Tag: Mary Soames

Mary Soames Centenary 1922-2022: A Remembrance by a Friend

Mary Soames Centenary 1922-2022: A Remembrance by a Friend

Mary Soames taught us all the most important rules any Churchill scholar must follow: never to proclaim what her father would do today; and strive to “keep the memory green and the record accurate.” She also taught us magnanimity—that what really matters is friendship, and trust. She was our guiding light—the person we sought to please with word committed to print on behalf of her great father.

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Paintatious – Paintaceous – Paintacious: What Was Churchill’s Word?

Paintatious – Paintaceous – Paintacious: What Was Churchill’s Word?

Paul Rafferty’s mag­nif­i­cent Win­ston Churchill: Paint­ing on the French Riv­iera is being trans­lat­ed for a French edi­tion by Dr. Antoine Capet. The author and trans­la­tor posed an inter­est­ing ques­tion. How did Win­ston Churchill spell “painta­tious”?

(Any read­er bored by pedan­tic, picayune, obscure mean­der­ings about noth­ing of impor­tance should stop read­ing now. For my review of Paul’s book see: “Book of the Year.”)

“Painta­tious” was artist Churchill’s word for a scene wor­thy of his brush. He found many such venues on the French Riv­iera, which Paul explores so well. But this is a tricky ques­tion because “painta­tioius” not a real word.…

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Fake Churchill Quotes: Lady Astor and Other Women Nemeses

Fake Churchill Quotes: Lady Astor and Other Women Nemeses

Pure nonsense

Mak­ing the rounds again is an off-col­or piece of “Churchillian Drift.” Years ago, colum­nist Jon­ah Gold­berg greet­ed its last appear­ance by call­ing it “A Thorny Porn-y Issue.” Porn-y maybe, Thorny not. Win­ston Churchill nev­er said any­thing like it.

For con­nois­seurs of made-up Churchill quo­ta­tions, here’s the alleged exchange. Sir Win­ston says to a woman at a social event: “Madam, would you sleep with me for a mil­lion pounds?” The lady stam­mers: “My good­ness, Mr. Churchill. Well, I suppose….”

Churchill inter­rupts: “Would you sleep with me for a fiv­er?” She responds hot­ly: “What kind of woman do you think I am?!”…

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Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

Boris John­son, who has sought com­par­i­son with Win­ston Churchill, denounced spend­ing nation­al lot­tery mon­ey to save the wartime leader’s per­son­al papers for the nation,” chor­tled The Guardian in Decem­ber. (The Churchill Papers cov­er 1874-1945. Lady Churchill donat­ed the post-1945 Chartwell Papers to the Churchill Archives in 1965.)

In April 1995 John­son, then a colum­nist for the Dai­ly Tele­graph, deplored the £12.5 mil­lion pur­chase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lot­tery-sup­port­ed Nation­al Her­itage Memo­r­i­al Fund, said John­son, was frit­ter­ing away mon­ey on point­less projects and ben­e­fit­ing Tory grandees. John­son added: “…sel­dom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”

The Memo­r­i­al Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a nation­al heir­loom under threat of being sold out­side the coun­try.…

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Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars

Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia: A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars

Excerpt­ed from “Great Con­tem­po­raries: T.E. Lawrence,” writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text and more illus­tra­tions, please click here.

Churchill and Lawrence

If the Almighty dab­bles in the cre­ation of indi­vid­u­als, He must have chor­tled when He con­jured up Lawrence of Ara­bia. For here was the ide­al advis­er, foil and friend of Win­ston Spencer Churchill. To para­phrase WSC’s apoc­ryphal quip, Lawrence pos­sessed none of the virtues Churchill despised, an all the vices he admired.

He was “untram­meled by con­ven­tion,” Churchill wrote, “inde­pen­dent of the ordi­nary cur­rents of human action.”…

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Lipstick and the Churchills: No Subject Too Obscure, None Too Trivial.

Lipstick and the Churchills: No Subject Too Obscure, None Too Trivial.

