Tag: Arthur Balfour

Paul Courtenay 1934-2020: No Better Definition of a Pro

Paul Courtenay 1934-2020: No Better Definition of a Pro

It’s a shop­worn phrase, but Paul Courte­nay was a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia on Win­ston Churchill. We worked togeth­er on con­fer­ences, sem­i­nars, books and arti­cles for thir­ty years. He was a major con­trib­u­tor to Finest Hour, the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, to books and biogra­phies. Paul was indis­pens­able. And he is irreplaceable.

As edi­tor over those years I was con­stant­ly grate­ful that he was there. I had only to press his Her­aldry but­ton, his Smuts but­ton, his Mil­i­tary but­ton, his For­eign Affairs but­ton, his Book Review but­ton, for exact­ly what I need­ed. I nev­er dis­cov­ered how many such but­tons he had.…

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“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

Excerpts from “Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid” 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), whose Churchillian mag­na­nim­i­ty was a mod­el for his time—and even more for ours.

Part 1: 1902-1909

In “Apartheid: Made in Britain,” Richard Dow­den argued that Britain not South Africa cost black South Africans their rights. His account is fac­tu­al as far as it goes, but there is more to say about Churchill’s effort to achieve jus­tice in South Africa.…

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Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

My pre­vi­ous note was about Alis­tair Cooke on Churchill in 1930s. I now reprise my intro­duc­tion to his speech, and a per­son­al epi­logue. Sir Alistair’s speech, at the Mount Wash­ing­ton Hotel, Bret­ton Woods, 27 August 1988, is 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. “This is the time of year when I turn down every­thing,” he wrote.…

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