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Lusitania
RMS Lusitania speeding past Fastnet Light, probably outward bound for New York on her maiden voyage. Near there eight years later, she met her tragic end. (Painting by Norman Wilkinson, pubic domain)
No, Churchill Didn’t Sink the Lusitania, Either

No, Churchill Didn’t Sink the Lusitania, Either

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The scholar Harry V. Jaffa placed most of the blame on human error: “Not only was Lusitania's steam reduced; her crew was also. The best men had been taken by the Royal Navy; lifeboat drills were listless…. The davits by which they had to be lowered were virtually unworkable from the moment the ship began to list. But the greatest of all the failures was the captain’s, since he navigated almost exactly as he would have done in peacetime.” Captain Turner had slowed down after striking the Irish coast, in order to arrive with the tide at Merseyside. 

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tours
Churchill’s England VI tour party with the flag of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, loaned by John Moir of Dover District Council, Walmer Castle, Kent, 16 June 1992. There are many absent friends here, so I want to remember them all. More or less left to right: George and Barbara Lewis, Richard Hazlet, Ron Helgemo, Helen O’Dell, Barbara Langworth, Ann Hazlet, Morgan Lewis, Alan Laufman, Don Cohn, Pat Laufman, Irene Cohn, John Utz, Beverly Bonine, Merry Alberigi, Kathleen Utz, Bill & Lorraine Beatty, John Smith, Virginia & Norm West, Fenton & Mary Cunningham, Irene Costas, Addy & Brock Comegys, Marianne & Karl Almquist, Elliott Costas, Don & Barbara Stephens, John David Marshall, Dave McCook, Charlote & Earle Nicholson, Carol Robson, Gary Bonine.
The Churchill Tours, 1983-2008: A Certain Splendid Memory

The Churchill Tours, 1983-2008: A Certain Splendid Memory

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"Garry, check this Churchill tour, and the price. To think that you and we used to deliver two weeks and places these people never heard about for a third the money not so long ago" .... "Richard, just think back to the people we met with Churchill connections who are no longer with us. And in many cases our tours visited their homes. Quite unique when you think about it—in fact impossible to be repeated. We definitely had the best.”

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fifty-nine
The Lying-in-State, Westminster Hall, painted for Parliament by Alfred Egerton Cooper. (Houses of Parliament)
“At Bladon”: Fifty-nine Years On, Echoes and Memories

“At Bladon”: Fifty-nine Years On, Echoes and Memories

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30 January 1965: "On the way home, my mind was a blank. I tried to say some silent prayers for that brave and generous soul, but they were choked and confused, and came to nothing. I could not mourn for him: he had so clearly and for so long wanted to leave the World. But I was submerged in a wave of aching grief for Britain's precipitous decline, against which he had stood in vain. When I reached our flat in Eaton Place it had been burgled." —Anthony Montague Browne

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DeSantis
Governor DeSantis speaking in my home town, Staten Island, New York, 20 February 2023. (Wikimedia Commons)
Teapot Tempest: DeSantis Misquote Goes Viral

Teapot Tempest: DeSantis Misquote Goes Viral

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Note! This post falls under the title "pedantry." As I said when Politifact asked: Who cares? Many fake Churchill quotes like Governor DeSantis uttered are honorable things for anyone to have said, and Churchill said many things like them. We like to keep the record straight, and we will keep doing the job of verifying. But these are not big questions, of which there are plenty. RML

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Martin Gilbert
Sir Martin (Photo: Lady Gilbert)
Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill and the Holocaust

Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill and the Holocaust

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Why so little of the Holocaust in Churchill's war memoirs? There were many reasons. Intelligence restrictions were still in place, war crimes trials were occurring. Churchill had an understandable reluctance to criticize American officials who had blocked his order to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz. Churchill was never never one to open a quarrel with allies over the past. Also, as Lady Gilbert pointed out that it wasn't actually known as the Holocaust for years later.

