There is always some alcohol in his bloodstream and it reaches its peak in the evening after he has had two or three scotches, several glasses of champagne, at least two brandies, and a highball.

Manchester was right in general but wrong in the details. Churchill had an impressive capacity for alcohol, but nobody saw him put that much away in one evening. Field Marshal Alanbrooke several times wrote that the boss was plastered—but Brookie wrote a lot of bad-tempered things in his diary late at night when he was tired and frustrated from arguing over strategy.

A dearth of proof

None of his family or friends ever saw Churchill the worse for drink. Only once do we have reliable testimony otherwise: Danny Mander, one of his bodyguards at Teheran, recalled escorting a well-lubricated Churchill and Anthony Eden home after a lengthy series of toasts with the Russians. Even then, Mander was careful to note: “They were not ‘falling down drunk,’ just singing songs and feeling good.”

Churchill’s alcoholic intake was exaggerated, not least by himself. Whatever the amount, it was not enough to affect him. He began young. Until age twenty-five, he wrote in My Early Life, he had found whisky repugnant.  Then in 1898, he joined the Malakand Field Force on India’s Northwest Frontier:

[T]here 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 these five days I had completely overcome my repugnance to the taste of whisky.*

*WSC, My Early Life (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1930), 140-41.

“The Papa Cocktail”

Churchill nursed “a bit of whisky” daily and for hours. His daughter Mary once mixed for me what she called “The Papa Cocktail.” You cover the bottom of a tumbler with a thimbleful of scotch, then fill it with water. Not even any ice! I thought the result was quite disgusting. (She agreed.) 

Churchill’s private  secretary, Jock Colville, referred to this concoction as “scotch-flavoured mouthwash.” A glass of it was almost always at his elbow, sipped from time to time—giving outsiders the impression that he was addicted.

It is simply not so. In his autobiography, WSC is for once candid on his drinking: “I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk—except on very exceptional occasions and a few anniversaries.”

Exaggerations

Certainly Churchill liked to fan his high capacity. A frequent declaration was: “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” Enemies from Labour politicians to Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels took this to suggest a red-nosed drunk. Churchill was occasionally wont to play the role.

“Prof!” he often exclaimed to his scientific advisor Frederick Lindemann over dinner. “Pray calculate the amount of champagne, whisky and other spirits I have consumed in my life and tell me how high it would reach in this room.”

The Prof would take out his slide rule and pretend to calculate: “I’m sorry Winston, it would only come up to a few inches.” On cue Churchill would reply: “How much to do—how little time remains!”

Some who exaggerate his drinking like to quote his famous encounter with Bessie Braddock MP. Accosting Churchill leaving the House of Commons, she claimed he was “disgustingly drunk.” Churchill retorted that Bessie was “disgustingly ugly….but tomorrow I shall be sober and you shall still be disgustingly ugly.”

His bodyguard at the time, Ronald Golding, told me this exchange actually took place. But, he added, “Mr. Churchill was not drunk, just tired and wobbly.” Nor was WSC’s response original. In the 1934 film It’s a Gift, the W. C. Fields character, when told he is drunk, responds: “Yeah, and you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.”

A shunner of pipes?

A reader sent me a Daily Telegraph article stating that Churchill occasionally smoked a pipe as a break from cigars: “I can find no reference to him having ever smoked a pipe—can you?” I cannot.

I think the Telegraph story is a stretch. There is no testimony to Churchill ever smoking a pipe. There are indications that he deplored pipe smoking (though he tolerated it from Sir Arthur Tedder). Some believe this arose through his antipathy (which grew in the early 1930s) to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

By looking for Baldwin references, I found a key cigar-and-pipe standoff between Churchill and “SB” in 1924, when they were on better terms, in Martin Gilbert‘s Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, page 59 quoting Churchill (from an unpublished note) after the 1924 general election. Baldwin was forming his new Conservative government:

I was shown into the Prime Minister’s office. After a few commonplaces I asked him whether he minded the smoke of a cigar. He said “No,” and pulled out his famous pipe. Then he said “Are you willing to help us?” I replied guardedly, “Yes, if you really want me.”

I had no intention of joining the Government except in some great position, and I had no idea—nor had anyone else—what was in his mind. So when he said, “Will you be Chancellor of the Exchequer?” I was astonished. I had never dreamed my credit with him stood so high…. I should have liked to have answered, “Will the bloody duck swim?” but as it was a formal and important conversation I replied, “This fulfils my ambition….”

Undoubtedly at that point, Churchill would have happily smoked Baldwin’s pipe himself.

What about cigarettes?

There are indications that he deplored Virginia cigarettes, though he smoked stronger cigarettes early in his youth and at least once later. I was a proofreader for Paul Reid’s Defender of the Realm 1940-1965, the third volume of The Last Lion. In it I found the first reference to Churchill smoking cigarettes.

Paul cited a comment by Jock Colville from 1943, after WSC had met with Turkish President İnönü. Despite mutual cordiality, İnönü had refused to enter the war. Colville found WSC puffing a Turkish cigarette—the only time he’d ever been seen with with one. Gesticulating with it, Churchill said, “It’s the only thing I ever got from the Turks.”

Further reading

Michael McMenamin, “The Myth of Churchill and Alcohol: A Distortion of the Record,” 2018. This is the most comprehensive article I have encountered on the subject. Next to the Bengal Famine, it draws the most reader comment on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

“The Alcohol Question—Again,” 2011.

“Churchill the Drunk. Or: Fasten Seatbelts on Bar Stools,” 2022.

“Memo to Peggy Noonan: Churchill Was Not a Drunk,” 2019.

“Churchill’s Magnanimity: Stanley Baldwin,” 2021.

Q: Who coined the a half-breed insult?

Didn’t one or more of Churchill’s detractors use this slur to criticize him? Google is no help. Surely you know? —S.B., Cleveland

A: Rab Butler

My colleague Michael McMenamin summarizes the answer to your question:

In his controversial book, A Republic, Not an Empire, American news commentator Pat Buchanan joined with England’s John Charmley to argue that it would have been better for Britain to make an honorable peace with Germany in 1940….

Charmley…attributes it to Churchill’s rhetorical skills and concludes with negative references to WSC’s “theatricality” [by Alexander Cadogan] and his “disorderly mind” [by Lord Halifax]. He repeats “Rab” Butler’s view of Churchill as “the greatest adventurer of modern political history,” Lord Hankey’s description of him as “a rogue elephant,” and John Colville’s memorable “half-breed American.”

“Winston and his rabble”

John Colville was quoting Richard Austin “Rab” Butler, then on the Foreign Policy Committee. He initially shared Butler’s doubts. His view on 10 May 1940 is worth quoting in full, since many elite Conservatives shared it:

7.15 PM: Alec [Douglas-Home, Lord Dunglass] and I went over to the Foreign Office to explain the position to Rab, and there, with Chips [Channon] we drank in champagne the health of “The King Over the Water” (not King Leopold, but Mr. Chamberlain).

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 had tried earnestly and long to persuade Halifax to accept the Premiership, but he had failed.

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, American dissidents like Lady Astor and Ronnie Tree.

A civil servant, Colville was then assigned to the new prime minister, though three days later his opinion hadn’t changed: “I spent the day in a bright blue new suit from the Fifty-Shilling Tailors, cheap and sensational looking, which I felt was appropriate to the new Government.”

Some opinion changed

Yet even then, Colville was beginning to soften. “It must be admitted,” he wrote in his diary, “that Winston’s administration, with all its faults, has drive; and men like Duff Cooper, Eden, Lord Lloyd and Herbert Morrison should be able to get things done.”

Churchill made Butler President of the Board of Education, his first cabinet-level position, on 20 July 1941—only to wax apoplectic when he found Butler had been in touch with the Swedes about a possible truce with Hitler. Historian Andrew Roberts believes it was Butler who kept Lord Halifax open to a compromise peace long after the Cabinet had backed Churchill’s determination to fight on. Yet he kept Butler on until 1945.

Churchill insiders tended to look upon Butler as an opportunist with no particular loyalties. Speaking in 1985, WSC’s last private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne, was typical. Relating Butler’s “half-breed” comment, he referred to Rab as someone “who was later to achieve great prominence in this country, but in my view no true fame.”

“The Respectable Tendency”

Michael McMenamin, in his and Curt Zoller’s seminal book on Churchill and Bourke Cockran, reflected again on Churchill’s reputation among what Andrew Roberts called “the Respectable Tendency” of the Conservative Party. The Tories who disdained Churchill were similar to those American aristocrats who disparaged Theodore Roosevelt:

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, explaining why her father disliked Churchill, takes on added significance: “Because they were so alike.” Which indeed they were: well-known writers before they were politicians, impulsive risk takers, soldiers and accomplished speakers. One was called a “cowboy” by his detractors, the other a “half-breed American.” Both eventually held their country’s highest office and each was a Nobel Prize winner—giants of their time.

“Mettle”

The historian Graham Stewart summarizes the High Tory attitude toward Churchill as he replaced Chamberlain—just in time, as it happened—in May 1940. Commenting on Butler, Dunglass and Channon drinking the health of the deposed Chamberlain, Stewart writes:

The cousin of the Duke of Marlborough, Churchill had a better claim to being aristocratic than many of those who affected to look down on him. Dunglass would inherit an earldom, but Butler was primarily wealthy because he had married into the Courtauld family, the same path that Channon—a half-breed American—had taken into the Guinness family.

So it went for a few weeks after Churchill took over. The more fair-minded among the Respectable Tendency eventually changed their minds. Some of the others never quite did. The former saw in Churchill a quality he himself cited when asked for the most important characteristic of a statesman: “Mettle.”

Related reading

“The Respectable Tendency and the New PM, 1940-2019,” 2019.

“Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took as Good as He Gave,” 2024.

“Winston Churchill on Peace with Hitler,” 2023.

“Churchill’s Consistency: ‘Politics before Country,” Part 1 of a two-part article, 2021.

“Barbara Leaming’s Churchill Defiant: Still the Best on Churchill Postwar,” 2022.

Q: Origins of the Lalique rooster

Many visitors to Chartwell admire the René Lalique crystal cockerel, which resides in the drawing room. It belonged to Clementine Churchill from the 1940s.

The story of its provenance is very strong, since it was a personal gift from Charles de Gaulle, likely in the Second World War era. What little we know is based on Celia Sandys’ description (in Churchill’s Little Redhead). There doesn’t appear as yet to be any textual record in the Cambridge Archives, and I’ve not yet found it mentioned elsewhere in print. Were there any other mentions? —Eugene McConlough, England (Mr. McConlough is a Chartwell docent)

A: De Gaulle’s apologia

René Jules Lalique (1860-1945) was a French jeweler known for his crystal and glass art, from diminutive perfume bottles to chandeliers. Uniquely, Lalique glass sculpture also served as motorcar bonnet mascots (hood ornaments).

As an automotive writer in another life, I am familiar with Lalique’s work on classic luxury cars of the Twenties and Thirties. Of course in that application, it usually comprises only the rooster’s head. The Lalique cockerel at Chartwell is the whole bird—large, complete, and unusually posed with his feathers folded.

The cockerel is the symbol of France—thus often Lalique’s subject. There is no doubt, as you say, that Chartwell’s was a gift to Clementine Churchill from Charles de Gaulle. Katherine Carter, the National Trust administrator, kindly provided the photo above, showing its location in the drawing room.

