June 24, 2015

Finest Hour 122, Spring 2004

Page 41

Martin Gilbert at the Chicago Humanities Festival

The First Julie and Roger Baskes Lecture in History, by Sir Martin Gilbert CBE. Chicago Humanities Festival, 2 November 2003. This lecture series is designed to honor renowned British historians.


Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, lightheartedly began this sold-out lecture by saying that the title he had been asked to use—”The Unique Blend of Leadership Qualities That Enabled Churchill to Re-Emerge from the Political Wilderness to Become the Savior Of His Nation”—was the longest that had ever been submitted to him. Its length guaranteed, he said, “that whatever I say this afternoon, I have never said to any audience before.”

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Indeed Gilbert did find fresh ways to tell a tale he has told often and well. He identified ten leadership advantages Churchill brought to Number Ten Downing Street in May 1940. Some were qualities and beliefs Churchill had carried from the beginning of his long political life, such as self-confidence, plod (the ability to outwork others), a firsthand knowledge and abhorrence of war, a steady advocacy of positive U.S.Britain relations, and a strong belief in a democratic society. Others were on-the-job skills that Churchill acquired through his long parliamentary career, notably a mastery of the legislative process and an ability to resolve problems without vindictiveness. The latter quality allowed Churchill to build an effective War Cabinet that included former political adversaries.

The remaining leadership advantages Gilbert cited were a direct result of Churchill’s industriousness during the Wilderness Years: his early, studied warnings about Hitler, his real knowledge of the respective military strengths and weaknesses of Germany and Britain, and the moral force he gathered in his unrelenting descriptions of the impending war as a battle between good and evil.

After the speech, Gilbert joined the Festival directors and his audience in a champagne toast to the sponsors. The lecture was the only one of 175 to be fully subscribed the first day.

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