Category: Research Topics
Poy (Percy Fearon): The Classic Churchill Cartoonist
Martin on Churchill: No One Left Without Feeling a Braver Man
Would the Royal Family and Churchill Had Left if the Germans Invaded?
“Would the Royal Family and Chrchill Evacuate?” is excerpted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text with endnotes, please click here.
Q: Evacuate the Royals?I am arguing with a person in another forum that there was a plan in the Second World War to evacuate Churchill and the Royal Family to Canada if the Nazis invaded. I believe it was called Operation Coates, but the reference I found doesn’t mention Churchill.
Churchill doesn’t seem like the sort of person to evacuate. At Sidney Street he was in the front line.…
What Winston Churchill was Doing on January 24th
“To be opened in the event of my death…” Winston Churchill to his Wife, 1915
I am doing some work for my English AS course and need a comparative piece to go with a poem I am studying. I have tried looking for Winston Churchill’s goodbye letter to his wife but have been unsuccessful. Is there any way I could even have a part of the text of the letter for my studies? —A.S., UK
A: “In the event of my death…”This was a great and memorable letter. After his removal as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, Churchill spent six uneasy months in a sinecure position, unable to influence war policy.…
Fatal Flaws: Winston Churchill wasn’t Perfect. Surprise!
Troublesome Toffs: The Duke of Windsor and Bendor Westminster
“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.”…
Churchill and the Destruction of Monte Cassino Abbey, 1944
An Italian journalist writes for Churchill references to the attacks on Monte Cassino during the Italy campaign in spring 1944, asking about “his silence, later contradictory” on the bombing of the town’s ancient monastery. If the implication is that Churchill was uncaring over the destruction of ancient shrines and grand buildings, that would contradict his revulsion over the bombing of Dresden. If it is that this particular destruction didn’t appear in his statements at the time, that is true. War is hell, and to expect him to eulogize every devastating loss is to expect a lot.…
The Biblical Churchill (3) “Be Ye Men of Valour”
N.B. “Be Ye Men of Valour” is from the original Appendix IV in my book Churchill By Himself. It was deleted in the later edition, Churchill in His Own Words, to make room for an index of phrases. Concluded from Part 2…
From the Book of MaccabeesOn 19 May 1940, Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister, a speech which lifted the hearts even of former critics:
A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders. The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks, have broken through the French defences north of the Maginot Line, and strong columns of their armoured vehicles are ravaging the open country, which for the first day or two was without defenders.…