Celia Sandys, and the guidebook Churchill at Chartwell by Robin Fedden, both mention the Lalique bird. But there another important reference that sheds light on the loyalty and character of Clementine Churchill.

Clementine Churchill, 1979

According to Lady Churchill’s daughter and biographer, the Lalique cockerel symbolized Gaulle’s regard for Clementine. This blossomed after a wartime argument. At Winston Churchill’s personal decision, Britain destroyed large elements of the French fleet at Mers el-Kebir. The object was to prevent their falling into German hands. Mary Soames writes:

On 3rd July [1940],  the Royal Navy opened fire on the French Fleet; three battleships were destroyed, with the loss of 1300 lives, and the remaining French ships at Oran and in other North African ports were either destroyed or immobilised.

It must have been just at the time of these searing events—the painfulness of which no one felt more keenly than Winston himself—that General de Gaulle lunched at Downing Street. The conversation turned to the future of the French Fleet, and Clementine said how ardently she hoped that many of its ships and crews would carry on the fight with us.

To this the General curtly replied that, in his view, what would really give the French Fleet satisfaction would be to turn their guns “On you!” (meaning the British).

Clementine from the first had liked and respected this dour man, but she found this remark too much to bear and, rounding on him, she rebuked him soundly, in her perfect, rather formal French, for uttering words and sentiments that ill became either an ally or a guest in this country.

“Certain things a woman can say…”

From the other side of the table Winston sensed that something had gone amiss and, in a conciliatory tone, said to the General: “You must forgive my wife. Elle parle trop bien le français [She speaks French too well].”

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 the next day he sent a huge basket of flowers for Clementine. Later on in the war he was to give her a beautiful Lalique cock—the emblem of France—which she greatly treasured.

“The Constable of France”

Surely whenever Churchill looked upon the glass bird, he must have remembered his many ups and downs with the great Frenchman. Yet their mutual respect survived. WSC wrote memorably in his war memoirs:

On the afternoon of June 16 [1940] M. Monnet and General de Gaulle visited me in the Cabinet Room…. [Monnet] turned to our sending all our remaining fighter air squadrons to share in the final battle in France, which was of course already over…. But I could not do anything to oblige him in this field.

My two French visitors then got up and moved towards the door, Monnet leading. As they reached it, de Gaulle, who had hitherto scarcely uttered a single word, turned back, and, taking two or three paces towards me, said in English: “I think you are quite right.”

Under an impassive, imperturbable demeanour he seemed to me to have a remarkable capacity for feeling pain. I preserved the impression, in contact with this very tall, phlegmatic man: “Here is the Constable of France.”

Related articles

Diana Cooper, “Duckling, Wormwood and the War,” 2024.

“Dieu Protège La France,” 2015.

“Churchill’s War Memoirs: Aside from the Story, Simply Great Writing,” 2023.

”Casablanca, Admiral Darlan, and Rick’s Letters of Transit,” 2021.

“Churchill on Joan of Arc: Agent of Brexit? Maybe Not,” 2020.

“Origins of the de Gaulle Quote, “I’ll Kiss Him on All Four Cheeks,” 2019.

Q: Smuggling Lenin

I listened to Larry Arnn and Hugh Hewitt in the Hillsdale Dialogue on Churchill’s The World Crisis, Part 25. I was shocked to hear that Germany instigated or engineered the Bolshevik Revolution by sending Vladimir Ilyich Lenin like a plague virus into Russia. Did I hear this correctly? What reading do you recommend on the subject? —J.P., Arkansas

A: A “mad, wild-eyed scheme”

Dr. Arnn is quite right: The Imperial German government purposely allowed Lenin to pass through occupied territory to Finland, en route to Russia Mitch Williamson, in Weapons and Warfare, provided a good summary:

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had found a safe refuge in Switzerland, where he continued to coordinate the underground activities of his small Bolshevik Party…. Contact was reduced to occasional courier messages and coded telegrams. So he was stuck, seething with frustration as the hated Czarist government collapsed in March 1917….

Finally, he struck on a plan that had a certain surreal quality to it…. Meeting with the German minister in Bern, Lenin laid out his proposal…that Germany would provide transport across their country and help to smuggle him into Finland. From there he would go into Russia, raise a revolution, seize control of the government, and pull Russia out of the war, freeing Germany to turn its full power to the Western Front.

The German minister in Bern, along with his intelligence advisors, must have had a difficult time concealing his grin of amusement over this mad, wild-eyed scheme…. Nevertheless the decision was made to approve it. At the very least it would provide a bit of consternation for the Western Allies, who were terrified that Russia might bail out of the war and it might even help to trigger further revolts in the Russian army, which was already disintegrating in the confusion resulting from the overthrow of the Czar.

For reference I recommend Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, volume 4, World in Torment 1916-1922 (Hillsdale College Press, 2008). Also, Sir Martin’s one-volume work, Churchill: A Life (1991, just reissued), adds details not in his biographic volumes.

“A culture of typhoid”

The plan was authorized by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. In a sealed railway car, Lenin and eighteen cohorts traveled over German-occupied or neutral territory to Helsinki. From Vyborg, then on the Finnish side of the border, they entered Russia. Lenin arrived in Petrograd on 16 April 1917. Churchill completes the story:

Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or of cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it 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.

Ten years later in The Aftermath, Churchill sharpened his analogy:

Full allowance must be made for the desperate stakes to which the German war leaders were already committed…. Nevertheless it was with a sense of awe that they turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.

Poet of Marxism

No less a wordsmith than Churchill could better describe what happened. In a few short months, the obscure dissident became master of the new Soviet state:

Lenin was to Karl Marx what Omar was to Mahomet. He translated faith into acts. He devised the practical methods by which the Marxian theories could be applied in his own time…invented the Communist plan of campaign…gave the signal and he led the attack.

Implacable vengeance, rising from a frozen pity in a tranquil, sensible, matter-of-fact, good-humoured integument! His weapon logic; his mood opportunist; his sympathies cold and wide as the Arctic Ocean; his hatreds tight as the hangman’s noose. His purpose to save the world: his method to blow it up. Absolute principles, but readiness to change them.

Apt at once to kill or learn: dooms and afterthoughts: ruffianism and philanthropy. But a good husband; a gentle guest; happy, his biographers assure us, to wash up the dishes or dandle the baby; as mildly amused to stalk a capercailzie as to butcher an Emperor.

“The Grand Repudiator”

His old colleague Sir Colin Coote thought Churchill privately respected Lenin, believing that had he lived, Russia’s fate might have been different. This indeed was suggested in The Aftermath. Lenin, WSC writes,

repudiated God, King, Country, morals, treaties, debts, rents, interest, the laws and customs of centuries, all contracts written or implied, the whole structure—such as it is—of human society. In the end he repudiated himself.

He repudiated the Communist system…. proclaimed the New Economic Policy and recognized private trade. He repudiated what he had slaughtered so many for not believing…and how great is the man who acknowledges his mistake! Back again to wash the dishes and give the child a sweetmeat. Thence once more to the rescue of mankind….

When the subtle acids he had secreted ate through the physical texture of his brain, Lenin mowed the ground…. His body lingered for a space to mock the vanished soul. It is still preserved in pickle for the curiosity of the Moscow public and for the consolation of the faithful.

Lenin’s intellect failed at the moment when its destructive force was exhausted, and when sovereign remedial functions were its quest. He alone could have led Russia into the enchanted quagmire; he alone could have found the way back to the causeway. He saw; he turned; he perished. The strong illuminant that guided him was cut off at the moment when he had turned resolutely for home. The Russian people were left floundering in the bog. Their worst misfortune was his birth: their next worst—his death.

Was Churchill right?

“Plague bacillus” is a chilling description, and Churchill’s view has been contested by historians. John Charmley quoted Lloyd George’s remark that Churchill’s “ducal blood revolted at the wholesale slaughter of Grand Dukes” in Russia. But Charmley also thought that

Churchill’s instincts were perhaps sounder than the legions of the good and the great who imagined that there was necessarily some relationship between Communist rhetoric and practice….

Churchill’s description of [Lenin] is certainly a trifle overblown: “His mind was a remarkable instrument. When its light shone it revealed the whole world, its history, its sorrows, its stupidities, its shams, and above all its wrongs.” But it is hard to quarrel with [Churchill’s] comment that “in the cutting off of the lives of men and women, no Asiatic conqueror, not Tamerlane, not Jengiz Khan, can match his fame.”

The revolution stirred some of Churchill’s deepest instincts: his sense of history was touched by the fall of an ancient empire; the repudiation of treaties by the Bolsheviks and their withdrawal from the war aroused his indignation at treachery, whilst the overthrow of established authority affronted his deeply conservative sense of social order.

Second thoughts

Dr. Charmley offers a fair assessment, but there is one adjunct worth adding. It illustrates a lifetime Churchillian characteristic: magnanimity.

In March 1918, to Allied consternation, Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, taking Russia out of the war. A month later, Churchill and Lloyd George were in France, pondering with the French how to bring Russia back in. In 1991 Martin Gilbert revealed WSC’s astounding proposal:

Churchill felt that if the former American President, Theodore Roosevelt, who was then in Paris, or the former French Minister of War, Albert Thomas, “were with [Soviet Military Commissar Leon] Trotsky at the inevitable moment when war is again declared between Germany and Russia, a rallying point might be created sufficiently prominent for all Russians to fix their gaze upon.

“Some general formula, such as ‘safeguarding the permanent fruits of the Revolution,’ might be devised which would render common action possible having regard to the cruel and increasing pressure of the Germans.” The Entente representative might become “an integral part of the Russian Government.”

Sir Martin learned of Churchill’s surprise suggestion after writing the Official Biography. Though WSC made it long before he learned of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s later depredations, it was still remarkable. Yet it was not atypical of Churchill’s attitude.

“I first revealed this in the late 1980s, to a roomful of Soviet dignitaries at a Moscow lecture,” Sir Martin told me. “You could have heard a pin drop.”

Related reading

“The Zinoviev Letter and the Red Scare, 1924: Was Churchill Involved?” 2024.

“Zionism, Bolshevism, and Enemies of Civilization: What Churchill Said,” 2021.

“Churchill, Henry Ford and Sidney Reilly: Anti-Bolshevik Collaborators?” 2022.

“Churchill and the White Russians: The Russian Civil War, 1919,” 2019.

The revolving door bust belongs to the British Embassy. It has twice resided on loan in the Oval Office. Ipso facto, it has twice returned to the Embassy. It is now making its third visit to the White House. Perhaps it should hang on a Zip line between the two buildings to convenience the spirit of the moment.

Whenever the Epstein makes a trip back or forth, the media explodes in speculation. Does this signify the end [renewal] of the Anglo-American Special Relationship? Is it a gesture of disdain [admiration] by the new president? Does this mean there won’t [will] be a trade deal between America and the post-Brexit United Kingdom?

There is much ignorance and confusion over this subject. So here is the latest revision of a story that began in 2009, was amended in 2017 and 2021, and needs amending again.

Tale of two busts

It is necessary to explain that there is more than one Epstein bust. The renowned sculptor cast eight or ten from his original mold. Naturally, they are highly prized. One is at Windsor Castle, another at Blenheim. A few are in private hands. I sold one myself to a collector in Connecticut when I was a Churchill bookseller.

