Tag: Daily Mail

Shocking Facts: “Nuke the Soviets”

Shocking Facts: “Nuke the Soviets”

Comments 4 Comments
Intaglio print by Sarah Churchill/Curtis Hoop­er
http://bit.ly/1uYE2PD

Novem­ber 5th— A call from the Lon­don Dai­ly Mail: “We are doing a piece on a new book and want­ed to run it by you.”

Novem­ber 6th— The new book is Thomas Maier’s When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys. What’s excit­ing is their dis­cov­ery of a Shock­ing Fact about Churchill (Shock­ing Fact #22,385, by my count.)

Mr. Maier reports, calm­ly and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly, a 1947 con­ver­sa­tion between Churchill and Sen­a­tor Stiles Bridges (R-NH). In it, Churchill says “that if an atom­ic bomb could be dropped on the Krem­lin wip­ing it out, it would be a very easy prob­lem to han­dle the bal­ance of Rus­sia, which would be with­out direc­tion.”

So—wow—the Mail is real­ly onto an exposé.…

Read More Read More

“OMG”: Churchillian Origins of the Texters’ Phrase

“OMG”: Churchillian Origins of the Texters’ Phrase

Comments 0 Comments
Admi­ral of the Fleet Lord Fish­er (1841-1920)

“I work for the New York Times Upfront, a mag­a­zine run by Scholas­tic Inc. and the New York Times for high school stu­dents. We hope you can ver­i­fy a recent piece of news. The Dai­ly Mail has pub­lished a let­ter writ­ten Sep­tem­ber 9, 1917, by Britain’s First Sea Lord, Admi­ral John Fish­er, to First Lord of the Admi­ral­ty Win­ston Churchill, where he first used the acronym O.M.G., for “Oh My God.” As you know, “OMG” is a phrase often used by tex­ters, espe­cial­ly teenagers! Is Fish­er the orig­i­na­tor, and is there a hand­writ­ten ver­sion of his let­ter to Churchill?” —A.P., New York, N.Y.…

Read More Read More

Churchill the Young Carouser

Churchill the Young Carouser

Comments 2 Comments
Churchill, arriv­ing at his wed­ding in 1908, was described as hav­ing “a glo­ri­fied coach­man appear­ance.”

Michael Shelden, author of Young Titan, a new biog­ra­phy of Churchill, set Lon­don media buzzing with spec­u­la­tion that young Vio­let Asquith attempt­ed sui­cide after Churchill decid­ed to mar­ry Clemen­tine Hozi­er (Finest Hour 158: 6). Not only that, reports the Dai­ly Mail, “He caroused with West End call girls and pro­posed to THREE soci­ety beauties—who turned him down.”

The soci­ety beau­ties were Pamela Plow­den, Muriel Wil­son and the actress Ethel Bar­ry­more. But the most rak­ish thing Mr. Shelden reports Churchill doing is show­er­ing Miss Bar­ry­more with “arm­fuls of flow­ers” and show­ing up at Claridge’s each night after her West End play end­ed, where he would “insist she have din­ner with him.”

The rest of the media’s lurid headline—“He caroused with West End call girls”—has main­ly to do with the 83-year-old sto­ry of Churchill as a Sand­hurst cadet, stand­ing up for the show­girls of the Empire The­atre when “prudes on the prowl” attempt­ed to erect bar­ri­ers shel­ter­ing their lair from more upright soci­ety.…

Read More Read More