Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

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DAT E L I N E S APPLE FROM ORCHARD AFTER seeing books about Churchill entitled Warlord and Soldier, it might surprise many to learn how much effort Churchill devoted to peace, reconciliation and human advancement. He believed that freedom of thought and speech were worth fighting for, both politically and militarily. Being cultured is a good thing. Respecting science is a good thing. Being patriotic is a good thing. Politics can be a noble profession. Above all, be civil, be informed, be engaged, and be happy. I think that all of these are themes that run through Churchill’s life and make his a timeless example worth exploring and emulating. STAN A. ORCHARD ON CHURCHILLCHAT@GOOGLEGROUPS.COM ARCHIVES ONLINE IN 2012 LONDON, JULY 29TH— Winston Churchill’s vast archive, from school reports and wagers to a personal copy of his “finest hour” speech, will be digitalised and online in 2012. The Churchill Archive Trust has arranged with publisher Bloomsbury to make available more than one million items, some 2500 archive boxes of letters, telegrams, documents and photographs stored in Cambridge and currently viewable only by appointment. After years of cataloguing and transferring the material to microfilm, the next logical step was making the archives available to everyone, although not for free, said Churchill Archives Centre director Allen Packwood: “It’s tremendously exciting for us, as it is fulfilling what the trust was established to do in the first place.” An enormous array of historical material will be available without the layers of interpretation that had been added over the years. “It is an opportunity for people to make their own judgments,” he said. “You’ll be able to see what was on Churchill’s desk on a dayto-day basis and how he responded to it. You’ll be able to compare easily what he was saying in public [to] what he was saying privately.” The CAC said the only way of digitalising the archive and making it widely available was by finding a commercial partner, since there was no prospect of gaining public funds. “We don’t have the money or, crucially, the expertise,” said Packwood. When the archive goes live in 2012, organisations and individuals will have to pay to access it. Exact figures are not confirmed, but Frances Pinter, the publisher of Bloomsbury Academic, said they would keep the price low to ensure a wide reach. Bloomsbury won the contract after a bidding process and Pinter said the database would be created in a way that researchers could find historical needles in haystacks: “As an archival collection, there’s nothing like this. The nearest comparison would be something like the presidential archives in America and they are not as digitally advanced as we will be.” The archive is packed full of letters, photographs and ephemera covering Churchill’s life from his school days; his time as a soldier during the Boer war; his spell as a FINEST HOUR 148 / 6 Quotation of the Season elieve me, the average modern politician “Bcares very little about consistency. He produces an assortment of wares with which to tempt the public, but as soon as the interest in them has declined, he quietly sets himself to work to dress the window with still later novelties. As long as he can sell something for the votes, upon which he depends for a livelihood, he is quite content. I daresay politics are regarded by most people as a game, in which the cleverest sharper wins.” —WSC TO HERBERT VIVIAN, PALL MALL, APRIL 1905 rising political star in Edwardian England; the isolation of the 1930s and the war itself, before his final years as an elder statesman during the Cold War. Much of it covers international affairs and there are drafts of some of his most famous speeches. There is also more personal material that shines a light on his personal interests and his famous tastes, including a bet with Lord Rothermere that he could refrain from “brandy or undiluted spirits” for a year. The archives include: • Annotated drafts of some famous speeches, including two commonly thought to have been broadcast: “Fight on the Beaches” speech of 4 June 1940, and the “The Few” on 20 August 1940. Both were delivered in the Commons, although he did record them after the war. • Items relating to Churchill’s menagerie of pets, including his black swans, sheep and pigs at Chartwell; his cat, Nelson; his dogs, Rufus I and II; and his budgerigar Toby. • Material about the testing of cigars, reflecting MI5’s concern that Churchill could be offered an exploding or poisonous cigar. • Articles on subjects both profound and the trite, supplementing his income with pieces such as “Can we breed a race of supermen” and “Are there men on the moon” In 1931, after an near-death experience on New York’s Fifth Avenue, he
wrote about what it was like to be hit by a motorcar (Finest Hour 136). • Painting correspondence with Walter Sickert and Sir John Lavery. There are also letters from George Bernard Shaw, T.E. Lawrence and Vivien Leigh. —MARK BROWN IN THE GUARDIAN WSC NEVER HESITATED WASHINGTON, JULY 2ND— Longtime Churchillian Charles Krauthammer ridicules the current fashion of not calling Muslim extremists Muslim extremists: “The Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shooter runs 86 pages with not a single mention of Hasan’s Islamism. It contains such politically correct inanities as ‘religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor.’ “Of course it is. Indeed, Islamist fundamentalism is not only a risk factor. It is the risk factor, the common denominator linking all the great terror attacks of this Krauthammer century—from 9/11 to Bombay, from Fort Hood to Times Square, from London to Madrid to Bali. The attackers were of varied national origin, occupation, age, social class, native tongue, and race. The one thing that united them was the jihadist vision in whose name they acted.” Krauthammer quotes Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square attacker: “One has to understand where I’m coming from….I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier.” Well, said the columnist, “that is clarifying. As was the self-printed business card of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, identifying himself as ‘SoA,’ Soldier of Allah. “Why is this important” Mr. Krauthammer asks. “Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don’t, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences. “Churchill famously ‘mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.’ But his greatness lay not just in eloquence but in his appeal to the moral core of a decent people to rise against an ideology the nature of which Churchill never hesitated to define and describe—and to pronounce (‘Nahhhhrrzzzzis’) in an accent dripping with loathing and contempt.” Charles Krauthammer admits he is not expecting anyone “to match Churchill’s rhetoric—just Shahzad’s candor.” Krauthammer knows. During the “Person of the Century” hoopla in 1999, he nominated WSC, saying, “Only Churchill carries that absolutely required criterion: indispensability.” (FH 105:15-16, Winter 1999-2000.) ANOTHER COVER-UP LONDON, AUGUST 5TH— The Telegraph divulged breathlessly that “Churchill was accused of ordering a cover-up of a WW2 encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public ‘panic’ and loss of faith in religion.” Is the news so slow that they have to regurgitate stuff that was taken care of years ago Finest Hour 115, Summer 2002 Datelines: London, October 21st— “What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to”....WSC’s advisers produced a six-page report [which] played down the phenomenon....later an order went out expressly banning all RAF personnel from discussing sightings. —THE OBSERVER Finest Hour 129, Winter 2005- 06, Around & About, page 10: [Sir Henry] Tizard saw no threat from UFOs. All sightings, he reported, were explainable by natural events such as the weather or meteors, or were normal aircraft. But Britain followed the American lead in underplaying the sightings, and a few months later an order went out expressly banning all RAF personnel from discussing UFO reports with anyone not in the military. Roberts and Clarke believe that the UFO sightings were the product of “mass hysteria”..... Some cover-up. Almost makes us pine for a resurrection of the much more amusing fables that WSC knew about Pearl Harbor and engineered the 1929 Wall Street crash. FINEST HOUR 148 / 7 ANGUS HAMILTON R.I.P. LENNOXLOVE, SCOTLAND, JUNE 5TH— Angus Hamilton, as he preferred to be known, inherited his dukedoms from his father in 1973, becoming the 15th Duke of 15th Duke of Hamilton Hamilton and the 12th Duke of Brandon, as well as 22nd Earl of Arran. In 2008, Angus and his wife Kay were our hosts at Lennoxlove on the final Churchill tour conducted by the editor and publisher. They entertained us affably at lunch while showing us around their exhibition on the 1941 flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. The Deputy Führer was intent on reaching Angus’s father, the 14th Duke, whom he knew and thought had access to the King. The Duke promptly locked him up and rang Downing Street. As senior descendant of the ancient lords of Abernethy, Angus carried the Crown of Scotland to the first reopening of the Scottish Parliament since its departure to London in 1707. Shy and academically intelligent, he never relished his public duties, but addressed them loyally. He preferred designing off-road vehicles, driving racing cars, and flying his Bristol Bulldog biplane. He wrote a fine biography of his ancestor, Mary Queen of Scots: The Crucial Years. Mary’s death mask is one of Lennoxlove’s exhibits. In 1973, Angus inherited Lennoxlove Castle, which his father had purchased in 1947. With its 460 acres of parkland and gardens, it became the Hamilton ducal seat in addition to being open to the public. He married the current Duchess of Hamilton in 1998, and shared her love of animals and music. His heir is his eldest son, Alexander Douglas- Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale, who now becomes the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon. >>
Page 1 and 2: THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILL AU
Page 3 and 4: The Journal of Winston Churchill ,
Page 5: R I D D L E S , M Y S T E R I E S ,
Page 9 and 10: GAZING UPWARDS: ROBERT HARDY AT 85
Page 11 and 12: Getting There: Churchill’s Wartim
Page 13 and 14: Above: A Boeing 314A flying boat of
Page 15 and 16: Small Craft, Short Visits On at lea
Page 17 and 18: Air and Sea AIRCRAFT Listed alphabe
Page 19 and 20: L-R: Radioman Russ Holmes, Co-pilot
Page 21 and 22: had proven that the North Atlantic
Page 23 and 24: Staying There: Mena House, the Summ
Page 25 and 26: Churchill sites like this are avail
Page 27 and 28: the Personality of the Century, whi
Page 29 and 30: “Nearly always it came about that
Page 31 and 32: Books, Arts & Curiosities Below:
Page 33 and 34: Charles Morin great pleasure to kno
Page 35 and 36: Gilman, Robert Bevan, John Nash and
Page 37 and 38: once again by Sangorski & Sutcliffe
Page 39 and 40: ole of Eisenhower’s wartime chauf
Page 41 and 42: elieves that Churchill’s behavior
Page 43 and 44: Churchill’s Ever-Readable The Unk
Page 45 and 46: In 1988 we mounted a direct mail ca
Page 47 and 48: 1 2 5 - 1 0 0 - 7 5 - 5 0 Y E A R S
Page 49 and 50: Churchill Quiz JAMES LANCASTER Each
Page 51 and 52: the 1932 collection Thoughts and Ad
Page 53 and 54: Giant Marauders: Scientific War and
Page 55 and 56: “Mass Effects” and the Great Ma
Page 57 and 58:
description of Pitt, one cannot mis
Page 59 and 60:
Thoughts and Adventures: A Reader
Page 61 and 62:
writing as well as his other activi
Page 63:
REGIONAL AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS Ch
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