(Epstein himself lived opposite the Churchills in Hyde Park Gate, London. Puttering in his garden, he took delight in answering visitors’ questions about his neighbors: “People thought I was the gardener.”)

Epstein #1: in the White House since 1965

There has been a Jacob Epstein bust of Sir Winston in the Executive Mansion since 1965. It was presented to the Johnson White House by wartime friends of WSC led by Averell Harriman.

This is “Epstein #1,” distinguished by a brass plaque, normally displayed outside the Treaty Room near the family quarters. Angela Baker provided a detailed history of this first Epstein in 2021.

This bust is frequently confused with a second Epstein (see below). In 2009, critics complained that Mr. Obama had replaced it with a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. He responded that had just changed its location, outside the Treaty Room near his private quarters.

Thus President Obama passed Epstein #1 every time he entered the Treaty Room on his way to watch a basketball game. So it can hardly be asserted that he was determined to rid the house of Churchill images.  Indeed, he made a point of showing Epstein #1 to Prime Minister David Cameron on his visit to the White House. (See photo above.) In describing this bust and his daily encounters with it, Obama said of Sir Winston, “I love the guy.”

Epstein #2: the revolving door bust

After 9/11, the British Embassy loaned President George W. Bush its own Epstein Churchill bust as a gesture of solidarity. It is, of course, identical to other Epsteins. The only difference from Epstein #1 is that its plinth bears a white-on-black, not a brass, plaque.

In 2009, before Mr. Obama arrived, Epstein #2 was returned to the Embassy. It was not returned specifically by Obama, although he received blame. There are stories that he rejected the image out of hatred toward the former prime minister, British colonialism, or something. This is incorrect. If he felt that way. he would not have kept Epstein #1 on prominent display upstairs.

In 2017 President Trump asked the Embassy to loan back the second bust—let’s call it “Epstein #2″—which had adorned the Oval Office under George W. Bush (2001-09). Pending its arrival, Trump temporarily moved Epstein #1 downstairs from its previous position outside the Treaty Room. When Epstein #2 arrived from the Embassy, Epstein #1 went back upstairs.

Epstein #2 is on loan

James Barbour, British Embassy press secretary, explained: Epstein #2 was “lent to the George W. Bush Administration from the UK’s government art collection, for the duration of the presidency.” White House curator William Allman said in 2010 that the decision to return Epstein #2 had been made before Mr. Obama arrived. “It was already scheduled to go back.”

It is true that the incoming Obama administration was offered Epstein #2 on extended loan out of courtesy, but wanted to make room for a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. They might well have known the White House had another Epstein Churchill already. Trump did not remove the King bust when he brought back Epstein #2. “I would never do that,” he said, “because I have great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King.”

Now in 2024, the Daily Mail reported:

The bronze bust was removed by “woke” Joe Biden when he defeated Trump in 2020 and was replaced by one of Hispanic union leader Cesar Chavez. Trump, a self-professed Anglophile whose mother was Scottish, has described the wartime leader as his “idol” and called the Oscar-winning 2017 film Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Churchill, “my favourite film ever.” Last night a source close to Trump said: “One of the first things he will do is bring the Churchill bust back into the Oval Office as a mark of respect. Donald idolises Churchill and believes he’s the greatest leader the world has ever seen. He will restore him to a position of honour.”

All this may be accurate but the Mail seems not to realize that Epsstein #1 has been there all along.

Teapot tempest

I greeted the 2009 return of Epstein #2 to the British Embassy with facts, then with reductio ad absurdum. The Obama White House, I reported, had more Churchilliana than the Bush White House, since Epstein #2 was replaced with Winston S. Churchill, Martin Gilbert’s majestic biography, which weighs almost as much and takes up more space.

In 2012, journalist Jake Tapper blasted out the fact that Epstein #1 had been there all along. Tapper wrote: “How did I figure out what was really going on? I never gave in—never, never, never, never. In nothing great or small, large or petty.” Very droll, Jake.

Some modest proposals…

Now that Epstein #2 is going back on loan to the Oval Office, another kerfuffle has arisen on predictable lines. On which, a few observations:

1) Together with the Official Biography, presented to President Obama by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the White House is brimming with Churchilliana. Churchill admirers must regard this as a fine thing.

2) As to its alleged symbolism for the Anglo-American Special Relationship, I recommend a rather broader perspective offered a few years ago by the American Embassy in London. Click here and scroll to the video.

Totems of their choice

While Churchillians are glad to see WSC’s bust in the Oval Office, all presidents have the right to the totems of their choice. A correspondent with whom I rarely agree about anything hit the nail on the head when he cited Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson in one of the flag salute cases in 1943:

Related articles

“President Obama and the Churchill Bust-Out,” 2009.

“More Obama and the Churchill Bust,” 2009.

“The Great Oval Office Bust Swap,” 2017.

Q: Was there a Churchill-Diesel relationship?

A Hillsdale colleague refers us to an excellent 2023 book, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, by Douglas Brunt…

Diesel vanished from the steamship Dresden while crossing from Belgium to England on 29 September 1913. Theories on the cause include accident, suicide or murder. On the eve of the Great War, the German government was anxious to maintain its progress on Diesel propulsion.

Douglas Brunt speculates that Diesel was being wooed or recruited as an asset of the British government, in particular by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. He offers no documentary proof, but points to a great degree of circumstantial evidence. Churchill’s incentive may have arisen from British problems developing Diesel engines for submarines. Obviously it would be a great advantage to have the inventor’s services.

A: Inconclusive

Douglas Brunt makes a good case for Diesel being murdered or thrown overboard by German agents, presumably to keep his talents from falling into British hands. We consulted our sources, including every word of Churchill’s in print or archived. There are forty hits for “Diesel.” A few testify to British anxiety that the Germans would steal a march with Diesel propulsion of military vessels or vehicles.

We found only one reference involving Churchill, by the historian R.W. Thompson in 1963. It concerns Churchill’s initial activities as First Lord of Admiralty after his appointment in October 1911. From The Yankee Marlborough (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1963), 164:

Churchill, now with the aid of Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, laid down two keels to one in competition with the Germans. It was not only a question of ships, but of types of ships, of propulsion and fuel, of armament, of the development of submarines and a naval air arm.

Rudolf Diesel had probably revolutionised propulsion, and with that coal, and even oil, might become obsolete. The internal combustion engine might rule the world, and the old “steam” empires were in a new race which might be dominated by science and technology.

It was an unpleasant thought. A constant stream of new and unknown factors, and problems of obsolescence, were constantly hampering the planners of weapons and strategy in a manner previously unknown, and undreamt of.

“Why Coal Must Go”

Jacky Fisher, the retired Admiral whom Churchill brought back as his First Sea Lord in 1914, was the driving force behind the Royal Navy’s conversion from coal- to oil-fired warships. But Fisher was also a proponent of internal combustion engines (including Diesels) for smaller craft.

On 4 October 1912, when Churchill was actively courting Fisher to take charge of oil conversion project. the Admiral wrote a memorandum: “A New Navy: Why Coal Must Go, Why the Internal Combustion Engine is Vital.” Sent to Churchill, it is a characteristic example of Fisher’s fervent prose

The enclosed, written for some of our faltering colleagues, may amuse you. Don’t send it to the Daily Mail. It’s written currente calamo as you will observe. On Nov. 26, 1910, every newspaper in America reported at length my words that the nation which first adopted Internal Combustion Propulsion would sweep the board commercially as well as pugnaciously!….

The British Admiralty is going to see a German battle-cruiser going round the Earth without refuelling in eighteen months from now, and all our wonderful marine engineers are simply servile copyists of a damned skunk called Diesel! And we haven’t got a workman or a metallurgist who is capable to produce anything approaching the foreign article.

I am going to become a naturalized Jew and go to Palestine as I think the end of the world must be near and the last trump begins there and I want to get in first somewhere!”

Archival resources

The Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge holds several Fisher-Churchill letters on coal-oil conversion. None, however, mention Rudolf Diesel—not surprising if his help was being sought surreptitiously.

There is no doubt that British naval thinkers were concerned that Germany might be first with Diesel-propelled submarines. The engine was also ideal for Churchill’s idea of  “land caterpillars” (tanks). But we found no evidence of Churchill’s interest in Rudolf Diesel himself.

It is known that 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.

Diesel links

Douglas Brunt interview about his book by Charles C.W. Cooke, 2023.

“‘OMG’: Churchillian Origins of the Popular Texter’s Phrase,” 2023.

“Dardanelles Straits, 1915: Success Has a Thousand Fathers,” 2024.

Marcus Frost, “Churchill’s ‘Landship’: The Tank,” 2016.

Christopher H. Sterling and Richard M. Langworth, Review of Barry Gough’s Churchill and Fisher: Titans of the Admiralty, 2018.

I‘m working on an article and need to know: (1) Into how many languages were Churchill’s Second World War memoirs translated? (2) Into how many languages was his 1959 abridged one-volume edition translated? —G.A., Bilbao, Spain

(Updated from 2012.) According to Ronald I. Cohen’s Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill (London: Continuum, 2006, 3 vols., I: 729-30), The Second World War was translated into nineteen languages: Czech, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Not all of these comprised 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.

On the one-volume abridged edition (1959), Mr. Cohen lists eight translations: Arabic, Catalan, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Slovene.

Official histories

Does Great Britain have an official History of the Second World War, like the American “Green Books”? Where might I find them?  —L.L., Raleigh, N.C.

Yes: several specialized multi-volume series, under the umbrella title History of the Second World War, were published by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office). Since 2006, HMSO has been part of the Office of Public Sector Information within the British National Archives, formerly the Public Records Office.

There are five sub-series, for example, Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War (five volumes, 1970). Other series were Military, Civil, Intelligence and Medical. HMSO also published individual collections of papers and documents.

The scope is colossal. For example, the Military Series alone comprises thirty-two volumes. There are nine groupings: Grand Strategy, The War at Sea, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, Home Defence, Victory in the West, The War Against Japan, Mediterranean and Middle East, and Civil Affairs & Military Government. Some of these also appeared as abridged one-volume editions.

There are disclaimers in the volumes stating that the opinions are those of the authors. Their quality varied, and some were controversial. Captain Stephen Roskill, who wrote all three volumes of The War at Sea, was one of Churchill’s strongest critics. Books were subsequently published by pro-Churchill naval authorities which disputed Roskill’s conclusions.

You can search for individual titles on Bookfinder, but major libraries should have them; they may also have been digitalized.

Related reading

“Winston Churchill’s World War Accounts: History or Memoirs?,” 2023

”Churchill and the Avoidable War: Book Outline,” 2017.

“Hillsdale College Acquires Cohen Churchill Recordings Collection,” 2018.

“Churchill’s War Memoirs: Aside from the Story, Simply Great Writing,” 20223.

“Grand Alliance: A Way Out of the Second World War?” 2021.

Please send me some book recommendations on Churchill’s life for young readers. By young, I mean a boy of seven years old. My nephew asked me about the book I was reading (Churchill: The Unexpected Hero by Paul Addison), and after I told him a little about it, he wanted to know more. I’d appreciate any recommendations. —R.M., Mass. (Updated from 2009.)

