Search Results for: EU

Blade
Opinion page of “The Blade,” Toledo, Ohio, 30 August.
Get Your History Right: Reply to Reader Hasan in “The Blade” (Toledo)

Get Your History Right: Reply to Reader Hasan in “The Blade” (Toledo)

NPR advances the Zeitgeist; The Blade responds

On a radio talk show dis­trib­uted by Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, one Aliyah Hasi­nah said World War II had been start­ed by a Eugen­ics-besot­ted Win­ston Churchill. On August 8th, the Edi­to­r­i­al Board of The Blade replied: “NPR gave air­time to an activist who has a clear ax to grind against Churchill, yet it couldn’t find a schol­ar or biog­ra­ph­er to give us a depic­tion of the whole man? …. Churchill was not a per­fect human being. He was often wrong and some of his fail­ures were spec­tac­u­lar, But for the most part, he epit­o­mizes elo­quence, courage and love of coun­try.…

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Humes
“The Inside Story of the Gettysburg Address”: Humes at the Nixon Library, 2011. Scroll to minute 5 at: https://bit.ly/3b117tt.
James Humes 1934-2020: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence

James Humes 1934-2020: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence

James Calhoun Humes … has died at 85. From his celes­tial perch, he is prob­a­bly won­der­ing about this lit­tle trib­ute. He was con­vinced, I heard, that he had giv­en “mor­tal affront” by his imper­son­ations of Sir Win­ston Churchill. Or, in my case, by pub­lish­ing a book of Churchill quotes, many of which he man­gled, some of which he made up. I guess in lat­er life, he thought we’d writ­ten him off. Not quite. = Humes was born in Penn­syl­va­nia to Samuel Hamil­ton Humes and Eleanor Kathryn Gra­ham. He was descend­ed from ear­ly set­tlers of Vir­ginia and Ten­nessee.…

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Bahamas
Late afternoon from the deck. Leave this? Well, at times you have to shuffle off…
Escape from Paradise: One Couple’s Experience, Bahamas, March 2020

Escape from Paradise: One Couple’s Experience, Bahamas, March 2020

Eleuthera, Bahamas, March 20th

Friends said, “If you expect to leave The Bahamas, do it now.” We thought it best. (I failed at retire­ment and need­ed my library in New Hamp­shire in my work for Hills­dale Col­lege in Michi­gan.) Accord­ing­ly, we changed our flights to Nas­sau and Boston from our usu­al April depar­ture to March 25th.

Jet Blue was in chaos. In my first online chat ses­sion they said the change would cost $472. It’s always a good idea to dis­con­nect and try anoth­er chat link. The sec­ond time it was “no charge”! We always use “Even More Space” (pre­mi­um econ­o­my, ear­ly board­ing), and those seats were wide open.…

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lipstick
Pre-WW2 lipstick production at Colgate-Palmolive, Australia. (State Library of New South Wales, Creative Commons)
Lipstick and the Churchills: No Subject Too Obscure, None Too Trivial.

Lipstick and the Churchills: No Subject Too Obscure, None Too Trivial.

Q: “The power of lippy”

I’m Blan­ca Bueno, a jour­nal­ist work­ing in Barcelona for a cul­tur­al quiz show for Ante­na 3, Span­ish tele­vi­sion. (It is the equiv­a­lent of NBC’s “Who’s still Stand­ing?“)

My work con­sists in writ­ing the ques­tions and check­ing if they are cor­rect and well for­mu­lat­ed, in order to be as pre­cise as pos­si­ble. We try not to spread wrong infor­ma­tion to our con­tes­tants and our audi­ence. Some­times, to do this work, I need to con­tact to some experts, such as you, in this case. I need help ver­i­fy­ing a ques­tion about Win­ston Churchill and lipstick.…

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Apartheid
South Africa in 1885 showing the array of contending jurisdictions. The four provinces of Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were united in 1910. German Southwest Africa was seized in 1915 and administered by South Africa as a nominal fifth province until 1990, when it became Namibia. The British Protectorates, Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland, achieved independence in 1966-68 as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (now Eswatini). Griqualand East and West were annexed by Cape Colony in 1878-80. Stella Land was annexed by the Transvaal (South African Republic) in 1884. Zululand was a British protectorate from 1887 to 1897, when it was absorbed by Natal. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Art of the Possible (2): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid, Mandela

The Art of the Possible (2): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid, Mandela

 Excerpt­ed from “Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid,” part 2 of an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, June 2020. For the com­plete text with end­notes, please click here. 

