Tag: John Charmley

Charmley
One of my favorites: Offered a light by a Frenchman at Cherbourg, 24 July 1944.
“Churchill: The End of Glory” by John Charmley

“Churchill: The End of Glory” by John Charmley

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Q: I have just been giv­en a copy of Churchill: The End of Glo­ry, A Polit­i­cal Biog­ra­phy by John Charm­ley (1993) and am oblig­ed to say that it has the most con­fused index I have ever come across.  It may be idle schol­ar­ship on my part but when I open a book that is new to me the first thing that I do is look through the index to see if it con­tains mat­ters that I con­sid­er it should and the next thing I check is the bib­li­og­ra­phy.  I looked for Sin­ga­pore and its British com­man­der, Lieu­tenant-Gen­er­al Arthur Ernest Per­ci­val but could not find any men­tions.  Charmley reviewed The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project offers summ­raries of books about Churchill from 1905 on. For The End of Glo­ry we write….…

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Belloc
“This trench is wrong. It doesn’t agree with my map.” Belloc at the Front, WW1. (Cartoon by Leonard Ravenhill in Punch, 27 June 1917.)
“Incandescent Brilliance:” Churchill and Hilaire Belloc

“Incandescent Brilliance:” Churchill and Hilaire Belloc

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“To Bel­loc this gen­er­a­tion owes big glimpses of the Home­r­ic spir­it. His mis­sion was to flay alive the hum­bugs and hyp­ocrites and the pedants and to chant robust folk-songs to a rous­ing oblig­a­to of clink­ing flagons….” He lat­er con­clud­ed that Lib­er­al reforms mere­ly offered the “prop­erty­less work­er per­pet­u­al security…in exchange for the sur­ren­der of polit­i­cal free­dom.” 

Excerpt­ed and con­densed from “Great Con­tem­po­raries: Hilaire Bel­loc,” for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the full arti­cle click here.

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Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc

(1870-1953)—writer, sailor, poet, friend of Churchill—helped fuel Churchill’s pas­sion for the sur­vival of free gov­ern­ment.…

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movies
Well-cast leads in “Churchill: The Wilderness Years” (1981). L-R: Edward Woodward (Sir Samuel Hoare), Peter Vaughan (Sir Thomas Inskip), Robert Hardy (Winston Churchill), Eric Porter (Neville Chamberlain), Peter Barkworth (Stanley Baldwin).
Churchill Bio-Pics: The Trouble with the Movies

Churchill Bio-Pics: The Trouble with the Movies

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“The Trou­ble with the Movies” was pub­lished in the Amer­i­can Thinker, 5 August 2017.

David Fran­co, review­ing the film Churchill, star­ring Bri­an Cox, rais­es ques­tions he says every­one should be ask­ing. “Isn’t the abil­i­ty to accept one’s mis­takes part of what makes a man a good leader? …. To what extent should we rely [on] past expe­ri­ences in order to min­i­mize mis­takes in the future? These are the ques­tions that make a bad movie like Churchill worth see­ing.”

Well, I won’t be see­ing this bad movie. Described as “per­verse fan­ta­sy” by his­to­ri­an Andrew Roberts, it joins a recent spate of slop­py Churchill bio-pics that favor skewed car­i­ca­tures over his­tor­i­cal fact.…

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