A magazine fact checker writes asking if Churchill ever said, “Stalin never broke his word to me.” The short answer is yes. The long answer shows how careful we should be when quoting Churchill.
The source of this quote is the journalist C.L. Sulzberger (1912-1993), in his 1970 book, The Last of the Giants, page 304. In it Sulzberger reports his “five hours with old Winston Churchill” at Chartwell on 10 July 1956.
Churchill, wrote Sulzberger, thought Stalin “a great man, above all compared to Khruschev and Bulganin,” and quoted Churchill as follows:
Stalin never broke his word to me.…
Moving right along, the 1911 Census was recently released in England. No address was “ex-directory” in those days. Winston Churchill is listed at 33 Eccleston Square, London (seventeen rooms) with wife Clementine, daughter Diana and eight servants. The help comprised a cook, nurse, lady’s maid, housemaid, parlor maid, under-parlor maid, kitchen maid and hall boy). Can this be so? —A.J., NSW, Australia
A: Absolutely.By the 1920s and 1930s, when the Churchills were ensconced at Chartwell, the help had grown to fifteen or more, counting gardeners, handymen, secretaries and household staff.…
“Randolph Churchill: Present at the Creation,” is taken from a lecture aboard the Regent Seven Seas Explorer on the 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019.
Most everybody has an inkling of who Winston Churchill was. But how many know of his son Randolph? How many British schoolchildren do you think have heard of him? Do they know that Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, who some think was a real person? They should, Sir Arthur was a great writer. Like Randolph Churchill, who founded the longest biography ever written. In the words of Dean Acheson, he was “present at the creation.”…
“Churchill and the Myths of D-Day is excerpted from a lecture on the 2019 Hillsdale College Round-Britain cruise. Hillsdale cruises with “lectures at sea” are an annual event, usually occurring in May or June. For information on the 2020 cruise to Jerusalem and Athens, click here.
I’m here to talk about Winston Churchill. I know this audience knows who he was! Did you know a survey of British schoolchildren reveals that one in five think he was a fictional character? And better than half think Sherlock Holmes was a real person?
My book is about the non-fictional Churchill.…
Butterflies are back in force at Sir Winston Churchill’s Chartwell. In 2009, the National Trust rebuilt the butterfly hut and gardener Stephen Humphrey took charge of raising butterflies. Nigel Guest, a Chartwell volunteer, immediately reported “a terrific year for butterflies.” For his report and color photos of Churchill’s favorite species see BBC Radio Kent, “Churchill’s Butterfly House at Chartwell.”
David Riddle, a National Trust volunteer at Chartwell, gave me the background of the “Butterfly House” Churchill established to propagate the insects on the grounds of his home:
The Butterfly House was first used as a game larder between 1869 and 1889 by the Colquhoun family, who owned Chartwell between 1830 and 1922, when Churchill bought the estate.…
“Winston Churchill and Polo” was first published in 1991. It is now updated and amended, thanks to the rich store of material available in The Churchill Documents published by Hillsdale College Press. This article is abridged without footnotes from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the complete text and footnotes, click here.
============== Continued from Part 1…
Part 2: DislocationsOn 18 December 1898 Winston Churchill wrote to his friend Aylmer Haldane. “I am leaving the army in April. I have come back merely for the Polo Tournaments.” He told his mother he would stay at Government House.…
Having written about cars and Winston Churchill for fifty years, I finally produced a piece on them both. From exotica like Daimler, Napier and Rolls-Royce to more prosaic makes like Austin, Humber and Wolseley, the story was three decades in coming. I am satisfied that it is now complete.
Part 2, continued from Part 1: Excerpt only. For footnotes, all illustrations and a roster of Churchill’s cars, see The Automobile, (UK), August 2016. A pdf of the article is available upon request: click here.
Wolseley to AustinIn the early 1930s Churchill switched from Wolseley to Austin cars: small fours and big sixes.…
Chartwell, 1955— Here is one of the finest—as it is the most revealing—portraits of Churchill at Chartwell we can read, by the Oxford historian A.L. Rowse, who spent a memorable day at Churchill’s home.
It gives an insightful view of Churchill and Chartwell ten years after World War II, not without pathos and sadness, for even now he was beginning to reflect that he had “achieved a great deal, only to achieve nothing in the end”: a thought however inconceivable in his case, but worth pondering by us all. Read full article at Hillsdale College Churchill Project.…
