"Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly." Lady Soames, who said her father was always gallant to women, doubted the exchange, but bodyguard Ronald Golding was present and heard it. Golding explained that WSC was not drunk, just tired and wobbly, which caused him to fire the W.C. Fields riposte.
"The Arts are essential to any complete national life.... Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due" (Churchill, April 1938). "No, bury them in caves and cellars. None must go. We are going to beat them" (Churchill, June 1940).
It was a summer's evening, Sir Murland Evans recalled, "in one of those dreadful basement rooms in the Head Master's House, a Sunday, to be exact, after chapel evensong. We frankly discussed our futures." What came next was a stunner....
For 30 years I've written the bimonthly Values Guide for "Collectible Automobile," which for 40 years has consistently turned out quality articles and fine photography on collector cars. I write without a byline, hoping to avoid being denounced by owners who think their car is worth a lot more than the market says it is. But sometimes we make a mistakes....
In an age where Churchill is often subject to one-sided discussions by panelists who agree with each other, Bucknell deserves great credit for seeking balance on a fraught subject. Likewise the panelists, Drs. Arnn, McMeekin and Mukerjee, who manage to disagree without rancor, and to acknowledge each other's points of view. The Bucknell program is definitely worth the time of thoughtful readers.
1930: Kaiser Wilhelm II may today occupy "the most splendid situation in Europe." But "let him not forget that he might well have found himself eating the bitter bread of exile, a dethroned sovereign and a broken man loaded with unutterable reproach...if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg."
"Caricature was the object of all Poy’s work, but he never dipped his pen in vitriol…. He was not unlike a modern Aesop who…drew the simple truth with devastating clearness. Looking at any of his pictures you laugh because of their very rightness. It is only afterwards that you realise the brilliance of the drawing, and are staggered by the genius that created it."
In May 1940 Stanley Bruce argued for a peace settlement with Hitler. Churchill struck out this paragraph, and wrote in the margin: “No.” Next, Bruce wrote that “the further shedding of blood and the continuance of hideous suffering is unnecessary.” Churchill wrote: “Rot."
In reality, Packard’s crucial mistakes were made years before. After the war, when a company could sell anything on wheels, Packard could have reverted to type, rebuilding its reputation as a luxury automaker. Instead it pursued the lower-priced markets that had saved it in the Depression. Stemming from this marketing mistake was a series of product decisions that flew in the face of Packard’s proud heritage.
"When Ministers of the Crown speak like this [there is] no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour. I had even asked myself whether you, Mr. Speaker, would admit the word LOUSY as a Parliamentary expression in referring to the Administration, provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration."
