Tag: Winston S. Churchill

race
At risk: The Churchill statue on Parliament Square, London was twice defaced in recent riots, while nearby at the Cenotaph, someone tried to burn the flags. (Photo by Ben Brooksbank, Wikimedia Creative Commons)
Foreword to a Review of “The Racial Consequences of Mr. Churchill”

Foreword to a Review of “The Racial Consequences of Mr. Churchill”

“The Racial Con­se­quences of Mr. Churchill”: A Review

The fol­low­ing is my fore­word only to an analy­sis of the recent Churchill Col­lege pan­el, by Zewdi­tu Gebrey­ohanes and Andrew Roberts. They fol­lowed a max­im of Ran­dolph Churchill in the offi­cial biog­ra­phy: “I am inter­est­ed only in the truth.” Every Churchill schol­ar is in their debt.

Foreword

Eighty-eight years ago Hitler became Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many and the Oxford Union passed a res­o­lu­tion: “That this House refus­es in any cir­cum­stances to fight for King and Coun­try.” A week lat­er Win­ston Churchill said: “We have all seen with a sense of nau­sea the abject, squalid, shame­less avow­al made in the Oxford Union.…

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Rafferty
A “Paintatous” Masterpiece: Paul Rafferty on Churchill’s Riviera Art

A “Paintatous” Masterpiece: Paul Rafferty on Churchill’s Riviera Art

Paul Raf­fer­ty, Win­ston Churchill: Paint­ing on the French Riv­iera. Lon­don: Uni­corn Pub­lish­ing, 2020, 208 pages. $50. Excerpt­ed from a review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. To view the orig­i­nal, with more illus­tra­tions, please click here.

A work of art on Churchill’s art

This beau­ti­ful book com­bines Churchill’s favorite French paint­ing venues with fas­tid­i­ous research on their loca­tions. The hor­i­zon­tal for­mat blends qual­i­ty bind­ing with bril­liant col­or on thick, coat­ed paper, and the price is a bar­gain. Paul Raf­fer­ty, him­self an artist, brings Churchill’s oils alive as adjuncts to WSC’s per­son­al­i­ty. (N.B.: this writer played a minor part in ver­i­fy­ing quotations.)…

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Churchill's Britain
Churchill Barrier #2, linking Lamb Holm and Glimps Holm, Scapa Flow. On 14 October 1939, in a daring feat of seamanship, Günther Prien navigated U-47 into Scapa to torpedo HMS Royal Oak. On Churchill Tour VII Lord Jellicoe, son of the great Admiral, accompanied our visit to Scapa, including a view of Royal Oak on the bottom, reverently preserved as a war memorial . (BillC, Wikimedia Creative Commons)
“Churchill’s Britain”: Good Try, But More is Needed

“Churchill’s Britain”: Good Try, But More is Needed

Peter Clark, Churchill’s Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight. Lon­don: Haus Pub­lish­ing, 2020, 240 pp., no illus­tra­tions, $29.95, Ama­zon $27.48, Kin­dle $22.49. Excerpt­ed from a review for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. To read the orig­i­nal, click here.

N.B. March 2021: The orig­i­nal post con­tains author Clark’s response, which is about the most cor­dial reply to a grumpy review I’ve ever read. He kind­ly takes heed of my crit­i­cisms and says he will attend to them in the paper­back in due course. RML

Churchill’s Britain abridged

I did want to like this book.…

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Fulton
When Churchill spoke at Fulton in 1946, The Iron Curtain extended “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.” Vienna was then behind the Curtain, since northeast Austria was under under Soviet occupation. (BigSteve, Wikimedia Creative Commons)
Iron Curtain 75 Years On: Churchill on the Fulton Flak

Iron Curtain 75 Years On: Churchill on the Fulton Flak

The 75th Anniver­sary of Win­ston Churchill’s “Iron Cur­tain” speech at Ful­ton, Mis­souri, was cel­e­brat­ed this week with due cer­e­mo­ny. One need look no fur­ther than his lead­ing recent biog­ra­ph­er Andrew Roberts for an emi­nent­ly read­able account of the speech and its after­math in the Dai­ly Express.

Read­ers inter­est­ed in fur­ther details may wish to watch or read three per­ti­nent pre­sen­ta­tions, the first being the speech itself, the oth­er two pro­vid­ed by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project:

Sir Win­ston Churchill’s Ful­ton Speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” West­min­ster Col­lege, 5 March 1946 (audio; speech begins at minute 8:40) Sir Mar­tin Gilbert, “The Endur­ing Impor­tance of the ‘Iron Cur­tain’ Speech,” Hills­dale Col­lege, 22 Octo­ber 2004.…

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alliance
View from St. Paul’s Cathedral toward the Old Bailey after the Blitz, 3 January 1941. (H. Mason, Daily Mail, public domain)
Grand Alliance: A Way Out of the Second World War?

