Articles

Clews paints a loyal but frustrated Churchill who later defined the rule of the Phoney War: “Don’t be unkind to the enemy; you will only make him angry.”

“In my mind’s eye I invest him with the robes of Caesar…. The lives of the great are an inspiration to their posterity.” —Lewis Broad

On VE Day seventy-five years ago, Winston Churchill spoke on radio, in Parliament, from the Ministry of Health , and to celebrants in London streets.

Through education, Churchill strove to elevate the individual. Through labor exchanges, he strove to promote natural market functions. Through unemployment insurance, he paired the virtue of thrift with an encouragement of personal responsibility to strengthen the individual and curb the effects of uncontrollable misfortune. Churchill recognized an end; he saw a means and pursued it.

Churchill is interested in the ultimate ground of human freedom. He is the guardian of that freedom, of the right to be fully human: Man is spirit.

The Churchills, father and son, had close friendships with prominent, talented Jews. One was Nathaniel Mayer “Natty” Rothschild, First Baron Rothschild, head of the British branch of the famous banking family. He was the first Jewish member of the House of Lords. Another was Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel, also of Jewish origin, though he became a Catholic in 1880. A renowned merchant banker and financier, Sir Ernest was young Winston’s mentor, financial consultant and lifelong friend.

Churchill, who won a Nobel Prize, and did a few other things, cannot reply. He lies at Bladon in English earth, “which in his finest hour he held inviolate.” He’d love the controversy he stirs, on media he never dreamed of. He once said the vision “of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me.”

Randolph Churchill’s career in journalism lasted thirty-six years. He wrote hundreds of articles, edited seven volumes of his father’s speeches, and published fifteen books, including the first seven narrative and document volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography.

Before Covid-19 leaves our native shores, is there anything that might be learned from Churchillian leadership about our best response to it?

Historical close calls, during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-21, remind us of the role of illness and chance in the fate of nations and their leaders.

I have often wondered however what would have happened if two hundred thousand German storm troops had actually established themselves ashore. The massacre would have been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither mercy nor quarter. They would have used Terror, and we were prepared to go all lengths. I intended to use the slogan “You can always take one with you.” - Winston Churchill

The series—a collection of twenty-eight original pieces—attempts to depict the many facets of Churchill’s complex character. The series covers Churchill’s early childhood all the way through his second term as prime minister in the 1950s. Diving into both the public and private side of Churchill’s life, the series balances Churchill’s professional years as a soldier and war correspondent, a writer, a rhetorician, and a statesman with his private interests as a painter, aviation enthusiast, horseman, father, and husband. Hooper offers a complete, yet often overlooked, picture of the national and international icon.