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Winston S. Churchill
The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Winston S. Churchill
Vanishing National Anthems: Do We Still Know the Words?
31
Aug
2023
1
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
“Even the single-stanza Star-Spangled Banner is under threat from alternate anthems. One proposed replacement is that Chamber of Commerce production America the Beautiful—widely admired because everyone can sing it. Still, if we can put up with desecrations of the anthem by pop singers at Super Bowls, the rest of us can afford to miss the high notes in ‘rockets’ red glare...’”
Churchill: A Great Reformist Chancellor of the Exchequer
24
Aug
2023
By NICK BOSANQUET AND ANDREW HALDENBY
The truth needs to be recognized: Winston Churchill was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer whose policies explicitly aimed at promoting economic growth. He was the first to institutionalize protections for widows, their children and the aged. His Local Government initiatives spurred the growth of hospitals. His scheme of “derating” initiative was the first move by a Chancellor to manage an economy—not just to manage a budget.
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.”
Great Contemporaries: Harry S. Truman (1): Prelude to Potsdam
17
Aug
2023
By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
Churchill on Truman: “He takes no notice of delicate ground, he just plants his foot down firmly upon it.” Truman on Churchill: “I am sure we can get along if he doesn’t try to give me too much soft soap. You know soft soap is made of ash hopper lye and it burns to beat hell when it gets into the eyes.”
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.”
Charles Stephenson Examines WSC as Home Secretary
07
Aug
2023
4
By WILLIAM J. SHEPHERD
Churchill was the youngest Home Secretary since Sir Robert Peel in 1822. His, accomplishments, the greatest of which was prison reform, did not rank among his most remarkable. Still, he proved himself administratively and politically competent. Stephenson portrays a strange mix of radical and traditionalist, with a “mercurial approach to politics”— “a political Lazarus” who proved that the Home Office was not a career-ending move.
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.”
Reporting Churchills: Henry Lucy on Winston and Lord Randolph
31
Jul
2023
By DAVE TURRELL
Winston “was evidently fully supplied with notes,” Lucy wrote, “but he did not use his manuscript for the purpose of reading a single sentence...a debater who will have to be reckoned with whatever Government is in office. Probably a ministry composed of his own political friends have most to apprehend.” The last sentence is telling. It was obvious that Winston was his father’s son—a political disrupter by nature.
The Churchill Day Book for 1928: Other Years Welcome
27
Jul
2023
A Remembrance of Lady Williams of Elvel, 1929-2023
24
Jul
2023
By CITA STELZER
“As her prominent role in the life of Churchill became better known, Lady William began to receive speaking invitations. She was reluctant, but gave it a try. Her wealth of experience added to historians’ views—not only of the prime minister but also as a person with family and all the other problems, joys and sorrows. I like to think that the influence of this kind and intelligent woman extends across those years—years in which she helped Churchill serve his country and, indeed, the world.”
“The World Crisis” (1): Exploring Churchill’s Masterwork
20
Jul
2023
2
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
“It was the custom in the palmy days of Queen Victoria for statesmen to expatiate upon the glories of the British Empire, and to rejoice in that protecting Providence which had preserved us through so many dangers and brought us at length into a secure and prosperous age. Little did they know that the worst perils had still to be encountered and that the greatest triumphs were yet to be won....”
Churchill’s Novels in Sterner Days: More than Mere Escape
17
Jul
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Churchill was motivated by H.G. Wells’s views of science in war: “The irresistible Juggernaut, driving through towns and villages as through a field of standing corn—a type which Armageddon itself could not achieve....” That was an accurate description of the Blitzkrieg that swept over France in May 1940, though WSC himself had his reasons to speak less alarmingly. He settled for a “remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks.” He was, after all, about to admonish Britons: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour.”