“Harold Begbie” is excerpted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To view the original, click here. To SUBSCRIBE for fresh articles weekly from the Churchill Project, reaching 60,000 readers worldwide: Click here, scroll to bottom, enter your email address in the box entitled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email address is never given out and will remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
“The hand of destiny”The Hillsdale College Churchill Project’s updated bibliography of works about Churchill has produced gratifying interest in early biographies.…
“The Racial Consequences of Mr. Churchill”: A Review
The following is my foreword only to an analysis of the recent Churchill College panel, by Zewditu Gebreyohanes and Andrew Roberts. They followed a maxim of Randolph Churchill in the official biography: “I am interested only in the truth.” Every Churchill scholar is in their debt.
ForewordEighty-eight years ago Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and the Oxford Union passed a resolution: “That this House refuses in any circumstances to fight for King and Country.” A week later Winston Churchill said: “We have all seen with a sense of nausea the abject, squalid, shameless avowal made in the Oxford Union.…
Paul Rafferty, Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera. London: Unicorn Publishing, 2020, 208 pages. $50. Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To view the original, with more illustrations, please click here.
A work of art on Churchill’s artThis beautiful book combines Churchill’s favorite French painting venues with fastidious research on their locations. The horizontal format blends quality binding with brilliant color on thick, coated paper, and the price is a bargain. Paul Rafferty, himself an artist, brings Churchill’s oils alive as adjuncts to WSC’s personality. (N.B.: this writer played a minor part in verifying quotations.)…
Peter Clark, Churchill’s Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight. London: Haus Publishing, 2020, 240 pp., no illustrations, $29.95, Amazon $27.48, Kindle $22.49. Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To read the original, click here.
N.B. March 2021: The original post contains author Clark’s response, which is about the most cordial reply to a grumpy review I’ve ever read. He kindly takes heed of my criticisms and says he will attend to them in the paperback in due course. RML
Churchill’s Britain abridgedI did want to like this book.…
The 75th Anniversary of Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Missouri, was celebrated this week with due ceremony. One need look no further than his leading recent biographer Andrew Roberts for an eminently readable account of the speech and its aftermath in the Daily Express.
Readers interested in further details may wish to watch or read three pertinent presentations, the first being the speech itself, the other two provided by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project:
Sir Winston Churchill’s Fulton Speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” Westminster College, 5 March 1946 (audio; speech begins at minute 8:40) Sir Martin Gilbert, “The Enduring Importance of the ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech,” Hillsdale College, 22 October 2004.…
“Professor John Charmley says in a podcast that Neville Chamberlain believed a prewar grand alliance against Hitler was not feasible. He was referring to alliance between the UK and France and the United States and USSR. Do you agree?”
Answer:As Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) tells the District Attorney (Lane Smith) in “My Cousin Vinny” (1992), “that’s a B.S. question.”
(To voir dire Miss Vito on “general automotive knowledge” the D.A. had demanded the ignition timing of “a 1955 Chevrolet 327 V-8.” (Readers less mechanically inclined than Miss Vito may enjoy her devastating two-minute rebuttal to this “trick question.”)…
Paul Rafferty’s magnificent Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera is being translated for a French edition by Dr. Antoine Capet. The author and translator posed an interesting question. How did Winston Churchill spell “paintatious”?
(Any reader bored by pedantic, picayune, obscure meanderings about nothing of importance should stop reading now. For my review of Paul’s book see: “Book of the Year.”)
“Paintatious” was artist Churchill’s word for a scene worthy of his brush. He found many such venues on the French Riviera, which Paul explores so well. But this is a tricky question because “paintatioius” not a real word.…
“The Social Dilemma” is excerpted from an Essay on Winston Churchill’s 146th birthday, 30 November 2020, published by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original post, please click here.
“The Social Dilemma”: Netflix, 2020, 90 minutes.“Is not mankind already escaping from the control of individuals? Are not our affairs increasingly being settled by mass processes? Are not modern conditions—at any rate throughout the English-speaking communities—hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events: and lastly if this be true, will it be for our greater good and glory?…
