In the News Archives - Page 27 of 28

Comparisons: American Thinker’s Robert Morrison was Not Thinking

15 May 2011 Comments 2 Comments

In a May 10th piece on the American Thinker website, author Robert Morrison asserts that a) President Obama is no Churchill; b) Hitler, who in 1940 was ready “to parachute 10,000 commandos on London,” was rather scarier than Osama bin Laden; c) Obama, who dislikes Churchill for the torture of his grandfather in Kenya, “tossed” the bust of Churchill from the Oval Office; and d) “spilt his guts” to the media about the OBL operation.

Quoting Churchill’s famous remark that when he became Prime Minister he felt as if he “were walking with destiny,” Morrison writes: “I want my president to have concerns, but not fears.…

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“Alles sal reg kom”: Churchill on the Royal Wedding

29 April 2011 Comments 0 Comments

HOUSE OF COMMONS, 22 OCTOBER 1947— “I am in entire accord with what the Prime Minister has said about Princess Elizabeth and about the qualities which she has already shown, to use his words, ‘of unerring graciousness and understanding and of human simplicity.’ He is indeed right in declaring that these are among the characteristics of the Royal House. I trust that everything that is appropriate will be done by His Majesty’s Government to mark this occasion of national rejoicing. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel.…

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Churchill on the Middle East

31 March 2011 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill By Himself, p. 437: “The Middle East is one of the hardest-hearted areas in the world. It has always been fought over, and peace has only reigned when a major power has established firm influence and shown that it would maintain its will. Your friends must be supported with every vigour and if necessary they must be avenged. Force, or perhaps force and bribery, are the only things that will be respected. It is very sad, but we had all better recognise it. At present our friendship is not valued, and our enmity is not feared.”…

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Robert Hardy at 85: The Greatest “Churchill”

13 September 2010 Comments 0 Comments

Written for a birthday tribute in October 2010….

We have all heard about the art of Timothy Robert Hardy, even though we don’t need to do so, since it is self-evident. But that really doesn’t matter, does it? His three-decade involvement with the Churchill saga provides a balsamic reiteration of what we know, are glad that we know, pity those who do not know, and are proud to be associated with.

It began with his peerless portrayals of Sir Winston in the 1981 “Wilderness Years” TV documentary; David Susskind’s 1986 “Leaders” series; a London stage play; the mini-series “War and Remembrance”; and—just this August 20th—a brilliant reading from Churchill’s tribute to “The Few” on its 70th annniversary.…

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Talking Churchill in the Baltic, 1995

19 March 2010 Comments 1 Comment

I told the Baltic mayor how Churchill had hoped to force a "showdown" with Stalin over Poland if he got back to Potstam. What the result would have been is a matter for conjecture. “Much of Eastern Europe, given harsh reality, had no chance for liberty,” I said, “but we should not denounce the efforts Churchill made.” Mayor Teodors Enins listened politely, but then he just sadly shook his head. "No. You should have fought them anyway."

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Winston S. Churchill 1940-2010

10 March 2010 Comments 3 Comments

You can read about Winston Churchill’s career elsewhere. I’d like rather to indulge in the remembrance of a friend.

We met through the post forty-two years ago, when he became the third honorary member of the Churchill Study Unit, after his grandmother and his father. The latter had only just sent a letter of encouragement to our little group of stamp collectors when he himself died. It was June, 1968. In sending condolences, I asked Winston to take his father’s place. He accepted, adding, “It is consoling to know so many share my loss.”…

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135 Years: Raise a Glass

30 November 2009 Comments 0 Comments

“A few curmudgeons have flamboyantly abstained from joining in this birthday greeting; but they are so few that their action merely emphasises the fact that personal respect and friendship habitually survive and transcend political conflict in the Mother of Parliaments. It is particularly appropriate that these all-party tributes on his birthday should be paid to one, the outstanding fact of whose character and career is that he has never been happier than when leading men of all parties and men of no party in some great national cause. He has never ceased to combine zeal for reform with reverence for tradition.…

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“Winston” Olbermann and the Healthcare Debate

19 October 2009 Comments 1 Comment

N.B.: If Mr. Olbermann had done more research, he would know what Churchill did say about national healthcare, which is more to the point: see Churchill and Healthcare.

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann is for the proposed American healthcare reform bill, which is neither here nor there.

What is interesting to Churchillians is his use of Winston Churchill’s words to support it—from both 1945 (when Churchill was campaigning against socialism), and 1936 (when Churchill was urging rearmament in the face of Nazi Germany).

In 1945, Olbermann says, Churchill

equated his opponents, the party that sought to introduce “The National Health,” to the Gestapo of the Germans that he and we had just beaten just as those opposing reform now have invoked Nazis as frequently and falsely as if they were invoking Zombies.…

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The Un-great Non-debate Neither Buries nor Lionizes Churchill

22 September 2009 Comments 3 Comments

The Great Debate: “Resolved, that Winston Churchill was more a liability than an asset to the free world.” Sponsored by Intelligence Squared, viewable on C-Span.

LONDON, 3 SEPT 1999— It was avidly awaited but fell flat. Tabling a truly ridiculous motion, Intelligence Squared (“the only institution in town aside from Parliament to provide a forum for debate on the crucial issues of the day”) combined with C-Span to bring us this spectacle. It would have been more interesting to debate whether Hitler or Churchill was the better painter.

I will spare you wisecracks about Intelligence Squared.…

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Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges

4 July 2009 Comments 2 Comments

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Professor Andrew J. Bacevich considered the war in Afghanistan against Churchill’s experience in World War I. Churchill, he says, looked for alternatives to “sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders.” Just so. And we should be looking for alternatives to chewing dust in Afghanistan.

Bacevich describes Churchill’s alternative as “an amphibious assault against the Dardanelles.” (That is a physical impossibility.) Churchill championed a naval attack on the Dardanelles, followed by an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula). Bacevich adds that Churchill wished to “support the infantry with tanks.”…

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