Category: FAQs

Churchill, Smuts and Apartheid: Questions and Answers

Churchill, Smuts and Apartheid: Questions and Answers

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I read your arti­cle about bust­ing four myths about Win­ston Churchill from The Fed­er­al­ist. Here is an arti­cle I’d like you to read and hear your feed­back: “Apartheid, made in Britain: Richard Dow­den explains how Churchill, Rhodes and Smuts caused black South Africans to lose their rights.” (The Inde­pen­dent, 19 April 1994.)  —David E., Ohio

Accurate, But Not Dispositive

Mr. Dowden’s arti­cle seems to me broad­ly accu­rate, but not dispositive.

It is true that Britain dropped its oppo­si­tion to mak­ing South Africa a “white man’s coun­try” in 1909 by pass­ing the Union of South Africa Act.…

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Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

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Par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Fall of Sin­ga­pore (see ear­li­er post), a new cri­tique of Churchill miss­es the for­est for the trees and fails on the facts. Real­ly, Churchill made lots of mis­takes worth con­tem­plat­ing. But these aren’t among them.

The arti­cle appeared in south­west Australia’s Sun Coast Dai­ly on April 26th. Not exact­ly The Times, and if you don’t sub­scribe to Google Alerts you missed it. For the fun of shoot­ing fish in a bar­rel, how­ev­er, it’s worth a few min­utes of your time.

 

Critique 1: Self-Interest

“Churchill had a long and var­ied career in pol­i­tics, man­ag­ing to swap par­ties as his career needs required.” …

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Thoughts on National Churchill Day 2017: TheQuestion.com

Thoughts on National Churchill Day 2017: TheQuestion.com

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Q: The­Ques­tion tries to pro­vide our read­ers with the most reli­able knowl­edge from experts in var­i­ous fields. As we cel­e­brate Nation­al Churchill Day, April 9th, we would appre­ci­ate your thoughts on three ques­tions. These are cur­rent­ly post­ed with­out respons­es on our web­site: Was Win­ston Churchill real­ly that good an artist? What made him a great leader? What was his great­est achievement?

 

TheQuestion: Churchill as Artist

​Please take a vir­tu­al tour of Hills­dale College’s recent exhi­bi­tion of Churchill paint­ings and arti­facts. Here your read­ers can decide for them­selves. The con­sen­sus among experts, how­ev­er, is that Churchill was a gift­ed ama­teur.…

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racism
Churchill and Racism: Think a Little Deeper

Churchill and Racism: Think a Little Deeper

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Q: Anoth­er new movie, A Unit­ed King­dom,  sad­dles Churchill with racism. It’s the sto­ry of Seretse Khama of the Bechua­na­land roy­al fam­i­ly and heir to the throne. After study­ing in Eng­land, he meets and mar­ries a British woman, Ruth Williams. The South African gov­ern­ment, which is adopt­ing Apartheid, is trou­bled by the inter­ra­cial mar­riage. It press­es the Attlee gov­ern­ment in Britain to exile Khama, which they do. Churchill is not a char­ac­ter in the film, but we are told that he sup­ports Khama and will restore him if Churchill’s par­ty wins the 1951 elec­tion.…

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Cockran: A Great Contemporary

Cockran: A Great Contemporary

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Q: How impor­tant was Con­gress­man Bourke Cockran’s influ­ence on the young Churchill? 

A: Very. The late Curt Zoller was the first to write in depth about Bourke Cock­ran. This man played a vital but lit­tle under­stood role in form­ing young Churchill’s polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. In 1895, Zoller wrote, when young Churchill trav­eled to New York on his way to Cuba,

…he was greet­ed by William Bourke Cock­ran, a New York lawyer, U.S. con­gress­man, friend of his mother’s and of his Amer­i­can rel­a­tives. Winston’s Aunt Clara was mar­ried to More­ton Frewen. (The peri­patet­ic “Mor­tal Ruin” would lat­er bad­ly edit Churchill’s first book, Sto­ry of the Malakand Field Force.)…

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Churchill on the Broadcast

Churchill on the Broadcast

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The ques­tion aris­es, has any­thing been writ­ten on Churchill’s radio tech­nique? Did he treat radio dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er kinds of pub­lic speak­ing? How quick­ly did he take to the broadcast?

“The Art of the Microphone”

An excel­lent piece on this sub­ject was by Richard Dim­ble­by (1913-1965), the BBC’s first war cor­re­spon­dent and lat­er its lead­ing TV news com­men­ta­tor. His “Churchill the Broad­cast­er” is in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by his Con­tem­po­raries (Lon­don: Hutchin­son, 1953). Old as it is, the book remains a com­pre­hen­sive set of essays of the many spe­cial­ized attrib­ut­es of WSC.

Dim­ble­by offers four areas of dis­cus­sion: the tech­ni­cal back­ground, the dra­ma of World War II, the fac­tu­al mate­r­i­al, and Churchill’s meth­ods of delivery.…

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“Boneless Wonder” vs. “Dodgy Dave”

“Boneless Wonder” vs. “Dodgy Dave”

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"I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder.' My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench." —WSC, 1931

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Churchill on Trial: Washington, 1953

Churchill on Trial: Washington, 1953

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In ear­ly 1953, Win­ston Churchill was placed on tri­al by his peers, with Pres­i­dent Tru­man the pre­sid­ing judge, for com­plic­i­ty in the use of atom­ic bombs. To any­one who may write to say that he and Tru­man were mak­ing light of events caus­ing thou­sands of deaths, the answer is twofold: 1) How do you know they were mak­ing light?; and 2) This is in answer to a his­tor­i­cal query. Sources: Clark Clif­ford, rec­ol­lec­tion, to Richard Lang­worth, 1988. Mar­garet Tru­man, “After the Pres­i­den­cy,” in Life, 1 Decem­ber 1972, 69-70. Also record­ed in her book, Har­ry S. Truman.

__________________

Mar­garet Tru­man wrote: “Dur­ing our last weeks in the White House, Prime Min­is­ter Churchill arrived for a vis­it.…

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nonsense
“Amazone.” She’s not Churchill’s yacht and he never owned one.
Churchill Nonsense, Parts #1462-64

Churchill Nonsense, Parts #1462-64

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Nonsense #1462: Yachts

The Irish nov­el­ist George Moore orig­i­nat­ed the tale that Sir Winston’s moth­er Jen­nie, Lady Ran­dolph Churchill, slept with 200 men. Assum­ing she did so, say, between ages 20 and 60, she aver­aged five per year, a ten-week aver­age affair (if she had them one at a time, with a cou­ple days’ break in between). Which is a lot of lovers to main­tain, giv­en the state of Vic­to­ri­an and Edwar­dian locomotion.

How­ev­er ridicu­lous, the claim stuck, and is reg­u­lar­ly trot­ted out and embell­ished on a medi­um poor Jen­nie nev­er antic­i­pat­ed: the Inter­net. It occurs so often because it’s so easy to rat­tle off, and pruri­ent enough to raise a website’s Google Ana­lyt­ics—nev­er mind whether it is even feasible.…

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Avoidable War
Reviews of “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

Reviews of “Churchill and the Avoidable War”

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"I’ve touched on this before: if Hitler had been assassinated in 1937, he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest Germans. If assassinated in late 1941, before the tide began to turn, he would have gone down among Germans as a military genius. Horrible as it is to say or contemplate, it was necessary for him to stay around to the bitter end so that Germans could see what fools he made of them." —Manfred Weidhorn

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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