Barbara F. Langworth: The Right Parent Survived

Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother, by Anne Sebba (London, Murray, 2007).  American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill), (New York: Norton, 2007). 

It may seem a new story to many readers, since the previous biographies of Lady Randolph Churchill date back up to eight decades. Jennie published her own memoirs in 1908. Readers familiar with the Churchill saga wish to know if this latest book offers anything new. To some extent it does. Sebba writes well, accesses the latest sources, and punctures some myths.

Jennie’s influence in Winston’s life was considerable. She educated him, spent more time with him than most realize, and advanced his career as a writer and war correspondent. Much beloved, she died at 67.

In the 1990s we twice visited Sir Winston’s nephew, Peregrine Churchill, and his wife Yvonne, at their home in Hampshire. There we discussed the current raft of Jennie gossip. A lot of “neglected Winston” chatter was going round. Peregrine snorted at all that. He pulled out a box of Jennie’s diaries and letters to Winston, and began reading aloud. “Played all afternoon with Winston…” It was touching to hear her own words—hardly those of an uncaring, distant mother.

Anne Sebba’s book pulls together facts, discussions and controversy from previous books, adds new letters, and discusses recent Jennie historiography, producing informed conclusions about this ethereal, alluring being.

A fabled persona

There is a rounded mural of Jennie and her sisters, American girls in search of titles, who met British aristocrats in search of money. She was one of the most stunning women of her time, a “professional beauty.” (Victorians would collect photographs of lovely women.) Educated in France, she regaled London society.

Anne Sebba portrays Jennie as sexy, innovative and literate, her flirting persona irresistible to men. She was a concert pianist, artist, playwright, interior decorator. editor and author. (I had erroneously supposed that a famous sketch of Jennie by Singer Sargent was for a later portrait. Apparently it was done for the cover of a piano concert program she gave for charity.) Her rich life is the stuff of an outstanding seven-hour biography (see below).

The book mentions Jennie’s controversies, skirting conclusions when there are none to make. It is a near-certainty that Lord Randolph Churchill died of something besides syphilis—a brain tumor is the leading possibility. (See John Mather, “In Search of Lord Randolph Churchill’s Purported Syphilis.”) Indisputably, he was diagnosed with syphilis. So Sebba’s take is practical: He was told he had it. He believed he had it. His wife and son thought he had it. All their actions were based on the supposition that he did have it. Ergo, he might as well have had it.

This avoids a conclusion but does not challenge the truth in the way that vindictive or ignorant writers do, by referring, say, to “Winston’s syphilitic father” and moving on. As Dr. Mather has shown, Randolph’s malady was misdiagnosed from the start. Sebba’s thesis is not daring and her medical evidence inconclusive, but it is a safe position to take.

Is this fun for you?

Imagine what young Jennie must have felt. You meet this fantastic fellow. The sparks are potent, marriage is certain. Both sets of parents resist, but give in. Your first-born comes quickly. You then learn that your politician-husband is a flawed genius. At first brilliant and respected, Randolph excels in baiting the opposition. Self-willed and vindictive, he is withal not a very nice man. He quarrels with the Prince of Wales, “a great personage” in his son’s biography. That is not wise. A few years into your marriage, you find yourself ostracized from polite society. You end up in Ireland, in a kind of luxurious exile.

Another son, Jack, is born in Dublin, and speculation is rife. Is he Randolph’s son? Arguing strongly in favor of Jack’s legitimacy is his close resemblance to his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Arguing against is that he looks and acts nothing like his brother Winston. Why is this important? Surely what matters is that Winston and Jack were devoted to each other, enjoying a fond and close-knit family life.

Back in England, you’re told that Randolph has a sexually transmitted disease. You do much of his political campaigning, since he is perpetually ill. A few years pass and (diseased or not) he reaches one of the highest offices in the land, a step below prime minister—only to cast himself from the ladder in an ill-considered resignation, never to rise again, and to spend the rest of his life “dying by inches in public.” Not only that, he is hardly ever home, and when he is has a violent temper. Is this fun for you?

Jennie revelations

Unsurprisingly Jennie had numerous admirers—and lovers, whose number is hotly disputed by historians and seekers of the prurient. The author discusses Jennie’s one serious romance, with Karl, Count Kinsky, while she was still married. As Randolph neared death in 1894, she learned that Kinsky had become engaged—he needed the finances and progeny. She had hoped he would wait until Randolph had died (though there had been talk of divorce). Anne Sebba asks: what would have been the consequences for Winston? Suppose Jennie had married Kinsky, and put her energies into that relationship, instead of devoting herself to her son? Her efforts to advance his youthful career are well documented.

