Churchill’s censorious remark about Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was not, I was pleased to learn, his last words. Once again his characteristic magnanimity prevailed. My thanks to my colleague Dave Turrell for this information.
June, 1947Sir Martin Gilbert published the arresting assertion by Churchill in 1947 (In Search of Churchill, 1995, 106). In June, WSC was invited to send a letter (I would think for a festschrift) on Baldwin’s 80th birthday, August 3rd. Writing to an intermediary, Churchill refused. “I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.”…
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors…many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others.” —Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation: A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England, 1621.…
“A fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep as two Dreadnoughts; and Dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer.”
The wisecrack, wrongly attributed to Churchill, was actually uttered by his Liberal ally, David Lloyd George. (Allegedly LG said it in 1909, during their battle to reform the House of Lords,) It didn’t make Churchill more welcome at Blenheim Palace, where his cousin the Duke of Marlborough forbade the name of LG in conversation.
The Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII) and the 2nd Duke of Westminster are occasionally attacked for their “near-treasonous activity in support of the Third Reich.”…
“This truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.” —Winston S. Churchill, House of Commons, 17 May 1916
Q: His legacy today?Peter Baker of The New York Times recently reviewed a new book which delivers some sharp arrows toward Winston Churchill and his legacy. Baker writes that the text labels Churchill “not just a racist but a hypocrite, a dissembler, a narcissist, an opportunist, an imperialist, a drunk, a strategic bungler, a tax dodger, a neglectful father, a credit-hogging author, a terrible judge of character and, most of all, a masterful myth-maker.”…
(Updated from 2016). Home to Secretaries of State for War Lord Haldane, Lord Kitchener, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, it was a key venue in two global conflicts. But in 2016 the old War Office building was sold to developers of a five-star hotel and residential apartments. That work is expected to finish in 2022, and residents are being sought.
Built in 1906 for £1.2, million, the Grade II-listed property changed hands for £300 million. The buyers were the Hinduja Group, in partnership with a Obrascon Huarte Lain Desarrollos (OHLD), a Spanish industrial company.…
“Churchill on South Africa Prison Camps”: excerpted from my essay for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the unabridged original, together with endnotes, and WSC’s complete letter to The Times, click here.
1. Same old, same old…An Indian colleague writes:
I’ve noticed that the same accusations about Churchill repeated frequently. Many writers seem to recycle them on trust. Take for example a new anti-Churchill article which I think needs a thorough debunking. In fairness to the author, it is not all bad; she concedes for instance that Churchill wanted to use tear gas in Iraq, not poison gas.…
