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The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Articles
Great Contemporaries: Sir Robert Vidal Rhodes James, 1933-1999
18
Apr
2023
Though his best-known work was Churchill: A Study in Failure,” Robert was an admirer who had hoped to write a sequel, "Churchill: A Study in Success." His eight volumes of Churchill’s speeches are simply indispensable. True, he was a curmudgeon, but also a grand raconteur, full of stories about Churchill and Parliament. Our colleague Paul Addison remembered “what fun he was to be with. Such a warm and generous character, sparkling with gossip and full of enthusiasms.”
Churchill’s Push for Prefabs: Real “Homes for Heroes”
18
Apr
2023
Churchill was determined to solve the postwar housing shortage with prefabs. His Wartime Coalition government deserved more credit than it received for this extensive reform programme. Churchill avoided the trap he remembered from the end of the First World War: “Ministers should in my view be careful not to raise false hopes, as was done last time, by speeches about homes for heroes.” He remains the only prime minister to have polled 80% approval throughout his term of office.
Bourke Cockran: “Becoming Churchill” Becomes Better
10
Apr
2023
“I have never seen his like, or in some respects his equal. With his enormous head, gleaming eyes and flexible countenance, he looked uncommonly like the portraits of Charles James Fox. It was not my fortune to hear any of his orations, but his conversation, in point, in pith, in rotundity, in antithesis, and in comprehension, exceeded anything I have ever heard.” —Winston Churchill on Bourke Cockran
“Rough Men Stand Ready”: Neither Churchill nor Orwell
06
Apr
2023
2
While neither Churchill nor Orwell uttered the famous words, they certainly held the same attitude toward the defense of liberty. "A humanitarian is always a hypocrite," Orwell wrote. "It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, 'making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.'"
Meltzer & Mensch: The Long Shelf Life of Russian Disinformation
31
Mar
2023
The neglect of occupied Persia by serious WW2 scholars “has permitted certain conflated, sensational parachutists and Nazi ‘black ops’ to achieve folkloric stature.... The archival records say unequivocally that Operation Long Jump was never seriously conceived, never planned, and never executed.” Meltzer and Mensch know this. But thanks to them, “Russian disinformation” continues to have a very long shelf life.
Churchill and Margaret Thatcher: Two Meetings of Two Minds
28
Mar
2023
2
It is curious that neither her biographer Charles Moore nor Churchill’s bodyguard Edmund Murray—who each knew of one Churchill-Thatcher meeting—knew of the other. The story of their two encounters shows us that Margaret Thatcher’s respect for Churchill was lifelong. And Churchill’s words in 1950 on the regulatory state could have been her own words, 30 years later. When it came to liberty, neither were for turning.
Farrell: Earle Delivered Unwelcome News, and Paid the Price
24
Mar
2023
1
We cannot understand wartime diplomacy without examining the goals and thought processes of the leaders involved. Was the goal in Europe to defeat Nazi Germany or to prevent Russia from subjugating Poland and half the continent? Amid the chaos and commitments of world war, Roosevelt and Churchill opted for peace and hope, not another war.
Abstract: Judging the British Empire by its Aims and Intentions
22
Mar
2023
The costs and benefits of empire are not morally commensurate and incapable of being compared in those terms. Outcomes good and bad are historically and ethically complex. The best we can do is to make balanced moral judgments of the Empire’s aims and intentions, even if their execution was often flawed or the consequences sometimes unintended. As for the charge of imperial nostalgia, there can be none, since the British Empire, so long past, never can return.
Churchill and Company: Great Scholars Consider Uncancelled History
20
Mar
2023
1
“I will take away from Uncancelled History what the Hillsdale College historian Bill McClay said about Theodore Roosevelt, about some of these other historical figures who’ve been torn down, lambasted and attacked: History is like a great attic of belongings and inheritances. And if you chuck everything out of that attic—if you clear the whole thing—you might clear away things we may need some day.”
A New Account of Churchill Remaking the Mideast by Brad Faught
13
Mar
2023
Brad Faught has given us an expertly researched and thoughtfully argued examination of one of the seminal diplomatic events of the 20th century. He explains why British officials like Curzon and Allenby opposed a Jewish homeland within the Mandate of Palestine. Allenby, aided by Lawrence, was the general who had conquered the Ottoman provinces in the First World War.
Alan Saltman Looks at Churchill’s Decision to Fight On—Again
09
Mar
2023
1
Once Churchill became prime minister, ignominious vassalage à la Vichy France was never a serious possibility. But Saltman's psychological profile of why Churchill fought on omits a crucial dimension: Churchill’s belief in constitutional democracy. That didn’t come from his upbringing or the military, but from his wide reading of the classic philosophers, and broad understanding of representative government.
Great Contemporaries: Asquith: The Last Victorian Liberal (2)
06
Mar
2023
“Asquith fell when the enormous task was but half completed. He fell with dignity. He bore adversity with composure. In or out of power, disinterested patriotism and inflexible integrity were his only guides. Let it never be forgotten that he was always on his country's side in all her perils, and that he never hesitated to sacrifice his personal or political interests to the national cause.” —Churchill