Paul Addison’s Churchill: The Unexpected Hero is probably the best “brief life” in print. If your nephew was into that at seven,  he was far advanced. There are several other fairly short but excellent books of Addison’s quality, but they may be a shade advanced for readers so young. Among them, for the record:

Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Photographic Portrait
Douglas Russell, Winston Churchill: Soldier
Mary Soames, A Churchill Family Album—photo documentary

Number one for young readers

Fiona Reynoldson, Leading Lives: Winston Churchill. London: Heinemann Library “Leading Lives” series, 2001, 64 pp. hardbound, illustrated, later reprinted in paperback (currently more expensive on Amazon). Search also Bookfinder for clean used copies.

Targeted at the young (ages 8-15), now a quarter century old, this 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 other volumes, but Reynoldson’s Churchill is a masterpiece.

So much wisdom is attractively wedged into sixty-four pages! There’s a quality laminated cover; color throughout, including excellent photographs, cartoons, and posters. Sir Winston receives twenty brief chapters, including a summary, “Churchill’s Legacy.” There is an events timeline, a list of key people, good maps, a page showing how British government works, sources for further reading, a glossary and an index.

The glossary is one of this book’s fine features. Every time a word or phrase pops up that might be unfamiliar to young eyes—Nobel Prize, Boer War, Abdication, Home Secretary, VC, Bolshevik, DSO, Gold Standard, Home Rule, etc.—it is bold faced and referenced in a three-page appendix. This is not haphazard. There are over sixty entries, and every explanation is simple and accurate. It’s a wonder why more books for the young don’t offer this.

Sidebars that teach

Another special aspect is the set of sidebars that pace the story. These are carefully placed, written in precise English, and explain exactly what Churchill did and why. And Reynoldson is never wrong. Take his speech impediment, often misrepresented as a stutter. Reynoldson writes:

Churchill came home on leave in 1897 and went to see a doctor in London about his lisp. He pronounced ‘s’ as ‘sh.’ Nothing was found to be wrong, but the lisp never went away. Despite this, he made his first political speech during his leave and later became a great orator [glossary link] in the House of Commons.”

Perfect. Other sidebars offer rare insights to Churchill’s character. Take his letter to his wife in February 1945:

[M]y heart is saddened by the tales of the masses of German women and children flying along the roads…before the advancing armies…. The misery of the whole world appalls me, and I fear increasingly that new struggles may arise out of those we are successfully ending.

How well this dispels popular slander about how Churchill instituted and even enjoyed firebombing civilians.

The author delivers unadulterated, factual information. As with any good journalist, you have no idea how she feels personally about her subject. She deals in facts: entertainingly, even eloquently.

Writing a compact book, especially for the young, on a complicated subject is hard work. You must know what to highlight, what to jettison. To choose the right subjects, to represent them deftly, is a great achievement. Fiona Reynoldson’s young readers will develop their own perceptions of Churchill—thoroughly grounded in the education she provides. We should all buy five copies of this book and get them into the hands of schools, libraries and young people of promise.

Best for ages 12-18

John Severance, Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman, Artist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Clarion Books, 1996, 144 pp. hardbound, illustrated, $19.95 used from Amazon. Search also Bookfinder for clean used copies.

This one is even older, but bears mentioning. The first we heard of it was when Lady Soames remarked that someone had finally done her father justice in a book for young people. Soldier, Statesman, Artist was, she said, “intelligently written and beautifully printed.” Certainly the public must agree, for it was in print for more than a decade. Happily, copies are still available.

The target audience is older than Reynoldson’s. Like her book, there are no new revelations. Severance sets out to explain Churchill and his times to young people who have not heard much about them in school. Like Reynoldson, he acquaints non-British readers with how Parliament works. His tidy prose covers all the “great contemporaries”—Lloyd George, Stalin, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Hitler—and what they did.

Good writing iaccompanies elegant book design: fine type, artwork and photos that are not “old chestnuts. Admirably there is an index, a bibliography and an appendix sampling of “Winston’s Wit.”

There is a small rash of errors, not engendered by malice, ignorance, or conspiracy theories. The book is too short to give much attention to episodic excitements like the charge at Omdurman, the escape from the Boers, Armistice Day or 10 May 1940. Severance has a different tactic in mind.

Myth busting

He focuses on and demolishes numerous myths. For example, he notes that Churchill sent policemen, not troops, to pacify the strikers in Tonypandy. Facts are pounded in: Churchill inspired but did not invent the tank. The Dardanelles campaign was conceptually brilliant and ruined by incompetent execution. Churchill opposed the India Act, but sent Gandhi encouragement when it passed. WSC clung to office in the Fifties only because he thought he might be able to save the peace. Not the kind of thing young people tend to hear a lot.

On the wartime “spheres of influence” agreement with Stalin, over which Churchill’s detractors consistently fulminate, Severance has a point worth considering—and not just by young people: “Perhaps Churchill thought this was the only sort of plan Stalin would understand and accept.” Got it in one.

Some day we may have a Prime Minister or a President who as a youth was inspired by one of these books. Fiona Reynoldson and John Severance have done history as well as Churchill a great favor. Everyone who appreciates the great man is in their debt.

The Eagle’s cartoon biography

Clifford Makins, The Happy Warrior: The Life Story of Sir Winston Churchill as Told Through Great Britain’s Eagle Comic of the 1950s. Delray Beach, Fla.: Levenger Press, 2008, 64 pp. hardbound, illustrated, with commentary by RML, $29.95 new from Amazon.

Levenger, the well-known purveyor of bookman’s accessories, was for a time in the publishing business. Their excellent editor, Mim Harrison, took an interest in Churchill, publishing The Making of the Finest Hour in 2006. This book, on how Churchill wrote his most famous speech, contained contributions by WSC’s late grandson Winston and me. Ms. Harrison then asked me to write a commentary for the Happy Warrior biography, which they were republishing.

David Freeman described this as a “graphic novel, in the argot of today’s youth.” Its origins were as a serialized Churchill biography in The Eagle, a comic magazine for boys. Published separately by Hulton Press in 1958, the story line was by Clifford Makins, with lifelike illustrations by Frank Bellamy.

The Levenger Happy Warrior  was of much finer production quality. Despite its plebeian origins as a cartoon series, it is an accurate account of Churchill’s life up to his retirement as Prime Minister in 1955. Bellamy’s illustrations of people are remarkably true to life, and the dialogue (invented, most of it) is believable. Levenger’s production assured that the quality of reproduction was far superior to the original.  The Happy Warrior is still available. It first sold for $39, but Amazon now sells new copies for $29.95.

Related reading

“A Sun That Never Sets: Churchill’s Autobiography My Early Life,” 2018.

“Myths and Heresies: Firebombing the Black Forest,” 2024.

“Paul Addison 1943-2020: What Matters is the Truth,” 2020.

“Churchill’s Escape from the Boers, 1899,” 2019.

“Winston S. Churchill 1940-2010: A Remembrance,” 2010.

Q: What was it?

The Atlantic Charter was issued by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in August 1941. “We had the idea,” Churchill later told Parliament, “to give all peoples, and especially the oppressed and conquered peoples, a simple, rough and ready wartime statement of the goal towards which the British Commonwealth and the United States mean to make their way, and thus make a way for others to march with them….”

A reader asks if the Charter had a second iteration:

In your review of Cita Stelzer’s Churchill’s American Network, you link Martin Gilbert’s 2005 lecture on Churchill and America. In it, Sir Martin said: “One of the documents which I’ve never seen reproduced…was the Declaration of Principles which Churchill and Eisenhower signed in the White House.” Was this, as he hinted, a second Atlantic Charter?

A: “Perhaps—perhaps not”

Sir Martin was quoting, actually paraphrasing, Churchill’s description of the charter he signed with Eisenhower in 1954. He correctly said it was never published. Finding it proved a challenge.

Sir Martin’s book Churchill and America references the Eisenhower Papers at Johns Hopkins University. The university library could not find it. They referred me to the Eisenhower Library, which did not reply. (Some libraries seem to have difficulties even answering queries about materials in their care.)

Repeated online searches eventually produced the text. Back in 2005, Sir Martin wished that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair publish the “Second Charter” as a gesture of solidarity during the Iraq war.

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project met Sir Martin’s wish that the “charter” be published, albeit on its seventieth anniversary. The wording certainly bears the imprint of Sir Winston.

Washington, 29 June 1954

As we terminate our conversations on subjects of mutual and world interest, we again declare that: 

(1) In intimate comradeship, we will continue our united efforts to secure world peace based upon the principles of the Atlantic Charter, which we reaffirm. 

(2) We, together and individually, continue to hold out the hand of friendship to any and all nations, which by solemn pledge and confirming deeds show themselves desirous of participating in a just and fair peace.

(3) We uphold the principle of self-government and will earnestly strive by every peaceful means to secure the independence of all countries whose peoples desire and are capable of sustaining an independent existence. We welcome the processes of development, where still needed, that lead toward that goal. As regards formerly sovereign states now in bondage, we will not be a party to any arrangement or treaty which would confirm or prolong their unwilling subordination. In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to insure they are conducted fairly.

*

(4) We believe that the cause of world peace would be advanced by general and drastic reduction under effective safeguards of world armaments of all classes and kinds. It will be our persevering resolve to promote conditions in which the prodigious nuclear forces now in human hands can be used to enrich and not to destroy mankind. 

(5) 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.           

(6) We shall, with our friends, develop and maintain the spiritual, economic and military strength necessary to pursue these purposes effectively. In pursuit of this purpose we will seek every means of promoting the fuller and freer interchange among us of goods and services which will benefit all participants.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston S. Churchill 

Self-government, self-determination

In the original Atlantic Charter, Churchill had been careful to distinguish self-government from self-determination. Britain and the U.S. agreed to “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.”

Churchill’s hand was again evident in the 1954 declaration, with its closely similar wording: “We uphold the principle of self-government…the independence of all countries whose peoples desire and are capable of sustaining an independent existence.” They welcomed “the processes of development, where still needed, that lead toward that goal.” (Italics mine.)

The British Empire was much diminished by 1954. But this wording preserved a certain flexibility for Britain over the colonies that remained. In the years which followed, under Churchill’s successors, colony after British colony became independent. Most evolved peaceably, and with far less strife than colonies of other empires. Today many are members of the useful, if sadly underutilized, Commonwealth of Nations.

“Rough-and-ready”

Churchill glossed over minor semantics in his report to Parliament. The statement, he said, was only “a declaration of our basic unity.” Angl0-American unity, he continued, was “the strongest hope that all mankind may survive in freedom and justice.

This was virtually the same meaning Churchill had attached to the 1941 Atlantic Charter: “A simple, rough-and-ready” statement by which Britain and America “mean to make their way.”

In retrospect

Was the 1954 Washington declaration a second Atlantic Charter? Probably not, writes Roosevelt-Churchill scholar Warren Kimball: “I’m a bit dubious about ordaining that statement, since it apparently attracted little attention and had no effect on history.”

Indeed, Churchill’s bright hopes for a “new charter” were quickly dashed. The Prime Minister was at sea, returning to England. There he dashed off a telegram to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, suggesting a high-level meeting with the Russians—absent Eisenhower.

Churchill informed Eisenhower, furious that he had not been consulted. ‘‘You did not let any grass grow under your feet,” he fired back. Back in London, the Cabinet was “even more indignant.” The Prime Minister had not consulted them, either.

Though the President later insisted he was “not vexed,” he wanted no Soviet summit. Privately, later, Eisenhower voiced the concern that “Winston would give away the store.”

