Summoning up his life’s impulses (and mine) CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER WROTE: “The catastrophe that awaits everyone from a false move, fatal encounter—every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether, and how, we ever come back.”
Long Island, Bahamas by Bicycle: A Trip to Remember
Lying 100 miles southeast of Eleuthera, Long Island is 80 miles long and has roughly the same area. But it is flatter and relatively empty. There are only twelve people per square mile compared to Eleuthera's year-round seventy. The inhabitants are welcoming, but a team of cyclists tackling their 73-mile-long Queen’s Highway is not something they see every day.
"Cast your eye from the entrance on the War Rooms slightly to the right. You’ll see a doorway well above ground. To the right of that doorway you will see a set of six windows ending in a curved window at Storey’s Gate. Those are the actual rooms in which Winston Churchill slept and worked during the Second World War."
"My own feeling is that Napalm ought not to be used in the way it is being done by the American Forces. This is I am sure the overwhelming feeling of the House of Commons, but I do not take my opinion from them. I certainly could not agree to our taking any responsibility for it, otherwise than in the general duty of serving with and under the United Nations Commander. I do not see how Press articles and jabber of that kind compares with splashing about this burning fluid on the necks of humble people...."
For all his brilliance, Preston Tucker "was out of his pond. He remained a stranger and perhaps even a threat to the SEC, and he didn’t know anyone in government. Preston was careless in some of his pencil-work, perhaps in a bit of his talk, too. Nevertheless. Tucker conceived an amazing automobile. Nevertheless, the government did overreact, despite all he did to earn it.
Churchill's Jefferson: "He came from the Virginian frontier, the home of dour individualism and faith in common humanity, the nucleus of resistance to the centralising hierarchy of British rule. He was in touch with fashionable Left-Wing circles of political philosophy in England and Europe, and, like the French school of economists who went by the name of Physiocrats, he believed in a yeoman-farmer society. He feared an industrial proletariat as much as he disliked the principle of aristocracy. Industrial and capitalist development appalled him."
People are still falling for those reproduction Churchill thank-you letters produced by the thousands using a spirit duplicator. "The ultimate thrift shop haul," headlined the Daily Mail in July 2023. "Budget shopper is left STUNNED after buying a 'priceless' handwritten letter signed by Winston Churchill for just $1—after finding it buried in a New York store." Actually, $1 is about what it's worth—plus perhaps $50 for a nicely matted and framed example.
"On 4 July 1942 the 8th army held the line at El Alamein.... You’d see the glow from their cigarettes and pipes, and the little glow from the radio dial. After the news we'd switch over to the "Message from Home" program from Germany. And before long it would go Ompa Ompa—and there was Lili Marlene.... And the 8th Army swept on, capturing on its way 800 miles of desert, 75,000 prisoners, 5000 tanks, 1000 guns, and the famous enemy song of Lili Marlene." —Denis Johnston
"Today, looking back over a long life, I can honestly say that almost the only things in which I take any conscious pride or esteem in one way or another is my association with Winston Churchill. After the war I was lucky enough to be a member of his Government and also, with my wife, to be asked every now and then to Chequers or Chartwell to join him and his family in their noisy, affectionate, hilarious, often uproarious family life. That, as a friend said to me the other day, was something that left you both wiser and also warmer at heart." —Sir Fitzroy
Randolph Churchill had sacked Robert from his research team on the Official Biograhy, and Robert never forgave him (or his dislike of Eden). He maintained that Randolph just repeated the “case for the defence” Sir Winston had already made in his own books. Robert always said exactly what he believed—in the most forceful terms available to a gentleman. In an age of prevaricating phonies of Left and Right, such a character is rare. Winston Churchill would have loved him.
“Is [the Prime Minister] aware that...the Iver Heath Conservative Party Association held a fete to raise money for party purposes to which it invited American Service baseball teams to participate for a ‘Winston Churchill’ trophy?” WSC: “I read in the Daily Worker some account of this. I had not, I agree, fully realised the political implications that might attach to the matter, and in so far as I have erred I express my regret. [If the situation were reversed] I hope we should all show an equal spirit of tolerance and good humour.”
