Maxine Elliott Archives - Richard M. Langworth

A “Paintatous” Masterpiece: Paul Rafferty on Churchill’s Riviera Art

15 March 2021 Comments 0 Comments

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 art

This 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.)…

Churchill’s Common Touch (3)

19 March 2015 Comments 1 Comment

continued from part 2…

Part 3: Servants and Staff

Winston Churchill was a Victorian, with most of the attitudes of his class and time toward the common folk. “Servants exist to save one trouble,” he told his wife in 1928, “and sh[oul]d never be allowed to disturb one’s inner peace.”

Once before World War II he arrived in a violent rainstorm at his friend Maxine Elliott’s Chateau d’Horizon in the South of France. “My dear Maxine,” he said as she ushered him in, “do you realise I have come all the way from London without my man?”…