Churchill’s initiative came to nothing. “I cherish hopes not illusions,” he replied. “And after all I am ‘an expendable’ and very ready to be one in so great a cause.”

In April 1955, convinced at last that he could not foster “a meeting at the summit,” Churchill resigned.

Three months later his successor and Eisenhower met with the Russians in Geneva.

Related reading

“Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing, After All Other Possibilities are Exhausted,” 2021.

“Researching the Atlantic Charter Conference, Argentia, Newfoundland, August 1941,” 2019.

“Bull in a China Shop (Dulles): Not Churchill’s Line,” 2022.

“Churchillian Phrases: ‘Special Relationship’ and ‘Iron Curtain,’” 2019.

“Cita Stelzer on the Angl0-American Special Relationship,” 2024.

Q: Russians and Greeks

I’m studying Churchill’s The World Crisis, Volume 2, 1915, describing the naval assault on the Dardanelles. It occurs in Chapter 9: “The Fall of the Outer Forts and the Second Greek Offer.”

After the successful naval bombardment of the Turkish outer forts in February 1915, Churchill felt close to gaining the support of the Greeks. His plans fell apart when “the Russian Government would not at any price accept the cooperation of Greece in the Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) expedition”*

What problem did Czar Nicholas II have with Greece?  What did the Russians see as a threat, which caused them to take this position? —J.D.

*Quotations are from Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 2, 1915 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), and the modern paperback (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pages 201-04.

A: “Quos Deus vult perdere…”

You cite a poignant episode in The World Crisis. In early 1915, the hitherto neutral Greeks became interested in  joining the Triple Entente against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Churchill’s actions demonstrate two of his lifelong goals: coalitions and collective security.

Czar Nicholas’ refusal of aid from the Greeks when victory seemed possible poses an example of what Winston Churchill frequently described as “falling below the level of events.” WSC did not conceal his distress that a supreme opportunity was thrown away:

The time-honoured quotation one learnt as a schoolboy, “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat” [Those whom God wills to destroy He first makes mad], resounded in all its deep significance…. This was, indeed, the kind of situation for which such terrible sentences had been framed—perhaps it was for this very situation that this sentence had been prophetically reserved.

Military alliances in 1914. Italy (part of the 1882 Triple Alliance) ultimately joined the war against the Central Powers in May 1915. (Map by Historicair, Futeflute and Bibi Saint-Pol, Creative Commons)

“Before the end of April”

Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, while sympathetic to France and Britain, had refused to join them in the war until the naval assault on the Dardanelles in early 1915. This produced what Churchill calls “an immediate change.” Venizelos now proposed sending three Greek divisions to invade Turkey on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Churchill’s fertile imagination conjured up a stunning vision:

There was surely a reasonable prospect that with all these forces playing their respective parts in a general scheme, the Gallipoli Peninsula could even now have been seized and Constantinople taken before the end of April….

One must pause, and with the tragic knowledge of after days dwell upon this astounding situation which had been produced swiftly, easily, surely, by a comparatively small naval enterprise directed at a vital nerve-centre of the world.

The Czar’s veto

Two days later “a terrible fatality intervened.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Saznonov reported that Czar Nicholas II “could not in any circumstances consent to Greek cooperation in the Dardanelles.”

Russia, which had long coveted Constantinople, had welcomed the Dardanelles operation. But Russia saw Greece as a rival for the spoils. Suppose the Greeks joined in occupying the Turkish metropolis? The Russians would never allow Greek King Constantine to appear in Constantinople.

Desperately, Churchill and Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey sought to save the opportunity. Suppose the Greeks were limited to one division? Suppose Constantine promised not to go to Constantinople? Affronted, the King “relapsed into his previous attitude of hostile reserve.”

Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Churchill wrote, Czar Nicholas remained adamant:

Russia—failing, reeling backward under the German hammer, with her munitions running short, cut off from her allies—Russia was the Power which ruptured irretrievably this brilliant and decisive combination….

Was there no finger to write upon the wall, was there no ancestral spirit to conjure up before this unfortunate Prince, the downfall of his House, the ruin of his people—the bloody cellar of Ekaterinburg?

(Churchill refers to the murder of the Czar and his family by the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.)

Alliances denied

The refusal of Nicholas II to see the larger picture and make the necessary compromises astonished Churchill. Always a proponent of collective security, he could not believe the Czar would throw away such a glittering prospect. Churchill believed even more was at stake. He was sure that victory over Turkey could bring Romania and Bulgaria into a “Balkan Front” against the Germans.

Once the Dardanelles fleet turned back on March 18th, and after the failure to take Gallipoli in succeeding months, the Bulgars weighed their options. In October Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and invaded Serbia. (The term “Prussians of the Balkans,” as Churchill famously labeled the Serbs, was originally applied—disparagingly—to the Bulgarians by Russian Chancellor Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky in 1903.)

Bulgaria’s actions finally brought the Greeks into the Entente, but never with full-fledged zeal. Constantine’s royalists continued to favor Germany, and he and Venizelos sparred, alternately in and out of power, until the King’s death in 1923.

Churchill’s lament

The Greek and Russian imbroglio flew against all Churchill’s instincts to build coalitions. On 6 March 1915—with Dardanelles prospects still promising—he drafted a letter to Sir Edward Grey:

I beseech you at this crisis not to make a mistake in falling below the level of events. Half-hearted measures will ruin all, and a million men will die through the prolongation of the war. You must be bold and violent. You have a right to be. Our fleet is forcing the Dardanelles. No armies can reach Constantinople but those which we invite, yet we seek nothing here but the victory of the common cause.

Tell the Russians that we will meet them in a generous and sympathetic spirit about Constantinople…. If Russia prevents Greece helping, I will do my utmost to oppose her having Constantinople. She is a broken power but for our aid, and has no resource open but to turn traitor—and this she cannot do. If you don’t back up this Greece—the Greece of Venizelos—you will have another which will cleave to Germany.

“Mortal folly done and said”

Churchill decided to sleep on his draft. It proved a wise decision. Morning bought a “laconic telegram” from Athens: “The King having refused to agree to M. Venizelos’ proposals, the Cabinet have resigned.” Churchill’s most powerful Greek ally was temporarily out of the picture.

Churchill published his letter in The World Crisis—“not in any reproach of Sir Edward Grey or the Foreign Office. They felt as we did. They did all in their power. But I print it because it registers a terrible moment in the long struggle to save Russia from her foes and from herself.”

“Mortal folly done and said,” Churchill frequently quoted Housman— “And the lovely way that led To the slime pit and the mire And the everlasting fire.”

Thank-you for your question. It is an example of the myopia of nations and leaders who cannot see the way to their own salvation through concerted action. And it is not so unfamiliar today, as we are often reminded on the evening news. It makes one wonder—as Churchill did—what might happen “if God wearied of mankind.”

Related reading

“Dardanelles Straits, 1915: ‘Success has a Thousand Fathers,” 2024.

“Gallipoli Peninsula, 1915: “Failure is an Orphan,” 2024.

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

“Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges,” 2009.

“Lenin as Plague Bacillus, Churchill as Munitions Minister,” 2024.

***

A British historian contacted three Churchill authors–Amthony Seldon, Andrew Roberts and me–about Ivor Roberts-Jones’s Churchill statue in Parliament Square. It features in a forthcoming book on 100 famous UK monuments. “Is it true that Churchill personally selected the site?”

We all expressed our doubts, despite one contrary piece of evidence. Philip Howard, in The Times of 2 November 1973, reported after the unveiling of the statue:

In the 1950s, David Eccles, then Minister of Works, showed Churchill plans for the redevelopment of Parliament Square. Churchill drew a circle in the north-east corner and declared: “That is where my statue will go.”

We were not sure this is dispositive. Told a statue was planned, WSC might have casually proposed its place. But he was not particularly avid about statuary. Once, asked if he’d like one in London, he said he would much prefer his name on a park that East End children could play in. Seventy years later, we are still waiting for the park.

Asked for more comment, I responded to questions, which may be of passing interest. The new book—which I think is a grand idea—focuses on war commemorations. It is not about the recent culture wars, in which the London statue has been variously defaced by ignorant people who haven’t read enough history.

The commemorative function of statues is appropriate, given the ignorance that surrounds them. The advent of social media combines anonymity with the ability to reach millions with one injudicious click. On this and the Hillsdale Churchill website, we notice that 90% of our cogent, polite reader comments are signed by real people, while the vulgar or nasty ones are unsigned, except by pseudonyms. One American pundit who accepts replies always says: “Name and town if you wish to opine.”

Questions and answers

Are you British or American, and what inspired your professional and personal interest in Churchill?

American, born in Rye, New York with three immigrant grandparents, German, Italian and a smidge of Latvian. My interest began while watching the 1965 State Funeral on a flickering B&W telly. Having studied history, it occurred that this was somebody I should learn more about. I picked up The Gathering Storm, Churchill’s first volume of war memoirs, and was hooked. Above everything else he did, what a superlative writer! He is a model to scribblers. We follow meekly in his wake.

What is the perception of Churchill in America is today? Do most young people know who he is?  Recently a U.S. conspiracy theorist went viral with a denigration of Churchill. Was this proof of WSC’s ongoing relevance?

Historically, he will always be relevant. Yet a recent survey suggested that some appalling percentage of British schoolchildren think he was a fictional character. I fear the figure would be higher among Americans. History isn’t taught as it should be any more, which is why we need books on monuments, like yours.

Among those who know who Churchill was, impressions remain overwhelmingly positive, but shallow. It’s mostly the Second World War: blood, toil, tears and sweat. That includes, sadly, most politicians who profess to admire him. While books about him continue to pour off the presses, nowadays they tend to be either highly specialized (Mr. Churchill in the White House) or some off-the-wall demolition job, like Churchill’s Secret War.

The leader and the man

I am struck that you historians were all surprised by the idea that Churchill might have self-selected his spot in Parliament Square. Is there a danger that his subsequent popularity in the late Twentieth Century (when we started obsessively to commemorate the war) distorted our idea of him as person and leader? How would you sum up the leader and the man?

All three of us knew that he was not big on totems, though like anyone who has done great things, not averse to them! His wish for a park instead of a statue is I think more revealing than his spontaneous mark on a development plan.

You are quite right—our obsession with the war (and the many misinterpretations of it) has distorted his record. When asked to summarize him, I always quote Sir Martin Gilbert, who described Churchill in one sentence:

“He was a great humanitarian who was himself distressed that the accidents of history gave him his greatest power at a time when everything had to be focused on defending the country from destruction, rather than achieving his goals of a fairer society.”

“Liberty itself”

For a little more detail, consider Sir Martin’s last words in the Official Biography:

Churchill was indeed a noble spirit, sustained in his long life by a faith in the capacity of man to live in peace, to seek prosperity, and to ward off threats and dangers by his own exertions. His love of country, his sense of fair play, his hopes for the human race, were matched by formidable powers of work and thought, vision and foresight. His path had often been dogged by controversy, disappointment and abuse, but these had never deflected him from his sense of duty and his faith in the British people….

From his daughter Mary had come words of solace…when at last his life’s great impulses were fading. “In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving, generous father,’ she wrote, ‘I owe you what every Englishman, woman and child does—Liberty itself.”

The London statue

Do you think the statue captures the essence of Churchill?  Standing in his greatcoat, at what stage in his life does the statue depict? Is Britain still at war?