This arti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Nel­son Man­dela (1918-2013), below with François Pien­aar after the Spring­boks won the 1995 Rug­by World Cup. (See videos at end of arti­cle.) Not only did he sup­port and inte­grate the nation­al sport; he com­bined Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfri­ka and Die Stem van Suid-Afri­ka as a joint nation­al anthem. His Churchillian mag­na­nim­i­ty was a mod­el for his time.…

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memory
Not exactly a Nazi knee on the neck, but you get the analogy. “Your debt account, Churchill.” (Lustige Blätter, Berlin, 18 August 1944). The account book reads (with remarkable memory lapses): “England started the air war in the year 1940 against defenseless civilians! (Sylt, Freiburg.) It killed women and children, destroyed hospitals, residential quarters and churches, destroyed the cultural assets of Europe…Cologne, Hamburg…” etc. Chamberlain bombed the German airbase on Sylt on 19-20 March 1940 in reprisal for a German raid on Scapa Flow. Freiburg was mistakenly bombed by the Luftwaffe at the start of Hitler’s invasion on 10 May 1940, then by the Allies in 1944.
Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Here­with final install­ments by var­i­ous writ­ers in our two-month defense of Win­ston Churchill’s mem­o­ry. These and the links below cov­er his most pop­u­lar cur­rent sins—even cas­tra­tion and nuk­ing the Mar­alin­ga. So, unless we get a new one, that’s a wrap! RML

Memory: “The stars still shone in the sky”

Lost in the pell-mell rush to den­i­grate his mem­o­ry was the 8oth anniver­sary of Churchill becom­ing Prime Min­ster, 10 May 1940. I thought of his words as I read the igno­rant, ill-informed, false attacks on his char­ac­ter. They occurred amid protest over a trag­ic event that had noth­ing to do with him.…

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defense
The Churchill Statue by Ivor Roberts-Jones, Parliament Square, London. (Wikimedia Creative Commons, public domain)
Defcon 1: The Urgent Defense of Churchill’s Name and Legacy

Defcon 1: The Urgent Defense of Churchill’s Name and Legacy

Case for  the defense: “If we allow our mon­u­ments and stat­ues and place-names to be torn down because of our present-day views, and claims of peo­ple being offend­ed by our built envi­ron­ment that has been around for decades and some­times cen­turies, it speaks to a pathet­ic lack of con­fi­dence in our­selves as a nation. We are on the way to a soci­ety of com­pet­ing vic­tim­hoods, atom­ized and balka­nized into small­er and small­er com­mu­ni­ties, which iron­i­cal­ly enough is some­thing racists want too.” —Andrew Roberts

Defense of the good

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project has joined many oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in defense of the good.…

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Ivison
Churchill (followed by his brother Jack) visiting bomb-damaged areas of the East End of London, 8 September 1940. (War Office photo, Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Mr. Ivison: May we proclaim Trump no Churchill without slurring the latter?

Mr. Ivison: May we proclaim Trump no Churchill without slurring the latter?

Mr. Ivison is right. And wrong.

John Ivi­son in Canada’s Nation­al Post makes the point: “Don­ald Trump is no Win­ston Churchill, and the com­par­i­son is ludi­crous.” He refers to a June 3rd state­ment by the President’s press sec­re­tary, Kayleigh McE­nany. (She com­pared Trump’s appear­ance at St. John’s Epis­co­pal Church across from the White House to Churchill vis­it­ing the blitzed East End in 1940.)

I think from a pure­ly his­tor­i­cal point of view we can all agree with him. In 1940, Churchill wrote, “There was a white glow, over-pow­er­ing, sub­lime, which ran through our Island from end to end.”…

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Alistair Cooke
AC and the author, Bretton Woods, 1988. A hotel guest stopped him: “Did anyone ever tell you you look just like Alistair Cooke?” AC, who didn’t like being accosted, replied frostily: “My mother—often.”
Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

My pre­vi­ous note was about Alis­tair Cooke on Churchill in the 1930s. I here reprise my intro­duc­tion to his 1988 speech, and a per­son­al epi­logue. Sir Alistair’s remarks, at the Mount Wash­ing­ton Hotel, Bret­ton Woods, 27 August 1988, are avail­able by email. RML

Sir Alistair Cooke KBE

When, in what we must regard as a stroke of bril­liance, we thought to invite Sir Alis­tair Cooke to talk about Win­ston Churchill, we wrote him with trep­i­da­tion. We were told he had a rep­u­ta­tion for being very hard to get.

To our delight, he defied the odds.…

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John Churchill First Duke of Marlborough (mounted in red coat) at the Battle of Blenheim, 1704. (Painting by John Wootton, 1682-1764, National Army Museum, public domain)
Churchill’s Inspirations Bedizen the Pages of History

Churchill’s Inspirations Bedizen the Pages of History

Excerpt­ed from “Which His­tor­i­cal and Con­tem­po­rary Fig­ures were Churchill’s Inspi­ra­tions?” Writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, Feb­ru­ary 2020. For Hillsdale’s com­plete text and illus­tra­tions, please click here.

We are often asked which his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary per­son­ages most influ­enced Win­ston Churchill’s thought and states­man­ship. One is right to start with Lord Ran­dolph Churchill, Napoleon, Clemenceau and Marl­bor­ough. The clas­sics open anoth­er avenue. Read­ers can find pithy remarks by Churchill on many of the fol­low­ing fig­ures in Churchill by Him­self.

Lord Randolph Churchill

His father was the first of young Winston’s polit­i­cal inspi­ra­tions, and the sub­ject of his first biog­ra­phy.…

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