Tag: King Edward VIII

Troublesome Toffs: The Duke of Windsor and Bendor Westminster

Troublesome Toffs: The Duke of Windsor and Bendor Westminster

“A ful­ly equipped Duke costs as much to keep as two Dread­noughts; and Dukes are just as great a ter­ror and they last longer.”

The wise­crack, wrong­ly attrib­uted to Churchill, was actu­al­ly uttered by his Lib­er­al ally, David Lloyd George. (Alleged­ly LG said it in 1909, dur­ing their bat­tle to reform the House of Lords,) It didn’t make Churchill more wel­come at Blenheim Palace, where his cousin the Duke of Marl­bor­ough for­bade the name of LG in conversation.

The Duke of Wind­sor (for­mer­ly King Edward VIII) and the 2nd Duke of West­min­ster are occa­sion­al­ly attacked for their “near-trea­so­nous activ­i­ty in sup­port of the Third Reich.”…

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“Darkest Hour,” the movie: an interview with The Australian

“Darkest Hour,” the movie: an interview with The Australian

For The Australian …

Troy Bram­ston of The Aus­tralian news­pa­per had per­ti­nent ques­tions about the new movie Dark­est Hour, star­ring Gary Old­man as Win­ston Churchill. With the thought that Troy’s queries might be of inter­est, I append the text of the interview.

The Aus­tralian : Of all the things Win­ston Churchill is pur­port­ed to have said and done, the myths and mis­con­cep­tions, which are the most preva­lent and frus­trat­ing for scholars? None of these appear in the film, but there are three things that ran­kle: 1) The lies—that he was anx­ious to use poi­son gas; that he fire­bombed Dres­den in revenge for Coven­try; that he exac­er­bat­ed the Ben­gal famine, etc.…

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Churchill Bio-Pics: The Trouble with the Movies

Churchill Bio-Pics: The Trouble with the Movies

“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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