Bristol University: Churchill’s Longest Academic Connection

The British historian Sir David Cannadine takes up Churchill's long-running service as Chancellor of Bristol University. His excellent survey of Churchill's belated university experience is an important contribution to a little-known corner of Winston’s life.

Jonathan Black's book provides some interesting glimpses into Churchill's life and personality in art, though one has to wade through some disorganization to find said moments. With some guidance and revision, his book might have captured a more accurate portrayal of the titan of many moods and many faces.

Fiona Reynoldson’s "Winston Churchill", for ages 8-15, is far and away the best juvenile ever published, anywhere, by anybody. Throughout, the author delivers unadulterated, factual information. One wouldn’t expect so much wisdom to be so attractively wedged into sixty-four pages. We should all buy five copies and get them into the hands of schools, libraries and young people of promise.

Baltic historians tend to see British prewar policy toward Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in a narrow light. They want to see Britain coldly abandoning the Baltics to Soviet rule and so that is what they find. Churchill however, would resist recognizing the Sovietized Baltic even when it was to his advantage after Russia joined the Allied forces in late 1941 and 1942.

A colloquium on Churchill’s famous speech at Westminster College, Missouri and its impact on Anglo-American relations throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Nicholas Wapshott, a talented member of the tribe of British journalist-historians, writes an entertaining read that nonetheless lacks in historical context, sensitivity, or nuance.

Anti-statist, anti-collectivist and anti-establishment, Belloc deplored the servitude of the industrial wage-earner and longed to reconcile his two great loves, “the soil of England and the Catholic faith.” His book championed “distributism,“ a combination of broad land distribution, corporate organization of society, workers’ control of the means of production, decentralization of power, and Jeffersonian democracy comprising a property-owning electorate. Like Churchill, Belloc had traveled in America; it is odd that he never seemed to suggest that the United States, with its class mobility and broad property ownership, came remarkably close to his vision.

A primer for the study of statesmanship: correcting a century of myth about Churchill, Langworth tells us something of ourselves and the world we live in.

A contemporary recording of Churchill’s “Unknown Warriors" speech offers a rare opportunity to hear his voice as the world heard it in July 1940.

Britain’s mercurial First Sea Lord in 1915 was nothing if not vociferous, and often indulged in exaggeration. But for Fisher and the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, the Dardanelles proved to be just that, almost. Here is an insightful inquiry by noted naval historian Christopher Bell of Dalhousie University. His account of the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign is welcome testimony to how Winston Churchill’s career was temporarily ruined by events beyond his control. All the same, the book reminds us that at the time, Churchill’s critics, growing in strength and number, regarded him as a danger to British futures.

It’s not unusual for leaders with powerful egos and passionate views to prefer the company and advice of close and trusted friends over that of professional advisors or experienced experts. This can have positive results, perhaps shaking up a moribund bureaucracy or forcing radical new approaches to issues mired in the mud of conventional thinking. But it can also lead to disillusion or disaster. Fateful Questions, September 1943 to April 1944, volume 19 in Hillsdale’s series of The Churchill Documents, provides many examples of how Churchill’s decision-making was favorably influenced by close advisors.

Although Winston Churchill and George Orwell never met or even corresponded, the American military historian Thomas Ricks has linked them in a book subtitled The Fight for Freedom. He fully accepts that they were “vastly dissimilar men, with very different life trajectories.” Churchill, the older by twenty-eight years, was much more robust, extroverted and oratorically fluent than Orwell, whom Ricks depicts as having a “phlegmatic and introverted personality.” It is true that Orwell named the hero of 1984 “Winston,” and that Churchill enjoyed the book so much he read it twice. But is that really enough of a connection to justify an entire book?