…was a theme of Churchill’s, and he often wrote about it. He made many mistakes, but throughout his career he was seldom guilty of lacking consistency. Continued from Part 1…
“Much better if he had never lived”Churchill maintained friendly relations with Baldwin until Baldwin died in 1947. Nevertheless—which was rare for him—he never forgave and never forgot. In June 1947 he made an astonishing statement: “I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.” Official biographer Martin Gilbert wrote that this was not Churchill’s usual consistency, but exactly the opposite:
In my long search for Churchill few letters have struck a clearer note than this one.…
Paul Rafferty, Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera. London: Unicorn Publishing, 2020, 208 pages. $50. Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To view the original, with more illustrations, please click here.
A work of art on Churchill’s artThis beautiful book combines Churchill’s favorite French painting venues with fastidious research on their locations. The horizontal format blends quality binding with brilliant color on thick, coated paper, and the price is a bargain. Paul Rafferty, himself an artist, brings Churchill’s oils alive as adjuncts to WSC’s personality. (N.B.: this writer played a minor part in verifying quotations.)…
Excerpted from “Churchill, Shakespeare and Henry V.” Lecture at “Churchill and the Movies,” a seminar sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives, Hillsdale College, 25 March 2019. For the complete video, click here.
Shakespeare’s Henry: Parallels and InspirationsAbove all and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership. “True leadership,” writes Andrew Roberts, “stirs us in a way that is deeply embedded in our genes and psyche.…If the underlying factors of leadership have remained the same for centuries, cannot these lessons be learned and applied in situations far removed from ancient times?”…
My article, “The Churchill Marriage and Lady Castlerosse” was first published by The American Spectator on 13 March 2018.
“Here Firm, Though All Be Drifting” —WSCIt’s all over the Internet, so it must be true. Not only did Winston Churchill oppose women’s rights, gas tribesmen, starve Indians, firebomb Dresden, nurse anti-Semitism and wish to nuke Moscow. He even cheated on his wife—in a four-year affair with Doris Delevingne, Viscountess Castlerosse.
So declare the authors of “Sir John Colville, Churchillian Networks, and the ‘Castlerosse Affair’”—unreservedly repeated by British television, multiple media, even a university: (“Winston Churchill’s affair revealed by forgotten testimony.”)…
EXCERPT ONLY: For the complete text of “Churchill and the Baltic” with endnotes, please go to this page on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.
“No doubt where the right lay”: 1940-95Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky was a “Bollinger Bolshevik” who mixed support for Communism with a love of Western luxury. Friendly to Churchill, he knew the Englishman hoped to separate Hitler and Stalin, even after World War II had started.
But Maisky tended to see what he wished to see. In December he recorded: “The British Government announces its readiness to recognize ‘de facto’ the changes in the Baltics so as to settle ‘de jure’ the whole issue later, probably after the war.” There…
My colleague Richard Cohen commends a eulogy to Churchill by the great Labour Party leader Clement Attlee. It occurred in the House of Lords on 25 January 1965, the day after Sir Winston died. It is notable for its fine words. Moreover, it shows how their relationship as colleagues eclipsed that of political opponents. At a time of greatly strained relations between the parties, on both sides of the pond, this is a thoughtful reminder that things could be different.
Attlee was the first prime minister of a socialist government with an outright majority (1945-51).…
“Stanley Baldwin, showing an unexpected familiarity with Indian phrases, described Brendan Bracken as ‘Winston’s faithful chela,‘ wrote the biographer Charles Lysaght. “This is what gave Bracken his place in history, a minor but still an important one.”
The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has published two articles on Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s loyal ally and friend for four decades. The first begins with a memoir by the late Ron Robbins, a Canadian journalist who early on covered the House of Commons, where he met Bracken. The postscript is by me, followed by reviews of the two Bracken books by George Gale and A.J.P.…
“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.…
Churchill’s Secret, co-produced by PBS Masterpiece and ITV (UK). Directed by Charles Sturridge, starring Michael Gambon as Sir Winston and Lindsay Duncan as Lady Churchill. To watch, click here.
Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.
PBS and ITV have succeeded where many failed. They offer a Churchill documentary with a minimum of dramatic license, reasonably faithful to history (as much as we know of it). Churchill’s Secret limns the pathos, humor, hope and trauma of a little-known episode: Churchill’s stroke on 23 June 1953, and his miraculous recovery. For weeks afterward, his faithful lieutenants in secret ran the government.…
