The Dallying Duke of Marlborough
This historical corner of the Web is exercised over the misquotes and tall tales about Winston Churchill that clutter the Internet—by everybody from Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III to assorted authors and politicians (see “Churchillian Drift”).
They range from RG III’s recent “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak” (nobody knows who said that, but Churchill didn’t) to the fiction that Alexander Fleming twice saved Churchill’s life.
But here’s an amusing example of Churchill himself destroying a Churchill myth—about his ancestor John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. Reference is to the early pages of Marlborough: His Life and Times, vol.…