Tag: Clement Attlee

Churchill Misquotes: The Red Herrings Now Number 175

Churchill Misquotes: The Red Herrings Now Number 175

Quotes and Misquotes

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

Part 2: Fanat­ic to Liberty

Mis­quotes Part 3: Lies to Sex

Part 4: Sex­ism to Ypres

A trove of misquotes

The orig­i­nal “Red Her­rings” appen­dix (2008) con­tained about 80 mis­quotes.…

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Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Here­with final install­ments by var­i­ous writ­ers in our two-month defense of Win­ston Churchill’s mem­o­ry. These and the links below cov­er his most pop­u­lar cur­rent sins—even cas­tra­tion and nuk­ing the Mar­alin­ga. So, unless we get a new one, that’s a wrap! RML

Memory: “The stars still shone in the sky”

Lost in the pell-mell rush to den­i­grate his mem­o­ry was the 8oth anniver­sary of Churchill becom­ing Prime Min­ster, 10 May 1940. I thought of his words as I read the igno­rant, ill-informed, false attacks on his char­ac­ter. They occurred amid protest over a trag­ic event that had noth­ing to do with him.…

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80 Years On: Winston Churchill Prime Minister, 10 May 1940

80 Years On: Winston Churchill Prime Minister, 10 May 1940

The 10th of May…

In the splin­ter­ing crash of this vast bat­tle the qui­et con­ver­sa­tions we had had in Down­ing Street fad­ed or fell back in one’s mind. How­ev­er, I remem­ber being told that Mr. Cham­ber­lain had gone, or was going, to see the King, and this was nat­u­ral­ly to be expect­ed. Present­ly a mes­sage arrived sum­mon­ing me to the Palace at six o’clock. It only takes two min­utes to dri­ve there from the Admi­ral­ty along the Mall. Although I sup­pose the evening news­pa­pers must have been full of the ter­rif­ic news from the Con­ti­nent, noth­ing had been men­tioned about the Cab­i­net cri­sis.…

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Churchill’s Potent Political Nicknames: Adm. Row-Back to Wuthering Height

Churchill’s Potent Political Nicknames: Adm. Row-Back to Wuthering Height

Spo­rad­i­cal­ly, pun­dits com­pare Don­ald Trump with Win­ston Churchill. There’s even a book com­ing out on the sub­ject. I dep­re­cate all this by instinct and will avoid that book like the Coro­n­avirus. Sur­face sim­i­lar­i­ties may exist: both said or say main­ly what they thought or think, unfil­tered by polls (and some­times good advice). But Churchill’s lan­guage and thought were on a high­er plane. Still, when a friend said that Churchill nev­er stooped to deri­sive nick­names like Trump, I had to disagree.

Whether invent­ed by the Pres­i­dent or his scriptwrit­ers, some of Trump’s nick­names were very effec­tive.…

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McKinstry’s Churchill and Attlee: A Vanished Age of Political Respect

McKinstry’s Churchill and Attlee: A Vanished Age of Political Respect

Churchill and Attlee: Allies in War, Adver­saries in Peace, by Leo McK­instry. New York: Lon­don, Atlantic Books, 736 pages, £25, Ama­zon $25.66.  Excerpt­ed from a book review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal text, click here.

The McKinstry Epic

Leo McKinstry’s book 738 pages—twice the size of the pre­vi­ous Attlee-Churchill book and is riv­et­ing from cov­er to cov­er. Scrupu­lous­ly fair, McK­instry tells the sto­ry, backed by a volu­mi­nous bib­li­og­ra­phy, exten­sive research and pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence. Thus he cap­tures Churchill’s gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it, and Attlee’s great­ness of soul.