Given extant literature, it is encouraging to find new material in this book. One revelation was that Jennie had a serious illness and almost died in 1892. She had severe abdominal pains and was diagnosed with peritonitis and perhaps a tumor or cyst. Miraculously, it healed on its own. Think of the aftermath if Jennie had not been there to launch Winston on his career.

At the time of publication there was an intriguing publicity-rumor that Jennie had a snake tattoo on her wrist. There is a well-known photo of Jennie holding Peregrine. Her arms are bare, no sign of a tattoo. Nor is there on any other photo I have examined. The author duly displayed a snake on her arm in at least one of her book signings. I’m sure she meant it as a tribute, but it’s like Martin Gilbert at  a book signing wearing a siren suit and homburg.

Salacious speculation

It is a shame that the publicity surrounding this biography focused so hard on the salacious. How many men did Jennie sleep with? Did Lord Randolph die of syphilis? Who was Jack Churchill’s father? Flyspeck issues obscuring what really matters is a feature of our age. What matters is that Jennie Churchill was a notable woman at a time when woman were mainly considered to be trophies, concubines or breeders.

She slept with men, though the number is vastly exaggerated. But while others of her class indulged in primping and fripperies, she raised the statesman of the century, produced a literary magazine, displayed multiple talents, raised money for charities, wrote literate memoirs, aided troops on the scene of battle, and set new standards in dress and manners. Anne Sebba suggests perceptively that while Randolph lived, he stood in the way of Winston’s aspirations. His death in 1895 was as crucial for Winston as the other things that happened that fateful year. 

Jennie didn’t have the vote and didn’t want it. Yet she knew politics inside out, and probably influenced more votes than many in Parliament. If she were alive and sentient today, she could easily gain elective office. Her influence on her son, her efforts to launch him on his twin careers of writing and politics, far exceeded those of the father Winston held awe. For Winston Churchill, the right parent survived.

The author

Barbara Langworth was publisher of Finest Hour from 1982 to 2014 and contributed twenty installments of “Recipes from Number 10 for the modern kitchen.” She is the author of “Churchill and Polo” (2018), appearing in two parts for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

The Jennie bibliography

Mrs. George Cornwallis-West, The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill. London: Edward Arnold, 1908. A charming memoir, but discreet and circumspect. Victorian society as seen by a participant.

Kraus, René, Young Lady Randolph, New York: Putnam, 1943. A capable biography by a journeyman writer, who also produced a wartime biography of Winston and the men around him.

Leslie, Anita. Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill, London: Hutchinson, 1960. A competent biography by a member of the family who stands for no nonsense or salacious rumors.

Ralph Martin, Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph (2 vols.). New York: Prentice Hall, 1969-71. Widely acclaimed at the time, but withdrawn in Britain after Peregrine Churchill objected to its characterization of him as a bastard son.

Peregrine Churchill & Julian Mitchell, Jennie: A Portrait with Letters. London: Collins, 1974. Written mainly to dispel Martin’s reflections on Jennie’s alleged reputation, well backed by letters from Lady Randolph’s own archives.

Charles Higham, Dark Lady: Winston Churchill’s mother and Her World. London: Virgin, 2006. “Disappointing, perplexing and decidedly odd…a soup bowl of scandals and a forest of family trees.” —Finest Hour 135

Anne Sebba, Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother. London, Murray, 2007)  American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill), (New York: Norton, 2007).

Video and related books

ITV and Thames Television, “The Life and Loves of Lady Randolph Churchill.” Lee Remick received a  Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her role as Jennie in this brilliant, seven-part television documentary. Ronald Pickup played Lord Randolph and Warren Clarke was young Winston.

Celia and John Lee, Winston and Jack: The Churchill Brothers. London: Celia Lee, 2007. The only work on the long filial relationship, with much on Jennie, by accomplished researchers relying on Churchill family archives.

Richard M. Langworth, “Jennie’s Indiscretions, Jack’s Parentage,” Chapter 2 in Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2017. Other chapters discuss the myths of Jennie’s Iroquois ancestors, young Winston’s education, and Lord Randolph’s illness.

