June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 11


Wendy’s, the fast food chain, ran an advert in England where a young woman leans over to the Bond Street statue of Winston Churchill, places a sandwich to its mouth and says, “Care for a chicken sandwich, Winnie?” Rafal Heydel-Mankoo writes: “After years of seeing the Royal Family debased and ridiculed on television I have become desensitized to such depictions of great people. At least Churchill is being introduced to couch potatoes”….Unrepentant Communist and syndicated columnist Alexander Cockburn (pronounced “Co-burn”) has recirculated the old lie of late actor Norman Shelley, that Shelley gave one or more of Churchill’s speeches over the BBC in 1940 when the Premier was indisposed. Sir Robert Rhodes James gave the lie to Shelley’s claim years ago (see “An Actor Did Not Give Churchill’s Speeches,” FH92). Cockburn also said that Churchill contemplated keeping the people out of the London Underground during air raids, and that if Hitler had won, all the Communists would have been shot. We have little doubt about the second of these statements. (Mr. Cockburn was three during the Blitz.)

David Cannadine, who collected Churchill’s great speeches interspersed with his own caustic comments in a book called Blood, Sweat and Tears, is regularly trotted out as a reliable source in television documentaries. His recent volume, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven & London, Yale University Press), calls Churchill a product of the declining aristocracy, “the drinker, the gambler, the spendthrift” who became a “national character.” Curt Zoller writes: “Seldom have I read such derogatory accusations published by a university press. Included is a disreputable characterization of Churchill’s family and friends, starting with the Duke of Marlborough and ending with Churchill’s children, including innumerable rumors about illegitimate relations, marital infidelities, unscrupulous finances, etc. The only one who comes across unbloodied is Clementine Churchill….” On the other hand, the book was quite acceptable to the establishment press. Jonathan Parry, writing in the London Review of Books, stated, “Few historians bring more energy and relish to chronicling the shortcomings of titled or famous people. But though the book contains iconoclastic reassessments of Lord Curzon, Winston Churchill, the Devonshires and Nicolsons, none is treated altogether unsympathetically. With a couple of exceptions, all the essays concern individuals and families who are brought to life with a panache that almost disguises Cannadine’s exemplary professionalism and industry…..Cannadine’s book is effervescent, erudite and enormously enjoyable.” Gosh, we are relieved.

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