“Palestinian dung eaters.” As noted above, the quote is hearsay, though I wouldn’t dispute the context. Michael Makovsky in Churchill’s Promised Land, is correct to say it jibed with WSC’s low opinion of Palestinians he’d met in 1920. But to call people primitive or backward is not racist. Nor is Palestine a race. Fact.

Killing natives: Where exactly did he laugh and joke about killing natives? If you want to throw accusations around, have the integrity to back them up. What he said about the Amritsar Massacre is, however, apposite: “Frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people….Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British pharmacopoeia.” House of Commons, 8 July 1920. Fact.

Eugenics. Yes, Churchill was “into” Eugenics for a flash of cosmic time, when everybody else was, too. He didn’t murder anyone, let alone six million, for the accident of their birth. Fact.

Stick to reality, not fancy. Otherwise, to paraphrase Santayana, those who spew rubbish are condemned to respew it.

As a teacher I would say this is good advice; as a literary critic I would say it is too pedestrian to be WSC.