The best editor I ever had wrote: “There is nothing to be said when a friend dies, even among people whose trade is words.” Much nevertheless is being said about Charles Krauthammer. That is fitting, and it is what we have the Internet for. (Some of the most touching tributes are linked below. Fox News produced a very fine tribute, “Krauthammer in His Own Words” click here.)

My editor meant, rather, that for some, words are inadequate against “a big, empty hole where there was once someone you loved. And all the talk in the world won’t change that. Everybody who knew him well misses him.” For CK, those who think they knew him well include millions who encountered him only as a face on the evening news. And were mesmerized by his intellect, eloquence, humor and collegiality.

All those are very Churchillian traits. So is courage. Unlike many of those talking faces, Dr. Krauthammer never indulged in introspection or self-pity. In his forties and his seventies, Winston Churchill was thrown violently out office. He ignored it and rebuilt his life, declaring: “Never give in.” In his twenties, young Charles dove into a swimming pool, banged his head, and was confined forever after to a wheelchair. He ignored it and became a psychiatrist, a writer, syndicated columnist, a husband and father, a TV personality, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Now that is a Churchillian performance.

Things That Matter

His book is one of a score I would take with me if confined to a desert island. Significantly, among its nearly ninety columns and essays, the Churchill chapter ranks second—in Part I (entitled “Personal”)—after a piece on his beloved brother Marcel. Churchill was a very personal subject to Dr. Krauthammer, who was always quoting him (accurately). Many chapters touch on Churchill’s saga: the Middle East, wars in Asia, bioethics and the future, serious enquiries into the nature of man and the universe. (Churchill covered those in Thoughts and Adventures.)

Churchill-related columns include insults (“In Defense of the F-Word”), the “Joy of Losing” (a thing Sir Winston knew something about), how to define democracy (Churchill laid out precepts, Krauthammer laid out Albania), the Holocaust, Zionism, Language, Leadership, the question of Germany’s “collective guilt.” There’s plenty here to interest Churchillians.

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And much else besides. CK was fascinated by “the innocence of dogs, the cunning of cats, the elegance of nature, the wonders of space…fashions and follies…manners and habits, curiosities and conundrums social and ethical. Is a doctor ever permitted to kill a patient wishing to die? Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase ‘women and children?’” Churchill wrote an essay asking, “Are There Men on the Moon?” Krauthammer studied Enrico Fermi and wondered: “With so many habitable planets out there, why in God’s name have we never heard a word from a single one of them?” Fermi’s answer, as CK explained, is disquieting. These are subjects, he wrote, that “fill my days, some trouble my nights.”

I wrote all this and more in a review, the best words I could summon up. I sent it to my hero through a mutual friend with a copy of Churchill by Himself. He didn’t have to reply, but of course, being CK, he did: “How kind and generous was your assessment of my writing. And how gratifying to receive such appreciation. As you know, being a writer as well, the point of writing is less self-expression than trying to express and impress certain ideas on others. Your kind review makes me think that I might have succeeded in some way.”

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Fortune and the magic name of Churchill gave me the chance to meet him twice. The first was at a dinner for Sir Martin Gilbert hosted by a World War II Veteran’s Association in 2004. I presented him with the Sir Winston Churchill Birthday Book, which a friend and I had just republished. It contains a Churchill quote for every day of the year, with space opposite for penciling in someone’s birthday. It has an uncanny knack for providing suitable quotations for everyone. CK’s birthday was March 13th: “There is always much to be said for not attempting more than you can do….But this principle…has its exceptions.” Said Charles: “He had that one right.”

The second was just a few years ago at a Hillsdale College Churchill seminar. That video is not online, but I recommend one that is. In 2011, CK spoke to 50,000 people (99% online) at a Hillsdale Constitution Day celebration. He spoke with piercing clarity, as Brit Hume said. “He was as kind a man as I ever known. His personal grace and gentleness were just remarkable. He was one of a kind.”

One should not attach any great importance to those encounters, and hope I don’t sound like a groupie. But since Bill Buckley died, he was my go-to source of political wisdom. Forever after his Hillsdale appearance, whenever I was unsure of something I would say: I have to read Charles Krauthammer, who will tell me what to think.”

“Hinged” : Krauthammer at Large

I must present a few blades from my sheaf of Krauthammeriana.

