By: Andrew G

Andrew G — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 20:10:38 +0000

Sheer class! I’m late to the party, as I’ve only just seen this post now, but better late than never. I hope you enjoyed a lovely Christmas, and a Happy New Year, Richard. This is such a charming and beautifully stated message of festive peace – I shall have to refer to these words next Christmas Eve, as I sip on a glass of Johnnie Walker Black Label. What a Wordsmith Sir Winston was! Alas, we shall never again witness such an eloquent PM.
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Thanks so much. Your message puts me in mind of another passage like that, about HM The Queen: We may think of Churchill as an amiable or even reverent agnostic, who conceived of himself not as a pillar of the church but perhaps as a flying buttress. He did not invoke the Deity casually or cynically, a fact which confers its own interest upon his touching and heartfelt reply to the Queen:
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“Our Island no longer holds the same authority or power that it did in the days of Queen Victoria. A vast world towers up around it and after all our victories we could not claim the rank we hold were it not for the respect for our character and good sense and the general admiration not untinged by envy for our institutions and way of life. All this has already grown stronger and more solidly founded during the opening years of the present Reign, and I regard it as the most direct mark of God’s favour we have ever received in my long life that the whole structure of our new-formed Commonwealth has been linked and illuminated by a sparkling presence at its summit.”
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Quoting this, Prof. David Dilks added: “…and if you will allow the remark in parenthesis, ladies and gentlemen, do you not sometimes long for someone at the summit of our public life who can think and write at that level?” —RML

Comments on: Christmas Eve, Washington, 1941: Eighty Years On

By: Andrew G