Tag: Winston S. Churchill

Jibes
“Dawn in Dundee,” 1922: A cartoon in the “Dundee Advertiser” (the paper, not the politician) quotes Henry V, Act 5 Sc. 1: “All Hell shall stir for this.” Churchill had lost his seat, his party, and his appendix in the general election. (Public domain)
Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took As Good As He Gave

Jibes and Insults: Churchill Took As Good As He Gave

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Not all were pleasant ribbing: “The Prime Minister wins Debate after Debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights Debates like a war and the war like a Debate.... [His speech indulged] in these turgid, wordy, dull, prosaic and almost invariably empty new chapters in his book…while dressed in some uniform of some sort or other. I wish he would recognise that he is the civilian head of a civilian Government, and not go parading around in ridiculous uniforms.” —Nye Bevan

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theme
Men with a Theme: Meeting with U.S. naval authorities, Admiralty, London, May 1942. L-R: Capt. Charles Baker USN, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, U.S. Ambassador Gil Winant, First Lord of the Admiralty A.V. Alexander, U.S. Naval Forces in Europe Commander Admiral H.R. Stark, Winston Churchill, Chief of Staff Capt. Ralph Wentworth USN, Capt. H.A. Flanigan, USN. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Churchillisms: Puddings Without a Theme

Churchillisms: Puddings Without a Theme

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"[We are] passing through a period of eclipse which may well be converted into a period of decline. There is anxiety abroad, and can we wonder at it! Why should the Government complain? Look at all they have said. Look at all they protest they stand for…. They have no theme [and] have deluded the masses of their supporters in the country into believing they are about to bring into being some vast, splendid, new world." —WSC

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Zinoviev
Bolshevik leaders write a letter of defiance to then-British Foreign Secretary George Curzon, 1923. L-R: Semyon Budyonny, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Kalinin, Sergey Kamenev (mustachios), Leonid Krasin (fedora), Karl Radek (smoking pipe), Nikolai Bukharin, Georgy Chicherin( writing); Lev Kamenev (gesturing), Christian Rakovsky (arm raised) Leon Trotsky (goatee) , Demyan Bedny (facing the others), Maxim Litvinov (glasses), Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev. (Krasnyi Perets, public domain)
Churchill and the Red Scare: The Zinoviev Letter

Churchill and the Red Scare: The Zinoviev Letter

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The conspiracy theorists have not got round to accusing Churchill of actually writing the Zinoviev Letter–at least as far we know! It is virtually certain that he was not involved in the forgery, though he initially accepted it as genuine. He did take political advantage of the Zinoviev uproar. Even if it were forged, he said, it was nothing new where Bolsheviks were concerned. He called Ramsay MacDonald a “futile Kerensky.”

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Poland
Territories taken by Poland from Czechoslovakia. Medium blue: annexed after the October 1938 Munich Agreement. Darker blue: annexed from the German client state Slovakia after the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. (Minkeslandian, Creative Commons)
Poland or Russia: Did Churchill Pick the Right Enemy?

Poland or Russia: Did Churchill Pick the Right Enemy?

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With Russia invaded and America still neutral, Churchill was desperate for allies. Decisions had to be made with what was known at the time. It was logical to conclude then that Germany not Russia was the greater expansionist threat. No one could see far ahead, yet no one worked harder than he for Poland’s independence after the war. No one more admired the valiant Poles who fought with the Allies from 1940 to D-Day and beyond.

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Murray
Churchill visiting President Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm, 6 May 1959. Sergeant Murray stands behind them. (Hillsdale College Press)
Remembering Eddie Murray, Churchill’s Bodyguard 1950-65

Remembering Eddie Murray, Churchill’s Bodyguard 1950-65

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"Murray's devotion to Churchill was genuine, and I have no doubt that if danger had threatened he would have stood before him. He certainly made the great man’s life easier and the Boss, I think, had a real affection for him. It was Churchill’s inevitable reaction to stand up for any member of his entourage who was under attack. As Lady Churchill once said (looking at me rather pointedly): 'Winston is always ready to be accompanied by those with considerable imperfections.'" —Anthony Montague Browne

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depression
A particularly vicious cartoon by Illingworth in Punch, 3 February 1954, exaggerated his depression, though old age was soon to bring long episodes of it. (Wikimedia Commons)
Q&A: “Black Dog” — Churchill and Depression

Q&A: “Black Dog” — Churchill and Depression

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"A lot has been made of depression in his character by psychiatrists who were never in the same room with him. He himself talks of his Black Dog, and he did have times of great depression. Some of the things he went through would depress anybody.... Of course, if you have a Black Dog, it lurks somewhere in your nature. But I never saw him disarmed by depression. I'm not talking about the depression of his much later years, because surely that is a sad feature of old age which afflicts a great many people who have led a very active life." —Lady Soames

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Randolph Churchill
The White House, 9 April 1963. President John F. Kennedy declares Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. On steps, front row (L-R): Undersecretary of State, George Ball, British Ambassador Sir David Ormsby-Gore, President Kennedy, Randolph Churchill. Back rows (L-R): Deputy Chief of Protocol William J. Tonesk (mostly behind Ball), Sylvia Ormsby-Gore, Randolph’s son Winston, President’s naval aide Tazewell Shepard. Secret Service agent Art Godfrey is at far right. (Photograph by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton. presented to Richard Langworth, 1988, public domain)
D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

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And so on 6 June 1944 we launched the great crusade, as Eisenhower put it (today perhaps politically incorrectly). Western civilization was saved. Yet it was not, William F. Buckley Jr. argued, “the significance of that victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that causes the name of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster....It is the roar that we hear, when we pronounce his name….The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy."

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Peninsula
The landing of 4th Battalion, Australian troops at ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli, 25 April 1915. (Ernest Brooks, Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Gallipoli Peninsula 1915: Failure is an Orphan

Gallipoli Peninsula 1915: Failure is an Orphan

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From May to November 1915, Churchill held a meaningless sinecure, his only task the appointment of rural judges. “Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted,” he wrote, “my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it; I had vehement convictions and small power to give effect to them.… I was forced to remain a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front seat.”

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Straits
“Mount Ida and Plains of Troy” by William Wyllie, with HMS Queen Elizabeth bombarding of Turkish forts, March 1915, covered inshore by HMS Canopus. Wyllie’s title relates the nearby site of Homeric Troy, excavated a few years earlier. (Royal Museums, Greenwich, public domain)
Dardanelles Straits 1915: Success Has a Thousand Fathers

Dardanelles Straits 1915: Success Has a Thousand Fathers

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It is widely believed that Churchill proposed the expedition to the Dardanelles Straits to bypass the static slaughter in Europe’s trenches. While this is true in the abstract, the plan was not his original vision, nor was it hatched overnight. Churchill and others first contemplated assaulting Germany and Austria-Hungary from the south. Churchill also proposed attacking Germany from the north, even as the Dardanelles operation was being approved by the War Cabinet.

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Marlborough
John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. (Dulwich Picture Gallery, public domain)
Marlborough Drift: The Dallying Duke

Marlborough Drift: The Dallying Duke

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John Churchill (not yet a Duke) "was hidden in the cupboard of Barbara Palmer (not yet a Duchess). After having prowled about the chamber the King, much upset, asked for sweets and liqueurs. His mistress declared that the key of the cupboard was lost. The King replied that he would break down the door.On this she opened the door, and fell on her knees on one side while Churchill, discovered, knelt on the other...."

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RML Books

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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

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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