Career choices: “How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News? The answer is short and simple. I was young once … It is true that I’m a psychiatrist in remission. People ask me the difference [between psychiatry] and what I do in Washington and the answer is rather simple. In both lines of work I deal every day with people who have delusions of grandeur. The only difference is that here in Washington these deluded have access to nuclear weapons….” (2011)

Donald Trump: After a heated news conference, CNN’s Jake Tapper called the President “unhinged.” Dr. Krauthammer (a devout Never Trumper before the election) replied: “I found it entirely hinged … The high point was when he mentioned me. I thought I was going to be the surprise new national security adviser, so I was somewhat disappointed. The country is really divided. He’s not the one who caused it, but his supporters will love this, and those who are skeptical about him are going to wonder about how hinged he is.” (2017; this reminded me of Churchill using “choate” as the opposite of “inchoate.”)

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The Universe: “I read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as a public service—to reassure my readers that this most unread bestseller is indeed as inscrutable as they thought.” Speaking of the attempts to contact alien life forms (Voyagers 1 and 2), CK noted that the greetings they carry, on behalf of all mankind, are from UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, a Nazi. “Makes you wish that we’d immediately sent out a Voyager 3 beeping frantically: Please disregard all previous messages.” (2000)

Vladimir Putin: “Being a good, well trained KGB agent, he lies with a smile. I love the fact that this week he’s been saying it could’ve been Russian patriots—who are artists who act on their own—who might have hacked. But of course the state is innocent. Nothing like that happens in Russia without the state. He knows it, we know it, but he’s a very good liar.” (2017)

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Baseball: Rick Ankiel was the first player since Babe Ruth to have won at least ten games as a pitcher and also to hit at least fifty home runs. Recalling how Ankiel’s pitching career was destroyed by a nervous breakdown, and how he came fighting back as an outfielder, CK summoned up his own life’s impulses: “The catastrophe that awaits everyone from a simple false move, wrong turn, fatal encounter—every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether—and how—we ever come back.” (2011)

And after our beloved Washington Nationals set the team record of eight home runs in a game, including four in a row and the all-time record of five in an inning: “Oh, the glory! With the White House on fire, the Congress in chaos, and the world going to hell in a handbasket, we need happy news like this. This is why God created baseball, late on the sixth day.” (2014)

Friends and Colleagues

[Churchill and Krauthammer] have many things in common. Both have a wit as dry as a properly-made martini. They both exhibit an unparalleled intellectual capaciousness, enabling a supremely wide range in their writing.  Both men dictate their prose. Charles may think my comparison of him to the great statesman is extravagant, but I do not think so, for this simple reason: Charles rightly refers to Churchill in his essay as “the indispensable man.” Well, for those of us trying to make sense of what is happening in our country right now, Charles is our indispensable man. —Steve Hayward

I remember attending an event at the Kennedy Center which Charles and his wife put on to celebrate ancient Hebrew music, and my wife saying to me, “We wouldn’t be here for anybody but Charles Krauthammer.” On the 4th of July Charles would have all his colleagues and friends out at his summer home on the Chesapeake, but it wasn’t all hot dogs and cokes, it was something special. Charles would have each of us read a passage from the Declaration of Independence. Nothing was more emotional than being among people of different political perspectives….attracted to a fine intellect, Robyn’s husband, Daniel’s dad, who loved America. —Juan Williams

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Like a lot of his friends we started out as ideological adversaries …We spent many dinners together. I had the foolishness to challenge him at chess. I never beat him but they were very instructive games. He would even correct my moves before he clobbered them. We spent a lot of time splitting theological hairs … He knew Aquinas, the principle articulator of Catholic theology, better than I did, and I studied it formally… It is said that “no great man is a good man.” Charles was an exception to that. —Andrew Napolitano

The loss to America is dwarfed by the loss to his family and friends, but nevertheless it is enormous. Especially at this time. The nation is deeply divided. Americans are having difficulty separating fact from fiction. Today’s debates lack the intellectual rigor and civility that Charles championed in his columns, his appearances on Fox News, and his many speeches and essays. When Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, Charles was no cheerleader. But after the election, Charles insisted on treating Mr. Trump with the fairness and respect due the president of the United States. Still, he kept watch for dangers to the institutions the Founding Fathers put in place-the “guardrails” that constrain any president’s behavior. —Irwin Stelzer

May we all say this at the end…

Two weeks ago he wrote to all to say that his fight with cancer was lost. “I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life—full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

That does not diminish our loss, however eloquent and typical of him. He died as he had lived, brave and unaffected, facing the most traumatic of human experiences. I have quoted this passage before, but it is irresistible now. It fits him so perfectly—almost as if Churchill in 1931, writing of Arthur Balfour, intended it for Charles:

As I observed him regarding with calm, firm and cheerful gaze the approach of Death, I felt how foolish the Stoics were to make such a fuss about an event so natural and so indispensable to mankind. But I felt also the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling, or lets its fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.

