“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
Q: How important was Congressman Bourke Cockran’s influence on the young Churchill?
A: Very. The late Curt Zoller was the first to write in depth about Bourke Cockran. This man played a vital but little understood role in forming young Churchill’s political philosophy. In 1895, Zoller wrote, when young Churchill traveled to New York on his way to Cuba,
…he was greeted by William Bourke Cockran, a New York lawyer, U.S. congressman, friend of his mother’s and of his American relatives. Winston’s Aunt Clara was married to Moreton Frewen. (The peripatetic “Mortal Ruin” would later badly edit Churchill’s first book, Story of the Malakand Field Force.)…
He spoke to us about Winston Churchill in San Francisco in 2009. Ever since, I have sought out the uncommon speeches of Justice Clarence Thomas. Invariably I find them moving, eloquent, and instructive on things I haven’t considered sufficiently.
Such was his November 2016 tribute to Antonin Scalia, given to the Federalist Society. He began with examples of the late Justice’s wit (beloved alike by Justice Thomas and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Respectively, they agreed with Scalia most of the time—and little of the time.):
In PGA Tour vs. Martin [Scalia] wrote: “I am sure that the framers of the U.S. Constitution aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland, prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this August Court would some day have to wrestle with the age-old jurisprudential question for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer?”…
The question arises, has anything been written on Churchill’s radio technique? Did he treat radio differently from other kinds of public speaking? How quickly did he take to the broadcast?
“The Art of the Microphone”
An excellent piece on this subject was by Richard Dimbleby (1913-1965), the BBC’s first war correspondent and later its leading TV news commentator. His “Churchill the Broadcaster” is in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by his Contemporaries (London: Hutchinson, 1953). Old as it is, the book remains a comprehensive set of essays of the many specialized attributes of WSC.
Dimbleby offers four areas of discussion: the technical background, the drama of World War II, the factual material, and Churchill’s methods of delivery.…
Churchill’s wisdom speaks to us across the years. Take the controversy of whether we blab too much in advance about military operations, like Mosul.
In the October 19th presidential debate, Mr. Trump said the U.S. and Iraqis forfeited “the element of surprise” in publicizing the coming offensive against Mosul. This, he insisted, allowed Islamic State ringleaders to remove themselves from the danger zone: “Douglas MacArthur, George Patton [must be] spinning in their graves when they see the stupidity of our country.” Earlier in the week he had asked: “Why don’t we just go in quietly, right?…
Who here is in their Forties? Are you as pessimistic as he was?
Winston Churchill was 48 when he penned some “Reflections on the Century,” which may arrest you with their prescience—and their eerie relevance.
His words below are in his original “speech form.” This is the way they were set out on the notes he carried with him, however well he memorized his lines. They appear in this style in my collection of quotations, Churchill by Himself, but differ from the way you may have encountered them in other books:
What a disappointment [this] century has been.……
Norman Longmate, If Britain Had Fallen: The Real Nazi Occupation Plans. Published 1972, reprinted 2012, available from Amazon in hardback, paperback and Kindle editions.
A recent kerfuffle over draping Nazi banners on beloved British icons reminds me that this has been going on a long time and is perfectly acceptable in examining historical possiblities. Take the late Norman Longmate, who offered a gripping pastiche about what might have happened in 1940. As a result, we have a glimpse of a possible alternative.
Longmate’s Yarn on the Worst Possibility
Later that afternoon with the Germans already in Trafalgar Square and advancing down Whitehall to take their position in the rear, the enemy unit advancing across St.…
Transformers: Blenheim Palace bedizened with Nazi Swastikas? File this in the overflowing catalogue of much ado about nothing.
Blenheim Affront
On September 25th, several Churchill writers received an email: “Urgent Media Request—the Sin.” (A typo for the Sun newspaper, though ironically appropriate.)
“I’m a journalist with the Sun,” we were told by a member of their staff. “I’m working on a story in our paper tomorrow about a disgusting act which tarnishes Sir Winston Churchill’s memory.” He didn’t say what, but it was easy to guess.
The disgusting act, already blasted around via the Internet, was to drape Blenheim (“Churchill’s home” according to reports) with huge Nazi banners.…
Scarcely more than a year since fighting had ended in Europe, Churchill spoke at Zürich University. There he stunned his audience with words that perhaps only he was able to say at that time:
I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the re-creation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. Zürich, 19 September 2016
Seventy years to the day after Churchill’s Zürich speech, Zürich University sponsored a distinguished seminar.…
Synopsis: Reflections on fifty years of messing about with Triumphs: “I’d never say this if I were not among friends, but Ferraris bore me. Just unaffordable excellence. My fun derives from funky vintage British cars.”
Speaker: Richard Langworth has been an automotive writer since 1969. After a freelance article in Automobile Quarterly, he joined AQ as associate and later senior editor. In 1975 he left to freelance. He has since written or co-authored more than fifty books and 2000 articles on automotive history. Richard…
Churchill’s Secret, co-produced by PBS Masterpiece and ITV (UK). Directed by Charles Sturridge, starring Michael Gambon as Sir Winston and Lindsay Duncan as Lady Churchill. To watch, click here.
PBS and ITV have succeeded where many failed. They offer a Churchill documentary with a minimum of dramatic license, reasonably faithful to history (as much as we know of it). Churchill’s Secret limns the pathos, humor, hope and trauma of a little-known episode: Churchill’s stroke on 23 June 1953, and his miraculous recovery. For weeks afterward, his faithful lieutenants in secret ran the government.…
