In the News Archives - Page 2 of 28

Nye — Churchill broadcasting on VE-Day, 8 May 1945. On national health he earlier told Lord Moran: “The doctors aren’t going to dictate to the country, they tried that with Lloyd George.” (Imperial War Museum, public domain)

Gotcher in the Nye: Winston Churchill on the National Health

20 March 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Winston Churchill was fighting for national health services when Nye Bevan was still in short pants. After July 1945, national health policy fell to Labour, Robert Colville writes: "In other words, we owe to Bevan not THE National Health Service but THIS National Health Service—the one that turned the existing profusion of provision into something regimented, standardised, centralised and nationalised.... Bevan’s role in persuading America to enter the war is grossly overblown; his enthusiasm for Soviet Russia completely unmentioned. In John Bew’s biography of Attlee, Bevan’s index entry starts with 'tries to undermine Attlee and his supporters,' and goes on from there."

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Vanishing National Anthems: Do We Still Know the Words?

10 March 2024 Comments 1 Comment

There’s always been something faintly concerning to important or fancy people about national anthems. Early on, the disenchantment was relatively trivial. During Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897, Lady Randolph Churchill arranged for a young man with a music box to play God Save the Queen whenever Her Majesty sat down in her Jubilee dress. When she rose, the song stopped, only to recommence when she sat down again. Nowadays, the critics are more frantic, and most lyrics have been forgotten.

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The Churchill Tours, 1983-2008: A Certain Splendid Memory

5 February 2024 Comments 2 Comments

"Garry, check this Churchill tour, and the price. To think that you and we used to deliver two weeks and places these people never heard about for a third the money not so long ago" .... "Richard, just think back to the people we met with Churchill connections who are no longer with us. And in many cases our tours visited their homes. Quite unique when you think about it—in fact impossible to be repeated. We definitely had the best.”

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“At Bladon”: Fifty-nine Years On, Echoes and Memories

30 January 2024 Comments 2 Comments

30 January 1965: "On the way home, my mind was a blank. I tried to say some silent prayers for that brave and generous soul, but they were choked and confused, and came to nothing. I could not mourn for him: he had so clearly and for so long wanted to leave the World. But I was submerged in a wave of aching grief for Britain's precipitous decline, against which he had stood in vain. When I reached our flat in Eaton Place it had been burgled." —Anthony Montague Browne

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Teapot Tempest: DeSantis Misquote Goes Viral

25 January 2024 Comments 1 Comment

Note! This post falls under the title "pedantry." As I said when Politifact asked: Who cares? Many fake Churchill quotes like Governor DeSantis uttered are honorable things for anyone to have said, and Churchill said many things like them. We like to keep the record straight, and we will keep doing the job of verifying. But these are not big questions, of which there are plenty. RML

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Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill and the Holocaust

20 January 2024 Comments 1 Comment

Why so little of the Holocaust in Churchill's war memoirs? There were many reasons. Intelligence restrictions were still in place, war crimes trials were occurring. Churchill had an understandable reluctance to criticize American officials who had blocked his order to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. Churchill was never never one to open a quarrel with allies over the past. Also, as Lady Gilbert pointed out that it wasn't actually known as the Holocaust for years later.

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Latvians — House of the Blackheads, Old Town, Riga, Latvia. (Photo by Jorge Franganillo, Creative Commons)

The New York Times on Those Repressive Lativans

15 January 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"You should have fought them in 1945," the Mayor of Liepaja said. "Think of all the trouble you would have saved yourselves—not to mention us.” As we stood to leave, he pulled up his shirt, showing scars across his stomach. As a boy, he and his mates would visit the barb-wired beaches after curfew, walking backwards into the water to simulate an invasion. He'd been strafed by Soviet guards. How you think about these things often depends on how you grew up.

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Winston Churchill’s Tests of Freedom: Then and Now

10 January 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"These simple, practical tests, are some of the title-deeds on which a new Italy could be founded." Think of the years of experience, thought, and hard political lessons that went into those basic tenets. How Churchill expressed them in only 201 words, mostly of one or two syllables. How little they are thought of today, when we try to describe certain nations as free countries.

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“Churchill and Palestine”: Richmond, California, February 10th

30 December 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill and Palestine had a long association spanning two world wars and thirty years. It began when Arthur Balfour declared Britain's objective of a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine. Almost simultaneously, T.E. Lawrence was promising the Arabs sovereignty over lands in the Middle East ruled for nearly half a millennium by the Turks. A reluctant Britain accepted responsibility for the Mandate of Palestine after the war. East Palestine became Arab-ruled Jordan. West Palestine became the source of conflict that has now lasted over a century.

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Today — Churchill at Harvard, 6 September 1943, with President James Conant. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)

Conant, Churchill, and the Harvard of 1943

15 December 2023 Comments 0 Comments

James Conant was a liberal. He favored admitting women and minorities, and ultimately Harvard did. I don't think he welcomed anti-Semites, although undoubtedly they existed on his campus. He was, above all, devoted to the free exchange of ideas. "Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant and venomous things that are said," as Churchill once remarked. "But on the whole we would rather lump them than do away with it."

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