Subscribe now and receive weekly newsletters with educational materials, new courses, interesting posts, popular books, and much more!
Articles
The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Articles
The Churchill Timeline: His Life and Times, 1874-1977
09
Oct
2023
Remembrances: A Young Irishman at Sir Winston’s Funeral
05
Oct
2023
1
“Unlike many Irish children of my generation, I was brought up to admire Winston Churchill. My father, although nationalist enough, always uttered his name with reverence. He believed that he had saved us as well as the British from the evil Hitler. Churchill’s defiant orations, received at home in those perilous years on our crackling Telefunken wireless, had made a deep impression.”
Churchill Confronts “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp”
28
Sep
2023
1
Churchill fought the Second World War with single-minded intensity; thus, his reaction to the Colonel Blimp film. Any distraction from the war effort was inadmissible, even treasonous. His notorious outburst, “I hate Indians...beastly people with a beastly religion” was in reaction to Delhi separatists when India was under invasion. Alas today it is treated as an offense of genocidal magnitude.
Churchill as a Character from the Works of Lewis Carroll
21
Sep
2023
Churchill was represented as a character from Lewis Carroll eight times: a wide range, from the innocent Alice to the bizarre Mad Hatter to the supercilious Caterpillar. Whatever their politics, the cartoons were devoid of viciousness, suggesting the affection in which he was held, often by those who utter disagreed with him. They are artefacts of a vanished political age.
The Churchill Papers: Largest Private Repository of Recent British History
18
Sep
2023
1
“Having read them all and edited most, I can only conclude that the Churchill Papers will provide in the future, as they are already doing, a rich seam of historical gold—the richest in fact outside the Government’s own National Archives, which houses Churchill’s voluminous wartime papers, as well as the papers of his four-year peacetime premiership.”
Churchill and the Rhineland: “They Had Only to Act to Win”
14
Sep
2023
It is the belief of many thoughtful historians that Churchill said and did nothing about the Rhineland. His actions are more complex than that. He did give mixed signals, but he also proposed solutions. When France refused action, he favored collective action. His public declarations were hardly a clarion call. But we must bear in mind also that he was not in office. The Rhineland marked Churchill’s final disillusionment over the League of Nations and impelled his efforts to secure Collective Security. The problem was that the willing were few—and demonstrably unwilling to cooperate.
Gift Copies of Churchill’s “Marlborough: His Life and Times”
13
Sep
2023
1
Best buy for gift giving is the four-volume 1991 Folio Society edition, handsomely bound and boxed in maroon buckram. A plus for this edition is a special introduction by Maurice Ashley. Churchill’s literary assistant in the 1930s, Ashley knew as much about the writing as anyone. This is the most luxurious production of an individual set since the signed limited edition of the 1930s. It is regularly available, and makes a gift anyone would be proud to receive.
Robert Kershaw Looks at Dunkirk from the Other Side
07
Sep
2023
Kershaw explains Hitler’s “halt” order and Germany’s focus on the still formidable and as yet undefeated French army. But his greatest accomplishment is to unpack established historical hindsight by depicting how letters, diaries, and reports of contemporary players reveal on-the-ground realities. This is particularly valuable through his use of overlooked or otherwise unknown German language sources.
Churchill and the Presidents: Harry S. Truman (2): Postwar Shadows
04
Sep
2023
“Your great country and mine are founded on the fact that the people have the right to express themselves on their leaders, no matter what the crisis.... We are in the midst of grave and trying times. You can look with satisfaction upon your great contribution to the overthrow of Nazism & Fascism in the world. ‘Communism’ so called, is our next great problem. I hope we can solve it without the 'blood and tears' the other two cost. May God bless and protect you.” — Harry Truman to WSC, July 1948.
Vanishing National Anthems: Do We Still Know the Words?
31
Aug
2023
1
“Even the single-stanza Star-Spangled Banner is under threat from alternate anthems. One proposed replacement is that Chamber of Commerce production America the Beautiful—widely admired because everyone can sing it. Still, if we can put up with desecrations of the anthem by pop singers at Super Bowls, the rest of us can afford to miss the high notes in ‘rockets’ red glare...’”
Churchill: A Great Reformist Chancellor of the Exchequer
24
Aug
2023
The truth needs to be recognized: Winston Churchill was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer whose policies explicitly aimed at promoting economic growth. He was the first to institutionalize protections for widows, their children and the aged. His Local Government initiatives spurred the growth of hospitals. His scheme of “derating” initiative was the first move by a Chancellor to manage an economy—not just to manage a budget.
Winston Churchill Retells the World’s Great Stories, Part 3
21
Aug
2023
Adam Bede’s fictional county of Loamshire is, like Churchill’s favored Kent, “an early paradise...with its rich and rewarding farmlands, its flowery gardens, fruitful orchards and spotless dairies, its people secure and contented in their own traditions.” This was the England he would invoke so effectively a few years on, when the terror of imminent extinction flickered. Perhaps too, in the sorry march to Munich in 1938, he would ponder George Eliot’s wise maxim: “Consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions.”