Search Results for: EU

motorist
Churchill at the wheel of his Wolseley 10, 1925; the bulb horn was used frequently in assorted mad rushes. (Author’s collection)
Winston Churchill as Motorist: Always in a Hurry

Winston Churchill as Motorist: Always in a Hurry

Habitually late, Churchill would typically “pile into the Humber around 5:30 for a 7:00 speech a hundred miles distant. As his chauffeur swings into the high road, Churchill crouches, with a flask, on the edge of the back seat and urges him to greater speeds. Once, doing 80 on a curve, a rear tyre blew and “a van full of irate constables screeched to a halt alongside. They had been trying to catch the runaway for miles.” Realizing who it was, they helped fix the tyre. “Churchill made no sign of apology but cried, ‘Drive off!’ The constables saluted humbly.”

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Speaker
Holding forth on “National and Imperial Defence,” City Carlton Club, 26 September 1935. (Hillsdale College Press)
Speaker Jitters: Churchill Had Them, Necessitating Strategy

Speaker Jitters: Churchill Had Them, Necessitating Strategy

Unlike modern newscasters and some politicians, Churchill saw no reason to patronize foreigners by overemphasizing their pronunciation. In fact, he worked very hard to anglicize words that particularly annoyed him. Britons, he said, should stand forthrightly behind Anglicized nomenclature: "If we do not make a stand we shall in a few weeks be asked to call Leghorn Livorno, and the BBC will be pronouncing Paris 'Paree.' Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names. I date this minute from St. George’s Day." Churchill as speaker was devoid of faddish jargon. (Imagine what he would make of vernacular like “reaching out” (for “contacting”) or “issues” (“for problems”).

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Signatures
The real thing: inscribed to secretary Lettice Marston on a copy of “The Gathering Storm,” 1949. The most prized form of an inscription is one made out to someone in particular. (Photo: Mark Weber)
Literary Queries: Churchill Signatures and Inscriptions

Literary Queries: Churchill Signatures and Inscriptions

Is the signature genuine? Yes, it seems so. From your photo it looks suitably aged and seems to have been there a long time. Inscribed books or photographs with the signatures pasted in or added to the matte are sometimes encountered. They are not, of course, as valuable as books the author personally inscribed, particularly if he named the recipient (such as the example above).

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Jibes
“Dawn in Dundee,” 1922: A cartoon in the “Dundee Advertiser” (the paper, not the politician) quotes Henry V, Act 5 Sc. 1: “All Hell shall stir for this.” Churchill had lost his seat, his party, and his appendix in the general election. (Public domain)
Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took As Good As He Gave

Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took As Good As He Gave

Not all were pleasant ribbing: “The Prime Minister wins Debate after Debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights Debates like a war and the war like a Debate.... [His speech indulged] in these turgid, wordy, dull, prosaic and almost invariably empty new chapters in his book…while dressed in some uniform of some sort or other. I wish he would recognise that he is the civilian head of a civilian Government, and not go parading around in ridiculous uniforms.” —Nye Bevan

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Lee Remick
(PBS)
“Jennie” with Lee Remick is Viewable on YouTube

“Jennie” with Lee Remick is Viewable on YouTube

Viewable all seven episodes on YouTube, "Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill" (1974) remains one of finest Churchill films, honest to history with vivid portraits of the Edwardian Churchills. Its lasting fame was largely owed to Lee Remick, whose portrayal of Lady Randolph was simply unimpeachable. As Gregory Peck said at our tribute: "Playing opposite this clear-eyed Yankee girl with the appealing style and femininity that graces every one of her roles just simply brings out the best in a man."

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Willie
Wille Mays in his rookie year, a Bowman card from 1951. (Wikimedia Commons)
Willie and Monte: Game Called. A New York Kid Remembers

Willie and Monte: Game Called. A New York Kid Remembers

I greeted Monte Irvin at the bar: "Hullo, Number Twenty!" Monte said, "You remember!?" "I yelled hello at you from the outfield stands in the Polo Grounds forty years ago. You hit one out. I rooted for you even more than Twenty-four." (That was Willie). He laughed and said, "Yeah, but he lasted longer." "Maybe so," I said, "but the word was, you got more dates."  Odd how some memories come flooding back. I loved those guys.

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Poland
Territories taken by Poland from Czechoslovakia. Medium blue: annexed after the October 1938 Munich Agreement. Darker blue: annexed from the German client state Slovakia after the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. (Minkeslandian, Creative Commons)
Poland or Russia: Did Churchill Pick the Right Enemy?

Poland or Russia: Did Churchill Pick the Right Enemy?

With Russia invaded and America still neutral, Churchill was desperate for allies. Decisions had to be made with what was known at the time. It was logical to conclude then that Germany not Russia was the greater expansionist threat. No one could see far ahead, yet no one worked harder than he for Poland’s independence after the war. No one more admired the valiant Poles who fought with the Allies from 1940 to D-Day and beyond.

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Murray
Churchill visiting President Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm, 6 May 1959. Sergeant Murray stands behind them. (Hillsdale College Press)
Remembering Eddie Murray, Churchill’s Bodyguard 1950-65

Remembering Eddie Murray, Churchill’s Bodyguard 1950-65

"Murray's devotion to Churchill was genuine, and I have no doubt that if danger had threatened he would have stood before him. He certainly made the great man’s life easier and the Boss, I think, had a real affection for him. It was Churchill’s inevitable reaction to stand up for any member of his entourage who was under attack. As Lady Churchill once said (looking at me rather pointedly): 'Winston is always ready to be accompanied by those with considerable imperfections.'" —Anthony Montague Browne

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Randolph Churchill
The White House, 9 April 1963. President John F. Kennedy declares Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. On steps, front row (L-R): Undersecretary of State, George Ball, British Ambassador Sir David Ormsby-Gore, President Kennedy, Randolph Churchill. Back rows (L-R): Deputy Chief of Protocol William J. Tonesk (mostly behind Ball), Sylvia Ormsby-Gore, Randolph’s son Winston, President’s naval aide Tazewell Shepard. Secret Service agent Art Godfrey is at far right. (Photograph by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton. presented to Richard Langworth, 1988, public domain)
D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

And so on 6 June 1944 we launched the great crusade, as Eisenhower put it (today perhaps politically incorrectly). Western civilization was saved. Yet it was not, William F. Buckley Jr. argued, “the significance of that victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that causes the name of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster....It is the roar that we hear, when we pronounce his name….The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy."

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Peninsula
The landing of 4th Battalion, Australian troops at ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli, 25 April 1915. (Ernest Brooks, Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Gallipoli Peninsula 1915: Failure is an Orphan

Gallipoli Peninsula 1915: Failure is an Orphan

From May to November 1915, Churchill held a meaningless sinecure, his only task the appointment of rural judges. “Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted,” he wrote, “my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it; I had vehement convictions and small power to give effect to them.… I was forced to remain a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front seat.”

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