Churchill in the News

Winston is Back (In Eight Volumes)

Finest Hour 142, Spring 2009

LONDON, JANUARY 23RD- The BBC announced that President Obama has sent George W. Bush's Jacob Epstein bust of Winston Churchill packing from the Oval Office (while retaining a bust of Abraham Lincoln). This touched off a buzz of media speculation over the implied symbolism of his action.

The bust is one of four or five copies sculpted by Jacob Epstein, and regarded as the most valuable of its kind ever commissioned. This example is from the British government collection at Cockburn Street, London; another is at Windsor and others are in private hands.

In 2001, President Bush explained: "My friend the Prime Minister of Great Britain heard me say that I greatly admired Winston Churchill and so he saw to it that the government loaned me this and I am most honored to have this Jacob Epstein bust of Winston Churchill." In the years since, some demanded its return, claiming that Bush was undeserving or was using it to proclaim himself another Churchill. In fact, he was simply an admirer of WSC, like most of us.

Last Updated on Monday, 21 March 2011 16:56

The Bengali Famine

The editors of Finest Hour wish to bestow their 2008 Utter Excess Award on MWC (“Media With Conscience”) News in Vancouver for its November 18th editorial by Gideon Polya, charmingly entitled, “Media Lying Over Churchill’s Crimes”

Bengali Famine “Churchill is our hero because of his leadership in World War 2,” Polya writes, “but his immense crimes, notably the WW2 Bengali Holocaust, the 1943-1945 Bengal Famine in which Churchill murdered 6-7 million Indians, have been deleted from history by extraordinary Anglo-American and Zionist Holocaust Denial.”

The article goes on to cite a long list of Churchill “crimes,” including all the old chestnuts (poison-gassing the Iraqis, warmongering before World War I, attacking Gallipoli, bombing German cities, etc.); and some new ones: “Churchill actively sought the entry of Japan into World War 2.” (That one brings to mind Churchill’s occasional observation that he had never heard the opposite of the truth stated with greater precision.) We have dealt with most of them before (over and over)—so let’s consider the flagship accusation.

Last Updated on Monday, 13 September 2010 18:25

A Fresh Case of "Generational Chauvinism"

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LONDON, APRIL 18TH: From today's Times: "Anybody repeating the bonkers mantra that Beijing 2008 will re-run the 1936 Nazi Olympics might reconsider some other racial views of that era, such as Winston Churchill's considered opinion that 'Chinks' and 'dirty baboos' in the East needed a good thrashing with 'the sjambok.'"

This intriguing remark sent us scurrying to our scans of 50 million words by and about Winston Churchill including all of the latter's books, articles, speeches and published papers.

"Chinks" comes up 21 times, mostly in relation to chinks in walls or armour, only once in relation to the Chinese. "Baboos" has nine appearances, mostly in the words of Churchill's father, Lord Randolph. The only WSC quotation with both epithets is from Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994):

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:46