Martin Gilbert Archives - Page 5 of 7

Frederick Lindemann: Churchill’s Eminence Grise?

21 August 2017 Comments 6 Comments

Revisionist History, Season 2, Episode 5, “The Prime Minister and the Prof [ Frederick Lindemann ],” podcast by Malcolm Gladwell.

A popular weekly half hour podcast, Revisionist History takes aim at shibboleths, real and imagined. This episode is Churchill’s turn in the barrel.

Scientific Nemesis

The villain, aside from Sir Winston, is his scientific adviser, Frederick Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell, aka “The Prof.” You’ve probably never heard of him, says narrator Malcolm Gladwell. You should have. It was Lindemann who made Churchill bomb innocent German civilians and starve the Bengalis.

Ironically, the program begins with an ad for its sponsor, Chanel Perfume.…

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Churchill Bio-Pics: The Trouble with the Movies

10 August 2017 Comments 2 Comments

“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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Churchill Qualities: Leadership, Judgment, Humanity

26 May 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Qualities

Written for a colleague who asked various contributors for 300 words on the qualities of Winston Churchill they most admire.

Leadership

Few great leaders are also great writers; none who were both compare with Winston Churchill. In 1940 he saved civilization by keeping Britain in the fight until those “who hitherto had been half blind were half ready.” His historical and biographical eloquence won a Nobel Prize. Uniquely for a politician, he thought and wrote deeply about the nature of man. He hated and tried to prevent war. He fought to preserve constitutional liberty.…

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Fateful Questions: World War II Microcosm (1)

2 April 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944, nineteenth of the projected twenty-three document volumes, is reviewed by historian Andrew Roberts in Commentary.

The volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill, and the present volume is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day.” Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Fateful Questions: Excerpts

Fastidiously compiled by the late Sir Martin Gilbert and edited by Dr.…

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Songs Churchill Would Love: “Willie McBride”

13 February 2017 Comments 3 Comments

Sir Martin Gilbert’s moving book, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War, ends with verses from “Willie McBride,” by the Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle, which carry an evergreen message to all generations, and capture what Churchill thought of modern war—which he tried so hard, before both World Wars, to avoid.

Sir Martin wrote that in research for the book, he and Lady Gilbert found the grave of Private William McBride, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, killed April 1916, two months before the Somme. Whether this was the grave of Eric Bogle’s subject is immaterial.…

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Pearl Harbor +75: All in the Same Boat. Still.

7 December 2016 Comments 1 Comment

A slightly extended version of my piece on Pearl Harbor: “How, 75 years ago today, we were saved,” in The American Spectator, 7 December 2016….

Seventy-five years ago today, Winston Churchill was pondering survival. Hitler gripped Europe from France to deep inside Russia. Nazi U-boats were strangling British shipping; Rommel’s Afrika Korps was advancing on Suez. Britain’s only ally beside the Empire/Commonwealth, the Red Army, was fighting before Moscow. America remained supportive…and aloof.

Eighteen months earlier he had become prime minister. No one else had wanted the task. “God alone knows how great it is,” he muttered, his eyes filling.…

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Last Try to Avoid Hell, 1914

22 January 2016 Comments 0 Comments

“Saving the Nations from Hell”: The “Kingly Conference,” 1914 (Excerpt)

Churchill’s faith in personal diplomacy—solving intractable problems by meetings at the highest level—was famously expressed during World War II.

Less widely known is Churchill’s 1914 proposal for a conference of heads of state (including, it seems, French President Raymond Poincaré) in an effort to head-off World War I. The scheme failed, but not for Churchill’s lack of trying.

There is little on Churchill’s “kingly conference” in the literature. There is no reference in Churchill’s The World Crisis, Asquith’s memoirs, or biographies by Manchester, Jenkins, Rose, Charmley and Birkenhead, though Sir Martin Gilbert includes in the official biography an excerpt from a cabinet member which records Churchill’s words in the cabinet of July 27th:

Churchill said we were now in a better than average condition, & the fleet was at war strength….Churchill,…

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Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality

13 January 2016 Comments 0 Comments

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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Robert Hardy’s “Wilderness Years”

5 October 2015 Comments 3 Comments

5 October 2015: Turning 90 this month and as vivacious as ever, Timothy Robert Hardy spoke tonight on “My Life with Churchill” at a Hillsdale College Churchill seminar, attended by over 500 registrants and 200 students, sponsored by Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives. That afternoon I had the privilege to play Alistair Cooke, and introduce four excerpts from Tim’s inimitable portrayal in the documentary, “Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years.” Here is the introduction to the first excerpt, which may be viewed on YouTube (first 12 minutes). All four excerpts will be published later by The Churchill Project for the Study of Statesmanship.…

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Churchill-Mussolini Non-Letters

12 April 2015 Comments 3 Comments

(Or: “You Haven’t Looked Hard Enough”)

“The Untold Story of Mussolini’s Fake Diaries” (Daily Beast, 12 April 2015) evaluates Mussolini’s supposed diaries, letters or documents peddled over the years, while raising some incriminating charges, or suppositions, about Winston Churchill:

Before the war, Churchill offered Il Duce a deal. After the war, British intelligence tried to destroy their correspondence…. When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 he tried, in a series of letters, to dissuade Mussolini from joining the Axis powers. He was ignored. Three weeks later Italy joined Nazi Germany and declared war on Great Britain.…

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