Winston S. Churchill

I have sent a few emails asking why Churchill sold Eastern Europe to Stalin. ​Eastern Europeans do not look admiringly at Mr. Churchill...like my father who fought with the British, in his Polish uniform.

Sonia Purnell's new book on Clementine Churchill is replete with well established facts masquerading as fresh material, unsubstantiated allegations, and historical inaccuracies. Perhaps the best response to this book is Sir Martin Gilbert's oft repeated remark in the face of dubious information, "Perhaps not!"

Ever since the producers of “The Wilderness Years” television documentary (1982) took liberties by suggesting that Wigram was a suicide, it has been broadly accepted as fact. Indeed recently another myth was layered on to this one: that Wigram’s parents didn’t attend his funeral in Sussex because suicide was proscribed by the Church.

“Since Mr. Hoover became President,” he said on June 14th, “a more comprehending and sympathetic spirit has been imparted to the policy of the United States, not only towards this country but towards Europe in general.”

Anyone who believes that Churchill was an enthusiast of lethal gas must produce better evidence than we have seen so far—and some acceptable explanation for the many instances when, faced with its possible use, Churchill and his commanders demurred. While he never advocated the first use of lethal gas, Churchill's main aim in both world wars was victory. To that end he would consider almost anything. Describing the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 he had written similarly: "At the Admiralty we were in hot pursuit of most of the great key inventions and ideas of the war.... all were being actively driven forward or developed. Poison gas alone we had put aside—but not, as has been shown, from want of comprehension."

Churchill was a bigger man, and his literary works are richer, than this historian’s thesis. The Literary Churchill advances our knowledge of Churchill’s intellectual life, but more sustained attention to Churchill’s books would have made it better.

The author has done an exemplary job reporting this major North American encounter by a Churchill still in his fifties. Cynics will say, why bother? Well, because it needed to be done.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the study of war, politics, and power was thought to be part and parcel of an undergraduate education. But today, programs in peace studies and in conflict resolution abound; rarely does anyone face up to the fact that conflicts quite often get resolved, and peace achieved, through the successful conduct of war.

“The idea that Winston Churchill wanted to covert to Islam is utter tripe,” tweets the historian Andrew Roberts. This has not prevented the National Post from claiming that he did, in a December 2014 edition.

"Watching the horrifying events in Paris this week," wrote Scott Johnson, "I have found Churchill’s great speech of November 12, 1936, coming to mind. It is one of Churchill’s prophetic speeches—I believe in the Prophet Churchill—decrying the complacency of the government in the face of the gathering storm in Germany. . . ."

Reviewing a recent book, The Churchill Factor, by London Mayor Boris Johnson, a reviewer repeated a widespread canard that Winston Churchill caused the Bengal Famine. This allegation false; Churchill did everything he could in the midst of world war to save the Bengalis, and without him the famine would have been worse.