“Above all, Sir Winston carried about him a certain JOYOUS HUMANITY. Asked what he most admired about him, Marshal Tito, a most perceptive man, said:
‘His humanity. He is so human.’ On that at least I agree with Marshal Tito.” —RML
What Winston Churchill Meant by “Christian Civilization”
When Churchill referred to Christian civilization, he did not mean to exclude Jews or Buddhists or Muslims. Just as, to him, the word “man” meant humanity, his allusions to Christianity embodied principles he considered universal. He meant the Ten Commandments (a “judgmental” set of moral imperatives now expunged from certain public places). He meant the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule. He meant charity, forgiveness, courage.
"Churchill's style of tossing ideas around with his companion, often to test their effect, mistakenly inclined Moran to give these half-formed thoughts and suggestions a status of hard fact." And not just Moran. Bridges and King were certainly taken aback sufficiently to record Churchill's contemplation of nuclear war.
Churchill did have an astonishing capacity, and most historians grant him a decided preference for lubrication. But Lockhart is no more reliable than others. from Alan Brooke to Bessie Braddock, who attributed to alcohol a Churchill who worked and harangued 18 hours a day and was often exhausted…. Yet apparently not drunk enough to debate Empire Free Trade—or to spark Lockhart’s imagination.
Churchill only used "artist - invalid - sybarite" twice, and very early on. Evidently it didn't "stick" as well as others he repeated decades apart. If it had, he might have applied it to Morocco or the South of France, where he was all three of those things from time to time. He found both to be perfect for convalescing, painting, or enjoying the luxuries of life. (Of course, he knew where to stay!)
The reader now has the context, and may decide whether Churchill's remark was an expression of imperialist racism, or the fashionable Darwin-Reade philosophy prevalent at that time. In the words of Mark Twain and several showmen before him: "You pays your money and you takes your choice."
Mary Soames taught us all the most important rules any Churchill scholar must follow: never to proclaim what her father would do today; and strive to “keep the memory green and the record accurate.” She also taught us magnanimity—that what really matters is friendship, and trust. She was our guiding light—the person we sought to please with word committed to print on behalf of her great father.
It fell to Winston Churchill to define “this fair and youthful figure…heir to all our traditions and glories... Gazing at her photo “in a white dress and with long white gloves, displaying that enchanting smile which lights up her face as if a blind had suddenly been raised,” he mused: “Lovely, inspiring. All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited to the part.” Admiration grew to attachment, attachment to adoration. Every week during their meetings her private secretary reported “gales of laughter” coming from the audience room: “Winston generally came out wiping his eyes.”
"Mealtimes sometimes prolonged themselves into three-hour sessions, often to my mother's despair. And so eventually she would make to move. And I so well remember my father looking at her down the table, lovingly and ruefully, and saying, 'Oh, Clemmie, don't go. It is so nice. Let us command the moment to remain.' Of course, one never can. But today I've tried to command some precious moments that I remember to remain." —Mary Soames
Churchill took no part in subsequent debates over air pollution. Remarkably, the subject didn’t even come up during the December smog. Not until 12 February 1953 did Marcus Lipton MP raise the issue. The Churchill government assured him that “intensive inquiry” would occur. The Clean Air Act of 1956 eventually followed.
Orwell on Churchill: "It is rumoured that after promising to fight in the streets he turned from the microphone and said: 'We'll throw bottles at the bastards; it's about all we've got left!' One may assume that this story is untrue, but at the time it was felt that it ought to be true. It was a fitting tribute from ordinary people to the tough and humorous old man whom they would not accept as a peacetime leader [in 1945] but whom in the moment of disaster they felt to be representative of themselves."
