Tag: Alistair Cooke

Begbie
“The Political Struwwelpeter,” 1899. (Flickr, The Commons, public domain)
Harold Begbie: “The Man Who Did God for the Westminster Gazette”

Harold Begbie: “The Man Who Did God for the Westminster Gazette”

“Harold Beg­bie” is excerpt­ed from an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. To view the orig­i­nal, click here. To SUBSCRIBE for fresh arti­cles week­ly from the Churchill Project, reach­ing 60,000 read­ers world­wide: Click here, scroll to bot­tom, enter your email address in the box enti­tled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email address is nev­er giv­en out and will remain a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

“The hand of destiny”

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project’s updat­ed bib­li­og­ra­phy of works about Churchill has pro­duced grat­i­fy­ing inter­est in ear­ly biogra­phies.…

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Mount
Barbara Langworth and our 1953 Studebaker at the Mount Washington, 2015.
Churchill Memories of the Mount Washington and Bretton Woods

Churchill Memories of the Mount Washington and Bretton Woods

Read­ers react­ed kind­ly to my essay on Alis­tair Cooke. I ven­ture to add some pri­vate Churchillian moments at the Mount Wash­ing­ton Hotel at Bret­ton Woods. I sent these to still-liv­ing par­tic­i­pants, who urged I pub­lish them—with strate­gic edits to pro­tect the innocent.

“I’ve been using microphones before you were born”

Com­man­der Lar­ry Kryske USN was our toast­mas­ter for the 1988 Mount Wash­ing­ton Churchill din­ners. I remem­ber par­tic­u­lar­ly his naval dec­la­ra­tion after din­ner: “The smok­ing lamp is light­ed.” (How odd that sounds now! In my expe­ri­ence, group smok­ing stopped almost dead around 1990.) Lar­ry sends this amus­ing mem­o­ry of that night, 27 August:

Dur­ing his address, Sir Alis­tair appeared to be hav­ing trou­ble with the mic.…

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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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Cooke
It is sobering to reflect that British deaths from the Coronavirus only recently surpassed those on the first day of the Somme battle. Above: the road to Pozières, 1 August 1916, looking toward Contalmaison, which was being shelled. Australian troops from the I Anzac Corps passed along this route to the fighting at Pozières and Mouquet Farm between July and September 1916. (Australian War Memorial, Crown copyright expired, public domain)
Alistair Cooke: Why didn’t They Listen to Churchill?

Alistair Cooke: Why didn’t They Listen to Churchill?

Alis­tair Cooke addressed this ques­tion over thir­ty years ago. I’ve quot­ed his words repeat­ed­ly over the years. A recent com­ment (reprised below), encour­aged this revi­sion from 2011. Mr. Cooke’s full speech is avail­able by email. RML

Back in the 1930s, who all denounced and crit­i­cized Churchill for his beliefs in the rad­i­cal Nazi Ger­many? Who specif­i­cal­ly mocked him? Obvi­ous­ly Churchill was right about Hitler and his plans but who in the polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, or enter­tain­ment are­nas vil­i­fied him? —A.H.

The answer to your ques­tion, I think, is “just about every­body,” from the Roy­al Fam­i­ly to ordi­nary cit­i­zens, most of the media, his own par­ty, the Labour and Lib­er­al par­ties, and cer­tain­ly most intel­lec­tu­als and enter­tain­ment personalities.…

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Marshall: “Noblest Roman of Them All”

Marshall: “Noblest Roman of Them All”

Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty Press releas­es this month the sev­enth and final vol­ume of The Papers of George Catlett Mar­shall: “The Man of the Age,” Octo­ber 1, 1949 – Octo­ber 16, 1959. It was mas­ter­ful­ly edit­ed by Mark Stol­er and Daniel Holt under the aus­pices of the Mar­shall Cen­ter. It joins its pre­de­ces­sors pre­sent­ing the papers of one of the great­est gen­er­als and states­men of his age (1880-1959). I quick­ly assigned it for review by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, for its many ref­er­ences to Churchill in George Marshall’s final phase. This and the pre­vi­ous vol­ume are indis­pens­able for any­one wish­ing to under­stand the com­pli­cat­ed inter­na­tion­al scene imme­di­ate­ly after World War II.…

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Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View

Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View

Scott John­son of Pow­er­line (“Why We Dropped the Bomb,” 13 April) kind­ly links an old col­umn of his quot­ing an old one of mine with ref­er­ence to Pres­i­dent Obama’s vis­it to Hiroshi­ma and the atom bomb­ing of Japan.

John­son links a lec­ture by Pro­fes­sor Williamson Mur­ray, which is worth con­sid­er­ing, along with Paul Fussell’s clas­sic essay in The New Repub­lic, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” which makes you think, though some con­sid­er it a rant. Fussell wrote:

John Ken­neth Gal­braith is per­suad­ed that the Japan­ese would have sur­ren­dered sure­ly by Novem­ber with­out an inva­sion.…

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Robert Hardy’s “Wilderness Years”

Robert Hardy’s “Wilderness Years”

5 Octo­ber 2015: Turn­ing 90 this month and as viva­cious as ever, Tim­o­thy Robert Hardy spoke tonight on “My Life with Churchill” at a Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill sem­i­nar, attend­ed by over 500 reg­is­trants and 200 stu­dents, spon­sored by Hillsdale’s Cen­ter for Con­struc­tive Alter­na­tives. That after­noon I had the priv­i­lege to play Alis­tair Cooke, and intro­duce four excerpts from Tim’s inim­itable por­tray­al in the doc­u­men­tary, “Win­ston Churchill: The Wilder­ness Years.” Here is the intro­duc­tion to the first excerpt, which may be viewed on YouTube (first 12 min­utes). All four excerpts will be pub­lished lat­er by The Churchill Project for the Study of Statesmanship.…

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Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges

Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges

Writ­ing in the Los Ange­les Times, Pro­fes­sor Andrew J. Bace­vich con­sid­ered the war in Afghanistan against Churchill’s expe­ri­ence in World War I. Churchill, he says, looked for alter­na­tives to “send­ing our armies to chew barbed wire in Flan­ders.” Just so. And we should be look­ing for alter­na­tives to chew­ing dust in Afghanistan.

Bace­vich describes Churchill’s alter­na­tive as “an amphibi­ous assault against the Dar­d­anelles.” (That is a phys­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty.) Churchill cham­pi­oned a naval attack on the Dar­d­anelles, fol­lowed by an amphibi­ous assault on the Gal­lipoli Penin­su­la). Bace­vich adds that Churchill wished to “sup­port the infantry with tanks.”…

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