Churchill by Him­self is dif­fer­ent from all oth­er Churchill quote books through “cor­rectibil­i­ty.” It offers a ref­er­ence to each quo­ta­tion, and a method by which cor­rec­tions may be sent in, ver­i­fied, and made avail­able dig­i­tal­ly to readers.

Pro­duc­ing any work as com­pli­cat­ed as this is a con­stant run­ning bat­tle between con­flict­ing sources, experts who dis­agree with each oth­er, and inex­orable dead­lines. For instance, one expert offered cor­rec­tions based on the 1974 Com­plete Speech­es (not com­plete and scarce­ly free of errors) that con­tra­dict the texts of ear­li­er vol­umes by Churchill himself—which to me take pri­or­i­ty. Nev­er­the­less the process of revi­sion is endless.

Accord­ing­ly, pub­lish­ers were cho­sen who keep books in print with fre­quent reprints, allow­ing con­tin­u­al revi­sion. The Sec­ond Edi­tion, exten­sive­ly cor­rect­ed down even to ellip­sis points, will be pub­lished by Pub­lic Affairs in 2010. The Third Edi­tion will be improved again, and so on.

For read­ers who own First Edi­tions I offer below the most impor­tant corrections—the ones I’d dear­ly like to have back, and some­times alter by hand when inscrib­ing copies per­son­al­ly! A mas­ter list con­tain­ing many more cor­rec­tions is being pre­pared for the Sec­ond Edi­tion, and I wel­come being advised of any that my read­ers should find.

Although many per­sons helped com­pile this list, my spe­cial grat­i­tude is owed to Pro­fes­sor David Dilks, for­mer Vice-Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hull, not only for his fas­tid­i­ous note-tak­ing, but for his lack of pedantry and under­stand­ing in improv­ing the book—qualities which, I have come to learn, are rare. —RML

Note: “106/1” means page 106, col­umn 1.

1. Cor­rec­tions to British and Amer­i­can Edi­tions

Page 1 cap­tion, line 2 should read: With Sir John Ander­son on Vic­to­ry in Europe Day, 8 May 1945.

16/1 Dif­fi­cul­ties, “Don’t argue the mat­ter”: for “1941” read 1942.

23/1 Per­son­nel. For date “1941” read 1942

25/2 Right and wrong: For date “26 May” read 27 May. In the note, lines 1-2, revise to read: WSC to Clement Davies, who ven­tured to sug­gest that Pres­i­dent Tru­man meet pri­vate­ly with

32, third para­graph, last two lines should read: for a trai­tor. Accord­ing to his last Pri­vate Sec­re­tary Churchill called John Fos­ter Dulles “dull-duller-Dulles,” and it was just like him.

82/2 first note, penul­ti­mate line: for “House of Com­mons” read Guild­hall after the war

100/1, first note, line 4, replace to read: Sid­ney (1622-1683, son of the Earl of Leicester)

3-8, revise to read: divi­sion of pow­er has lain at the root of our devel­op­ment. We do not want to live under a sys­tem dom­i­nat­ed either by one man or one theme. Like nature we fol­low in free­dom the  paths of vari­ety and change and our faith is  that the mer­cy of God will make things get bet­ter of we all try our best.

101/1 first entry, replace as fol­lows: …elec­tions exist for the sake of the House of Com­mons and not…the House of Commons…for the sake of elec­tions. 1953, 3 November.

106/1, first editor’s note should read: Churchill was refer­ring to Lord Rose­bery (Prime Min­is­ter 1894-95), whose hors­es, Ladas II and Sir Vis­to, won the Der­by in 1894 and 1895….

106/2, line 2: for “New York Uni­ver­si­ty” read the Uni­ver­si­ty of the State of New York

118/1 sec­ond quote should run before the first quote, and its date­line should read: 1940, 20 August.

130/2, sec­ond note, last sen­tence should read: Britain and the Com­mon­wealth con­tributed $6 bil­lion in “Reverse Lend-Lease” such as rent on airbases.

144, cap­tion should read: WSC with Roo­sevelt and Stal­in at Yal­ta, Feb­ru­ary 1945.

155/2, third date from top, for 1919 read 1929.

254/2, Ribben­trop meet­ing cred­it line should read: 1938, MARCH. (GUEDALLA, 271-72.) Revise the note to read: The Cab­i­net had asked Churchill to join them for lunch to bid farewell to Hitler’s Ambas­sador Joachim von Ribben­trop, while Aus­tria was being absorbed by Ger­many. The quote is…

321/1, “Attlee,” first entry date: for “1935.” read 1940.