Q: “The power of lippy”

I’m Blan­ca Bueno, a jour­nal­ist work­ing in Barcelona for a cul­tur­al quiz show for Ante­na 3, Span­ish tele­vi­sion. (It is the equiv­a­lent of NBC’s “Who’s still Stand­ing?“)

My work con­sists in writ­ing the ques­tions and check­ing if they are cor­rect and well for­mu­lat­ed, in order to be as pre­cise as pos­si­ble. We try not to spread wrong infor­ma­tion to our con­tes­tants and our audi­ence. Some­times, to do this work, I need to con­tact to some experts, such as you, in this case. I need help ver­i­fy­ing a ques­tion about Win­ston Churchill and lipstick.…

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Churchill Memories of the Mount Washington and Bretton Woods

Churchill Memories of the Mount Washington and Bretton Woods

Read­ers react­ed kind­ly to my essay on Alis­tair Cooke. I ven­ture to add some pri­vate Churchillian moments at the Mount Wash­ing­ton Hotel at Bret­ton Woods. I sent these to still-liv­ing par­tic­i­pants, who urged I pub­lish them—with strate­gic edits to pro­tect the innocent.

“I’ve been using microphones before you were born”

Com­man­der Lar­ry Kryske USN was our toast­mas­ter for the 1988 Mount Wash­ing­ton Churchill din­ners. I remem­ber par­tic­u­lar­ly his naval dec­la­ra­tion after din­ner: “The smok­ing lamp is light­ed.” (How odd that sounds now! In my expe­ri­ence, group smok­ing stopped almost dead around 1990.) Lar­ry sends this amus­ing mem­o­ry of that night, 27 August:

Dur­ing his address, Sir Alis­tair appeared to be hav­ing trou­ble with the mic.…

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Life Amid Chaos: “The Hope Still Lives…The Dream Shall Never Die”

Life Amid Chaos: “The Hope Still Lives…The Dream Shall Never Die”

My broth­er Andrew Roberts inspired this post, when he asked for Churchill quo­ta­tions about child­birth. Yes, even now, friends have brought a new life into the world. Three months ago, my son and daugh­ter-in-law did likewise.

Life Goes On

On 30 May 1909, Clemen­tine Churchill was preg­nant with their first child, Diana. Win­ston, ask­ing her to prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing, wrote these beau­ti­ful words: “We are in the grip of cir­cum­stances, and out of pain joy will spring, and from pass­ing weak­ness new strength will arise.”

Four and one-half decades lat­er, his daugh­ter Mary was a fort­night over­due for the birth of Char­lotte, her fourth child.…

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Churchill’s Christmas, 1882-1947: Halcyon and Sterner Days

Churchill’s Christmas, 1882-1947: Halcyon and Sterner Days

Merry Christmas …..  Happy Hannukah

“Churchill’s Christ­mas” is excerpt­ed from a two-part arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the com­plete text with foot­notes, please click here.

To Churchillian col­leagues, and most of all those who have encour­aged and sup­port­ed our Churchill work at Hills­dale Col­lege so many years: thank-you for being our friends.

Washington, 24 December 1941

“Let the chil­dren have their night of fun and laugh­ter… Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstint­ed plea­sures before we turn again to the stern task and the for­mi­da­ble years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sac­ri­fice and dar­ing, these same chil­dren shall not be robbed of their inher­i­tance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.…

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Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (2)

Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (2)

“Ran­dolph Churchill: Present at the Cre­ation,” is tak­en from a lec­ture aboard the Regent Sev­en Seas Explor­er on the 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019. Con­tin­ued from Part 1.

Randolph Churchill Postwar

Out of the Army and Par­lia­ment in 1945, and divorced from Pamela in 1946, Ran­dolph Churchill led a “ram­pag­ing exis­tence,” his sis­ter Mary wrote. “He always had lances to break, and hares to start.” He was loy­al and affec­tion­ate, but he “would pick an argu­ment with a chair.”

In 1948 he mar­ried June Osborne and fathered his sec­ond child, Ara­bel­la.…

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