July 23, 2013

AROUND AND ABOUT: FINEST HOUR 124, AUTUMN 2004

==================

A humorous moment on Brian Lamb’s PBS-TV (USA) program “Book Notes” (which is being dropped in favor of a broader interview series) was recalled by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund (13 August). It seems that in a Lamb interview, Churchill’s official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert mentioned in passing that Churchill as a young soldier “was accused of buggery.” Mr. Lamb in his rapid way replied, “Define it, please.” An agitated Sir Martin was nonplussed: “Oh, dear. Well, I’m sorry. I thought the word we—buggery is what used to be called a—the—’unnatural act of the Oscar Wilde type’ is how it was actually phrased in the euphemism of the British papers. It’s…you don’t know what buggery is?” —TERRY MCGARRY

***

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024

More

Former Presidential adviser Dick Morris, who has parlayed a mixed career as political tactician into that of a prominent media commentator, displayed his Churchillian credentials on July 1st: “Every poll shows a dead heat between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry….It’s not so much a contest between two candidates, ideologies or even parties as it is a clash between two different issues or priorities for the voters. In this respect, it parallels the 1945 election in the United Kingdom, when voters had a choice of Winston Churchill to lead the nation in war or Labour’s Clement Attlee to lead it in peace. With Germany defeated but Japan still holding out, the war was still a real concern, but voters opted for Labour’s social-welfare focus.”

***

In a letter to the Providence [R.I.] Journal on July 30th, Bruce G. Richardson, “author of Afghanistan: Ending the Reign of Soviet Terror” says that the “new Russia” is just the same old gang: “…one cannot but reflect on the words of Winston Churchill when in 1945, following an intense and difficult negotiation with Stalin, he said, ‘Despite the perfume and lace, Russia is still the same old whore underneath.'” The only problem here is that the remark came from Dwight Eisenhower, not Winston Churchill, at the November 1953 Bermuda Summit conference, when Stalin was already dead and Churchill was pleading for a summit which might lead to an accommodation with Stalin’s successors. Is Richardson’s book on Afghanistan equally well sourced?

***

Speaking of Afghanistan, The Washington Post (also July 30th) commented: “It’s hard to name any other country that has successively experienced monarchy, dictatorship, communism, anarchy, warlordism and Islamic fundamentalism. Afghans might well testify to the truth of Winston Churchill’s famous aphorism that democracy is the worst system of government except for all the rest. In Afghanistan, they have tried them all.”

***

According to a retrospective in The San Francisco Chronicle Winston Churchill spoke at a Bohemian Club luncheon given by Gerald Campbell on 12 September 1929: “Churchill contends Great Britain will never abandon the Jews in Palestine as long as the British maintain their protectorate over that country.”