Articles

Journalist Stephen Cliffe has assembled a small volume that surveys the lives and careers of three World War I British leaders. Churchill may have been given pride of place in the book title because of his later prominence, or for alphabetic order; but in fact their relative importance in World War I was exactly the opposite.

Among the charms of this book are the speakers’ many references to Canada—tailored, of course, to their hosts, but nevertheless fitting, and not often acknowledged in histories we read today. Per capita, Canada was the largest contributor of fighting personnel, materiel and capital to the Allied cause in World War II. No nation was more generous, and by the time the war ended the feisty Canadian Navy was one of the largest and most effective afloat. Every speaker at Edmonton, in his or her own way, acknowledged the enormous debt we all owe to “The True North Strong and Free.”

Author Douglas Austin, in "Churchill and Malta", provides a thorough review of Winston Churchill's encounters with the nation of Malta during the two world wars. Through time, he came to understand and appreciate the nation and the aspirations of its people.

The historian Geoffrey Best wrote that King George V prevented Churchill (as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911-15) from naming battleships after Cromwell and Pitt. I knew about Cromwell, but why Pitt and which one?

With his third book on Malta, Douglas Austin depicts Churchill's great leadership and understanding of the geopolitical importance of the nation of Malta. In this deeply researched volume, the story of Malta's heroic struggle is told through Churchill's official Malta Papers and the vitality of Malta's role in supporting the Allied efforts.

Hitherto unknown and uncatalogued, this fine painting at the Parthenon was presented by Sir Winston Churchill to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer

Lincoln and Churchill not only knew and quoted Shakespeare; they were connoisseurs of his plays and critics of the actors.

Churchill’s understanding of France, and its potential for good and ill, begins with his biography of Marlborough, redolent with his lifetime theme of resisting continental tyrants.

Critics have argued that the Allied victory in the Atlantic was delayed by Churchill’s stubborn refusal to provide Coastal Command with aircraft capable of operating in the region known as the “Air Gap”—the waters south of Greenland in which convoys could not count on air support from either land-based or carrier-borne aircraft. The implication is that millions of tons of merchant shipping and thousands of lives might have been saved if Churchill had not prioritized the bomber offensive over the U-boat war. In this article, history professor Christopher M. Bell addresses whether or not Churchill was really responsible for this delay.

“Churchill’s titanic reputation,” Roger Hermiston writes, has tended to eclipse the vast cast of men—and women—who steered Britain through the worst crisis in her history. Nevertheless, and to his credit, Churchill put them together. In his book, "All Behind You, Winston," Hermiston chronicles not only how they worked in harness, despite manifestly different backgrounds, but how Churchill—whom many say had no concern for others—orchestrated their performance.

Among the important figures of the 20th century, Churchill and Einstein competed with each other for the distinction of being labeled “Person of the Century” by Time magazine. At first sight they seemed different in almost all respects. Yet to some extent they had similar personalities and over time their thinking developed in not entirely different ways. They also liked each other—from the time they first met in 1933 at Chartwell, Churchill’s country estate.

Apocryphal quotations aside, there was no question of Churchill's lifetime faith in the Americans and what he always called "The Great Republic."