Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

C H U R C H I L L P R O C E E D I N G S
Churchill was not an amateur author but a professional writer....Throughout
most of his life Winston Churchill depended on writing for income which
allowed him to live—or almost to live—in the aristocratic style which he
had no inheritance to support. More importantly, income from writing also
allowed Churchill freedom to engage in politics. He was a professional writer
who engaged in politics, not a politician who dabbled in amateur writing.
THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES...
Drill, Gymnastics and Riding.” For reading to supplement
this curriculum, Churchill reports that he soon
obtained “Hamley’s Operations of War, Prince Kraft’s
Letters on Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery, Maine’s Infantry
Fire Tactics, together with a number of histories dealing
with the American Civil, Franco-German and Russo-
Turkish wars, which were then our latest and best
specimens of wars.” 2
Although doubtless useful for a cavalry officer, all
this was thin fare to nourish a future Nobel laureate in
literature. Famously, it was later, in India, that Churchill
embarked on his own program of reading very good
books indeed for several hours a day: Gibbon, Macaulay,
Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Malthus, Darwin, Lecky,
and many more.
Churchill also reports that while reading in India
he longed for university instructors who could have
guided him: professors “eager to distribute the treasures
they had gathered before they were overtaken by the
night.” Countering this agreeable though utopian image
of ever-helpful professors, Churchill adds that he now
pities “undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives
many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting
opportunity.” 3
It may be as well that Churchill can’t be with us in
the Bay Area this week to observe and comment on
American undergraduates. Despite his nostalgia in sentimental
moments for the academic experience he never
had, I believe he certainly did as well or better reading
and thinking for himself than within the confines of
university attitudes and orthodoxies.
In any case, Churchill’s advice, exemplified by his
own approach to reading, is the first lesson—and
perhaps the most important one—that we ought to take
away from consideration of Thoughts and Adventures. It’s
well to read widely. It’s best to read good books when we
can measure them against something more than very
early life experiences. It’s best to read because we want
to—not because somebody hands us a syllabus along
with news of the ordeal that awaits on final exam day.
It’s excellent that you are all here by choice not compulsion.
If by chance you’re coming to Thoughts and
Adventures for the first time at an age that might politely
be described as “post-adolescent,” so much the better. I
want next to consider what frameworks might be most
useful for thinking about Thoughts and Adventures.
In 2003 Gretchen Rubin published a nice book
entitled Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill. She
might have found fifty ways, or a hundred ways.
Churchill was deeply involved in military and civil pursuits
over an unusually long, active, and influential life.
There are many angles from which he can be viewed.
One that deserves a conference of its own some day, for
example, is his work as a skillful amateur painter.
In looking as readers at Thoughts and Adventures, I
suggest we start with the fact, fundamental to all
facets of his career, that Churchill was not an amateur
author but a professional writer. I use “professional” in
the sense defined by the 11th edition of Merriam-
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary to mean “participating
for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor
often engaged in by amateurs.” Throughout most of his
life Winston Churchill depended on writing for the
income which allowed him to live—or almost to live—
in the aristocratic style which he had no inheritance to
support. More importantly, income from writing also
allowed Churchill freedom to engage in politics.
He was a professional writer who engaged in politics,
not a politician who dabbled in amateur writing.
Only infrequently did his political offices provide
enough money to sustain himself and his family. Nor
did his writing, at first. He was a professional writer too
in that other sense of a professional as somebody who
works successfully to master techniques in a particular
field. As he improved his skill and his reputation via his
FINEST HOUR 148 / 60