On the first day of April, a spoof flashed around social media. In honor of Easter, all thirty Major League Baseball teams would be wearing jerseys in Easter egg pastel colors. April Fool! The day dawned, and the teams all wore their normal uniforms. The culprit, Chris Creamer of SportsLogos.net, said it was all in fun.
Chris’s joke gained credence thanks to MLB’s habit of commemorating everything from pet dogs to “our troops.” (“Pups in the Park,” who’s gonna clean up that mess?…
… is the most mysterious and ethereal story Winston Churchill ever wrote. Yet the more we know about him, the better we may understand how he came to write it.
Replete with broad-sweep Churchillian narrative, The Dream contains many references to now-obscure people, places and things. The new online version published by Hillsdale provides links to all of them. You need only click on any unfamiliar name or term for links to online references.…
A colleague asks if there were any official tributes by the government of India following Churchill’s death in January 1965. He was curious to know if Indian attitudes half a century ago were as virulent as they are in some quarters today.
There were indeed tributes from India. Heidi Eggerton of the Churchill Archives Centre provided this coverage in The Times of 25 January 1965, page 8, under the heading:
“Leader with Magic Personality”
DELHI, 24 JANUARY 1965— The Indian tricolour flying on all public buildings in preparation for Republic Day on Tuesday, was lowered to half-mast today….…
At a time when Churchill is under violent and irrational attack, it is time for a tonic. One good antidote to it all is an eloquent essay by Simon Schama.
Years ago the Columbia historian reviewed, for The New Republic, Martin Gilbert‘s official biography Volume VI, Finest Hour 1939-1941. It was, incidentally a fine tribute to Sir Martin, whose epic biography Professor Schama christened “The Churchilliad.”
What we should consider right now, though, are Schama’s evergreen words about Churchill. Martin Gilbert’s volume VI reaches its apogee in May 1940—the very time commemorated by the movie Darkest Hour.…
Assault count: Since I am losing track, I thought it would be convenient to create an index to smears of Winston Churchill following the film Darkest Hour. Note the similarity of topics. Many writers feed off each other, repeating the same disproven arguments. Never do they check Churchill quotes or The Churchill Documents —which prove them irretrievably wrong. The order is most recent first.
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Update for 2019 Assault of 29 March: The Ezine Scroll-in reported that Churchill’s policies caused the drought that caused the Bengal Famine. (Not enough to be Prime Minister, he must also be a farmer, since he needed to know Irrigation.)…
So declare the authors of “Sir John Colville, Churchillian Networks, and the ‘Castlerosse Affair’”—unreservedly repeated by British television, multiple media, even a university: (“Winston Churchill’s affair revealed by forgotten testimony.”)…
Ms. Camilla Long (“TV Review, Sunday Times, March 11th)* has a way with words. Never mind that some of them are so ultra-camp that she could be accused of gratuitously inflicting them on the rest of us proles with malnourished intellects.
“Hoorays,” “lilo,” “naff,” “proto-Wallis” and “pantomime horse-named” may be daily vernacular in the rarified atmosphere of the Sunday Times Culture Section. But they’re likely to confuse anyone who prefers communication to obfuscation. However, the Long View of my colleague Andrew Roberts as a “striped-piglet historian” makes me forgive her everything. I will dine out on that one many times, not least with the Striped Piglet himself.…
Robert Hardy’s estate went under the hammer in Gloucestershire yesterday. It comprised an eclectic scrapbook of his grand life. There was even the brass plaque of Siegfried Farnon, the irascible Yorkshire vet. RH endeared himself as Siegfried for ninety episodes on “All Creatures Great and Small.”
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Alerted late, I tried for one of his Churchill rings, but the bidding went far beyond estimates. A friend and colleague came away with Churchill’s bow tie. It was given to RH by Grace Hamblin during the filming of Churchill: The Wilderness Years, in 1981.…
After more than our share of historical clangers recently, Churchill admirers can welcome all this movie offers. Unlike any recent production, it genuinely honors the heroic memory. And that’s a special thing these days. Give Gary Oldman, the cast and producers a tip of the hat.
"But all this is only the background upon which the glorious heroism and martial qualities of the Indian troops who fought in the Middle East, who defended Egypt, who liberated Abyssinia, who played a grand part in Italy, and who, side by side with their British comrades, expelled the Japanese from Burma…. The loyalty of the Indian Army to the King-Emperor, the proud fidelity to their treaties of the Indian Princes, the unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war…." -Churchill
