“Even today, with fifty million words published about him, CHURCHILL IS MISJUDGED as a warmonger ardent for battle. In reality he hated and feared war,
and struggled to avoid both World Wars in the 20th century.” —RML
An article in the Christian Post equates President Obama’s absence from the March in Paris with President Johnson skipping the 1965 Churchill Funeral. The Johnson story has gone around a lot lately, but it is neither accurate nor a fair comparison.
President Johnson, suffering from a bad case of flu, sent Chief Justice Earl Warren and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the Churchill Funeral. In his official statement Johnson said: “When there was darkness in the world…a generous Providence gave us Winston Churchill….He is history’s child, and what he said and what he did will never die.”…
"Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.… If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told." —Churchill, 1933
“I was, I think, the first in this House to suggest, in November 1949, recognition of the Chinese Communists….I thought that it would be a good thing to have diplomatic representation. But if you recognise anyone it does not necessarily mean that you like him. We all, for instance, recognise the Rt Hon Gentleman, the Member for Ebbw Vale.”* —Winston S. Churchill, 1 July 1952.
On President Obama’s December 17th announcement restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, a colleague writes: “Finally we’ll have access to truly great healthcare.”
Funny. Actually top tier Cuban healthcare is mainly for party members. There is a tiered system.…
Richard Deane Taylor achieved immortality when he painted one of the most evocative and accurate portraits of Winston Churchill for Collier’s in 1951, to mark Churchill’s return to office. Years later he gave me the privilege of using it on the first English edition of my book of quotations, Churchill By Himself. He leaves fond memories among his colleagues and former students.
This year marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Churchill becoming prime minister in 1940, and the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1965. This Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar drew leading historians and thinkers to examine Churchill’s extraordinary statesmanship and the lessons that may be drawn from his example today.
Boris Johnson, whose book, The Churchill Factor, is feted widely, speaks his mind with a smile. Like Mr. Obama, he’s a chap I’d like to share a pint with at the local.
But fame and likability don’t a Churchill scholar make. And in that department, Boris Johnson needs some help.
His remarks are quoted from a November 14th speech at the Yale Club in New York City.
Boris Fact-checks
1) Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s World War II “loan” of $50 billion worth of war materiel to the Allies, “screwed” the British.
I queried Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers University, editor of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence and several books on World War II, who wrote:
Realpolitik: "At a conference in the Greek Foreign Office, lit only by hurricane lamps as bombs burst over the Piraeus, Churchill subjected the warring Greeks to a discourse the like of which they had never heard before. The two factions agreed to appoint Damaskinos as Regent; he called for reconciliation, ended the fighting, and left office in 1946 with Greece a constitutional monarchy."
I am pleased to post this press release, and honored to be associated with the distinguished Churchill scholars at Hillsdale. Without their work, the Churchill Official Biography would be out of print and unfinished. With them, you can buy every volume at a modest price, all 31 volumes. It's nice to be among friends.
After playing doormat to the National League East for ages; after blowing a sure Division Series in 2012, we all expected our Washington Nationals to put a stamp on the 90th anniversary of 1924—the last year Washington won the World Series. Why it didn't happen...
Laguna Hills, Calif., October 6th— Curt Zoller, a Churchill scholar for a third of a century, passed away a week short of his 94th birthday. “Over the last two years his health had been rapidly declining,” writes his daughter Marsha, “but he tried so hard to ‘Never give in.'”
A serious book collector, Curt was a longtime columnist for Finest Hour, the Churchill quarterly I edited from 1982 to 2014. There he wrote “Churchilltrivia,” the Quiz column. In 2004 he published an invaluable reference, The Annotated Bibliography of Works About Sir Winston S. Churchill. In it, Curt logged thousands of books, articles and dissertations.…
