Tag: Bernard Montgomery

On Good News from Generals: Churchill’s Experience and Methods

On Good News from Generals: Churchill’s Experience and Methods

Say what?

A New York Times cor­re­spon­dent writes:

I’ve been read­ing The Best and the Bright­est by David Hal­ber­stam, about how we got into Viet­nam. When you’re decid­ing whether to inter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly, he says, you can count on the gen­er­als to tell you every­thing that can go awry and stress the neg­a­tive part of the pic­ture. But once they’re invest­ed, once it’s their job to cre­ate a good out­come through mil­i­tary means, it’s going to be all hap­py talk. They’re not going to report that they’re fail­ing. They’re going to give you the sun­nier side of what’s hap­pen­ing, in this case, in Afghanistan.…

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The Brendon Bestiary: Churchill’s Animal Friends and Analogies

The Brendon Bestiary: Churchill’s Animal Friends and Analogies

Piers Bren­don, Churchill’s Bes­tiary: His Life Through Ani­mals. Lon­don, Michael O’Mara Books, 2018, 320 pages, Ama­zon $18.96. Excerpt­ed from a review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the full text, click here.

“An enor­mous­ly agree­able side of his char­ac­ter was his atti­tude toward ani­mals,” Sir Antho­ny Mon­tague Browne, his last pri­vate sec­re­tary, said of Win­ston Churchill. “Although a Victorian—and they were not notably aware of ani­mal suffering—he had a sen­si­tiv­i­ty well in advance of his time.” Ever since Sir Antho­ny said that we’ve been wait­ing for a good book on the sub­ject, and his­to­ri­an Piers Bren­don has oblig­ed.…

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Brendan Bracken: “Winston’s Faithful Chela”

Brendan Bracken: “Winston’s Faithful Chela”

Stan­ley Bald­win, show­ing an unex­pect­ed famil­iar­i­ty with Indi­an phras­es, described Bren­dan Brack­en as ‘Winston’s faith­ful chela,‘ wrote the biog­ra­ph­er Charles Lysaght. “This is what gave Brack­en his place in his­to­ry, a minor but still an impor­tant one.”

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project has pub­lished two arti­cles on Bren­dan Brack­en, Churchill’s loy­al ally and friend for four decades. The first begins with a mem­oir by the late Ron Rob­bins, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist who ear­ly on cov­ered the House of Com­mons, where he met Brack­en. The post­script is by me, fol­lowed by reviews of the two Brack­en books by George Gale and A.J.P.

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EU and Churchill’s Views

EU and Churchill’s Views

EU Enough! In debates about the EU (Euro­pean Union), and Britain’s June 2016 ref­er­en­dum opt­ing to leave, much mis­in­for­ma­tion was cir­cu­lat­ed on whether Churchill would be for “Brex­it” or “Remain.” The fact is, we don’t know, since no one can ask him.

Promi­nent­ly quot­ed in this con­text is a remark Churchill made to de Gaulle—at least accord­ing to de Gaulle—in Uni­ty, his 1942-44 war mem­oirs: “…each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea.”

Nothing to do with the EU

War­ren Kimball’s Churchill and Roo­sevelt: The Com­plete Cor­re­spon­dence (III, 169), nice­ly clears up this quo­ta­tion.…

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