Randolph Churchill Archives - Page 2 of 4

Churchill’s Memorable Allusions to Shakespeare’s Richard II

29 November 2019 Comments 0 Comments

“Allusions to Richard II” is extracted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text, click here.

Richard II and “This Sceptr’d Isle.”

We are asked: “Churchill quoted Shakespeare’s famous lines, ‘This scepter’d isle,’ in one of his speeches. They are the words of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, from Richard II, Act 2, sc. 1. Could you direct me to the speech?”

Churchill knew his Shakespeare and had a near-photographic memory. Darrell Holley’s Churchill’s Literary Allusions tells us he alludes to Shakespeare more than any other English author. King…

Churchill’s Escape from the Boers, 1899

28 June 2019 Comments 0 Comments

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.…

Brendan Bracken: “Winston’s Faithful Chela”

12 December 2017 Comments 0 Comments

“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.…