Tag: Franklin Roosevelt
Churchill Quotations for December 7th
Winston Churchill and the Art of the Press Conference
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.…
Galloping Lies, Bodyguards of Lies, and Lies for the Sake of Your Country
About lies. Can you please advise whether or not Sir Winston Churchill said: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Many thanks. —A.S., Bermuda
That one lies with Cordell HullIt was Franklin Roosevelt‘s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, not Churchill. I have a slight variation of it in the “Red Herrings” appendix of Churchill by Himself, page 576: “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.” Although commonly ascribed to Churchill (who would have said “trousers,” not “breeches”), this is definitely down to Hull.…
Witold Pilecki: A Brave Pole Who Did His Best for Liberty
Excerpted from Richard Cohen and Richard Langworth: “Witold Pilecki: A Deserving Addition to “The Righteous Among the Nations,” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Mr. Cohen is a real estate lawyer based in London and head of the Essex Branch of the Jewish Historical Society of England. For the full text and illustrations please click here.
War aim or by-product?Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz. (The story of Witold Pilecki.) New York: HarperCollins, 2019, $28.99, Amazon $20.49, Kindle $13.99.
By 1 August 1946 the world knew the full truth of the Holocaust.…
Garfield, “The Paladin” (or: Christoper Creighton’s Excellent Adventure)
The Paladin, by Brian Garfield. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979; London, Macmillan 1980; Book Club Associates 1981, several tarnslations, 350 pages. (Review updated 2019.)
Garfield’s gripping novel: fictional biography?The late, prolific Brian Garfield wrote this book four decades ago, yet I am still asked about it—and whether it could be true.
The story Mr. Garfield tells seems impossible—fantastic. An eleven-year-old boy named Christopher Creighton leaps a garden wall in Kent one day. He finds himself face to face with the Right Honorable Winston Churchill, Member of Parliament. He will later know the great man by the code-name “Tigger.”…
“The Pool of England”: How Henry V Inspired Churchill’s Words
Excerpted from “Churchill, Shakespeare and Henry V.” Lecture at “Churchill and the Movies,” a seminar sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives, Hillsdale College, 25 March 2019. For the complete video, click here.
Shakespeare’s Henry: Parallels and InspirationsAbove all and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership. “True leadership,” writes Andrew Roberts, “stirs us in a way that is deeply embedded in our genes and psyche.…If the underlying factors of leadership have remained the same for centuries, cannot these lessons be learned and applied in situations far removed from ancient times?”…
Churchill had how many ideas a day? How many were good?
Q: “Who made the crack that Churchill had a hundred ideas a day but only four of them were good?” —Bruce Saxton, Trenton, N.J.
A: There are several candidates and variations. Taking them as a group, Churchill had from six to 100 ideas daily, of which between one and six were good. In order of the most likely. But it could be one of those all-purpose cracks applied to many people.
Roosevelt: fifty to 100 ideas, three or four good.President Roosevelt is the most likely to have said this, since he’s quoted more than anyone else.…
All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said (3: Lies to Sex)
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.”…