“Among his many qualities over fifty years of political prominence was CHURCHILL’S CONSISTENCY. He might not agree with every position, biographer Martin Gilbert wrote: ‘But there would be nothing to cause me to think: How shocking, how appalling.’” —RML
The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 2: Tucker to Kaiser-Frazer
Continued from Part 1. My Alex Tremulis piece was published in full in The Automobile, March 2020.
Alex and Tucker
Like Bob Bourke’s famous 1953 Studebaker “Loewy coupe,” the 1948 Tucker was almost entirely the work of one designer. Of course many helped, and both Bourke and Tremulis gave them credit. But as near as one comes to designing a car by oneself, they did.
Alex set to work in a studio at Tucker’s large, ex-Dodge plant in Chicago. As chief designer he had to inject practicality into Preston Tucker’s enthusiasm. First concepts included a car with cycle fenders that turned with the wheels, a periscope rearview scanner, and vast expanses of compound-curved glass.…
My Tremulis piece was published in full in The Automobile, March 2020.
“That was a different time,” Alex Tremulis told me, recalling his heyday in car design. “The Forties through the Seventies. Back then a single person could often influence the shape of a car. Sometimes the whole car. Of course, lots of our ideas were sheer rubbish. But now and then, by luck or force of personality, we put something good into production.”
Many famous automotive designs did have whimsical beginnings. Bill Boyer put portholes on the rear roof quarters of the 1956 Ford Thunderbird to recall “the coachwork heritage.”…
My brother Andrew Roberts inspired this post, when he asked for Churchill quotations about childbirth. Yes, even now, friends have brought a new life into the world. Three months ago, my son and daughter-in-law did likewise.
Life Goes On
On 30 May 1909, Clementine Churchill was pregnant with their first child, Diana. Winston, asking her to practice social distancing, wrote these beautiful words: “We are in the grip of circumstances, and out of pain joy will spring, and from passing weakness new strength will arise.”
Four and one-half decades later, his daughter Mary was a fortnight overdue for the birth of Charlotte, her fourth child.…
We are constantly asked to verify the famous exchange. Shaw writes: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Churchill replies: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.” Though it’s lovely repartee, both of them denied it.
Sporadically, pundits compare Donald Trump with Winston Churchill. There’s even a book coming out on the subject. I deprecate all this by instinct and will avoid that book like the Coronavirus. Surface similarities may exist: both said or say mainly what they thought or think, unfiltered by polls (and sometimes good advice). But Churchill’s language and thought were on a higher plane. Still, when a friend said that Churchill never stooped to derisive nicknames like Trump, I had to disagree.
Whether invented by the President or his scriptwriters, some of Trump’s nicknames were very effective.…
“Churchill on Low” is excerpted from “David Low” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Click here for the original text. To subscribe for regular Hillsdale updates, click here, scroll to bottom and fill in your email.
“Master of invective”
“Low is the greatest of our modern cartoonists,” wrote Winston Churchill in his delightful essay “Cartoons and Cartoonists.” He praised “the vividness of his political conceptions,” declaring Low a singular talent: “He possesses what few cartoonists have—a grand technique of draughtsmanship. Low is a master of black and white. He is the Charlie Chaplin of caricature, and tragedy and comedy are the same to him.”…
In our electronic Speaker’s Corner (the Internet), Winston Churchill is beset by haters. Their knee-jerk spouts are laced with out-of-context quotes and preconceived notions. Call it Churchill Derangement Syndrome. Where is the truth? Perhaps we need a Derangement Index. Click on “A” for Aryan Supremacy, “B” for the Bengal Famine, etc. A handy reference to every derangement you can access with a couple of clicks.
An e-zine called This is Local London, describing its offerings as “quality local journalism,” is a standard example. Well, maybe not so standard. “The Problem with Glorying Winston Churchill” was written not by a historian or researcher, but a student at Wallington County Grammar School.…
“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders,” Churchill wrote. [1] A war leader is “the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations—all take their seat at the Council Board….” [2]
Churchill’s most flagrant inaction, according to many critics, was failing to bomb Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, or the rail lines leading to it.…
“How many speeches did Churchill make, and in how many words? Also, how many words did he write in his books and articles? [Updated from 2014.]
Word counts
Through the wonders of computer science (Ian Langworth and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project), we know that the present corpus of works by and about Winston S. Churchill exceeds 80 million words (380 megabytes). This includes 20 million (120 megabytes) by Churchill himself (counting his letters, memos and papers in the 23 volumes of Churchill Documents. Here are his the top word counts among his books:
Winston Churchill retired as Prime Minister on 5 April 1955. On April 3rd, he met with his non-Cabinet ministers. His last words were reported by William Sidney, Viscount De L’Isle and Dudley, his neighbor in Westerham, to Martin Gilbert. “Man is spirit,” he told them. Then he added: “Never be separated from the Americans.”
The latter is well understood. In 1956, when he wasn’t around, there was quite a serious separation, over Suez. “Man is spirit” is harder to understand. What did Churchill mean?
A professor teaching Churchill’s statesmanship says his class is going back and forth on that.…
