Tag: Andrew Bonar Law

Roosevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

Roosevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

A col­league asks whether Win­ston and Clemen­tine Churchill’s pri­vate name for  Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt was “Don Quixote.” Also, who com­pared Roo­sevelt and Churchill to Don Quixote and San­cho Pan­za? This offers an inter­est­ing trawl through the sources.

So far as I can learn, the Quixote – Pan­za anal­o­gy for Roo­sevelt and Churchill (also FDR and his devot­ed advis­er Har­ry Hop­kins) occurred only dur­ing the 1943 Casablan­ca Con­fer­ence (SYMBOL). Roo­sevelt pro­posed those code names, and I rather think Churchill had dif­fer­ent image of them than FDR. (Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary: “Quixote: Enthu­si­as­tic vision­ary, pur­suer of lofty but imprac­ti­ca­ble ideals.”)…

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Churchill Myth and Reality: Antwerp. Shocking Folly?

Churchill Myth and Reality: Antwerp. Shocking Folly?

Churchill’s role in the defense of Antwerp, in Octo­ber 1914, has been called one of his “char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pirat­i­cal” adven­tures. An emi­nent his­to­ri­an described it as “a shock­ing fol­ly by a min­is­ter who abused his pow­ers and betrayed his respon­si­bil­i­ties. It is aston­ish­ing that [his] cab­i­net col­leagues so read­i­ly for­gave him for a lapse of judg­ment that would have destroyed most men’s careers.”1

 As the Ger­mans closed in around Antwerp, Hast­ings writes, Churchill “assem­bled a hotch­potch of Roy­al Marines and sur­plus naval per­son­nel… his own pri­vate army.” Then he “aban­doned his post at the Admi­ral­ty.”…

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