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The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Search results for 'wilderness years'
The Churchill Timeline: His Life and Times, 1874-1977
09
Oct
2023
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.”
Kishan Rana on Churchill and India: A Misunderstood Relationship
15
May
2023
2
By ANDREAS KOUREAS
The most common misconceptions about Churchill and India are no better misrepresented than by former Indian Ambassador Rana. Ladled on wholesale are false accusations of genocide, imperial hatred and invented conspiracies. The ridiculous price for so short a book may do more than anything to prevent people from reading it. Which, given the contents, may not altogether be a bad thing.
Churchill and the Reign of King George V, Part 1: The Filmscript
25
Nov
2022
1
By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
“It is an experience I shall never forget,” said filmscript editor Lajos Biró. “He wrote a story that was the perfect basis for a film... I had to add nothing…. I tell you, a tremendous film writer is lost in Churchill. He has absolutely no vanity. He wants to learn and to tell. I came away dazed.”
English-Speaking Peoples (6): A Nuanced View of Oliver Cromwell
07
Nov
2022
By DUGGAN FOLEY
From Cromwell’s example, Churchill learned the inefficacy of appeasement when dealing with despotism. Cromwell also reified the beauty and fragility of free government: Should one adopt a wrong policy or allow civil war and division to rule the day, a Cromwellian demagogue may be the necessary—and simultaneously evil—solution.
Alistair Cooke, Churchill at the Time (Part 2): Politics and Principle
08
Sep
2022
By ALISTAIR COOKE KBE
Churchill’s virtues included the acceptance of defeats as necessary to wielding power; a tough but generous relation with rivals in politics, magnanimity toward a defeated enemy; a willingness to experiment; and above all, in the supreme crisis, an absolute refusal to compromise or surrender. From all this, there is powerful evidence to support Isaiah Berlin’s judgment of him as “the largest human being of our time.”
Churchill’s Little Redhead: A Thoughtful Memoir by Celia Sandys
21
Jun
2022
By CITA STELZER
During Celia’s childhood she spent time with her grandfather at Chartwell and Chequers. At Chartwell, Celia and her sister slept in a room above Churchill’s. The girls would go in to say good morning to Winston and Clementine in their separate bedrooms. She says “we saw a great deal of our grandparents.”
Churchill, Henry Ford and Sidney Reilly: Anti-Bolshevik Collaborators?
02
Jun
2022
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
“Reilly considered Churchill the only useful British politician in the anti-Bolshevik cause. Shortly before his death he told a friend: ‘Only one man is really important, and that is the irrepressible Marlborough [WSC]. I have always remained on good terms with him….His ear would always be open to something sound.’”
Churchill and the Nation-State: Ukraine and Hungary Today
06
Apr
2022
By ANDREW ROBERTS
Churchill was a powerful advocate of the nation-state. The EU is not one, but Ukraine has shown that it is. Day after day, in their streets and suburbs and forests, ordinary Ukrainians are showing that they believe it is a real country. They would not be fighting and dying if they did not believe this.
Kluger and Evans on the Atlantic Charter: Less Than Meets the Eye
25
Jan
2022