Grand Alliance: A Way Out of the Second World War?

Question:

“Pro­fes­sor John Charm­ley says in a pod­cast that Neville Cham­ber­lain believed a pre­war grand alliance against Hitler was not fea­si­ble. He was refer­ring to alliance between the UK and France and the Unit­ed States and USSR. Do you agree?”

Answer:

As Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) tells the Dis­trict Attor­ney (Lane Smith) in “My Cousin Vin­ny” (1992), “that’s a B.S. question.”

(To voir dire Miss Vito on “gen­er­al auto­mo­tive knowl­edge” the D.A. had demand­ed the igni­tion tim­ing of “a 1955 Chevro­let 327 V-8.” (Read­ers less mechan­i­cal­ly inclined than Miss Vito may enjoy her dev­as­tat­ing two-minute rebut­tal to this “trick question.”)…

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Paintatious
Paul Rafferty’s elegant book is reviewed at https://bit.ly/2ZTwktD
Paintatious – Paintaceous – Paintacious: What Was Churchill’s Word?

Paintatious – Paintaceous – Paintacious: What Was Churchill’s Word?

Paul Rafferty’s mag­nif­i­cent Win­ston Churchill: Paint­ing on the French Riv­iera is being trans­lat­ed for a French edi­tion by Dr. Antoine Capet. The author and trans­la­tor posed an inter­est­ing ques­tion. How did Win­ston Churchill spell “painta­tious”?

(Any read­er bored by pedan­tic, picayune, obscure mean­der­ings about noth­ing of impor­tance should stop read­ing now. For my review of Paul’s book see: “Book of the Year.”)

“Painta­tious” was artist Churchill’s word for a scene wor­thy of his brush. He found many such venues on the French Riv­iera, which Paul explores so well. But this is a tricky ques­tion because “painta­tioius” not a real word.…

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Social Dilemma
A modern railway station anywhere, any time. (Rawpixel.com, Wikimedia Creative Commons)
“The Social Dilemma” and Churchill’s “Mass Effects in Modern Life”

“The Social Dilemma” and Churchill’s “Mass Effects in Modern Life”

“The Social Dilem­ma” is excerpt­ed from an Essay on Win­ston Churchill’s 146th birth­day, 30 Novem­ber 2020, pub­lished by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal post, please click here.

“The Social Dilemma”: Netflix, 2020, 90 minutes.

“Is not mankind already escap­ing from the con­trol of indi­vid­u­als? Are not our affairs increas­ing­ly being set­tled by mass process­es? Are not mod­ern conditions—at any rate through­out the Eng­lish-speak­ing communities—hostile to the devel­op­ment of out­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties and to their influ­ence upon events: and last­ly if this be true, will it be for our greater good and glo­ry?…

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Darlan
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” —Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart. right) in “Casablanca,” with Henreid, Bergman and Rains, 1942. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
“Casablanca,” Admiral Darlan, and Rick’s Letters of Transit

“Casablanca,” Admiral Darlan, and Rick’s Letters of Transit

"Casablanca's" famous Letters of Transit were signed by General Maxime Weygand, not de Gaulle and not Darlan. This is confirmed by watching the Peter Lorre episode on YouTube. Lorres's character can clearly be heard saying "General Weygand." There is no evidence that a subtitle ever appeared substituting the names of Darlan or de Gaulle for American audiences. (Thanks to reader James Overmeyer for pointing this out.

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papers
“The largest single private repository of recent British history”: Churchill Archives Centre and dining hall, Churchill College Cambridge. (Cmglee, Creative Commons)
Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

Old Kerfuffles Die Hard: The Churchill Papers Flap is Back

“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.…

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cartoon
Left: “Modesty, my dear Winston, is the secret of all success in the House of Commons, look at ME!! Cultivate it, my boy, I beseech you!” Right: “Nothing like a quiet, unobtrusive manner, my dear Churchill, to make you popular in the House! Keep your eye on ME!” (“Punch,” 5 December 1900)
In Search of Winston Churchill’s First Political Cartoon

In Search of Winston Churchill’s First Political Cartoon

First Cartoon? The Current Contender

We are asked: what was the first Win­ston Churchill polit­i­cal car­toon? The ear­li­est dis­cov­ered so far is this one, from the “Essence of Par­lia­ment” col­umn in Punch on 5 Decem­ber 1900. It appeared about two months after young Win­ston was elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Old­ham, Lan­cashire, on 1 Octo­ber. Alas the car­toon (artist unknown) pos­es more ques­tions than it answers. Churchill is being urged to exhib­it mod­esty, a qual­i­ty he was not known for. But who is doing the urg­ing? We asked sev­er­al authorities.

I first thought the man at right might be Joseph Cham­ber­lain, known for his mon­o­cle.…

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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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