Tag: World War II

Action
Action aplenty in the Charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, 1898. In old age Churchill reflected: “It was very stimulating, but I did think ‘Suppose there is a spoil-sport in the hole with a machine gun?'” Painting by Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. (1856–1927), Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Churchill Quotes: “Action vs. Inaction….Religion of Blood and War”

Churchill Quotes: “Action vs. Inaction….Religion of Blood and War”

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N.B. We do not see Churchill in Woodville’s dra­mat­ic paint­ing above. He had drawn his pis­tol not his sword, in def­er­ence to his weak right shoul­der. For the skill and dex­ter­i­ty it took to sheath his sword and aim his pis­tol, see my review of Brough Scott’s Churchill at the Gal­lop (with Ben Bradshaw’s paint­ing of Churchill in the charge.)

Action and inaction

Q: Could you ver­i­fy the cor­rect word­ing for the Win­ston Churchill state­ment:  “I nev­er wor­ry about action, but only inac­tion.” There are var­i­ous iter­a­tions among the sources. —S.D.

From Churchill by Him­self, page 190 (note he placed quotemarks around “wor­ry”): “I nev­er ‘wor­ry’ about action, but only about inaction.”…

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World War II Official Histories

World War II Official Histories

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Does Eng­land have an offi­cial His­to­ry of WW2 like the “Green Books” that are print­ed in the US as their offi­cial his­to­ry of WW2 and where might find them?  —L.L.

Yes: sev­er­al spe­cial­ized mul­ti-vol­ume series, under the umbrel­la title His­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, were pub­lished by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Sta­tionery Office, since 2006 part of the Office of Pub­lic Sec­tor Infor­ma­tion with­in the UK Nation­al Archives, for­mer­ly the Pub­lic Records Office).

There are five sub-series, for exam­ple, Llewellyn Wood­ward, British For­eign Pol­i­cy in the Sec­ond World War (five vols.,…

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

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