Articles

McKercher and Capet have provided a collection of substantive and challenging essays. Their book offers many useful observations that will stimulate further historical discussion and scholarship.

In late 1899, Winston Churchill was catapulted to prominence following the famous armoured train attack and his subsequent escape from a Boer prison camp. His adventures fostered long-lasting controversy. A very hostile account was written as late as 1994. This essay was first published by John Hussey in 1999. So far as he and we know, no further discoveries have been made to dispute his conclusions.

Thompson’s eighteen perilous years are really the key. His accounts tend to suggest that he saved Churchill’s life at every juncture. Undoubtedly, many potential threats did exist, and to his credit, he disregarded no possibility. We are left however with six particular episodes, only three of which involve known assassination plots.

Mannerheim stepped down as Commander-in-Chief in January 1945 and as Regent-President in March 1946, aged 78. No actions were taken against him by the West for having been Hitler’s ally for three years. Winston Churchill, and every other objective observer, recognized that he was the savior of his country. He acted at a time when Finland was intolerably squeezed between the two most evil and violent totalitarian dictatorships in history.

Following previous abstracts, Vale and Scadding now complete their survey of Churchill’s health through his death in 1965. The format of their earlier articles continues. They present the evidence (mainly from diaries and memoirs), offer a chronology based on the official biography, quote press reports, and extensively discuss causal factors. Since technical language is minimal, their articles are readable by non-physicians. The main text is accompanied by vignettes on the relevant people and places.

"Working with Winston: The Unsung Women," by Cita Stelzer, shows the importance Churchill attached to everything, from routine domestic matters to the terror of imminent extinction. This book is essential to understand the rounded picture.

This is just a representative fraction of Piers Brendon’s comprehensive book. He avoids repeating material in several previous accounts, and goes much deeper into the subject. Most of the anecdotes have not appeared previously and are thus quite valuable. Anyone interested in the personal side of the great man owes it to themselves to buy a copy.

“For Nemon,” Rosenthal said, “Winston Churchill symbolized greatness of character as a bulwark against inhumanity. This was the mainspring of Nemon’s message, as expressed in the numerous busts and statutes of Churchill now in many lands.”

Much is heard today about the perils of nationalism vis a vis global organization. Churchill considered the debate in Holland seven decades ago.

Both Churchill and Chamberlain understood that Nazi Germany was a time bomb. But whereas Chamberlain imagined that it could be defused by diplomacy, Churchill believed that it could only be defused by force, or the threat of force. When the diplomacy of appeasement failed Chamberlain was compelled to accept—albeit with the profound reluctance of a man who loathed war—that no other response was possible. In the final analysis the British Empire, which was already in decline, had to be sacrificed so that Britain itself could live.

"I have forfeited a great deal. I have given up an office that I loved, work in which I was deeply interested, and a staff of which any man might be proud. I have given up associations in that work with my colleagues with whom I have maintained for many years the most harmonious relations, not only as colleagues but as friends. I have given up the privilege of serving as lieutenant to a leader whom I still regard with the deepest admiration and affection. I have ruined, perhaps, my political career. But that is a little matter; I have retained something which is to me of great value—I can still walk about the world with my head erect." - Duff Cooper, 1938

Whatever arguments we might make about Ireland in the Second World War, they will help us better to understand the dynamics of today’s relationships between the great powers.