The Literary Churchill

“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

“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

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.

Much of Churchill’s pre-1914 career was tied into that of Lloyd George, who kick-started the rebuilding of that career in 1917. The memory of Lloyd George’s experience as war leader helped shape how Churchill structured his own position in 1940. Lloyd George’s career is worth remembering for its own sake, and for its impact on Churchill, who led Britain through a second and greater total war.

Through the pages of his novel, Churchill explains the deference of personal ambition to political duty is the mark of a civilized person, and how civilized statesmanship ennobles ambition.

Churchill saw in Clemenceau the importance of projecting the right mood in a crisis. He remembered the particular words Clemenceau had tried out to him, before exclaiming them in the French parliament: “I will fight in front of Paris; I will fight in Paris; I will fight behind Paris.” In 1940, Churchill adopted the Tiger’s trope: “Clemenceau was quite right. The only thing that mattered was to beat the Germans.

Savrola expresses the statesman’s prudence to restore civic liberty—constitutionally if possible: “All my philosophy,” he wrote, “is put into the mouth of the hero.”

Savrola voices Churchill’s fundamental political and ethical principles at the very moment when he settled on them for the rest of his life.

Churchill’s affinity for scientific techniques, themes and writers significantly proclaims his openness toward the future—and its perils.

Churchill’s imagination in engaging with science and its potential consequences enabled him to confront vast change between the Victorian and Atomic eras.

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