“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
Winston Churchill on the “Unconquerable Welsh” and Lloyd George
"[Lloyd George] was the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors. Much of his work abides, some of it will grow greatly in the future, and those who come after us will find the pillars of his life's toil upstanding, massive and indestructible; and we ourselves, gathered here today, may indeed be thankful that he voyaged with us through storm and tumult with so much help and guidance to bestow." —WSC
This history of the Official Biography was first published in Finest Hour 190, Fourth Quarter 2020
“We go back a long way,” Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn recently reminded me. “I knew Dal Newfield.” He realized that would invoke a fond memory. A few still remember the man responsible for where some of us are today.
Dalton Newfield was a Sacramento army veteran who had admired Winston Churchill since he saw him live during World War II. In 1970, I shrank away from Finest Hour after the first eleven issues. I was clearing the decks for an automotive writing career in New York City.…
Excerpted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, September 2020. For the complete text, an appendix of Churchill’s words on Armenia, more illustrations and endnotes, please click here.
The age-long misfortunes of the Armenian race have arisen mainly from the physical structure of their home. Upon the lofty tableland of Armenia, stretching across the base of the Asia Minor Peninsula, are imposed a series of mountain ranges having a general direction east and west. The valleys between these mountains have from time immemorial been the pathways of every invasion or counter-attack between Asia Minor in the west and Persia and Central Asia in the east….…
The Greeks are still not laughing about their mid-1940s civil war, so levity may be inappropriate. Nor was at the time was Winston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “responsible for building up the nest of cockatrices for EAM [communist partisans] in Greece.” (His vocabulary was broad: A cockatrice is a mythical, two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a cock’s head.)
Nevertheless, the peace deal Churchill brokered between warring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilarious moments that, 75 years later, we may be permitted to indulge in lighter aspects.…
It is remarkable how we still encounter in Churchill words of astounding currency. A friend in Portland, Oregon asked for verification of a Churchill quotation: “A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril….” (“The Tasks which Lie Before Us,” House of Commons, 29 November 1944.) A good, solid maxim, but not out of the ordinary.
AND THEN my eye fell across what Churchill said a week later.
Its current application, to Portland among other places, is remarkable. December 1944
Only two months after Greece had been liberated from German occupation, leftist elements of the government resigned and began an armed rebellion.…
About lies. Can you please advise whether or not Sir Winston Churchill said: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Many thanks. —A.S., Bermuda
That one lies with Cordell Hull
It was Franklin Roosevelt‘s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, not Churchill. I have a slight variation of it in the “Red Herrings” appendix of Churchill by Himself, page 576: “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.” Although commonly ascribed to Churchill (who would have said “trousers,” not “breeches”), this is definitely down to Hull.…
Excerpted from Richard Cohen and Richard Langworth: “Witold Pilecki: A Deserving Addition to “The Righteous Among the Nations,” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Mr. Cohen is a real estate lawyer based in London and head of the Essex Branch of the Jewish Historical Society of England. For the full text and illustrations please click here.
War aim or by-product?
Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz. (The story of Witold Pilecki.) New York: HarperCollins, 2019, $28.99, Amazon $20.49, Kindle $13.99.
By 1 August 1946 the world knew the full truth of the Holocaust.…
Everyone is familiar with Margaret Thatcher’s career. Everyone depending on their politics will have their own vision. It is left to say here what she meant to the memory of Winston Churchill, the prime minister she revered above all. More than anyone who lived at 10 Downing Street, she had real appreciation for him. She read his books, quoted him frequently, even hosted a dinner for his family and surviving members of his wartime coalition.
In 1993 she was in Washington to coincide with a Churchill Conference hosting 500 people, including 140 students, a dozen luminaries, and ambassadors from Britain and the Commonwealth.…
Q: In 'Darkest Hour,' on Churchill in 1940. I am puzzled by two characters. There is a young man who is seen near Churchill at Chartwell and the underground War Rooms. The Darkest Hour cast names him 'John Evans.' The name of another man in the cast, 'Tom Leonard,' suggests nothing. He is the driver of Churchill’s car when the PM abruptly bolts and heads for the Underground. Who are they?"
If the Almighty dabbles in the creation of individuals, He must have chortled when He conjured up Lawrence of Arabia. For here was the ideal adviser, foil and friend of Winston Spencer Churchill. To paraphrase WSC’s apocryphal quip, Lawrence possessed none of the virtues Churchill despised, an all the vices he admired.
He was “untrammeled by convention,” Churchill wrote, “independent of the ordinary currents of human action.”…
