Search Results for: EU

Lenin
Lenin haranguing Muscovites, May 1920. (Photo by Grigory Petrovich Goldstein, public domain)
Lenin as Typhoid Culture. Or: To Russia With Love

Lenin as Typhoid Culture. Or: To Russia With Love

The German plan, Churchill wrote, “worked with amazing accuracy. No sooner did Lenin arrive than he began beckoning a finger here and a finger there to obscure persons in sheltered retreats in New York, in Glasgow, in Bern, and other countries, and he gathered together the leading spirits of a formidable sect, the most formidable sect in the world, of which he was the high priest and chief. With these spirits around him he set to work with demoniacal ability to tear to pieces every institution on which the Russian State and nation depended. Russia was laid low. Russia had to be laid low. She was laid low to the dust.”

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Benson
Tim Benson and the Cartoonists’ Churchill

Tim Benson and the Cartoonists’ Churchill

Benson devotes himself mainly to the Second World War. The uplifting spirit of British cartoonists in the black days of 1940-41 is at once evident. A glow of resolve swept Britain; there were no carping media midgets such as we hear from today. That was a time, as Churchill put it, “when it was equally good to live or die.” The pace picks up as Hitler invades Russia. The Daily Sketch pictures Roosevelt leading a sailing race in a boat marked “Lend-Lease.” Melbourne’s Herald adds Aussie humor: Tojo being fed a cigar (lit end first), and wrestler Churchill putting a toe-hold on a screaming Mussolini. This is a first-class work of scholarship in addition to high entertainment.

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Greeks
“Was there no ancestral spirit to conjure up before this unfortunate Prince, the downfall of his House, the ruin of his people—the bloody cellar of Ekaterinburg?” L-R: Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Alexandra, Anastasia, Alexei, Tatiana at Livadia, Crimea, 1913. (Photo by the Levitsky Studio, public domain)
Russians and Greeks: “Falling Below the Level of Events”

Russians and Greeks: “Falling Below the Level of Events”

Churchill to Grey: "I beseech you at this crisis not to make a mistake in falling below the level of events. Half-hearted measures will ruin all, and a million men will die through the prolongation of the war. You must be bold and violent. You have a right to be. Our fleet is forcing the Dardanelles. No armies can reach Constantinople but those which we invite, yet we seek nothing here but the victory of the common cause." Grey and the Foreign Office "felt as we did. They did all in their power. It registers a terrible moment in the long struggle to save Russia from her foes and from herself.”

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statue
(Photo by Tim Buss, Creative Commons)
Interview: Some Thoughts on Churchill’s London Statue

Interview: Some Thoughts on Churchill’s London Statue

The statue dilemma: All those statues on Parliament Square—not just Churchill's—are of people with human faults. During the craze to tear down statues a few years ago, French President Macron boldly announced that no French statues would go. They are part of France's heritage, he said, for good or ill. That was very courageous of him. Statues tell a nation's story. If you object to one, erect one to balance it. There is no virtue in hiding from history.

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jargon
“Let us not shrink from using the short, expressive phrases”: Campaigning at Uxbridge, Middlesex, 27 June 1945. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Churchill on Jargon: “Let Us Have an End to This Grimace”

Churchill on Jargon: “Let Us Have an End to This Grimace”

Churchill said, “Short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.” How would that peerless practitioner of English, would react to the kind of language around us today? We can imagine what he would think about substituting fashionable jargon like “challenges” for “handicaps” or “issues” for “difficulties.” What would he make of that stand-by cliché “reaching out”? Oh dear....

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Pamela
“The Life of the Party,” Christopher Ogden’s entertaining biography, is strongly recommended.
Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman 1920-1997

Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman 1920-1997

Pamela Harriman was a noble spirit devoted to friends, family and both her countries. Not many people could have journeyed so successfully and far She was grace personified, at home equally in Churchill’s air raid shelter or the Élysée Palace. President Chirac was saddened by her death: “To say that she was an exceptional representative of the U.S. does not do justice to her achievement. She lent to our longstanding alliance the radiant strength of her personality. She was elegance itself...a peerless diplomat.” That old Francophile, her father-in-law, would have smiled.

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Black Forest
Vickers Wellington; KA letters designate the 1448 Flight. (Painting by Jkdomus, Creative Commons)
Myths and Heresies: “Firebombing the Black Forest”

Myths and Heresies: “Firebombing the Black Forest”

The great Tucker Flapdoodle: Adolf Hitler was misunderstood, we are told. He invaded Poland only because Chamberlain and Churchill forced him. He never wanted France, dropped peace leaflets on Britain. The Germans were baffled over what to do with millions of Russian POWs because Churchill kept fighting long enough to bring Stalin in. Then Churchill got America involved. Here we consider just one of these unique charges: that in his bloodlust, Churchill firebombed Germany's Black Forest. (We hadn't heard that one before.)

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Iroquois
“Sh— I think I can hear a little war coming in the East.” Sidney Strube in the Daily Express, 23 January 1920. Poland and Russia were at war and War Minister Churchill was beating tom-toms, according to the Express. The paper’s owner, Lord Beaverbrook, was often amused when his cartoonists lampooned his friend Winston. (Public domain)
Chief Great Leader: The Myth of Churchill’s Iroquois Ancestors

Chief Great Leader: The Myth of Churchill’s Iroquois Ancestors

"Race: human. But if, as I imagine is the case, the object of this enquiry is to determine whether I have coloured blood in my veins, I am most happy to be able to inform you that I do, indeed, so have. This is derived from one of my most revered ancestors, the Indian Princess Pocahontas, of whom you may not have heard, but who was married to a Jamestown settler named John Rolfe." —Randolph Churchill, way out in fiction, to South African Immigration officers in the days of Apartheid.

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V-sign
Whoops! Oblivious to the difference, Churchill flashes the V-sign wrong-way out, Bradford, 4 December 1942. (Photo by Capt. Horton, War Office, pubic domain)
Churchill’s V-Sign (both ways) and the Peace Symbol

Churchill’s V-Sign (both ways) and the Peace Symbol

It is virtually certain that Churchill was unconscious of the meaning of the palm-in V-sign. Former secretary Elizabeth Layton Nel told me he was "astonished" when (with some embarrassment) she told him what it meant. This moment is humorously reenacted in the great film "Darkest Hour, "with Gary Oldman as WSC and Lily James as Elizabeth. 

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Rootes
Bikers admire Mike Hoffman’s Alpine and our second Tiger, Alton Bay, New Hampshire, 2020. (Photo by the author)
Confessions of a Rootes Autoholic

Confessions of a Rootes Autoholic

Meet the Tiger: Remember, I’d been driving an Alpine, so the rest of this car seemed more or less familiar. At the Rootes showroom on Fifth Avenue, they rolled down the plate glass and gingerly drove to the waterfront. Then I got onto the East Side Drive and put my foot down. Lightning struck! I had one thought: I’ve got to get one of these!

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