Thoughts on National Churchill Day, 9 April 2017

Was Churchill really that good of an artist? What made him a great leader and what was his greatest accomplishment? Richard M. Langworth discusses these highlights of Winston Churchill and his reputation.

Beginning in the 1950s, reported UFO sightings were rampant in Great Britain. There was even a claim that Churchill ordered that one sighting be classified, in order to prevent mass hysteria in the public. This claim, unsubstantiated, is probably no more than a rumor.

“Quivering and shaking, but still standing, [the Baltics] have held back not only the Bolshevik armies but the more devastating Bolshevik propaganda.” —WSC, 1919

At the Jaipur Literary Festival in India, historian Andrew Roberts encountered a misconception that Winston had condoned sexual assault, at a panel discussion entitled 'Churchill: Hero or Villain?' The persistence of this misconception contributes to the post-truth history that surrounds Churchill.

Churchill’s bibliographer, Ronald Cohen, surveys Churchill’s output for his best-seller titles. The answer, we learn, is not so surprising.

“BW”—for Barbara Lutyens Wallace—lived a life of sacrifice notable even in that vanished, valiant generation, and provides some tips for Churchill researchers.

Richard M. Langworth, senior fellow for the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, provides some recommended reading for the postwar period of Churchill's life.

“Dreams of the future are blurred but…London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital and save the Empire.” —WSC, 1891

From the tank to radar, Churchill’s keen interest in technology prompted key developments in what he knew to be “wars of science,” where victory often depended on the laboratory.

From Omdurman in 1898 to his last major speech in the House of Commons, Churchill weighed the consequences of modern war. His affinity for new technology must be considered in this light.

The worldwide media was exercised over the surfacing of what was alleged to be an unpublished Churchill article, held by the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, in which our author contemplates the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The Museum, which received the typescript from the wife of Churchill’s literary agent Emery Reves, believed the manuscript to be a new discovery. As much as we’d be pleased to find new Churchill material, however, the “Aliens” article is not new. Whole passages mark it as a variant of Churchill’s essay, “Are There Men on the Moon?” published by London’s Sunday Dispatch on 8 March 1942. In 1975 it reappeared in volume form in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill.

“There are many valuable accounts of Churchill’s nuclear thinking during his second premiership, notably in books by Klaus Larres and Peter Hennessey. But, for me, the account Ruane gives here is outstanding for the breadth of its scholarship, the richness of its narrative and the acuity of its judgements.”