“We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on typewriters will eventually produce THE ENTIRE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” ―Robert Wilensky
May 2021 marks thirty years since we lost dear Lee Remick. She was the accomplished actress who brought Winston Churchill’s mother vividly to the screen.
One of the finest-ever Churchill films, Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, is available on CD. It was originally a television documentary, “The Life and Loves of Jennie Churchill,” broadcast on ITV in Britain and PBS in the USA in 1974. Co-starring with Remick were Ronald Pickup as Lord Randolph Churchill and Warren Clarke as young Winston.
Lee and Greg
In 1991, two months before she died, we held an award dinner for Ms.…
Like his lifelong friend Hilaire Belloc, Churchill never looked on women as intellectual inferiors. That view, Belloc said, "was held only by young, unmarried men. The rest of us, as we grow older, come to look on the intelligence of women first with reverence, then with stupor, and finally with terror.” I don't know about stupor and terror, but the first was true of Winston Churchill.
"Casablanca's" famous Letters of Transit were signed by General Maxime Weygand, not de Gaulle and not Darlan. This is confirmed by watching the Peter Lorre episode on YouTube. Lorres's character can clearly be heard saying "General Weygand." There is no evidence that a subtitle ever appeared substituting the names of Darlan or de Gaulle for American audiences. (Thanks to reader James Overmeyer for pointing this out.
“Boris Johnson, who has sought comparison with Winston Churchill, denounced spending national lottery money to save the wartime leader’s personal papers for the nation,” chortled The Guardian in December. (The Churchill Papers cover 1874-1945. Lady Churchill donated the post-1945 Chartwell Papers to the Churchill Archives in 1965.)
In April 1995 Johnson, then a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, deplored the £12.5 million purchase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lottery-supported National Heritage Memorial Fund, said Johnson, was frittering away money on pointless projects and benefiting Tory grandees. Johnson added: “…seldom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”
The Memorial Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a national heirloom under threat of being sold outside the country.…
We are asked: what was the first Winston Churchill political cartoon? The earliest discovered so far is this one, from the “Essence of Parliament” column in Punch on 5 December 1900. It appeared about two months after young Winston was elected Member of Parliament for Oldham, Lancashire, on 1 October. Alas the cartoon (artist unknown) poses more questions than it answers. Churchill is being urged to exhibit modesty, a quality he was not known for. But who is doing the urging? We asked several authorities.
I first thought the man at right might be Joseph Chamberlain, known for his monocle.…
s To view and search these “Works about,” please visit the Bibliography at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Herewith, some comments and a few sample entries.
Introduction
In 2018, Andrew Roberts wrote in Churchill: Walking with Destiny, works about Sir Winston Churchill topped 1000. This catalogue piles on, listing more than 1100, nearly 900 of which we have annotated. Winston Churchill was the subject of his first biography in 1905 when he was 30 years old. The flow hasn’t stopped. Here in the 21st century, 100 years later, some years see over 20 new Churchill titles.…
“Three Outstanding War Books” is Excerpted from an essay for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Why settle for the excerpt when you can read the whole thing full-strength? Click here.
Better yet, join 60,000 readers of Hillsdale essays by the world’s best Churchill historians by subscribing. You will receive regular notices (“Weekly Winstons”) of new articles as published. Simply visit https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/, scroll to bottom, and fill in your email in the box entitled “Stay in touch with us.” (Your email remains strictly private and is never sold to purveyors, salespersons, auction houses, or Things that go Bump in the Night.)…
Excerpted from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Why settle for the excerpt when you can read the whole thing ? Click here.
Please join 60,000 readers of Hillsdale essays by the world’s best Churchill historians by subscribing: visit https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/, scroll to bottom, and fill in your email in the box, “Stay in touch with us.” (Your email remains strictly private and is never sold or distributed to anyone.)
“Sir Winston’s Gettysburg essay…
...is a fantasy which transcends all my objections to exploring the what-ifs and might-have-beens in that great war.”…
“Why are you buying expensive pills over the counter?” asked Dr. John Mather. We were in an elevator during a 2001 Churchill Conference. “Don’t you have an honorable discharge from the Coast Guard?” He was then a Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service and Assistant Inspector General at the Veteran’s Administration. I’d never thought my four years with the USCG worthy of anything special, but I did have my DD-214. Mather said I was entitled: “We issue cheap pills.”
In the lift with us was Luce Churchill, married to Sir Winston’s grandson.…
"At nine the next morning, with three hours to go, a French organizer told us that if we souped up our car a little, we'd beat Porsche for the Efficiency Index. Great delight! We ran up a sign that said '+500 REVS TO BEAT X.' Sure enough, up came 500 rpm. Peter, of course, was very disciplined. The car just kept going round and round. We couldn't believe it! It gave us no trouble at all." —Lewis Garrad
