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The Literary Churchill
Writers and Writing: Churchill to the Authors’ Club
22
Jan
2024
By WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
“Someone—I forget who—has said: ‘Words are the only things which last forever.’ That is, to my mind, always a wonderful thought. The most durable structures raised in stone by the strength of man, the mightiest monuments of his power, crumble into dust, while the words endure. And, leaping across the gulf of three thousand years, they light the world for us today.”
Great Writing: Churchill as Biographer, Novelist, Explorer, Memoirist
11
Jan
2024
By JOHN BUCHAN, LORD TWEEDSMUIR
“Churchill offers a striking and a moving picture. A close observance of the words, however, will show that its vividness is built up entirely by the use of simple words simply arrayed. It owes nothing to elaboration, nothing to stilted conception. Its effectiveness is the direct result of clarity.”
Churchill as a Character from the Works of Lewis Carroll
21
Sep
2023
By GARY L. STILES
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.
Gift Copies of Churchill’s “Marlborough: His Life and Times”
13
Sep
2023
1
By MICHAEL RICHARDS
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.
Winston Churchill Retells the World’s Great Stories, Part 3
21
Aug
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
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.”
Winston Churchill Retells the World’s Great Stories, Part 2
11
Aug
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Churchill was busy in 1933, and Eddie Marsh wrote large tracts of the Great Stories. Yet Churchill signed off on every word and edited freely. His aim was not “great stories summarised, but great stories retold. It is essential to select the salient features of the tale and make them live in all their fullness.” These were old tales, but Churchill’s view was balanced: “Even in the 20th century, there have been some well-known writers, but I think that modesty must prevent me from pursuing that line of thought to its legitimate and inevitable conclusion.”
Winston Churchill Retells the World’s Great Stories, Part 1
03
Aug
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
“[W]e are not writing great stories summarised, but great stories retold,” Churchill wrote Eddie Marsh. “It is essential to select the salient features of the tale and make them live in all their fullness, leaving the rest in darkness. Both Dickens and Dumas mixed up a lot of rot and padding in their writing for feuilleton purposes, all of which goes overboard through my lee scuppers.... I know A Tale of Two Cities well, though I suppose I shall have to re-read it. It certainly lends itself to dramatic pemmicanisation.”
Churchill’s Descriptive Power: The River War and Herbert Kitchener
13
Jul
2023
By ALAN STRAUS-SCHOM
Churchill deftly describes Herbert Kitchener, Sirdar of the Anglo-Egyptian Army, with whom he would have more encounters in a greater war to come. No detail escapes his gaze. Kitchener inspected everything from machine shops to transport to cooking arrangements, even verifying the quality of grain, clothing, and food. Churchill at this time sees Kitchener as “ungracious”: cold and aloof, incapable of any human warmth. Later, in the First World War, he was more magnanimous.
“Trumpets from the Steep”: Churchill’s Second World War Memoirs
24
Feb
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Churchill had a right to make his case. He had attacked an allied fleet, fired generals, lost battleships, stalled on launching fronts, argued with Roosevelt and Stalin and carpet bombed Germany. He felt the need to defend his actions, knowing critics would gladly seize on and emphasize his mistakes.
Churchill and the Reign of King George V, Part 2: War and Peace
19
Dec
2022
By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
“King George’s reign has seen moral, social, political and scientific changes in the life of all countries and of all classes so decisive that we, borne along upon the still hurrying torrent, cannot even attempt to measure them. The means of locomotion, the art of flying, the position of women, the map of Europe, the aims and ideals of all nations—East and West, white and black, brown and yellow—have undergone a prodigious transformation.” —WSC
Rhetoric: How Churchill Scaffolded His First Speech to Congress
19
Aug
2022
By RICHARD COHEN & RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
“The orator is the embodiment of the passions of the multitude. Before he can inspire them with any emotion he must be swayed by it himself. When he would rouse their indignation his heart is filled with anger. Before he can move their tears his own must flow. To convince them he must himself believe.” —WSC, “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric,”1897
Band of Brothers: Austen and Neville Chamberlain, and Their Eulogists
16
Jun
2022
By DAVE TURRELL
All are all now firmly established in the great pantheon of the House of Commons. All experienced failure, engendered controversy, still do, and always will. In death, all passion spent, they can be evaluated for the characters that lay beneath their politics. And, in common, a deep seam of basic decency can be found.