Tag: Stanley Baldwin

Bracken
Holding forth, London, 1941: Bracken lectures Dutch diplomat Eelco van Kleffens. Charles de Gaulle, seemingly oblivious, chats with U.S. Ambassador to Holland Tony Biddle. (Wikimedia Commons)
Brendan Bracken: “Winston’s Faithful Chela”

Brendan Bracken: “Winston’s Faithful Chela”

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“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.…

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quotations
Holding forth in Parliament, 1912. (Illustrated London News)
How Would Churchill Tweet? -National Review

How Would Churchill Tweet? -National Review

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“How Would Churchill Tweet?” appeared in Nation­al Review, 12 August 2017.

Since Pres­i­dent Trump has tak­en office, the pub­lic has quick­ly learned to get its polit­i­cal news from a nov­el source—namely, the President’s Twit­ter account.

The move to this plat­form rep­re­sents a shift in the nature of pol­i­tics, both for good and for ill. Trump might be among the first polit­i­cal lead­ers to use this medi­um to attack oppo­nents or make major announce­ments. He is cer­tain­ly not the first to uti­lize the kind of brevi­ty the plat­form requires to make his points.

Such brevi­ty also char­ac­ter­ized the rhetor­i­cal style of Win­ston Churchill, whose wit, humor and insight com­ple­ment­ed his deci­sive and effec­tive polit­i­cal lead­er­ship.…

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Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

Maisky and Churchill: Hard to Put Down

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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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Was WW2 Avoidable?

Was WW2 Avoidable?

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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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Why Churchill Shunned Pipes and Cigarettes

Why Churchill Shunned Pipes and Cigarettes

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A friend sent me a Dun­hill fea­ture from the Dai­ly Tele­graph, stat­ing that Churchill occa­sion­al­ly smoked a pipe as a hol­i­day from cig­ars: “I can find no ref­er­ence to him hav­ing ever smoked a pipe, can you?”

I think Dun­hills are stretch­ing. I can find no tes­ti­mo­ny to Churchill ever smok­ing a pipe. There are indi­ca­tions that he deplored pipe smok­ing (though he tol­er­at­ed it from Sir Arthur Ted­der). Per­haps this arose through his antipa­thy (which grew in the ear­ly 1930s) to Prime Min­is­ter Stan­ley Bald­win.

By look­ing for Bald­win ref­er­ences, I found a key cig­ar-and-pipe stand­off between Churchill and “SB” in 1924, when they were on bet­ter terms, in Mar­tin Gilbert’s Win­ston S.…

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Re-Rat Awards to Senators Gregg, Specter

Re-Rat Awards to Senators Gregg, Specter

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In Finest Hour 142, Spring 2009, I proud­ly pre­sent­ed the Churchill Re-Rat Award (issued infre­quent­ly) to Sen­a­tor Judd Gregg (R.-NH), who accept­ed nom­i­na­tion as Pres­i­dent Obama’s Sec­re­tary of Com­merce but then with­drew, say­ing he could not bal­ance “being in the Cab­i­net ver­sus myself as an indi­vid­ual doing my job.” Gregg’s nom­i­na­tion had sewn fear among con­ser­v­a­tives who learned that NH’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor, John Lynch, would appoint a lib­er­al Repub­li­can in his place. 

On 26 Jan­u­ary 1941 Win­ston Churchill, who had desert­ed the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty for the Lib­er­als in 1904 but oozed back into the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty in 1925 (after being appoint­ed Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer the pre­vi­ous year by Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Stan­ley Bald­win) remarked to his pri­vate sec­re­tary John Colville: “Any­one can rat, but it takes a cer­tain amount of inge­nu­ity to re-rat.”…

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

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