Comments on: Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

By: Randall Brown

Randall Brown — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 20:02:07 +0000

Do you know if it is possible to get a British hole punch today like "klop"? I need one for a Churchill desk display. He kept two of them. Any antique shop or business that might have one like Mr. Churchill's for sale? Thank you. PS--can you possible tell me the make or brand of Mr. Churchill's desk hole punch? - Sorry, no information, but I directed your query to Chartwell, where they may be able to help. RML

By: Richard Langworth

Richard Langworth — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 21:06:11 +0000

In reply to Richard Munro.

I don’t know enough about FDR to compare the two of them, though from what I do know I think you are right that Churchill was the more sincere. What you saw was what you got, as his daughter said: “His private voice was no different from his public one.” As for servants, see Part 3 in this series. Yes, he was a Victorian, with the attitudes of his time; and yet he said some remarkably un-Victorian things about people that caused many of his contemporaries to call him a traitor to his class. See also https://richardlangworth.com/eagles.

By: Richard Munro

Richard Munro — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:15:37 +0000

I know the Grace Hamblin stories from Martin Gilbert. But I wasn't referring only to his hard charging with personal secretaries but his aloofness with servants etc. I am aware also, however, that people who don't like Churchill (or his politics) exaggerate to the far extreme to show Churchill in the most negative fact possible (even to the point that he was an extreme racist and arch-imperialist and no lover of freedom and democracy at all). My person opinion is that Churchill -whatever his faults- was probably more sincere than FDR. FDR was a charmer but I think at times he was insincere and opportunistic. He LIKED to PLAY the part of everyone's favorite uncle but that was his public persona. FDR actually could be as ruthless as Churchill perhaps more so. Good examples would be the Japanese Internment or the Ex Parte Quirin case (the Nazi Sabateurs). FDR pushed for all of them to get the death penalty (except for the ones who helped turn them in -they got life but were later pardoned by Truman). And in the Detroit riots in 1943 FDR sent the Army with orders to shoot to kill if necessary. I know this to be true because my father was an NCO with the MP's at that time. They had loaded weapons and loaded 50 caliber machine guns mounted on their jeeps. If the rioting African-Americans did not respond to warning shots and if they endangered the lives of MP's they had orders to open fire (something they didn't have to do -the most they did was fire over their heads). But orders like that had to have come from the top.