Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

writing as well as his other activities, he became one of
the most highly paid writers in his day. In addition to
financial incentives, there was of course, as for most professional
writers, interest in using his writing to explore
and think about various topics that concerned him, thus
using his writing as a means of thinking for himself in
some depth about significant issues.
The essays in Thoughts and Adventures are outstanding
examples of this. As Professor Muller has
carefully documented in the notes to his edition, before
being collected in the book, most of the essays were each
published in several magazines, thus multiplying the
money Churchill received for them while also, and not
incidentally, keeping his name and ideas in the public
eye on both sides of the Atlantic. As Professor Muller’s
edition also documents, successive publication of the
same essay allowed for the professional writer’s technique
of revising and polishing early drafts.
By 1900, when Churchill entered Parliament at the
age of twenty-six, he was already the author of five books
as well as many articles for newspapers as a war correspondent.
Eventually his collected works ran to
thirty-eight volumes (they don’t include all his speeches).
In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
This, according to the citation, was “For his mastery of
historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant
oratory in defending exalted human values.”
“Oratory” refers to the great wartime speeches that
are deservedly the most familiar and most famous part of
Churchill’s oeuvre. His mastery of historical and biographical
description has been less often appreciated. It is
this aspect of his writing that is most conspicuous in
Thoughts and Adventures, although somewhat in miniature.
The most imposing of his histories are The World
Crisis, his six-volume account of World War I, and The
Second World War, his six-volume memoir of that conflict.
Churchill’s most dazzling work as biographer is
found in his four-volume biography of the First Duke of
Marlborough, and in the panorama of biographical
sketches in Great Contemporaries.
As the title of Thoughts and Adventures invites us to
do, we may divide it into essays exploring particular
topics, mostly historical, and short true narratives,
mostly autobiographical in form, featuring Churchill but
not always starring him as the central character.
A brilliant example of the latter is “A Day with
Clemenceau.” In Thoughts and Adventures an arresting
and perennially relevant example of Churchill’s essays on
history is “Ludendorff’s ‘All—or Nothing.’” Tomorrow
and Saturday we’ll be discussing many but far from all of
the outstanding essays. What I want to stress now via
brief comments on those two essays is that both the historical
essays and the biographical and autobiographical
narratives are skillfully shaped in ways to which
Churchill’s Nobel Prize citation does not do justice—as
it hardly could in six words—by praising his “mastery of
historical and biographical description.”
It is the word “description” that is misleading. Had
the Nobel Committee asked me (it never does), I would
have suggested “analysis” rather than “description.” >>
“Very well,” said Clemenceau...”I have done
what you wish. never mind what has been
arranged before....And now,” he said, “I
claim my reward...I wish to pass the river
and see the battle.” The Army Commander
shook his head. “It would not be right for you
to go across the river,” he said. “Why not”
“Well, we are not at all sure of the situation beyond the river. It is
extremely uncertain.” “Good,” cried Clemenceau. “We will re-establish it....You
come with me, Mr. Winston Churchill, and you, Loucheur. A few shells will
do the General good.”
—WSC. Who can resist thinking that his “Day with Clemenceau” was in his mind in
1944, when he insisted on crossing over to the east bank of the Rhine
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