“Film after film, book after book, paints Churchill as a grotesque anachronism. WE NEED TO LOOK DEEPER. Because as he himself once said, “I should think it was hardly possible to state the opposite of the truth with more precision.” —RML
Nolan’s Dunkirk: “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans”
(Reviewed for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.) Dunkirk, produced by Christopher Nolan, sets out to portray the 1940 rescue of the Allied armies from the clutches of Hitler’s Wehrmacht in terms of courage, heroism, survival, and a few examples of cowardice. In that he succeeds admirably. In terms of context—in conveying an understanding of what Dunkirk was about—he fails utterly.
Drama Sans Meaning
Mr. Nolan says context wasn’t the aim. Dunkirk is about communal togetherness and universal goodness. But that could be shown on any beach in any war in the last hundred years from Gallipoli to Normandy to Inchon.…
“What Price Churchill?” Click here for the final moments of a momentous television epic. “Churchill: The Wilderness Years” (1981) enshrined him forever as the greatest of “Churchills” in a sea of pale imitations. Martin Gilbert‘s close involvement with the scriptwriters gave him truth and substance. In a world of revisionist history, flawed portraits and overplayed roles, it was accurate to a fault. Timothy Robert Hardy was the only actor to play her father for whom Lady Soames would brook no word of criticism. I’ll always remember her greeting Tim with outstretched arms: “Papa!”
"The glorious heroism and martial qualities of the Indian troops...shine for ever in the annals of war…. Nearly three million Indians volunteered to serve, and by 1942 an Indian Army of one million was in being, and volunteers were coming in at the monthly rate of fifty thousand…. The response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire." Churchill
Invasion in 1940? Timothy Egan poses a thoughtful question in The New York Times. What if Hitler, not hesitating after Dunkirk, had rapidly launched an invasion of Britain? In conveying the movie Dunkirk‘s importance, Egan’s first paragraph is a much better introduction than the film provides: For more than a thousand years, the tribes of Europe have stared into the gun-metal-gray chop of the English Channel and thought of conquest. “We have six centuries of insults to avenge,” said Napoleon. I was just there, on the same spring week when the great bedraggled scraps of the French and British armies were cornered for slaughter by the Nazi war machine 77 years ago.…
Furry Hot-Water Bottles: Churchill was fond of cats, though in their nature, they didn't always return his affections. Nelson was a formidable grey tom which Churchill brought from the Admiralty when he moved to Downing Street in 1940. The aggressive Nelson soon chased away the previous resident, a holdover from Chamberlain, which the Churchill family had christened “Munich Mouser.” Nelson was congratulated.
“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles.”
The statement above is attributed to Churchill. I cannot find it, as a speech or in a book. Although it is widely and increasingly quoted in the Indian press and, given what is happening, he seems to have been prophetic! —K.P., India
This post has the distinction of engendering the most comment among the 500 on my website.…
The Churchill Society of Tennessee held its autumn banquet program in Nashville on the evening of Saturday October 14th. Our guest speaker, Richard M. Langworth, CBE discussed “Winston Churchill: Current Contentions.” Some 200 members and friends attended.
Langworth is also author or editor of A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, Churchill in His Own Words, Churchill By Himself and nine other books about Churchill.…
Reviews of Christopher Nolan’s new film on Dunkirk, which take quite opposite points of view.
Dunkirk without Context
Dorothy Rabinowitz, in The Wall Street Journal, proclaims “the dumbing down of Dunkirk.” Mr. Nolan, she writes:
…considers Dunkirk “a universal story…about communal heroism.” Which explains why this is—despite its impressive cinematography, its moving portrait of suffering troops and their rescuers—a Dunkirk flattened out, disconnected from the spirit of its time, from any sense even of the particular mighty enemy with which England was at war.
When an event in history has become, in the mind of a writer, “universal” it’s a tip-off.…
I am asked what Churchill wrote and thought about his birthplace, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The first words I recall are those of his mother Jennie: “with pardonable pride.” They occur early in The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (1908). I always loved her description. One regrets the decline of people who can write like Jennie. She ranked with Lady Diana Cooper, and I think her son’s writing talent was inherited from her.…
A friend writes asking for the audio of Churchill’s second of three speeches to Congress, and poses a question: “Roosevelt attended neither the 1941 nor 1943 speeches. Why not?”
Click here for clear audio of the 50-minute speech.
Presidents never attend speeches to Congress by foreign heads of state or government. Part of this is certainly courtesy, so as not to steal focus from the guest. In a deeper sense, it is an assertion of the separation of powers between Congress and the Executive. A similar tradition in Britain is when the House of Commons slams the door on Black Rod, when he summons Members to the House of Lords to hear the Queen’s Speech.…