328/2, Bro­drick note, last line: for “1860-1907” read 1890-1907

329, last line: for “Con­ser­v­a­tive” read Lib­er­al

359/1 last note, last line: for “Dun­can­non” read: Dun­con­nel

369/2 first note should read: Con­ver­sa­tion at a lun­cheon thrown by Cham­ber­lain for the Ger­man Ambas­sador to Britain, Ribben­trop, 11 March 1938, at the time of the Anschluss with Aus­tria…[etc.]

518/1, top line: for “WSC’s pri­vate sec­re­tary” read Lib­er­al MP

527/1 sec­ond note, line 2: for “9 May” read 10 May.

544/1 sec­ond entry: For “Naz­im” read Naz­imud­din. For the date “1941” read 1953

556/1 “Prac­tice,” note, line 2: for “Mose­ley” read Mosley.

561 foot­note line 1: for “1954” read 1945.

570, para­graph 4 line 1: revise last sen­tence to read: For exam­ple, “The heav­i­est cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lor­raine” is so well estab­lished that I was sur­prised to learn that some­one else said it.

573: delete “Dull, duller, Dulles” which has been attributed.

575: delete “Grace of God” and “Impromp­tu remarks” which have been attributed.

2. Cor­rec­tions to the First British Edi­tion only.

(All of the fol­low­ing have been made in the Amer­i­can edi­tion)

11 cap­tion line 2 should read: In a tommy’s hel­met vis­it­ing the defences at Dover, 1943.

132/2 top entry: for 27 read 28 June.

380 cap­tion, line 2: delete “in Wood­ford”

532 cap­tion: For “study” read bed­room.

3. Adden­da

I have found two instances where Churchill’s words were incor­rect (or, more like­ly, his tran­scribers were): On page 528, col­umn 2, line 7, Churchill said “six­teen years lat­er” but should have said “six.” On page 553, col­umn 2, “Inter­rup­tions, answer­ing,” Churchill is record­ed as say­ing “abro­gat­ed,” but almost cer­tain­ly he said “arro­gat­ed.”

Page 20, col­umn 2, first entry: Man­fred Wei­d­horn brings to my atten­tion a pre­vi­ous occur­rence of almost the same words, in Churchill’s essay, “A Sec­ond Choice” (1931, March. Strand Mag­a­zine; Thoughts, 11): The jour­ney has been enjoy­able and well worth making—once.”

Page 322, Stan­ley Bald­win: A dis­tin­guished his­to­ri­an has sug­gest­ed to me that Churchill’s atti­tude toward Bald­win was not as uni­form­ly crit­i­cal as the quotes here list­ed. He quot­ed WSC’s praise of SB at the Par­ty Con­fer­ence in Octo­ber 1935 and in pri­vate let­ters, and not­ed that Churchill vis­it­ed Baldwin’s home in 1950, after SB’s death. I believe how­ev­er that Churchill was sin­gu­lar­ly crit­i­cal of Bald­win, per Mar­tin Gilbert’s In Search of Churchill, as quot­ed here, and out­lined my rea­sons in “How Churchill Saw Oth­ers: Stan­ley Bald­win,” Finest Hour 101, Win­ter 1998-99.

Page 360, Mar­shall, note 2: It has been sug­gest­ed to me that Churchill met Lazare Carnot (see under Trot­sky, page 375), but I am not sure. Sadi Carnot was a rec­on­cil­er, Lazare a rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Though the lat­ter was known as “the orga­niz­er of vic­to­ry,” I am not sure Churchill thought of Mar­shall in quite those terms.

Page 573 (main entry), also 32, 570: “Dull-duller-dulles” (with the hyphens) has been attrib­uted, by Sir Antho­ny Mon­tague Browne (Long Sun­set), 126.’’ Thanks to Jim Lan­cast­er for dig­ging out this and sev­er­al oth­er attri­bu­tions in Sir Anthony’s book.

Page 576, col­umn 2: Leise Chris­tensen has advised me that when the Duke of Northum­ber­land said “A liv­ing dog is bet­ter than a dead lion,” he was him­self quot­ing from Eccle­sastes 9:4.

Page 579, “Best of Every­thing”: Thanks to Robert Pilpel for report­ing that George Bernard Shaw pre­ced­ed both F.E. Smith and Churchill with this line in his play, “Major B” (1905), when Lady Brit­o­mart says (act 1, scene 1): “I know your qui­et, sim­ple, refined, poet­ic peo­ple like Adolphus—quite con­tent with the best of everything!”