“Laboring forty years in the vineyard of his words, I am struck most by CHURCHILL’S JUDGEMENT. And as William Manchester wrote, ‘while his early reactions were often emotional, and even unworthy of him, they were usually succeeded by reason and generosity.’” —RML
Balmy temperatures and a record turnout of 700 marked our event featuring Nigel Farage as keynote speaker at Hillsdale College‘s Churchill Conference and Dinner, held in conjunction with the “The Art of Winston Churchill: An Exhibition at Hillsdale College.” Like most Hillsdale educational events, there were no registration fees or meal charges, all of which are pre-funded. The paintings, organized by the National Churchill Museum, Fulton, were on display from January through March.)
Videos of all presentations are posted. Click here.
Nigel Farage built the UK Independence Party from a fringe group to the point where it dominated UK elections for the European Parliament and was a key force in Britain’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union.…
Q: Another new movie, A United Kingdom, saddles Churchill with racism. It’s the story of Seretse Khama of the Bechuanaland royal family and heir to the throne. After studying in England, he meets and marries a British woman, Ruth Williams. The South African government, which is adopting Apartheid, is troubled by the interracial marriage. It presses the Attlee government in Britain to exile Khama, which they do. Churchill is not a character in the film, but we are told that he supports Khama and will restore him if Churchill’s party wins the 1951 election.…
Published 8 March 2017 on the Daily Caller, under the title “A Lesson on Russia for Trump.” Their title, not mine; I do not presume to offer anyone lessons.
“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” —Winston Churchill, 1939
“If Putin likes Trump, guess what, folks, that’s called an asset, not a liability. Now I don’t know that I’m going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there’s a good chance I won’t.” —Donald Trump, 2017
Russia National Interests
Trump-Churchill comparisons are invidious and silly.…
The longest biography in history takes a long step to completion with publication of The Churchill Documents, Vol. 19, Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944. (Order your copy here). Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr. Larry Arnn, these 2700 pages serve up another fresh contribution of documents crucial to our understanding of Churchill in World War II. It is a vast new contribution to Churchill scholarship.
Winston S. Churchill, the official biography consists of eight narrative volumes and now nineteen companion or document volumes, all kept in print and offered at modest prices as both hardback and electronic editions.…
Sir Martin Gilbert’s moving book, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War, ends with verses from “Willie McBride,” by the Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle, which carry an evergreen message to all generations, and capture what Churchill thought of modern war—which he tried so hard, before both World Wars, to avoid.
Sir Martin wrote that in research for the book, he and Lady Gilbert found the grave of Private William McBride, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, killed April 1916, two months before the Somme. Whether this was the grave of Eric Bogle’s subject is immaterial.…
A colleague asks if it’s true that Churchill comrade Jack Seely was “arrested for arrogance” in the Boer War! It doesn’t sound to either of us like an arrestable offense, but fits the character—a lordly aristocrat-adventurer, and thus almost inevitable Friend of Winston.
A Churchill biographer, Esme Wingfield-Stratford, agreed: “Gallant Jack Seely, from the Isle of Wight…a light-hearted gambler with death, was about the one man who could claim a record to compare with that of Winston himself.”
C.N Trueman thinks that Jack Seely could not have lived in the 21st century. “He truly belonged to an era associated with the British Empire and the attitudes embedded into a society that at one point had a government that controlled a quarter of the world.”…
Was the war really avoidable? Yes, it was—at Munich in particular—but with great difficulty. No one can underestimate the problems in the way. And yet, tantalizing opportunities existed. "Appeasement" is not in "Churchill and the Avoidable War." It is far over-used, and broadly misunderstood. It is not popular, Churchill wrote, "but appeasement has its place in all policy." There are lessons in Churchill's Avoidable War that serve us well today. Will we listen? We rarely have.
Because my son works in Silicon Valley, and has start-up experience both as an employee and a founder, I found this book of interest and devoured it in three nights. It’s the story of a journalist who, at 52, tries his hand as a tech marketer, and is gravely shocked and disappointed with the culture he discovers in a start-up tech firm with hundreds of employees and bazillions in venture capital.
. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, by Dan Lyons. Hachette Books, $15.16 from Amazon, Kindle $13.99.
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Tech morphs constantly; humanity never changes. I bookmarked descriptions which reminded me of people my son has described—and people I’ve met in my own career, which is as far away as it gets from the Silicon Valley tech world.…
The inaccuracies would be boring to catalogue. Is it really so big a deal? Not in itself. The trouble is, it advances ignorance. It's only drama, people will say. But as a result we will soon read on the web how Churchill’s stroke was kept from the Queen. How he "forced" the Royal Couple to move from Clarence House. And how he painted a scene repeatedly in his Black Dog of despair. Why do producers distort the past and expect people to believe it? Because most will? Because the screenwriter may appear at a Churchill event, praised for his achievement in selling a million copies?
Seventy-five years ago today, Winston Churchill was pondering survival. Hitler gripped Europe from France to deep inside Russia. Nazi U-boats were strangling British shipping; Rommel’s Afrika Korps was advancing on Suez. Britain’s only ally beside the Empire/Commonwealth, the Red Army, was fighting before Moscow. America remained supportive…and aloof.
Eighteen months earlier he had become prime minister. No one else had wanted the task. “God alone knows how great it is,” he muttered, his eyes filling.…
