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Winston S. Churchill
The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Winston S. Churchill
The Lion and the Mouse: Did Churchill Desecrate Rubens?
14
Mar
2024
By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
Did the Prime Minister defile a Rubens? Technically it was possible, especially if Churchill used tempera. But official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert was doubtful: “This story, charming though it is, and often retold, may be typical of (dare I say it?) the wilder shores of oral evidence. Churchill was surely too great an art lover to ‘touch up’ a Rubens.”
Churchill in Film and Video: Part 2, Documentary Productions
12
Mar
2024
1
By GWEN THOMPSON, DAVE TURRELL AND RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Part 1 of “Churchill in Film and Video” comprised dramatizations—fiction based on Churchill’s life. Part 2 presents documentary productions. Both compilations constitute a work on progress, subject to amendment and addition. Comments or corrections are most welcome.
We have linked films available on the Internet. For others, check streaming video suppliers such as Netflix.
Churchill in Film and Video: Part 1, Dramatizations
23
Feb
2024
1
By GWEN THOMPSON, DAVE TURRELL, AND RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Churchill bio-films began well and generally of high quality for decades. Four of the all-time classics appeared early: “Young Winston” (1972), “The Wilderness Years” “The Gathering Storm” and “Jennie” (1974), and “The Wilderness Years” (1981). A long, mixed spell ensued, though there were many honorable mentions. In 2018, Garry Oldman starred in another superb production, “Darkest Hour,” proving that there is hope yet.
Pericles and Churchill: Matching Leadership, Millennia Apart
15
Feb
2024
By JUSTIN D. LYONS
Pericles sought to preserve Athens, its glory, power and reputation. Churchill demanded struggle not only for Britain, but for the very meaning of Britain—something larger than its borders, more powerful than its military strength and, ultimately more important than its survival: liberty. Churchill’s war was a battle for the freedom of man, to be defended first at home and then upon whatever far-flung fields the conflict would rage.
“Churchill Always Admired and Offered Peace to Mussolini”
06
Feb
2024
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
One tends to say polite things about a nation’s leader when he has promised to pay your country a lot of money. Things changed when Mussolini declared war on the Allies in June 1940. Three years later he was deposed, and Churchill told Parliament. “The keystone of the Fascist arch has crumbled.” Long before then, Mussolini had long gone from “renowned chief” to “hyena” in the Churchill lexicon.
“The World Crisis” (2): The Marne and Its Meaning
29
Jan
2024
By GWEN THOMPSON
“One must suppose upon the whole that the Marne was the greatest battle ever fought in the world,” Winston Churchill wrote in 1931. Its scale, he added, “far exceeded anything that has ever happened.” It actually “decided the World War,” for “never after the Marne had Germany a chance of absolute triumph.”
Writers and Writing: Churchill to the Authors’ Club
22
Jan
2024
By WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
“Someone—I forget who—has said: ‘Words are the only things which last forever.’ That is, to my mind, always a wonderful thought. The most durable structures raised in stone by the strength of man, the mightiest monuments of his power, crumble into dust, while the words endure. And, leaping across the gulf of three thousand years, they light the world for us today.”
Churchill’s classic, “The River War” Returns to Print
08
Jan
2024
By LARRY P. ARNN
The book is a portent of what Churchill will become and achieve. It demonstrates two things about him, the first his incessant ambition. Young British officers used every artifice to get sent to a war, any war. Churchill did the same, but when he was emphatically refused, he went anyway and found a job, a fighting job, when he got there. The second thing demonstrated about Churchill in this book is his power to see beyond the battlefield to something more strategic and political: the meaning of the battle to the way of life and the way of government of the peoples involved.
Great Contemporaries: George Marshall and America at War (2)
05
Jan
2024
1
By RAYMOND A. CALLAHAN
Despite sharp wartime differences, the British never forgot George Marshall. At the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, as he entered Westminster Abbey representing the United States, the vast congregation stood as a mark of respect. When he was hospitalized and dying in 1959, Churchill (by then “Sir Winston”), on a visit to Washington, accompanied President Eisenhower to see him. He left Walter Reed Medical Center with tears in his eyes.
Great Contemporaries: The Three Lives of Churchill’s Hitler Essays
03
Jan
2024
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Did Churchill ever admire Hitler? The question, ridiculous on its face, is frequently asked. Critics have long quoted selectively from Churchill to show he was “for Hitler before he was against him.” In fact, Churchill never deviated in his view of Hitler, who was himself so infuriated that he lodged a diplomatic protest against Churchill’s “personal attack.”
Video: The 20th Century: Its Promise and Realization, M.I.T., 1949
18
Dec
2023
1
By WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
“No technical knowledge can outweigh knowledge of the humanities.... Those whose minds are attracted or compelled to rigid and symmetrical systems of government should remember that logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man. Human beings and human societies are not structures that are built or machines that are forged. They are plants that grow and must be tended as such.”
Great Contemporaries: Marshall, “The American Carnot” (1)
15
Dec
2023
By RAYMOND A. CALLAHAN
Marshall’s role is usually discussed now in terms of his contributions to Anglo-American strategy. His clashes with Churchill and his formidable Chief of Imperial General Staff General Sir Alan Brooke well known. But the skill with which he built a small, somewhat obsolescent force into a mighty army was staggering. He selected and promoted its leaders, oversaw its organization and training, secured its equipment, worked with industry, and managed relations with the President, Congress and a public anxious about “their boys.”