Tag: Cabinet War Rooms

Downing Street Annexe and Churchill Secretary Ellizabeth Layton Nel

Downing Street Annexe and Churchill Secretary Ellizabeth Layton Nel

Excerpt­ed from “Down­ing Street Annexe and War Rooms,” answered in full on the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

Who were John Evans and Tom Leonard?:

Ques­tion: In the 2017 film Dark­est Hour, on Churchill in May 1940. I am puz­zled by two char­ac­ters. There is a young man who is seen near Churchill at Chartwell and the under­ground War Rooms. The Dark­est Hour cast names him “John Evans.” The name of anoth­er man in the cast, “Tom Leonard,” sug­gests noth­ing. He is the dri­ver of Churchill’s car when the PM abrupt­ly bolts and heads for the Under­ground.…

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Churchill on the Broadcast

Churchill on the Broadcast

The ques­tion aris­es, has any­thing been writ­ten on Churchill’s radio tech­nique? Did he treat radio dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er kinds of pub­lic speak­ing? How quick­ly did he take to the broadcast?

“The Art of the Microphone”

An excel­lent piece on this sub­ject was by Richard Dim­ble­by (1913-1965), the BBC’s first war cor­re­spon­dent and lat­er its lead­ing TV news com­men­ta­tor. His “Churchill the Broad­cast­er” is in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by his Con­tem­po­raries (Lon­don: Hutchin­son, 1953). Old as it is, the book remains a com­pre­hen­sive set of essays of the many spe­cial­ized attrib­ut­es of WSC.

Dim­ble­by offers four areas of dis­cus­sion: the tech­ni­cal back­ground, the dra­ma of World War II, the fac­tu­al mate­r­i­al, and Churchill’s meth­ods of delivery.…

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Churchill: Not Much to Say Today?

Churchill: Not Much to Say Today?

If a man is com­ing across the sea to kill you, you do every­thing in your pow­er to make sure he dies before fin­ish­ing his jour­ney. That may be dif­fi­cult, it may be painful, but at least it is sim­ple. We are now enter­ing a world of impon­der­ables, and at every stage occa­sions for self-ques­tion­ing arise. Only one link in the chain of des­tiny can be han­dled at a time. 

—Win­ston S. Churchill, 18 Feb­ru­ary 1945

It was recent­ly assert­ed that Churchill doesn’t have much to say to us today, and that the only peo­ple who use Churchill as a guide nowa­days are “over-testos­teroned Amer­i­can neocons.”…

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