Quotations scholar Ralph Keyes writes:

Cicero and Livy wrote of  “sweat and blood.” A 1611 John Donne poem included the lines “That ‘tis in vaine to dew, or mollifie / It with thy Teares, or Sweat, or Bloud.” More than two centuries later, Byron wrote, “Year after year they voted cent per cent / Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions—why?—for rent!” In his 1888 play Smith, Scottish poet-playwright John Davidson wrote of “Blood – sweats and tears, and haggard, homeless lives.” By 1939, a Lady Tegart reported in a magazine article that Jewish communal colonies in Palestine were “built on a foundation of blood, sweat, and tears”….Since this phrase was obviously familiar when Churchill gave his memorable speech the following year, even though he rearranged the words and added “toil” for good measure, our ears and our memory quickly returned them to the more familiar form.¹

Blood, tears and (occasionally) toil

In the Boer War, imprisioned in Pretoria, he had a conversation with Mr. Grobelaar, the Boer Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Churchill told Grobelaar that Britain would win: “…as I think Mr. Grobelaar knows, [it] is only a question of time and money expressed in terms of blood and tears.”² In a 1900 article entitled, “Officers and Gentlemen” he used the phrase again:

…the knowledge gained at every manoeuvre must be used remorselessly to control the progress of mediocre men up the military ladder; to cast the bad ones down and help the good ones towards the top. It will all seem very sad and brutal in times of peace, but there will be less blood and tears when the next war comes.³

Thirty years later, in The World Crisis, he regarded the demise of European empires—a precursor, though he could not know it then, of the Second World War to come:

In the Parliaments of the Hapsburgs bands of excited deputies sat and howled at each other by the hour in rival languages, accompanying their choruses with the ceaseless slamming of desks which eventually by a sudden crescendo swelled into a cannonade. All gave rein to hatred; and all have paid for its indulgence with blood and tears.⁴

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“Toil” was in the mix as early as 1932. Leaving New York after a lecture tour, Churchill was asked whether “a war between two or more powers is about to take fire.” He responded with one of his few strikingly bad predictions:

I do not believe that we shall see another great war in our time. War today is bare—bare of profit and stripped of all its glamour. The old pomp and circumstance are gone. War now is nothing now but toil, blood, death, squalor and lying propaganda.⁵

“Blood and tears” next appeared in when war was almost certain, in 1939″

Although the sufferings of the assaulted nations will be great in proportion as they have neglected their preparations, there is no reason to suppose that they will not emerge living and controlling from the conflict. With blood and tears they will bear forward faithfully and gloriously the ark which enshrines the title deeds of the good commonwealth of mankind.⁶

Toil, waste, sorrow and torment

An allied expression came in an article Churchill wrote during late stages of the Spanish Civil War, reprinted in his 1939 collection of articles, Step by Step:

Nearly all the countries and most of the people in every country desire above all things to prevent war. And no wonder, since except for a few handfuls of ferocious romanticists, or sordid would-be profiteers, war spells nothing but toil, waste, sorrow and torment to the vast mass of ordinary folk in every land. Why should this horror, which they dread and loathe, be forced upon them? How is it that they have not got the sense and the manhood to stop it?⁷

Blood, sweat and tears

Churchill added “sweat” in 1931, in the last volume of The World Crisis, as he described the devastating battles between the Russians and the Central Powers. His pages, he said, “record the toils, perils, sufferings and passions of millions of men. Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain.”⁸ Another piece on war in Spain carried the expanded phrase:

But at length regular armies come into the field. Discipline and organisation grip in earnest both sides. They march, manoeuvre, advance, retreat, with all the valour common to the leading races of mankind. But here are new structures of national life erected upon blood, sweat and tears, which are not dissimilar and therefore capable of being united. What milestone of advantage can be gained by going farther? Now is the time to stop.⁹

