Remembering Richard Haking: The General who Saved Churchill’s Life

Unknowingly, General Haking assisted in one of the narrowest of Churchill’s many escapes from death. “Over me,” said WSC, “beat the invisible wings.”

Early in the 20th century, Armenian peoples suffered the greatest and bloodiest of all the great mass-slaughters which till then there was record.

Today, we need not flinch from the image. Sutherland saw a man behind the legend, reached deep, and gave us the man. The legend needed no portrait.

Prudence, Aristotle’s primary quality of statesmen was well demonstrated by Churchill at the Admiralty in the years leading up to the First World War.

In 1945 Churchill and his Conservative Party were swept away. Klaus Larres explains why this was as inevitable as Churchill’s comeback six years later.

Questions on the role of secretary Elizabeth Layton in the 2017 film, and the Annexe where Churchill really ran the wartime government.

The main concern for Pilecki at Auschwitz was the fate of Poles, but in describing that of the Jews he asked a stark question: “Were we all people”?

During the war Churchill told a general: “Improvise and dare…He improvise and dore.” Leebaert sees America’s walk to global leadership in much the same way.

Americans were right to fear Mossaddeq, for his aim was to diminish freedom. They should, however, have imposed the same powerful pressure on the Shah further to liberalize Iran’s politics and evolve toward a constitutional democracy. Occasionally there were efforts to curb his excesses, but they were strong enough only to encourage his fundamentalist foes. America’s failure to push for a peaceful transition to a liberal state, combined with the Shah’s authoritarianism and too rapid modernizations, made the revolution of 1979 inevitable.

Lawrence “was indeed a dweller upon the mountain tops…and where the view on clear days commands all the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” —WSC

The Soviets contributed mightily to victory, but their success was owed to Churchill and Roosevelt, who provided crucial aid and kept Japan occupied.

On the Raj, Tharoor offers a half-truth, which, “like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.”