Tag: Barbara Leaming

“Churchill Defiant,” by Barbara Leaming: Still the Best on Churchill Postwar

“Churchill Defiant,” by Barbara Leaming: Still the Best on Churchill Postwar

Barbara Leaming: “Others Heard Taps, Churchill Heard Reveille”

Churchill Defi­ant: Fight­ing On 1945-1955, by Bar­bara Leam­ing. Lon­don: Harp­er Press, 394 pages.

“Great cap­tains must take their chance with the rest. Cae­sar was assas­si­nat­ed by his dear­est friend. Han­ni­bal was cut off by poi­son. Fred­er­ick the Great lin­gered out years of lone­li­ness in body and soul. Napoleon rot­ted at St. Hele­na. Com­pared with these, Marl­bor­ough had a good and fair end to his life.” —Win­ston S. Churchill, Marl­bor­ough: His Life and Times, 1936, Book Two.

A decade on, still a book to read

Read­ers some­times ask for the best books to read on Churchill’s career after the Sec­ond World War.…

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Churchill Haters’ Feast of Jagan (Or: The Cheddi Gorge)

Churchill Haters’ Feast of Jagan (Or: The Cheddi Gorge)

Ched­di Jagan?! France’s fore­most Churchill his­to­ri­an, Pro­fes­sor Antoine Capet of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rouen, sends along a brand new Fake Churchill Calum­ny. (If the FCC didn’t have copy­right, I’d reg­is­ter the initials.)

This one is from those fair and bal­anced enti­ties, “Crimes of Britain” and the “Mal­colm X Move­ment.” In the back­ground, snide­ly, they play “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.” It takes only 57 sec­onds to recite sev­en* long-dis­proven, shop­worn Churchill sins—plus one new one: “Churchill oust­ed demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Ched­di Jagan in British Guiana, 1953.” Con­grat­u­la­tions. That’s real­ly original!

*See list below.…

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A Fresh Look at the Churchills and Kennedys by Thomas Maier

A Fresh Look at the Churchills and Kennedys by Thomas Maier

When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys, by Thomas Maier. New York: Crown Pub­lish­ers, 784 pages, $30, Kin­dle Edi­tion $11.99. Writ­ten for The Churchillian, Spring 2015.

The most touch­ing and durable vision left by Mr. Maier comes toward the end of this long book: the famous White House cer­e­mo­ny in April 1963, as Pres­i­dent Kennedy presents Sir Win­ston Churchill (in absen­tia) with Hon­orary Amer­i­can Citizenship—while from an upstairs win­dow his stroke-silenced father, Joseph P. Kennedy, watch­es close­ly, with heav­en knows what reflections:

What­ev­er thoughts raced through the mind of Joe Kennedy—the ran­cor of the past, the lost oppor­tu­ni­ties of his own polit­i­cal goals, and the trag­ic for­got­ten dreams he had once had for his old­est son, could not be expressed.…

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