“Not a day passes when Winston Churchill, who proved indispensable WHEN LIBERTY HUNG IN THE BALANCE is not accused of something dreadful, from misogyny to warmongering. My book, Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality, confronts this busy industry.” —RML
Alistair Parker Presents a Balanced, Scholarly Cambridge Seminar
Review of Parker excerpted from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text including more images and endnotes, please click here. Subscriptions to this site are free. You will receive regular notices of new posts as published. Just scroll to SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW. Your email address guaranteed to remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
“There are times,” wrote a great Cambridge scholar, Sir Geoffrey Elton, “when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchill: whether they can see that no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains, quite simply, a great man.”…
Churchill was born into a world in which virtually all Britons, from the Sovereign to a Covent Garden grocer, believed in their moral superiority. They preached it to their children. All learned that the red portions of the map showed where Britannic civilization had tamed savagery and cured pandemics. Churchill’s assertions, especially as a young man, were often in line with this. And yet he consistently displayed this odd streak of magnanimity and libertarian impulse.
It was Churchill, the aristocratic Victorian, who argued that Dervish enemy in Sudan had a “claim beyond the grave…no less good than that which any of our countrymen could make.”…
I published in 2010 an account of Churchill’s youthful (circa 1910-12) fling with Eugenics, a pseudo-science popular at the turn of the century. Eugenics favored sterilizing or confining the “feeble-minded” to “maintain the race.”
This drew an irate letter from a reader who said he will never think the same of Churchill, knowing that he could have supported such horrendous ideas:
No truly educated intelligent person, even in those early years, can have bought into Eugenics. Churchill’s was not just a fling of youth or immaturity but the decided opinion of a nearly middle-aged man. His support of Eugenics could only lead to the extremities practiced to by the Nazis.…
“Wrung Like a Chicken” is excerpted from an essay for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text including more images and endnotes, please click here. Subscriptions to this site are free. You will receive regular notices of new posts as published. Just scroll to SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW. Your email address is never given out and remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Ottawa, 30 December 1941
In his first and as it proved only address to the Canadian Parliament, Winston Churchill brought down the house in words which will live as long as his story is told:
The French Government had at their own suggestion solemnly bound themselves with us not to make a separate peace….…
“The great title deeds”
In an illuminating interview on the Northwest Ordinance, Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn explains one of America’s key founding documents. This is not a usual subject here. Indeed Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples doesn’t even mention it. Nonetheless— the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 qualifies as one of Churchill’s “great title-deeds of Anglo-American liberties.”
. The interview didn’t answer all my questions but taught me things I didn’t know. I doubt that many American schoolchildren know them either. Nevertheless, the Northwest Ordinance deserves broader familiarity.
Northwest Ordinance Provisions Dr. Arnn’s remarks need little elaboration here.…
Churchill’s article was an attack on Bolshevism (“a sinister confederacy”) not Zionism, which Churchill mainly (but not always) supported. Churchill mentioned—accurately—that many Bolsheviks were Jews—and also gave a reason: They were people "reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race." He then named names.
If I have written anything worthwhile over 50 years it's thanks to my five years as a minor player at Automobile Quarterly. Between Don Vorderman and Beverly Rae Kimes, I learned things that couldn't be acquired in a school of journalism. The foregoing began with an email to a friend who acquired an old issue. I just wanted him to know the treat he was in for.
“The British Boxing Controversy” is excerpted from an essay for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text including more images and endnotes, please click here. Subscriptions to this site are free. You will receive regular notices of new posts as published. Just scroll to SUBSCRIBE AND FOLLOW. Your email address is never given out and remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Boxing, 1911
In February a Cambridge University panel of four, all sharing the same opinions, branded Winston Churchill an overrated racist imperialist. The British Empire, one speaker added, was worse than the Third Reich.…
Text of my Zoom address to the Chartwell Society of Portland, Oregon on 10 May 2021, 81st anniversary of Churchill taking office as Prime Minister. “Questions and Answers” are part of an iTunes audio file. For a copy, please email [email protected].
From Senator Bob Packwood (who recalls shelling peas with you on a pleasant former occasion): Everybody asks what Churchill’s position would be today on the Middle East. It appears that he wanted to do right by everybody—guarantee the Jews a homeland but respect the rights of the Arabs.…
Text of my Zoom address to the Chartwell Society of Portland, Oregon on 10 May 2021, 81st anniversary of Churchill taking office as Prime Minister. “In Defense of Liberty” is part of as an iTunes audio file. For a copy, please email [email protected].
A Life Devoted to Constitutional Liberty (continued from Part 2)
Churchill was far more than the hero of 1940. His thinking on concepts like liberty, representative government and the rule of law are as important today as ever. Holding the Anglo-American relationship central, he had a vast appreciation for and understanding of the British and American constitutions, and the pros and cons of each.…