It is not widely known that the existing statue was not the first proposal. Back in 1995, as editor of Finest Hour, I ran a cover photo of Roberts-Jones’s first bronze maquette, in Garter robes, which had come up for sale. It had actually been approved by the Royal Fine Arts Commission when Lady Churchill asked that the statue be in military uniform. Her daughter Lady Soames confirmed this to me. The greatcoat is perfect—not redolent of any one branch of the military.

Of course Lady Churchill was right. As her husband said, “Nothing surpasses 1940.” His grandson Winston thought, with some justification, that his warnings of the late 1930s were his true finest hours. But Lady Churchill knew he had to appear as the great wartime figure.

I think Ivor Roberts-Jones gave him the perfect expression as he gazes at Parliament. In his eerie short story, The Dream, about conversing with the ghost of his father, Lord Randolph mentions the House of Commons. His son wrote: “There was a sort of glare in his eyes as he said ‘House of Commons.’” (You can read this marvelous flight of fancy on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website.)

“To err on the side of history’s defaulters”

How important are statues like Churchill’s in terms of telling a nation’s story? We also have one of de Gaulle in London, Churchill’s nemesis in many ways (after which Paris erected one of Churchill!)

Ah, Le Grand Charles. Brendan Bracken said, “Remember, Winston…he thinks of himself as the reincarnation of St. Joan.” WSC replied, “Yes, but my bishops won’t burn him!”

Yet in the end each of these two imposing figures respected and honored the other. De Gaulle gave Churchill the Ordre de la Libération, and attended his funeral. In a message to his widow, de Gaulle wrote: “In the great drama, he was the greatest.” And Churchill in his war memoirs called de Gaulle “the Constable of France.”

This is a quality we seem to be losing: “To err on the side of history’s defaulters,” in the words of the great Allen Guelzo. Heroes are what they are because the good they did far outweighs their faults. All those statues on Parliament Square are of people with human faults. Gandhi fought for Indian rights in South Africa but thought blacks “live like animals” and wanted whites to stay in charge. And yet, he was Gandhi—and on balance, a hero.

During the craze to tear down statues a few years ago, French President Macron boldly announced that no French statues would go. They are part of France’s heritage, he said—for good or ill. That was very courageous of him. Statues tell a nation’s story. If you object to one, erect one to balance it. Hillsdale College has no statue of Robert E. Lee—but we do have one of Frederick Douglass. There is no hiding from history.

“Eels get used to skinning…”

It is impossible to know, but what do you imagine Churchill’s response would be to acquiring a grass Mohican, red paint, etc.? Could one argue that iconoclasm is a sign of true national greatness? Would he see it like that?

His daughter impressed me with what I call The Mary Soames Commandment: “Thou shalt not proclaim what Papa would say about any modern issue. After all, how do you know?”

So we cannot say. Still, he did love critical caricatures of him, even bought and framed some. In his 1931 essay “Cartoons and Cartoonists” he wrote:

Just as eels are supposed to get used to skinning, so politicians get used to being caricatured.…If we must confess it, they are quite offended and downcast when the cartoons stop.… They fear old age and obsolescence are creeping upon them. They murmur: “We are not mauled and maltreated as we used to be. The great days are ended.”

Related reading

“Allen Guelzo on Robert E. Lee: ‘To Err on the Side of  History’s Defaulters,'” 2021.

“‘Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone’…JFK, Winston Churchill,” 2023.

“Foreword to a Review of ‘The Racial Consquences of Mr. Churchill,'” 2021

“In Defense of Churchill: Questions and Answers,” 2021.

“Churchill’s Legacy Today: Undented in the Digital Age,” 2023.

The following article, from 2009 and updated in 2023, is republished only to alert readers that six originals of the notorious facsimile thank-you notes have now surfaced! For the details, scroll to “Addendum: the originals” below.

Don’t fall for them…

…those multiple Churchill thank-you letters, each of which is a carefully made facsimile. “The ultimate thrift shop haul,” headlined the Daily Mail. “Budget shopper is left STUNNED after buying a ‘priceless’ handwritten letter signed by Winston Churchill for just $1—after finding it buried in a New York store.”

I kept waiting for the shoe to drop on this story—but the Mail apparently believe it’s true. The letter is a facsimile, one of thousands, worth perhaps $50 if nicely framed. Apparently some are still being taken in. (Updated from 2019.)

“Signed Holograph Letter…

…by the British Prime Minister, on debossed House of Commons Notepaper, thanking a well-wisher for a kind message on his birthday, 1947. Folded once, slightly yellowed from age, otherwise a fine copy. $1200.”

This was an actual offer on the Internet, but the honest seller, alerted by an observer, conscientiously withdrew the item.

More than one collector has been taken in by these remarkable facsimile holograph notes, produced by Churchill’s Private Office from 1945 through at least 1959—some of them so convincing that casual observers swear they are originals.

Facsimile Reproductions

From 1945, at least nine variations of replica holograph notes were reproduced in quantity to thank well-wishers, whose congratulations poured in on Churchill’s birthday and other occasions. They are very well produced and appear original. They were made by a “spirit duplicator,” commonly known as a Roneo machine—similar to, but producing better quality than, a mimeograph. Early examples actually use Churchill’s blue-black ink, though they are not color separations, as I previously suspected. In any case, they are not originals and were not signed by Churchill personally.

The key to identifying a facsimile is its lack of a salutation (“My dear X”). Secretaries would simply place them in envelopes and post them by the hundreds to anyone who sent Churchill a token of respect. The value of these facsimiles on the market is incidental. A true autograph letter by Churchill is, of course, worth much more.

Origins

The first-known facsimile, dated 1945, acknowledged congratulations following V-E Day and sympathies after Churchill’s party’s defeat in the 1945 General Election. In November that year, Churchill’s birthday was the signal for well-wishers to send cards, letters and gifts. But this was not the end, or even the beginning of the end.

From the time Churchill was thrown out of office in 1945 almost until the end of his days, letters, cards and gifts flowed in. They attested to the esteem people all over the world held for him. So from time to time, his Private Office made him sit down with his big fountain pen and ink a note—sans salutation, sometimes dated, sometimes not. The original was reproduced on the Renograph and then destroyed. Run off by the thousands, they were popped into the post. Write to Sir Winston, and chances were good you would get a “handwritten” reply!

Recollection

A former bodyguard, Ronald Golding, told me: “The deluge would start in November and continue through New Year’s. It came in great sacks, delivered daily.” The boss sat down again and drafted a note for his 76th birthday in 1950. After he became Prime Minister again, the birthday greetings reached a crescendo. By then the Private Office decided not to date the thank-you note so that it could be used again the following year. The print on this and later notes is plain black ink.

For his 80th birthday in 1954, Sir Winston received many official gifts on behalf of Parliament and the Nation. This required a new facsimile note. It used light airmail paper, since many congratulations came from abroad.

After Churchill retired in 1955, the Private Office adopted Chartwell notepaper. Sir Winston’s signature was shakier by now, and 1959 may be the last time he penned one for reproduction. Sometimes the notes accompanied unsigned books.

High quality

The spirit duplicator produced convincing facsimiles, especially in the early days. The intensity of the dark blue ink varied with nib pressure, as it does normally. Churchill’s signature usually bears his characteristic flourish, and looks genuine. Of course it was—in the original prototype.

In the beginning, secretaries would often type the name and sometimes the address of the recipient at the bottom of each facsimile note. But soon the workload prevented this modest personalization. Through 1950, most notes bore an embossed House of Commons seal. When Churchill returned to office in 1951 they adopted a printed 10 Downing Street letterhead. After he retired, the heading was Chartwell, Westerham, Kent. After his hand became shaky,  his private office reprinted previous notes, deleting the dates.

Values

A note to an individual, with salutation, entirely in Churchill’s own hand, is worth four figures or more, depending on the recipient. To someone like Lloyd George or Neville Chamberlain, the value would be very high; one to Franklin Roosevelt, assuming any escaped the archives, would be priceless.

But the printed facsimile notes should not command more than $50 or so on todays market. They are nice little items, fun to frame, but by no means rare.

Addendum: the originals!

I often wondered what happened to the originals penned by Churchill, long thinking they were destroyed. Not quite! We now know that at least six survive.

In September 2024 I heard from the owners of six original holograph notes Churchill wrote for reproduction. They were passed down to the granddaughter of Frank Rimell, manager of W. Straker Ltd, a printers and stationers, Ludgate Hill, London.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Strakers reproduced Churchill’s thank-you notes. At leasat six originals still exist, on embosssed House of Commons notepaper. Written between 1946 and 1950, and willed to Mr. Rimell’s heirs, they reside in the original document wallet where Frank Rimell carefully preserved them. Any reader with interest may contact me, and I will forward your message to the present owners.

Q: Where did Churchill get his V-sign?

A: Unknown, but it was a great prop

The “crow foot” peace symbol predates Churchill’s V-sign by four or five centuries. Its 20th Century form was popularized by Picasso in the World Peace Conferences of the 1950s. There it was alleged to represent the Christian cross upside down and broken, the symbol of a Communist peace.

Whether this is true or has any relation to Churchill’s “salute” the reader will have to judge. Wikipedia has an interesting discussion. The “crow foot” was later adopted in Britain by the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.

I’m not sure where Churchill picked up his V-sign, but he certainly popularized it during the Second World War. And most often, he got it right—flashing the V-sign palm-out.

According to members of his family and colleagues, he was completely oblivious to the alternate meaning. That occurs when you flash the V-sign palm-in. (See photo at top!)

The derisive alternative

The V-sign when made palm facing in is equivalent in Britain to the “one-finger salute” in America.

The late actor Robert Hardy was an expert on the history of archery and was sure of the V-sign’s origins. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French promised to cut off the index and middle finger of Henry V’s English archers. They lost, and the captured French prisoners were paraded before King Harry’s bowmen. The latter flashed their intact middle fingers at the vanquished French as a gesture of disdain. That insult has persisted in England and other places ever since.

It is virtually certain that Churchill was unconscious of the meaning of the palm-in V-sign, when on occasion he used it. Former secretary Elizabeth Layton Nel told me he was “astonished” when (with some embarrassment) she told him what it meant. This moment is humorously reenacted in the great film Darkest Hour, with Gary Oldman as WSC and Lily James as Elizabeth.

Related reading

“The Pool of England: How Henry V Inspired Churchill’s Words,” 2019.

“‘Tim’—In Memory of Timothy Robert Hardy,” 2017.

“Downing Street Annexe and Secretary Elizabeth Nel,” 2020.

“‘Then Out Spake Brave Horatius’: A Review of Darkest Hour,” 2018.

Q: Is it real?

I have a first American edition of Churchill’s Boer war book, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (New York: Longmans Green, 1900, later part of the combined volume The Boer War). On the inside cover is a label with a signature of Winston Churchill.Do you think that it is an original or a signatures label printed in quantities?

The first line reads, “duly Inscribed” and the signature looks like his (suitably aged ink), but I have never encountered “duly Inscribed” on another book signed by Churchill. However, since this is a card obviously pasted in, I suppose it’s possible. —L.C., Quebec, Canada

A: Likely, yes

The pen used had a broader nib than the ones Churchill favored. Of course it might have belonged to someone who handed it to him to inscribe. I believe it’s Churchill’s handwriting, but from a much later date. In 1900 his signature was less expansive than it became in later years, and this looks more like post-1930.

