Tag: Dardanelles

Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

Boris John­son, who has sought com­par­i­son with Win­ston Churchill, denounced spend­ing nation­al lot­tery mon­ey to save the wartime leader’s per­son­al papers for the nation,” chor­tled The Guardian in Decem­ber. (The Churchill Papers cov­er 1874-1945. Lady Churchill donat­ed the post-1945 Chartwell Papers to the Churchill Archives in 1965.)

In April 1995 John­son, then a colum­nist for the Dai­ly Tele­graph, deplored the £12.5 mil­lion pur­chase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lot­tery-sup­port­ed Nation­al Her­itage Memo­r­i­al Fund, said John­son, was frit­ter­ing away mon­ey on point­less projects and ben­e­fit­ing Tory grandees. John­son added: “…sel­dom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”

The Memo­r­i­al Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a nation­al heir­loom under threat of being sold out­side the coun­try.…

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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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Churchill Derangement Syndrome: A is for Aryans, R is for Racism

Churchill Derangement Syndrome: A is for Aryans, R is for Racism

“Quality local journalism”

In our elec­tron­ic Speaker’s Cor­ner (the Inter­net), Win­ston Churchill is beset by haters. Their knee-jerk spouts are laced with out-of-con­text quotes and pre­con­ceived notions. Call it Churchill Derange­ment Syn­drome. Where is the truth? Per­haps we need a Derange­ment Index. Click on “A” for Aryan Suprema­cy, “B” for the Ben­gal Famine, etc. A handy ref­er­ence to every derange­ment you can access with a cou­ple of clicks.

An e-zine called This is Local Lon­don, describ­ing its offer­ings as “qual­i­ty local jour­nal­ism,” is a stan­dard exam­ple. Well, maybe not so stan­dard. “The Prob­lem with Glo­ry­ing Win­ston Churchill” was writ­ten not by a his­to­ri­an or researcher, but a stu­dent at Walling­ton Coun­ty Gram­mar School.

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Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Critique Down Under: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

Par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Fall of Sin­ga­pore (see ear­li­er post), a new cri­tique of Churchill miss­es the for­est for the trees and fails on the facts. Real­ly, Churchill made lots of mis­takes worth con­tem­plat­ing. But these aren’t among them.

The arti­cle appeared in south­west Australia’s Sun Coast Dai­ly on April 26th. Not exact­ly The Times, and if you don’t sub­scribe to Google Alerts you missed it. For the fun of shoot­ing fish in a bar­rel, how­ev­er, it’s worth a few min­utes of your time.

 

Critique 1: Self-Interest

“Churchill had a long and var­ied career in pol­i­tics, man­ag­ing to swap par­ties as his career needs required.” …

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Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality

Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality

Per the pre­vi­ous post, I append for read­er com­ment the con­tents of my next book, Win­ston Churchill, Myth and Real­i­ty: What Churchill Stood For.

I have writ­ten on most of these mat­ters in the past; the book recasts it afresh. I also acknowl­edge and cross-ref­er­ence the work of experts who know far more than I, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fields of geneal­o­gy and med­i­cine. I would be glad to hear your thoughts; please use the “con­tact” page.

The his­to­ri­an David Stafford wrote: “Myth only devel­ops and takes hold when the time is right, and the cli­mate has long been ripe for the emer­gence of myths about a wartime hero who stood firm against a total­i­tar­i­an foe and smote an evil empire.”…

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Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges

Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges

Writ­ing in the Los Ange­les Times, Pro­fes­sor Andrew J. Bace­vich con­sid­ered the war in Afghanistan against Churchill’s expe­ri­ence in World War I. Churchill, he says, looked for alter­na­tives to “send­ing our armies to chew barbed wire in Flan­ders.” Just so. And we should be look­ing for alter­na­tives to chew­ing dust in Afghanistan.

Bace­vich describes Churchill’s alter­na­tive as “an amphibi­ous assault against the Dar­d­anelles.” (That is a phys­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty.) Churchill cham­pi­oned a naval attack on the Dar­d­anelles, fol­lowed by an amphibi­ous assault on the Gal­lipoli Penin­su­la). Bace­vich adds that Churchill wished to “sup­port the infantry with tanks.”…

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