Blood, toil, tears and sweat

Finally, on 13 May 1940, all four famous words came together in Churchill’s inspiring first speech as Prime Minister: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Clearly he had considered and arranged the words for maximum impact. His postwar recording of the speech comes down very hard on the“sweat.”¹⁰ The response to those words was electric and gratifying, though Churchill was had mixed thoughts about it: “One would think one had brought some great benefit to them, instead of the blood and tears, the toil and sweat, which is all I have ever promised.”¹¹

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An indefatigable reviser, like most good writers, Churchill created an addendum to his famous phrase a year after he first used it, at a grim time. Rommel was rebounding in North Africa, Nazi submarines were taking a deadly toll on the Atlantic, the Blitz continued, and Britain was still alone. Churchill recognized the perils, but ended on a high note:

I have never promised anything or offered anything but blood, tears, toil, and sweat, to which I will now add our fair share of mistakes, shortcomings and disappointments….When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves through which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage. We shall come through.¹²

A more hopeful evaluation of the cost of the war to date was offered just before the attack on Pearl Harbor:

I promised eighteen months ago “blood, tears, toil and sweat.” There has not yet been, thank God, so much blood as was expected. There have not been so many tears. But here we have another instalment of toil and sweat, of inconvenience and self-denial, which I am sure will be accepted with cheerful and proud alacrity by all parties and all classes in the British nation.¹³

Votes of no confidence

Although Russia and America had joined Britain in the battle by the end of 1941, the situation was bleaker than ever when Churchill called for a vote of confidence in January 1942. He handily won, 464 to one. Winding up for the Government, he reminded the House that nothing had changed: “I stand by my original programme, blood, toil, tears and sweat, which is all I have ever offered, to which I added, five months later, many shortcomings, mistakes and disappointments.”¹⁴

A more contentious vote of no confidence was faced down in July. After Tobruk had fallen to Rommel, dissident MPs tabled the motion, but Churchill defeated that one, too, 475 to 25, falling back on his old prescription and giving it a new twist:

I have not made any arrogant, confident, boasting predictions at all. On the contrary, I have struck hard to my “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” to which I have added muddle and mismanagement, and that, to some extent, I must admit, is what you have got out of it.¹⁵

Hinge of fate

Finally in the autumn of 1942, the victory at Alamein turned the tide of the war for Britain. It marked, wrote Churchill, “the turning of ‘the Hinge of Fate.’  It may almost be said, ‘Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.’”¹⁶ Doubtless he felt it right to reiterate the original phraseology:

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory—a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers, and warmed and cheered all our hearts.¹⁷

Endnotes

¹ Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier (New York: St. Martin’s, 2006), 15.

² Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter “WSC,” London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (London: Longmans, 1900), 166.

³ WSC, “Officers and Gentlemen,” The Saturday Evening Post, 29 December 1900, reprinted in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill(London: Library of Imperial History, 1975, 4 vols., I, 53.

⁴ WSC, The World Crisis, vol. V, The Eastern Front (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1931), 21.

⁵ Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), 45. From a radio interview in Boston on 10 March 1932. It is most unlikely that he would have made the same prediction a few months later. By May 1932 the National Socialists had become the largest single party in Germany.

⁶ WSC, “Will There Be War in Europe—and When?,” News of the World, 4 June 1939. Also published slightly abridged as “War, Now or Never,” Colliers, 3 June 1939 and reprinted in full in Collected Essays I, 443.

⁷ WSC, “How to Stop War,” Evening Standard, 12 June 1936, reprinted in Step by Step 1936-1939 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1939), 25.

⁸ WSC, The Eastern Front, 17.

⁹ WSC, “Can Franco Restore Unity and Strength to Spain?,” Daily Telegraph, 23 February 1939; reprinted as “Hope in Spain,” in Step by Step, 319.

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¹⁰  Winston S. Churchill: His Memoirs and His Speeches 1918-1945, New York: Decca Records (12 LPs), 1965.

¹¹ WSC, House of Commons, 8 October 1940.

¹² WSC, House of Commons, 7 May 1941.

¹³ WSC, House of Commons, 2 December 1941.

¹⁴ WSC, House of Commons, 27 January 1942.

¹⁵ WSC, House of Commons, 1 July 1942.

¹⁶ WSC, The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1950), 541.

¹⁷ WSC, Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon, Mansion House, London, 9 November 1942, in The End of the Beginning (London: Cassell, 1943), 265-66.

See also: “Churchill on the Broadcast.”