What catches the eye is the “duly Inscribed,” a notation I’ve never before encountered among signatures in his books. However, it seems innocent enough. Told it was for a book, he might have felt it appropriate to “duly inscribe” the label for the owner.

From your photo it looks suitably aged and seems to have been there a long time. Inscribed books or photographs with the signatures pasted in or added to the matte are sometimes encountered. They are not, of course, as valuable as books the author personally inscribed, particularly when he named the recipient.

I doubt this is something that was printed in quantities, like the well-known printed holograph thank-you notes. I cannot tell for certain from a photo that it’s written in ink, although it seems to be.

Q: Printed signatures

I recently acquired a copy of Painting as a Pastime, reprinted 1965.  Across  from the title page is the memorable photo of Mr. Churchill at an easel.   Under this photo is his signature.  The signature seems authentic, but I am not an expert and am unsure.  For this edition, is there a  signature printed under the photo?  —W.R., Seattle

A: A typical example

Yes; it’s a printed signature, present in every copy of the book. When Churchill actually signed copies, it would usually be on the first free endpaper, or occasionally on the title page.

Painting as a Pastime, Churchill’s charming essay on his chief hobby. (He had other hobbies—he was also big on books and bricks.) The essay was first published in The Strand magazine in 1921. Reprinted in Thoughts and Adventures, it was first published as a volume in its own right in 1948. It has nothing whatever to do with war or politics, and everything to do with having fun. Numerous reprints make it readily available.

For lovers of his paintings, the complete catalogue is  Sir Winston Churchill’s Life through His Paintings and Churchill: The Artist and His Paintings (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003). This documents all 550+ paintings, traces their whereabouts, and pictures most of them in full color. I also recommend Paul Rafferty’s masterful Churchill Painting on the French Riviera (London: Unicorn Publishing, 2020). See link below.

Related articles

“Don’t Fall for Them! Facsimile Churchill Holograph Signatures,” 2023.

“A ‘Paintacious’ Masterpiece: Paul Rafferty on Churchill’s Riviera Art,” 2021.

“Painting à Deux: Churchill’s and Alexander’s Portraits of Lake Como,” by Paul Rafferty, 2020.

“Provide for Your Library,” 2010.

Q: “How many jibes were aimed at Churchill?”

Charles Legge, the Daily Mail Q&A editor, was asked by a reader: “Entire books celebrate Winston Churchill’s insults, but what jibes were directed at him?” Mr. Legge offered a classic, delivered by Lord Haldane, a portly colleague given to witty rejoinders (below). Daily Mail readers added two more. Surely Churchill picked up many more jibes than this. Is there a list? —N.D., Camp Hill, Penna.

A: Incoming! 

No, but you prompt us to create one. Churchill, of course, received as good as he gave. For the most part, he took jibes sent his way good-naturedly, sometimes repeating them himself.

In compiling this list, we were struck by the good humor of many critics. Relatively few expressed real malice—Samuel Hoare and Aneurin Bevan being exceptions. (Rab Butler’s nasty aside when Churchill became prime minister quickly subsided when he saw opportunities and was given a Cabinet ministry.) Some were delivered with, or for, laughs. A few evidenced affection. It was another world, when decorum was expected— and prevailed.

Readers are welcome to add to this list in the comments box. Please provide the source (Hansard or book, author and page) and the most exact date available. Thanks for many of the following jibes to Richard Cohen, Andrew Roberts, Dave Turrell, William John Shepherd, Charles Legge  and Daily Mail correspondents Peter Gilbert and Dave Taylor.

Archie MacLaren

1888: “He’s quite useless and a snotty little b****r.”

Leopold Maxse

June 1904: “Churchill’s attitude cannot surprise since he is himself half-alien and wholly undesirable.”

F.E. Smith Lord Birkenhead

1918: “When Winston is right, he is unique. When he’s wrong—Oh My God.”

1920: “I finally come to the Dundee Advertiser. I mean the paper, not the politician.”

Arthur Balfour

1923: “I am immersed in Winston’s magnificent autobiography [The World Crisis], disguised as a history of the universe.”

Samuel Hoare

1923: “Winston has written an enormous book all about himself and calls it The World Crisis.”

1 June 1934:  “I do not know which is the more offensive or more mischievous, Winston or his son. Rumour, however, goes that they fight like cats with each other and chiefly agree in the prodigious amount of champagne that each of them drinks each night.”

Richard Haldane

1920s: [WSC, prodding Haldane’s ample belly: “What’s in there?”] Haldane: “If it is a boy, I shall call him John. If it is a girl, I shall call her Mary. But if it is only wind, I shall call it Winston.”

Philip Snowden

Ca. 1928: “I understand that Winston has taken up a new pastime—fiddling, and very appropriate, too.”

Herbert Samuel

May 1935: “[T]he House always crowds in to hear him. It listens and admires. It laughs when he would have it laugh, and it trembles when he would have it tremble—which is very frequently in these days; but it remains unconvinced, and in the end, it votes against him.”

Leopold Amery

June 1935: “Here endeth the last chapter of the Book of Jeremiah.”

Adolf Hitler

6 November 1935: “If Mr. Churchill had less to do with traitors and more with Germans, he would see how mad his talk is, for I can assure this man, who seems to live on the moon, that there are no forces in Germany opposed to the regime.”

Stanley Baldwin

22 May 1936: “When Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle bearing gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability—and then came a fairy who said, ‘No one person has a right to so many gifts,’ picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgment and wisdom. And that is why, while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.”

Neville Chamberlain

4 April 1939: “It doesn’t make things easier to be badgered for a meeting of Parliament by the two Oppositions and Winston who is the worst of the lot, telephoning almost every hour of the day. I suppose he has prepared a terrific oration which he wants to let off.”

Rab Butler

10 May 1940: “This is a black day in England’s history. We have been given into the hands of a drunken adventurer with all the worst characteristics of Charles James Fox…. A half-breed American whose main support is that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type, American dissidents like Lady Astor and Ronnie Tree.

James Maxton

10 May 1940: “I am getting more and more fatalist—it was written in the book of fate, say, perhaps on the battlefield of Blenheim or someplace, that he would one day be prime minister…. But frankly, I cannot see the wonderful motive power that has been produced by the transference of the relative positions of the two Rt. Hon. Gentlemen opposite [Churchill and Chamberlain].”

Franklin Roosevelt

1940s: “Winston has a hundred ideas a day and four of them are good.”

Aneurin Bevan

2 July 1942: “The Prime Minister wins Debate after Debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights Debates like a war and the war like a Debate.”

9 September 1942: “[His speech indulged] in these turgid, wordy, dull, prosaic and almost invariably empty new chapters in his book…. The Prime Minister was dressed in some uniform of some sort or other. I wish he would recognise that he is the civilian head of a civilian Government, and not go parading around in ridiculous uniforms.”

13 July 1945: “[For Churchill], democracy is a state in which the people acquiesce in the rule of property. Democracy is an admirable institution so long as the poor continue to carry the rich on their backs. When the poor decide to change places, democracy falls into disrepute. That is why, whenever you scratch a Tory, you find a Fascist.”

Ezra Pound

1945: “Winston believes in the maximum of injustice enforced with the maximum of brutality.”

Joseph Stalin

14 March 1946: “Mr. Churchill is now in the position of a war-monger…strikingly reminiscent of Hitler… also with a racial theory…. [He says:] ’Recognize our supremacy over you, voluntarily, and all will be well—otherwise war is inevitable.’ [We will not] change the rule of the Hitlers for the rule of the Churchills.”

Clementine Churchill

No date: “Winston is a sporting man; he always likes to give the train a chance to get away.”

Related articles

“‘Drunk and Ugly’: The Perennial Quotation Chase,” 2022.

“Gotcher in the Nye: Churchill, Bevan and the National Health Service,” 2024.

“Churchill, Roosevelt and the 1941 Washington Press Conference,” 2021.

“No Cards, No Flowers: Churchill on the Death of Stalin,” 2021.

“Bring a Friend—If You Have One: Shaw and Churchill,” 2020.

Question: Did Churchill abandon Poland?

The Anglo-Polish Alliance was signed on 25 August 1939 but was tentatively agreed to as early as 31 March 1939: The British would come to Poland’s aid in the event that they were invaded by a foreign power. No country was named. Britain lived up to her agreement with Poland when Germany invaded. However, in about a fortnight after the German invasion, the Soviet Union invaded Poland and the British did nothing. When the Polish Government asked the British Foreign Office for aid against the Soviets, Foreign Minister Halifax responded that the Anglo-Polish alliance was restricted to Germany.

Winston Churchill became the new Prime Minister on 10 May 1940. The Soviets occupied Poland for nearly two years. Churchill had to know the intent of the Communists, and yet he did nothing. On 22 June 1941 Churchill crawled into bed with Stalin. Where was the statesmanship in that? Of course, you know all these things.

Was Churchill’s fight with Hitler a personal one? He knew that Communism was just as evil as Nazism. He had nearly two years to contemplate what to do about Russia. Churchill had several choices. The best choice would have been to let the Soviet Union and Germany slug it out. We are not talking about hindsight because Churchill had a clear choice then, and time to study his options. The Communists had a much longer history of oppression than the Nazis. —W.S. via email

Answer: Poland before the war

Thank-you for your observations, which are best considered in context of the time. Many factors need to be considered here.

Poland owed her independence to the Allied victory in 1918. Yet the 1938 Polish government was hardly a passive neutral, having joined the Germans and Russians in dismembering Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement.

Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck, who admittedly didn’t expect a German assault on his country, took advantage of the Munich affair. Claiming that the Czechs were mistreating their Polish minority, Poland invaded and seized Teschen, a Czech industrial district with 240,000 people, and three other districts. In Parliament, Churchill was furious:

The British and French Ambassadors visited Colonel Beck, or sought to visit him, the Foreign Minister, in order to ask for some mitigation in the harsh measures being pursued against Czechoslovakia about Teschen. The door was shut in their faces.

The French Ambassador was not even granted an audience and the British Ambassador was given a most curt reply by a political director. The whole matter is described in the Polish Press as a political indiscretion committed by those two Powers, and we are today reading of the success of Colonel Beck’s blow.

I am not forgetting, I must say, that it is less than twenty years ago since British and French bayonets rescued Poland from the bondage of a century and a half. I think it is indeed a sorry episode in the history of that country, for whose freedom and rights so many of us have had warm and long sympathy.¹

Promises kept

In March 1939, Hitler absorbed what had been left of Czechoslovakia after Munich. Realizing now that Germany would never be appeased, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain issued a British guarantee to Poland. “Here was decision at last,” Churchill wrote, “taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground, which must surely lead to the slaughter of tens of millions of people.”²

When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Britain kept her promise to declare war on the aggressor. But the ground was indeed unsatisfactory: British chiefs of staff had earlier informed the Poles (who understood) that there was nothing practical they could do on the Western Front without the French, who did nothing. Poland was defeated in a few weeks. By prearrangement with Hitler, Stalin helped himself to his share. The Second World War was on.