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Latvians
House of the Blackheads, Old Town, Riga, Latvia. (Photo by Jorge Franganillo, Creative Commons)
The New York Times on Those Repressive Lativans

The New York Times on Those Repressive Lativans

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"You should have fought them in 1945," the Mayor of Liepaja said. "Think of all the trouble you would have saved yourselves—not to mention us.” As we stood to leave, he pulled up his shirt, showing scars across his stomach. As a boy, he and his mates would visit the barb-wired beaches after curfew, walking backwards into the water to simulate an invasion. He'd been strafed by Soviet guards. How you think about these things often depends on how you grew up.

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Rhineland
The Rhineland neighborhood in 1936. (Map by Soerfm, Creative Commons)
Churchill and the Rhineland: “Terrible Circumstances”

Churchill and the Rhineland: “Terrible Circumstances”

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Churchill would have backed French reoccupation of the Rhineland, but he soon gathered that the League of Nations was toothless. Churchill’s theme did not dramatically change in 1936; it merely evolved. As early as 1933 he had declared:  "Whatever way we turn there is risk. But the least risk and the greatest help will be found in re-creating the Concert of Europe." The failure of a concerted response over the Rhineland was to be repeated. Each time western statesmen hoped the latest Hitler inroad would be his last.

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Churchill and Palestine
A frail Roosevelt with King Ibn Saud aboard USS Quincy, Great Bitter Lake, Egypt, 14 February 1945 with interpreter Col. William Eddy, USMC. Fleet Admiral William Leahy, the President’s Chief of Staff, is at left. Remarkably, King Saud did not believe religion was the main Palestine problem. It was “immigration from Eastern Europe of people who were technically and culturally on a higher level than the Arabs, [who] had greater difficulty in surviving economically. [That these] energetic Europeans are Jewish is not the cause of the trouble. It is their superior skills and culture.” (Naval History & Heritage Command, Wikimedia Commons)
“Churchill and Palestine”: Richmond, California, February 10th

“Churchill and Palestine”: Richmond, California, February 10th

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Churchill and Palestine had a long association spanning two world wars and thirty years. It began when Arthur Balfour declared Britain's objective of a "Jewish National Home" in Palestine. Almost simultaneously, T.E. Lawrence was promising the Arabs sovereignty over lands in the Middle East ruled for nearly half a millennium by the Turks. A reluctant Britain accepted responsibility for the Mandate of Palestine after the war. East Palestine became Arab-ruled Jordan. West Palestine became the source of conflict that has now lasted over a century.

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Christmas
“Winter Sunshine, Chartwell,” circa 1924, Coombs 142. During a Christmas season, Churchill painted his Kentish home under snow. (Reproduced by kind permission of Churchill Heritage Ltd.)
Churchill’s Christmas, 1882-1947: Halcyon and Sterner Days

Churchill’s Christmas, 1882-1947: Halcyon and Sterner Days

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At Christmas 1932, Churchill received as a present “a huge bottle of brandy, and decided to paint it, accompanied by lesser bottles," Johnnie Churchill remembered. "He sent us children scurrying around Chartwell to find them: 'Fetch me associate and fraternal bottles to form a bodyguard to this majestic container.'"

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Generals
Sacking Wavell also gave Churchill the opportunity to make him Viceroy of India, where he became the person most responsible for relieving the Bengal Famine. Wavell (center) is at the Viceregal Gardens, New Delhi, with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (left) and Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, 17 June 1946. (Imperial War Museum, Wikimedia Commons)
Generals Wavell and Auchinleck, and the Lost Art of Going Quietly

Generals Wavell and Auchinleck, and the Lost Art of Going Quietly

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Leaving quietly was what you did in those bygone days. Lord Halifax in 1940 proposed negotiations with Hitler; rejected by the War Cabinet, he did not offer interviews to air his grievances. Nor would such an act of public disloyalty have occurred to him. George Marshall, a great man, had many disagreements with his civilian chiefs. Offered a million dollars for his memoirs, he declined, saying, “I have already been adequately compensated for my services.”

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