Tag: “My Early Life”

Churchill’s Escape from the Boers, 1899

Churchill’s Escape from the Boers, 1899

Escape from the Boers, 1899:

Please can you com­ment on, the “Dutch­man, Bur­gen­er by name,” men­tioned by Churchill in his account of his escape from the Boers in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, My Ear­ly Life? Is he one and the same per­son as the Charles Burn­ham men­tioned by Sir Mar­tin Gilbert in Churchill: A Life? Per­haps the sur­name was changed to pro­tect Mr Burnham`s posi­tion in South Africa? Yet thoughthree decades had elapsed by the pub­li­ca­tion of My Ear­ly Life. It seems cer­tain that Churchill knew of Burn­ham and the role that he had played.…

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Churchill on Horses

Churchill on Horses

“We need a horse­man for our next pres­i­dent,” writes Gary Hodg­son in the Fort Mor­gan Times, who then goes on to quote “the famous rein­ing cham­pi­on, team rop­er and all around cowboy…Sir Win­ston Churchill,” who alleged­ly said: “There is some­thing about the out­side of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

Unless Mr. Hodg­son has found a new attri­bu­tion, that charmer is not Churchill’s. It’s list­ed in the “Red Her­rings” appen­dix in Churchill by Him­self, page 575, with this note:

​​Repeat­ed­ly attrib­uted to every­one from Woodrow Wilson’s physi­cian to Ronald Rea­gan. “Cler­gy­man Hen­ry Ward Beech­er (1813–87) is one per­son to whom the thought was attrib­uted in his time.…

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“The Bank of Observance”

“The Bank of Observance”

I am in the final stages of writ­ing a book on the reli­gious beliefs of post-World War II Pres­i­dents. In the chap­ter on Dwight Eisen­how­er, I wrote that although Eisen­how­er asked for the “bless­ing of Almighty God” on D-Day, few assess­ments of him would dwell on his reli­gious char­ac­ter: “In fact, Eisenhower’s faith might be more accu­rate­ly described by Win­ston Churchill’s remark that he had made “so many deposits in the Bank of Obser­vance” as a youth that he had been con­fi­dent­ly with­draw­ing from it ever since. Can you con­firm the quo­ta­tion? —D.H., Virginia

Hap­py to assist.…

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