Category: Quotations

A.L. Rowse with Chartwell and Churchill, 1955

A.L. Rowse with Chartwell and Churchill, 1955

"I left in late afternoon. Beaverbrook was coming down to dine and spend the evening, till then he was going off to bed. Evening sun poured from the west into the front door, upon the flowers, the head of Roosevelt sculpted in wood, the aged bulky figure waving goodbye. I sank back exhausted in the lordly car, thrilled by it all, a last glimpse of the flag over Chartwell—and went back to Oxford to write it all down. It is only today, very many years after, that it occurs to me that he thought I would, and meant me to."

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Britain’s Leave Debate: Who’s Churchill? Who’s Stalin?

Britain’s Leave Debate: Who’s Churchill? Who’s Stalin?

The cam­paign to Leave is heat­ing up. Take Grass­roots Out, a “com­bined oper­a­tion” sup­port­ing Brexit—the cam­paign for Great Britain to exit the Euro­pean Union. G-O field­ed a broad spec­trum of speak­ers in Lon­don Feb­ru­ary 19th. Along with UK Inde­pen­dence Par­ty leader Nigel Farage were Con­ser­v­a­tive Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, econ­o­mist Ruth Lea, and a Lon­don cab driver.

The most unex­pect­ed Leave speak­er was the far-left for­mer Labour MP and head of the social­ist Respect Par­ty. Mr. George Gal­loway was imme­di­ate­ly queried about his new colleagues.

“We are not pals,” Gal­loway replied.…

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Churchill on Trial: Washington, 1953

Churchill on Trial: Washington, 1953

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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Last Try to Avoid Hell, 1914

Last Try to Avoid Hell, 1914

“Sav­ing the Nations from Hell”: The “King­ly Con­fer­ence,” 1914 (Excerpt)

(Read more at Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project)

Churchill’s faith in per­son­al diplomacy—solving intractable prob­lems by meet­ings at the high­est level—was famous­ly expressed dur­ing World War II.

Less wide­ly known is Churchill’s 1914 pro­pos­al for a con­fer­ence of heads of state (includ­ing, it seems, French Pres­i­dent Ray­mond Poin­caré) in an effort to head-off World War I. The scheme failed, but not for Churchill’s lack of trying.

There is lit­tle on Churchill’s “king­ly con­fer­ence” in the lit­er­a­ture. There is no ref­er­ence in Churchill’s The World Cri­sis, Asquith’s mem­oirs, or biogra­phies by Man­ches­ter, Jenk­ins, Rose, Charm­ley and Birken­head, though Sir Mar­tin Gilbert includes in the offi­cial biog­ra­phy an excerpt from a cab­i­net mem­ber which records Churchill’s words in the cab­i­net of July 27th:

Churchill said we were now in a bet­ter than aver­age con­di­tion, & the fleet was at war strength….Churchill,…

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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

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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Paris
(Wikimedia Commons)
Paris, 13 November 2015: A Churchill Moment for M. Hollande

Paris, 13 November 2015: A Churchill Moment for M. Hollande

“A Churchill Moment for M. Hol­lande” is excerpt­ed from my arti­cle in The Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor, 18 Novem­ber 2015.

Dear M. Hollande…

The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gal­lant French peo­ple who have fall­en into this ter­ri­ble mis­for­tune. Noth­ing will alter our feel­ings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again.  —Win­ston S. Churchill, 4 June 1940

On the 2015 Paris attacks: With every mur­der­ous threat to civ­i­liza­tion we are asked: “Where are our Churchills?” There isn’t one, and we should not expect one.…

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“Dieu protège la France”

“Dieu protège la France”

Churchill’s words, com­piled in solidarity:

“The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gal­lant French peo­ple who have fall­en into this ter­ri­ble mis­for­tune. Noth­ing will alter our feel­ings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again.” —4 June 1940

“The House will feel sor­row at the fate of the great French nation and peo­ple to whom we have been joined so long in war and peace, and whom we have regard­ed as trustees with our­selves for the progress of a lib­er­al cul­ture and tol­er­ant civ­i­liza­tion of Europe.”…

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Was WW2 Avoidable?

Was WW2 Avoidable?

con­tin­ued from pre­vi­ous post…

Churchill and the Avoid­able War

Pref­ace

This book exam­ines Churchill’s the­o­ry that “time­ly action” could have forced Hitler to recoil, and a dev­as­tat­ing cat­a­stro­phe avoid­ed. We con­sid­er his pro­pos­als, and the degree to which he pur­sued them. Churchill was both right and wrong. He was right that Hitler could have been stopped. He was wrong in not doing all he could to stop him. The result is a cor­rec­tive to tra­di­tion­al argu­ments, both of Churchill’s crit­ics and defend­ers. Whether the war was avoid­able hangs on these issues.

Chap­ter 1. Ger­many Arm­ing:  Encoun­ter­ing Hitler, 1930-34

“There is no dif­fi­cul­ty at all in hav­ing cor­dial rela­tions between the peoples….But…

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EU
Churchill to Roosevelt, 1944: “I think it would be a great pity if you and [de Gaulle] did not meet. I do not see why I have all the luck.” WSC (wearing his uniform as Honorary Air Commodore) and de Gaulle inspecting French troops at Marrakesh, Morocco, January 1944. (Wikimedia-Public Domain)
EU and Churchill’s Views

EU and Churchill’s Views

EU Enough! In debates about the EU (Euro­pean Union), and Britain’s June 2016 ref­er­en­dum opt­ing to leave, much mis­in­for­ma­tion was cir­cu­lat­ed on whether Churchill would be for “Brex­it” or “Remain.” The fact is, we don’t know, since no one can ask him.

Promi­nent­ly quot­ed in this con­text is a remark Churchill made to de Gaulle—at least accord­ing to de Gaulle—in Uni­ty, his 1942-44 war mem­oirs: “…each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea.”

Nothing to do with the EU

War­ren Kimball’s Churchill and Roo­sevelt: The Com­plete Cor­re­spon­dence (III, 169), nice­ly clears up this quo­ta­tion.…

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Churchill’s Choice: Hitler vs. Stalin

Churchill’s Choice: Hitler vs. Stalin

I find the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Churchill quite dis­gust­ing. It is typ­i­cal British-Amer­i­can arro­gance to ignore the out­come of WW2 for the peo­ples of East­ern Europe, not to speak of the Ger­mans. Churchill knew from the begin­ning about the ter­ri­ble fate of the Rus­sians and many oth­er East Euro­pean peo­ples under Bol­she­vist dic­ta­tor­ship. He obvi­ous­ly didn’t care. He was obsessed with anti-Ger­man hatred. Know­ing that he bombed Ger­man cities, killing thou­sands of civil­ians long before the Ger­mans were retal­i­at­ing, makes him in my opin­ion even worse than Hitler. Why  did he go into alliance with Stal­in against the Ger­mans?…

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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

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