I am completing an English assignment which looks at the speeches of Winston Churchill and would like to read press conferences or interviews Churchill gave during the Second World War. So far, I have been able to find only speeches. Please could you advise me whether any such interviews are in existence? —E.L.
Washington, 1941Churchill rarely gave interviews—only two that I know of as a young man, and those reluctantly. Speeches (live) were his preference. However, on his 1941 visit to Washington, Franklin Roosevelt ushered him into his first press conference.…
Reprised below are my small contributions on Churchill and the great Irish statesman and thinker Edmund Burke (1729-1797). It was eclipsed in 2019 in a brilliant speech by Andrew Roberts which the Hillsdale College Churchill Project offers here. Dr. Roberts spoke after receiving The New Criterion 7th Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society. He also discusses Churchill on Burke in a video interview with James Panero.
2. Churchill on BurkeA reader writes:
I’d like to congratulate you on Churchill by Himself, but I could not find any Churchill comments on Edmund Burke in the index.…
Churchill by Himself, my encyclopedia of Winston Churchill’s most quotable remarks, is to be republished. (If the publishers can ever agree about what form and substance they will allow each other to produce.) To the the original 4000 quotes I’ve added so far 600 new ones.
The “Red Herrings” appendix of misquotes has also grown apace. That, however, is always kept up to date online. You can look it up:
All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said
Misquotes Part 1: Accepting Change to European Union
Misquotes Part 3: Lies to Sex
A trove of misquotesThe original “Red Herrings” appendix (2008) contained about 80 misquotes.…
…is the only Churchill quotations book with each entry referenced with a date and source. There’s even an appendix on incorrect quotations (called “Red Herrings”), stating why they are not Churchill’s. By Himself is also the only Churchill quote book that has undergone repeated reviews to produce a text as close to Churchill’s original words as possible. Fortunately, it’s been continuously in print for over ten years, making constant revision possible.
Just before the first publication in 2008, we found that a transcriber had made many errors in copying out quotations.…
On 11-13 May 1948, Winston Churchill was in Norway to accept an honorary degree from Oslo University. He gave five speeches—University, City Hall, Storting (Norwegian Parliament) and two dinners. All five can be found in Churchill’s speech volume Europe Unite, or Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963. They offer six gems of Churchillian wisdom. I plan to add them to the upcoming new edition of Churchill by Himself, my book of quotations.
Oslo VariationsA reader reminds us of these obscure orations by sending one: Churchill’s dinner speech on May 12th. His source is Churchill’s Visit to Norway (Oslo: Cappelens, 1949).…
Much of my labor in the Churchill Vineyard involves researching quotations “AZ.” My 650-page books and ebooks, Churchill by Himself and Churchill in His Own Words, are the largest sources of Churchill’s philosophy, maxims, reflections and ripostes accompanied by a valid source for each entry. There are 4,150 entries, but a new, expanded and revised edition is coming. It will include a much larger appendix of “Red Herrings”—oft-repeated passages he never said but constantly ascribed to him.
“Red Herrings” are part of what quotemaster Nigel Rees calls “Churchillian Drift.” (Click here for the full description.)…
Who here is in their Forties? Are you as pessimistic as he was?
Winston Churchill was 48 when he penned some “Reflections on the Century,” which may arrest you with their prescience—and their eerie relevance.
His words below are in his original “speech form.” This is the way they were set out on the notes he carried with him, however well he memorized his lines. They appear in this style in my collection of quotations, Churchill by Himself, but differ from the way you may have encountered them in other books:
What a disappointment [this] century has been.……
Johns Hopkins University Press releases this month the seventh and final volume of The Papers of George Catlett Marshall: “The Man of the Age,” October 1, 1949 – October 16, 1959. It was masterfully edited by Mark Stoler and Daniel Holt under the auspices of the Marshall Center. It joins its predecessors presenting the papers of one of the greatest generals and statesmen of his age (1880-1959). I quickly assigned it for review by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, for its many references to Churchill in George Marshall’s final phase. This and the previous volume are indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the complicated international scene immediately after World War II.…
The campaign to Leave is heating up. Take Grassroots Out, a “combined operation” supporting Brexit—the campaign for Great Britain to exit the European Union. G-O fielded a broad spectrum of speakers in London February 19th. Along with UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage were Conservative Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, economist Ruth Lea, and a London cab driver.
The most unexpected Leave speaker was the far-left former Labour MP and head of the socialist Respect Party. Mr. George Galloway was immediately queried about his new colleagues.
“We are not pals,” Galloway replied.…
