Arthur Balfour

Paul Courtenay was indispensable, a Churchill encyclopedia. But he'd never say "I told you so." Even if he HAD told us so.

Churchill’s political imagination allowed him to portray the implausibility of reality: a crucially different turn of history at Gettysburg.

How Lord Alfred Douglas was convicted and sent to jail, but was mollified by later events; how he praised his former enemy, and was forgiven.

How Winston Churchill was invited to opine, and Lord Alfred Douglas was affronted by what he saw as an obvious conspiracy with Jewish financiers.

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

Before Covid-19 leaves our native shores, is there anything that might be learned from Churchillian leadership about our best response to it?

Churchill was an early and steady supporter of a Channel Tunnel, which was first proposed in 1751. For most of his life he joined in lively and almost continuous discussion of  “a fixed link with the Continent.” Indeed, during the 1924-1929 Conservative government, Churchill was seen as “the leading political advocate of a tunnel.”

Churchill offers thoughtful ideas on when representative government may be supplemented by a national vote. Above all, he thought the referendum must be rare. Only eleven times in his long career was there a call for a referendum. Only six times did he support it.

Mannerheim stepped down as Commander-in-Chief in January 1945 and as Regent-President in March 1946, aged 78. No actions were taken against him by the West for having been Hitler’s ally for three years. Winston Churchill, and every other objective observer, recognized that he was the savior of his country. He acted at a time when Finland was intolerably squeezed between the two most evil and violent totalitarian dictatorships in history.

Lecture offers started arriving while Churchill was still in South Africa. The first was from Major J. B. Pond, an American agent, in March 1900. English offers followed. His South Africa exploits gave a ready subject: “The War as I Saw It.” Of course, speaking was only a temporary activity, to earn money for his political career, for Members of Parliament were not salaried until 1911. This became crucial after Churchill, as predicted, was elected MP for Oldham on 1 October 1900.