Truths and Heresies

Rather than advancing segregation in South Africa, Churchill strove hard for justice, arrayed against the broad prejudices of his time. Part 1: 1902-09

No evidence exists that Churchill wished to commit a million Allied troops. The British contingent he envisioned was small, and made up of volunteers. Above all, Churchill wanted decision, not hesitation, which he abhorred all his life.

Tanks never appeared at the famous Glasgow riot; troops killed or injured no one, and Churchill’s was a leading voice of moderation among British ministers.

So deeply implanted is the belief that Churchill was a white supremacist that certain students and faculties accept it without demur.

Over a century on, it is impossible to say what killed Sir Winston's father. But current evidence argues against the frequent claim of syphilis

Folly demonstrates how two different concepts of how foreign policy is proposed and executed affected Anglo-Soviet relations during World War II.

Alexander Fleming (or Alex and his father) did not save Churchill's life twice, or even once. Tracking the origins of a persistent Churchillian myth.

Churchill was not philosophically hostile to the principle of women’s suffrage at any time in the 20th century. He voted for it as early as 1904. His hesitations in 1905-12 arose when militants tried to break up his speeches. He resisted certain measures at certain times for tactical reasons—unlike, say, Asquith, who in 1910-12 opposed the very principle. “Papa supported votes for women,” smiled his daughter Mary, “when he realized how many women would vote for him.”

Once and for all, by every definition from the linguistic to the clinical, Winston Churchill was not an alcoholic, nor even an excessive alcohol consumer.

“It will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.” This was how Shashi Tharoor, a successful and popular Indian politician, concluded his recent op-ed for The Washington Post. Tharoor began his piece with the sensational claim that Churchill was a mass murderer in the vein of Hitler and Stalin. One would expect such statements to have a mountain of evidence behind them. There is a mountain of evidence on these and similar issues, but from even the briefest expedition up the slopes one will see Tharoor’s arguments for what they are – revisionist, manufactured history.

The success of the movie “Darkest Hour” has prompted an outbreak of Churchill calumny by writers who feed off each other. The Star offers a mostly familiar litany.

The allegations that Winston Churchill was unfaithful while on holiday in the South of France in the mid-1930s have been knocking around for eighty years, with nothing substantial to back them up, and, having been researching a biography of Churchill for the past four years, I do not believe it.