Tag: William Manchester

Churchill’s Common Touch (3)

Churchill’s Common Touch (3)

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con­tin­ued from part 2…

Part 3: Ser­vants and Staff

Win­ston Churchill was a Vic­to­ri­an, with most of the atti­tudes of his class and time toward the com­mon folk. “Ser­vants exist to save one trou­ble,” he told his wife in 1928, “and sh[oul]d nev­er be allowed to dis­turb one’s inner peace.”

Once before World War II he arrived in a vio­lent rain­storm at his friend Max­ine Elliott’s Chateau d’Horizon in the South of France. “My dear Max­ine,” he said as she ush­ered him in, “do you realise I have come all the way from Lon­don with­out my man?”…

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The Lion is Back

The Lion is Back

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“Then out spake brave Hor­atius, the Cap­tain of the Gate.” William Manchester’s inscrip­tion, quot­ing Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, a Churchill favorite, on my sec­ond vol­ume of his Last Lion, reminds me that Bill was him­self for many of us “Cap­tain of the Gate”; and that his death in 2004 bid fair to deprive us of finale of the most lyri­cal Churchill work ever written.

Not quite. Twen­ty-four years on, Lit­tle Brown has pub­lished the third and final vol­ume of this famous biog­ra­phy, sub­ti­tled Defend­er of the Realm 1940-1965 (1232 pages, in hard­bound, Kin­dle and audio editions).…

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How much did Churchill drink?

How much did Churchill drink?

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Andy Klein asks whether William Man­ches­ter was being fac­tu­al or just cute when he wrote that Churchill was not a heavy drinker, despite the quan­ti­ties Man­ches­ter enumerated:

…the leg­end that he is a heavy drinker is quite untrue. Churchill is a sen­si­ble if unortho­dox drinker. There is always some alco­hol in his blood­stream and it reach­es its peak in the evening after he has had two or three scotch­es, sev­er­al glass­es of cham­pagne, at least two brandies, and a highball.

Man­ches­ter was right in the sense but wrong in the details. Churchill had an impres­sive capac­i­ty for alco­hol, but nobody saw him put that much away of an evening.…

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Churchill as Racist: A Hard Sell

Churchill as Racist: A Hard Sell

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Racist still? In “To See Humans’ Progress, Zoom Out”  (The New York Times, 26 Feb­ru­ary 2012), Pro­fes­sor Steven Pinker asserts that for all their faults, edu­cat­ed peo­ple today are get­ting better:

Ideals that today’s edu­cat­ed peo­ple take for grant­ed — equal rights, free speech, and the pri­ma­cy of human life over tra­di­tion, trib­al loy­al­ty and intu­itions about puri­ty — are rad­i­cal breaks with the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the past. These too are gifts of a widen­ing appli­ca­tion of reason.

Fair enough, but to con­trast what edu­cat­ed peo­ple were like in the bad old days, Prof.…

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“The Last Lion” Volume III is Published

“The Last Lion” Volume III is Published

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Over 400 read­ers asked when we will see the third and final vol­ume  of William Manchester’s Churchill biog­ra­phy, The Last Lion: Win­ston Spencer Churchill, Defend­er of the Realm 1940-1965. Answer: Ama­zon was ship­ping copies as of mid-Octo­ber 2012—only twen­ty-four years since Vol­ume II!

Mr. Reid kind­ly asked me to proof the man­u­script for Vol­ume III, as did Mr. Man­ches­ter for Vol­ume II.

This will be good news to the many Man­ches­ter fans who have wait­ed for years. Paul Reid’s vol­ume is writ­ten in the Man­ches­ter style, as dra­mat­ic and grip­ping as the first two vol­umes.…

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