Subscribe now and receive weekly newsletters with educational materials, new courses, interesting posts, popular books, and much more!
Cecil Rhodes
“The Art of the Possible”: Churchill, South Africa, and Apartheid (1)
Rather than advancing segregation in South Africa, Churchill strove hard for justice, arrayed against the broad prejudices of his time. Part 1: 1902-09
Churchill’s Confidant: Enemy to Lifelong Friend, by Richard Steyn
Among many close personal friendships that Churchill enjoyed in political and military life, one of the more unlikely was with a former foe, the South African statesman Jan Christian Smuts. Richard Steyn has offered a plethora of new information and insights in a readable account of this important friendship.
Poor, Dear Randolph: An Appreciation of Churchill’s Son
He combined two qualities: generous loyalty to those he loved, and an acid tongue and pen for those he didn’t. Most of the latter, I tend to think, richly deserved what they got. Randolph Churchill’s public persona was based on the latter quality. In the mid-1950s, surgery revealed that a tumor on his lung was benign. His friend Evelyn Waugh burst into the bar at White’s Club: “They’ve cut out the only part of Randolph that isn’t malignant!”