In the News Archives - Page 3 of 28

Girlfriends: Was Winston Churchill a Young Bacchanal?

30 March 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill and Lord Rosebery once dated a pair of “Gaiety Girls.” Each of them took one home. Alas, Winston’s date later told Rosebery he’d “done nothing but talk into the small hours on the subject of himself.” This sounds familiar from reports by his actual lady friends. (Clementine Hozier said the same.)

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“Churchill Drank 42,000 Bottles of Champagne”?

28 February 2023 Comments 0 Comments

WSC: "Prof! Pray calculate the total quantity of champagne, wine and spirits I have consumed thus far in my life and tell us how much of this room it would fill." Professor Lindemann (pretending a slide rule calculation): "I'm sorry, Winston, it would only reach our ankles." WSC: "How much to do—how little time remains."

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Nashville (6): The Myth of Dresden and “Revenge Firebombing”

8 February 2023 Comments 2 Comments

The Martin Gilbert Learning Centre offers a free Zoom presentation by Lady Gilbert herself, on the 1945 bombing of Dresden. The date is Monday 13 February 2023 at 2pm Eastern, 11 am Pacific, 7pm Greenwich Mean Time. Email Deputy Director Dr. Bethany Gaunt to be put on the Zoom invitation list. Lady Gilbert will include Sir Martin's story about how a Soviet general corroborated the truth about who ordered the bombing—in Moscow!

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Churchill, Ripka, Appeasement and the Czech Debacle

20 January 2023 Comments 0 Comments

When Ripka said the Czechs would defend themselves, Churchill waxed emotional: “Tomáš.Masaryk was right,” he cried. “Death is better than slavery.” If war did come, he continued, mopping his eyes, this time they must wage it against the Boche so thoroughly that he wouldn’t recover for generations.... After a while he spoke of “Herr Beans,” as he pronounced the name of Czechoslovakia’s president, Edvard Beneš, Ripka continued: "Churchill called him one of the greatest men of our epoch, and praised the resolution of the Czechs to fight for freedom with such vehemence that he began to cry all over again."

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Telling Off the Prez: “Love Actually” Still Sings

15 December 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"I love that word 'relationship.' Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship.... We may be a small country, but we're a great one too—the country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter—David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot for that matter." Hugh Grant at his best.

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A Battle of Britain Memory on Churchill’s Birthday

30 November 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"The British Empire and the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days."

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Princess Elizabeth’s Nazi Salute: Must We Know Everything?

15 November 2022 Comments 2 Comments

"Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time. This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary news reels. No one at that time had any sense how the salute would evolve."

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Churchill on Armistice Day: War, Peace and Foreboding

11 November 2022 Comments 1 Comment

"Is this the end? Is it to be merely a chapter in a cruel and senseless story? Will a new generation in their turn be immolated to square the black accounts of Teuton and Gaul? Will our children bleed and gasp again in devastated lands? Or will there spring from the very fires of conflict that reconciliation of the three giant combatants, which would unite their genius and secure to each in safety and freedom a share in rebuilding the glory of Europe?" —WSC

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Shocking Facts: “Nuclear Armageddon” Then and Now

10 October 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"Churchill's style of tossing ideas around with his companion, often to test their effect, mistakenly inclined Moran to give these half-formed thoughts and suggestions a status of hard fact." And not just Moran. Bridges and King were certainly taken aback sufficiently to record Churchill's contemplation of nuclear war.

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Churchill the Drunk. Or: Fasten Seatbelts on Bar Stools

5 October 2022 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill did have an astonishing capacity, and most historians grant him a decided preference for lubrication. But Lockhart is no more reliable than others. from Alan Brooke to Bessie Braddock, who attributed to alcohol a Churchill who worked and harangued 18 hours a day and was often exhausted…. Yet apparently not drunk enough to debate Empire Free Trade—or to spark Lockhart’s imagination.

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