William Manchester Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill Misquotes: The Red Herrings Now Number 175

20 May 2021 Comments 0 Comments

Quotes and Misquotes

Churchill by Himself, my encyclopedia of Winston Churchill’s most quotable remarks, is to be republished. (If the publishers can ever agree about what form and substance they will allow each other to produce.) To the the original 4000 quotes I’ve added so far 600 new ones.

The “Red Herrings” appendix of misquotes has also grown apace. That, however, is always kept up to date online. You can look it up:

All the “Quotes” Churchill Never Said

Misquotes Part 1: Accepting Change to European Union

Part 2: Fanatic to Liberty

Misquotes Part 3: Lies to Sex

Part 4: Sexism to Ypres

A trove of misquotes

The original “Red Herrings” appendix (2008) contained about 80 misquotes.…

Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

21 January 2021 Comments 1 Comment

“Boris Johnson, who has sought comparison with Winston Churchill, denounced spending national lottery money to save the wartime leader’s personal papers for the nation,” chortled The Guardian in December. (The Churchill Papers cover 1874-1945. Lady Churchill donated the post-1945 Chartwell Papers to the Churchill Archives in 1965.)

In April 1995 Johnson, then a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, deplored the £12.5 million purchase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lottery-supported National Heritage Memorial Fund, said Johnson, was frittering away money on pointless projects and benefiting Tory grandees. Johnson added: “…seldom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”

The Memorial Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a national heirloom under threat of being sold outside the country.…

Churchill’s Biographers: Manchester vs. Gilbert

10 February 2019 Comments 2 Comments

Manchester in the 1980s brought more people to Churchill than anyone then. Accomplished scholars, who took great issue with his conclusions, were often careful to credit him with that. Gilbert's work "rises with the tempo of accumulating disasters and Churchill’s presence, too, rises above the panic, like a great granite cliff."