“Some­times tur­bu­lent, often fruit­ful, theirs was a rela­tion­ship unprece­dent­ed in the annals of British pol­i­tics,” McK­instry con­cludes.…

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Clementine Churchill as Literary Critic

Clementine Churchill as Literary Critic

Q: Clementine as Editor

Your book Churchill By Him­self is a trea­sure to which I fre­quent­ly refer. I am a retired pro­fes­sor who recent­ly lost his wife. I am prepar­ing a memo­r­i­al to her and found Churchill’s words as quot­ed in Andrew Roberts’ recent biog­ra­phy to be per­fect. The sense of his words is that his wife Clemen­tine was was a fre­quent, strong and fair crit­ic of his writ­ings, always help­ful. I know that is not much to go on but I would appre­ci­ate cor­rob­o­rat­ing infor­ma­tion.  —M.S., via email

A: “Here firm, though all be drifting”

I will have to pon­der your ques­tion, because his remarks about Lady Churchill are main­ly trib­utes to her as wife, friend and advi­sor, not lit­er­ary critic–although of course she was that too.…

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Dewey, Hoover, Churchill, and Grand Strategy, 1950-53

Dewey, Hoover, Churchill, and Grand Strategy, 1950-53

“Dewey, Hoover and Churchill” is excerpt­ed from an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text, click here. The lat­est vol­ume 20 of The Churchill Doc­u­ments, Nomandy and Beyond: May-Decem­ber 1944, is avail­able for $60 from the Hills­dale Col­lege Bookstore.

A great joy of read­ing The Churchill Doc­u­ments is their trove of his­tor­i­cal side­lights. Vol­ume 22 (August 1945—September 1951, due late 2018) cov­ers the ear­ly Cold War: the “Iron Cur­tain,” the Mar­shall Plan, Berlin Air­lift and Kore­an War. It reminds us of the polit­i­cal bat­tles swirling around the Anglo-Amer­i­can “spe­cial rela­tion­ship.”…

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Hillsdale’s Churchill Documents: Harold Wilson, 1951

Hillsdale’s Churchill Documents: Harold Wilson, 1951

“Two days ear­li­er I had been a Min­is­ter of the Crown, red box and all. Now I was reduced to the posi­tion of a mes­sen­ger between my wife and Win­ston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a mes­sage from the oth­er.” —Harold Wilson 

___________

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project is rapid­ly com­plet­ing final vol­umes of Win­ston S. Churchill, the offi­cial biog­ra­phy. (The name is some­what of a mis­nomer; no one has ever cen­sored any mate­r­i­al.) Suit­ably, all thir­ty-one vol­umes will be com­plete by June 2019: the 75th Anniver­sary of D-Day. It will be fifty-six years since Ran­dolph Churchill and his “Young Gen­tle­men” includ­ing Mar­tin Gilbert began their work.…

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Churchill 101: Three Reasons to Learn about Sir Winston

Churchill 101: Three Reasons to Learn about Sir Winston

Orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for and pub­lished by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. This is one of sev­er­al forth­com­ing arti­cles intend­ed to encour­age younger read­ers to learn about Churchill. Read­er com­ment, sug­ges­tions of fur­ther points to make, and oth­er arti­cles on the same theme, would be appreciated.

_________

Learn …

Who was Win­ston Churchill? Why, half a cen­tu­ry since his death, is he the most quot­ed his­tor­i­cal fig­ure? Schol­ars know the answers. Do you? Why does it matter?

It mat­ters because Churchill con­tin­ues to offer guid­ance and exam­ple today. His indomitable courage, his abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate, his knowl­edge of his­to­ry, his polit­i­cal pre­cepts, are as valu­able now as they were in his time.…

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Churchill and the Baltic States: From WW2 to Liberation

Churchill and the Baltic States: From WW2 to Liberation

EXCERPT ONLY: For the com­plete text of “Churchill and the Baltic” with end­notes, please go to this page on the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

“No doubt where the right lay”: 1940-95

Sovi­et Ambas­sador Ivan Maisky was a “Bollinger Bol­she­vik” who mixed sup­port for Com­mu­nism with a love of West­ern lux­u­ry. Friend­ly to Churchill, he knew the Eng­lish­man hoped to sep­a­rate Hitler and Stal­in, even after World War II had started.

But Maisky tend­ed to see what he wished to see. In Decem­ber he record­ed: “The British Gov­ern­ment announces its readi­ness to rec­og­nize ‘de fac­to’ the changes in the Baltics so as to set­tle ‘de jure’ the whole issue lat­er, prob­a­bly after the war.” There…

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