The Literary Churchill

Jonathan Rose writes that the sea of Churchill's tastes was dominated by melodrama, but he misses the whale among the fish—Churchill's beloved Shakespeare.

We all benefit from Hillsdale’s twenty-three volumes of The Churchill Documents, Robert Rhodes James’s Complete Speeches and the 332 Churchill articles in the Collected Essays. Vital as these contributions are, they do not capture everything Churchill wrote or said. There is far more. The task I set myself, all those years ago, was to find everything else, too. - Ronald Cohen

Churchill’s friendship with H.G. Wells spanned forty years, and his enthusiasm for the writer’s work went back to “The Time Machine,” Wells’s first novel, published 1895.

Churchill’s best known four words had a long gestation, beginning with “sweat and blood” in Roman times. Once established, they served him for years.

The Dream revisits the relationship between Winston and his father Lord Randolph from the perspective of an older, more experienced Winston. The result is poignant, nuanced, and ironic, and allows the reader a unique glimpse into Winston’s complicated view of his father.

The Swedish Academy was right in recognizing a long and brilliant literary career that had begun in 1895. Despite Churchill’s disappointment in not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he thanked them humbly. “I hope you have not been biased in any way in your judgment of my literary qualities,” he told Ambassador Hägglöf. “But at any rate I am very proud indeed to receive an honor which is international. I have received several which are national, but this is the first time that I have received one which is international in its character.”8 At Ten Downing Street he told reporters: “I think it a very great honor to receive from the Swedish Academy of Literature this distinction gained among all the other writers of the world.”

Lincoln and Churchill not only knew and quoted Shakespeare; they were connoisseurs of his plays and critics of the actors.

The literary value of "Lord Randolph Churchill" as a work of history lies not in the career of its subject, but in the majestic writing of its author—Winston Churchill.

"The subtle art of combining the various elements that separately mean nothing and collectively mean so much in an harmonious proportion is known to a very few." - Winston S. Churchill

When it mattered most, Churchill became “the living symbol of their will to survive as a free people.” Read how Churchill's best known speech rallied the British resistance and bolstered their confidence in him.

"It was given to me to express what was in the hearts of the British people."

With the Nazis gazing at Dover’s cliffs from twenty miles across the English Channel, he “mobilized the English language,” as the journalist Ed Murrow remarked, “and sent it into battle.”