The Literary Churchill

The worldwide media was exercised over the surfacing of what was alleged to be an unpublished Churchill article, held by the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, in which our author contemplates the possibility of extraterrestrial life.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.

In a video at the Liverpool Museum (“The Power and the Glory?”), Churchill is quoted as saying that Britain, having gained prosperity by her efforts, must be prepared to defend it: “We have got all we want in territory, and our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions.” I am an American and large numbers of my fellow citizens seem to struggle with the same issue; Churchill’s words suggest an answer. When did he say or write this?