Tag: Jock Colville

Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

“There’s a lot of ruin in any nation…”

The Greeks are still not laugh­ing about their mid-1940s civ­il war, so lev­i­ty may be inap­pro­pri­ate. Nor was at the time was Win­ston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “respon­si­ble for build­ing up the nest of cock­a­tri­ces for EAM [com­mu­nist par­ti­sans] in Greece.” (His vocab­u­lary was broad: A cock­a­trice is a myth­i­cal, two-legged drag­on or ser­pent-like crea­ture with a cock’s head.)

Nev­er­the­less, the peace deal Churchill bro­kered between war­ring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilar­i­ous moments that, 75 years lat­er, we may be per­mit­ted to indulge in lighter aspects.…

Read More Read More

How Churchill Polished and Improved His Writing by Constant Revision

How Churchill Polished and Improved His Writing by Constant Revision

Con­densed from “Con­stant Revi­sion,” an arti­cle under my pen name for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text click here.

Revision and redraft

We are asked: “As I recall Churchill labeled his man­u­scripts some­thing like “draft,” “almost final draft” and “final draft.” Do you recall what those cat­e­gories were?”

We can­not estab­lish that he rou­tine­ly used those labels. Instead he tend­ed to use “revise” or “revi­sion.” Fre­quent­ly his fin­ished draft was marked “final revise.” It often took a long time before, with a sigh of relief, his pri­vate office staff reached that point.…

Read More Read More

The Brendon Bestiary: Churchill’s Animal Friends and Analogies

The Brendon Bestiary: Churchill’s Animal Friends and Analogies

Piers Bren­don, Churchill’s Bes­tiary: His Life Through Ani­mals. Lon­don, Michael O’Mara Books, 2018, 320 pages, Ama­zon $18.96. Excerpt­ed from a review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the full text, click here.

“An enor­mous­ly agree­able side of his char­ac­ter was his atti­tude toward ani­mals,” Sir Antho­ny Mon­tague Browne, his last pri­vate sec­re­tary, said of Win­ston Churchill. “Although a Victorian—and they were not notably aware of ani­mal suffering—he had a sen­si­tiv­i­ty well in advance of his time.” Ever since Sir Antho­ny said that we’ve been wait­ing for a good book on the sub­ject, and his­to­ri­an Piers Bren­don has oblig­ed.…

Read More Read More

RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks

Links on this page may earn commissions.