Churchill forever blamed Poland for complicity in Hitler’s designs by Beck’s rapaciousness in Czechoslovakia. He repeated his charges in his war memoirs, causing him trouble with exiled Poles, who published pamphlets attacking what they saw as a small matter compared to the depredations of Nazi Germany.³ In the face of such criticism Churchill waxed philosophic: “There are few virtues the Poles do not possess, and few mistakes that they have ever avoided.”⁴

What we know in hindsight

Did Churchill make the right choice between the Third Reich and Soviet Union? “My thought has always been that Nazism had absolutely no eschatology, and would wither on the vine,” William F. Buckley Jr. once remarked. “Only the life of Hitler kept it going, and I can’t imagine he’d have lasted very long. The Communists hung in there for forty-six years.”⁵

That is arguably true, but we know this in what Churchill called “the afterlight.” Churchill’s attitude was based on the situation as he saw it at the time.

Until 1939, the Russians had not moved beyond their own territory. Long after Poland had been conquered by the Reich, Churchill remained open to an understanding with Moscow. Even though the Russians and Germans had signed a non-aggression pact, he thought it would ultimately clash with Russian national interests.

“Favourable reference to the Devil”

In the event, Hitler took care of that with his invasion of Russia in June 1941. “If Hitler invaded Hell,” Churchill famously cracked, “I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”⁶

With Russia invaded and America still neutral, Churchill was desperate for allies. It was logical to conclude that Germany not Russia was the greater expansionist threat. No one could see far ahead, yet no one worked harder than he for Poland’s independence after the war. No one more admired the valiant Poles who fought with the Allies from 1940 to D-Day and beyond.

Churchill’s many efforts to secure an independent Poland are on record. Sadly, the war ended with Soviet power spread over Eastern Europe. One Russian who grasped what Churchill was trying to do was Ambassador Ivan Maisky. Our review of his diaries may be of interest.

Endnotes

¹ Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), House of Commons, 5 October 1938, in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), VI: 6009-10. For Beck’s view of German intentions see Melchior Wańkowicz, Poklęsce. Prószyński i Spółka (Warsaw 2009), 612.

² WSC, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), 271–72.

³ Studnicki, W., An Open Letter from a Polish Political Writer to Mr. Winston Churchill. (London: privately published, 1948). Kwasniewski, Tadeus, An Open Letter of a Chicago Waiter to Winston Churchill. (Chicago, privately published, 1950), subtitled Let’s Face the Truth, Mr. Churchill. Both writers attacked Churchill’s critique, in The Gathering Storm, of Poland’s participation in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

⁴ WSC, House of Commons, 16 August 1945, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta Books, 2015), 279.

⁵ William F. Buckley Jr. to the author, quoted in “William F. Buckley: A True Churchillian in the End,” 2020.

⁶ WSC, Chequers, 21 June 1941, in Langworth, Churchill by Himself, 276.

Further reading

Connor Daniels, “Why Churchill Allied with Stalin,” 2021.

Warren F. Kimball: “Ghost in the Attic: Churchill, the Soviets and the Special Relationship, 2021, in two parts. Part 1 and Part 2.

Richard M. Langworth, “The Maisky Diaries,” edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky,” 2016.

_____ _____, “Facing the Dictator: Stalin, 1946; Hitler, 1938,” 2021.

Q: Depression

What is the truth about Churchill suffering from depression, which he referred to as his Black Dog”? —A.L. Kansas

A: More smoke than fire

(Updated from 2009.) Churchill himself makes a few early mentions of depression, calling it his “Black Dog.” But the expression is much older than he was. It was frequently used by Victorian nannies, like Churchill’s Mrs. Everest, when their charges were in dark moods. One early reference to depression, aka Black Dog, is in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

When it comes to Churchill’s personal characteristics it is well to rely on family members who knew him best. There are many illuminating references. The best one was by his daughter Lady Soames, who I think had it right:

A lot has been made of depression in his character by psychiatrists who were never in the same room with him. He himself talks of his Black Dog, and he did have times of great depression. But in my opinion, marriage to my mother, and later his discovery of painting, which was a lifelong solace, largely kennelled the Black Dog.

Of course, if you have a Black Dog, it lurks somewhere in your nature and you never quite banish it. But I never saw him disarmed by depression. I’m not talking about the depression of his much later years, because surely that is a sad feature of old age which afflicts a great many people who have led a very active life.

Four Faces and the Man

Lady Soames was referring in particular to psychiatrist Anthony Storr’s chapter in Churchill: Four Faces and the Man, in its time a well-circulated analysis. She believed Storr made far too much of it. She told me once that anybody who was not depressed over some of the events her father went through would not be normal.

From Mary Soames, Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills (1998), page 53: WSC to Clementine Churchill, Home Office, 11 July 1911….

Alice [Guest] interested me a great deal in her talk about her doctor in Germany, who completely cured her depression. I think this man might be useful to me—if my Black Dog returns. He seems quite away from me now. It is such a relief. All the colours came back into the picture. Brightest of all your dear face—my Darling.

Related reading

“Mary Soames Centenary 1922-2022: Remembrance by a Friend,” 2022.

“Lady Soames Diaries,” 2011.

“Churchill Quoting Others: ‘Command the Moment to Remain,'” 2022.

“The Alcohol Question—Again,” 2011.

“Churchill Drank 42,000 Bottles of Champagne?” 2023.

Did Churchill ever make a three word speech, “Never Give Up,” and then just sit down? —A.S., Riga, Latvia

That story is all over the web, constantly repeated. But it is entirely wrong. I think it springs from the many inaccurate “wit and wisdom” quote books.

A: “In” not “up,” and more than three words

The three words (“in” not “up”) were part of Churchill’s 20-minute speech to the boys at Harrow, his old school, when he attended their annual songfest (“Songs”) on 29 October 1941. The full speech is in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches (New York: Bowker, 1974) and in Churchill’s speech volume The Unrelenting Struggle (London: Cassell, Boston: Little Brown, 1942).

The salient portion, from Churchill by Himself, is as follows:

This is the lesson: never give in, never give in…in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy…. Do  not  let  us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These  are  not  dark  days:  these  are  great days—the greatest days our country  has  ever  lived; and  we  must  all  thank God that we have been allowed,  each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

(And, for the umpteenth time, when he said “race” he meant “people.”)

Misreported at Columbia

In 2017 it was incorrectly reported that a three-word speech “never give in” was made at Columbia University, New York in 1946, a fortnight after his famous “Iron Curtain” address at Fulton, Missouri. His speech at Columbia was brief but poignant. It began with words we might well direct at Columbia today:

In my heart there is no abiding hatred for any great race on the surface of the globe. I earnestly hope that there will be no pariah nations after the guilty are fully punished. We have to look forward to a broader, fairer world….

Thus walking forward together, with no aim of subjugation or material profit or sordid interest, marching forward together we may render at this juncture a service to humanity which no countries before have ever had the honour to do.

Q: Did WSC define a “fanatic”?

Can you verify whether or not Churchill said: “A fanatic is someone who won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”?  —T.M., Ontario, Canada

A: Not Churchill

The maxim may well be true (and often applicable), but it is not Churchill’s. From Churchill by Himself, the “Red Herrings” appendix (unattributed quotes):

“Often attributed to Churchill or President Truman. Ralph Keyes, editor, The Quote Verifier, writes: ‘It’s a quotation I see often, but without a source. I doubt that it’s Truman, or, if he ever said it, that the quotation originated with him.’”

More on false Churchill quotes

“All the Quotes Churchill Never Said,” in four parts beginning here, 2018.

“Fake Churchill Calumny: Subsidiary Emissions from the Odd Crater,” 2020.

“Churchillian (Or Yogi Berra) Drift: How Quotations are Invented,” 2013.

“Fake Quotes: Lady Astor and Other Women Nemeses,” 2021.

“A-Z Quotes: A Cornucopia of Things Churchill Never Said,” 2018.

Carlos Marin, “‘Surely Churchill Said That?’ The Expanding Lexicon of the False Quote,” 2021.

Hello, I am the CEO of the Churchill Trust of Australia. I discovered this Churchill quote in your book Churchill: In His Own Words, page 238:

“I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.” WSC to David Lloyd George, 9 December 1918, cited in Langworth, Churchill: In His Own Words.

I understand we have been caught out in the past with Churchill quotes that were misattributed, so I would like to verify this. I wonder if it would be possible for you to provide some further information about its context? —Dr. Rachael Coghlan, CEO, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia, Canberra. A.C.T.

A: Verified, but not to Lloyd George

Dear Dr. Coghlan: Thank-you for writing. Your question is welcome because it uncovers an error in my book. A new, greatly expanded edition will be published by Hillsdale College Press this year—so I will be able to fix this.

The letter was not to Lloyd George but to Richard Lee, whom WSC called an “influential constituent.” He reprinted some of the words in The World Crisis. The complete letter is in Martin Gilbert, editor, The Churchill Documents, vol.  8, War and Aftermath, December 1916 to June 1919 (Hillsdale College Press, 2008). 432-33:

Winston S. Churchill to Richard Lee
(Churchill papers: 5/20)
9 December 1918, Ministry of Munitions

Dear Sir,
I am much obliged to you for your letter of December 6th. If the peace which we are going to make in Europe should lead, as I trust it will, to the​ liberation of captive nationalities, to a reunion of those branches of the same family which have long been arbitrarily divided, and to the drawing of frontiers in broad correspondence with the ethnic masses, it will remove for ever most of the causes of possible wars. And with the removal of the Cause, the Symptom, i.e. armaments, will gradually and naturally subside.

I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.

With regard to Russia, you have only to seek the truth to be assured of the awful forms of anti-democratic tyranny which prevail there, and the appalling social and economic reactions and degenerations which are in progress. The only sure foundation for a State is a Government freely elected by millions of people, and as many millions as possible. It is fatal to swerve from that conception.

Yours very faithfully,
Winston S. Churchill

This brief letter abounds with Churchillian wisdom. Had only we followed it. If only we were following it today….

False Quotes = Red Herrings = Churchillian Drift

There are indeed almost 200 common false attributions (“Churchillian Drift”). All are in my Appendix, “Red Herrings.” The list is now much longer, but I keep it up to date in four pages on my website beginning here.

Canberra, Australia, 7 December 1941

In 1991, on one of our Churchill Tours, we traveled to Australia. (This was something Sir Winston, to his regret, never managed.) Our host at the Memorial Trust of Australia was then-CEO Rear Admiral Ian Richards RAN.

Ian organised a lunch at the Botanical Gardens, a tour of  Parliament House and the outstanding Australian War Museum. We then enjoyed cocktails with U.S. Ambassador and Mrs. (recently the late) Melvin Sembler at the Embassy, and a dinner at the Commonwealth Club.

Mel Sembler told us a droll story. The Embassy, like most in Canberra, takes its style from its home country.  The American complex resembles the Governor’s Palace at Colonial Williamsburg. The then-Ambassador laid the cornerstone on (wait for it)….7 December 1941, amidst the news from Pearl Harbor.

The Ambassador wired Washington: “What do we do now?”

The answer came by return telegram: “Finish building the thing, or the Aussies will think we’re on the run.”

A good story to dine out on….

Related reading

“Australia: National Anthems, Miscellaneous Ramblings,” 2023.

“Churchill Quotations for December 7th,” 2022.

“Western Australian Black Swans Thrive at Chartwell,” 2024.

“Vanishing National Anthems: ‘Advance Australia Fair,'” 2024.

“Churchillian (Or Yogi Berra) Drift,” 2013.