Tag: Neville Chamberlain

“Churchill’s Secret”: Worth a Look

“Churchill’s Secret”: Worth a Look

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.…

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Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

Ivan Maisky: “The great­est sin of mod­ern states­man is vac­il­la­tion and ambi­gu­i­ty of thought and action.”

Gabriel Gorodet­sky, ed., The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambas­sador to the Court of St. James’s. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 634 pages, $28.80, Kin­dle $19.99, audio­book $36.32.

Excerpt­ed from the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. To read in full, click here.

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A strik­ing work of schol­ar­ship (actu­al­ly an abridge­ment of a three-vol­ume com­plete work com­ing in 2016), this book will inspire fresh schol­ar­ship on Churchill, Rus­sia and World War II. Ivan Maisky was a pen­e­trat­ing observ­er of 1932-43 Britain, and Gabriel Gorodet­sky con­nects every long gap in his diaries with informed accounts of what was hap­pen­ing.…

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Praise for “Avoidable War”

Praise for “Avoidable War”

Churchill and the Avoid­able War will cost you the price of a cup of cof­fee. You can read it in a cou­ple of nights.  You may then  decide if Churchill was right (or wrong) that World War II could have been pre­vent­ed. Click on “Buy Now” under the book image at right on this page.

Here is an excel­lent sur­vey of the key “what if” junc­tures where his­to­ry could have tak­en a dif­fer­ent turn. What I like about it espe­cial­ly is that it con­sci­en­tious­ly steers away from any defin­i­tive pro­nounce­ments about one zig or zag mak­ing all the dif­fer­ence in pre­vent­ing World War II.…

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Was WW2 Avoidable?

Was WW2 Avoidable?

con­tin­ued from pre­vi­ous post…

Churchill and the Avoid­able War

Pref­ace

This book exam­ines Churchill’s the­o­ry that “time­ly action” could have forced Hitler to recoil, and a dev­as­tat­ing cat­a­stro­phe avoid­ed. We con­sid­er his pro­pos­als, and the degree to which he pur­sued them. Churchill was both right and wrong. He was right that Hitler could have been stopped. He was wrong in not doing all he could to stop him. The result is a cor­rec­tive to tra­di­tion­al argu­ments, both of Churchill’s crit­ics and defend­ers. Whether the war was avoid­able hangs on these issues.

Chap­ter 1. Ger­many Arm­ing:  Encoun­ter­ing Hitler, 1930-34

“There is no dif­fi­cul­ty at all in hav­ing cor­dial rela­tions between the peoples….But…

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Churchill on Taxes

Churchill on Taxes

Espe­cial­ly nowa­days, politi­cians fre­quent­ly  quote Churchill as say­ing, “There is no such thing as a good tax.” Fas­tid­ioius search­es of his pub­lished words reveal no such state­ment; and here at least is proof that he con­sid­ered at least one tax a good one.

Per­haps the House may remem­ber that only sev­en or eight years ago I got into some trou­ble myself about the Kerosene Tax. It was a very good tax. I was quite right about it. My Rt. Hon. Friend [Neville Cham­ber­lain] slipped it through a year or two lat­er with­out the slight­est trou­ble and it nev­er ruined the homes of the peo­ple at all.…

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