May 9, 2013

DATELINES: FINEST HOUR 144, AUTUMN 2009

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By way of addenda to Finest Hour 143 (“Guarding Greatness,” page 32) we reprint the photo of Sir Winston with his Series 1 Land Rover UKE80, which we speculated was the one from which he alighted to despatch the rabbit in Ronald Golding’s time (1946-48) as his bodyguard. Not so….this was a later Land Rover, which arrived in 1954.

Our publisher scoured the web to learn that this is the bronze green Land Rover presented to Churchill at Chartwell on his eightieth birthday in 1954. The presenters were Rover’s Bob Hudson (Technical Sales Department), Geoffrey Lloyd Dixon (Sales and Service Director), and Col. Maitland (Caffyns, Rover’s Kent distributors). A model of this special Land Rover exists, and copies may be found on eBay.

The registration number UKE80 allegedly stood for “United Kingdom, Empire” and eighty years. In December 1999, a colleague of Hudson recalled that when he suggested finding some rough terrain to demonstrate where the Land Rover was able to go, “Sir Winston’s response was that he wanted to see terrain where it couldn’t go.”

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Fourteen years later, farmer Frank Quay of St. Mary Cray, Kent, bought the battered Land Rover for £320, and discovered its provenance while reading the log book. UKE80 has since been restored and turns up occasionally in classic car articles. It is one of 218,327 Series 1 Land Rovers produced between 1948 and 1958. Churchill’s was furnished without the often seen hard top, in pick-up truck configuration. It must have been ideal for navigating the damp grounds down by Chartwell’s ponds.

TCC WINS ANOTHER NEH EDUCATION GRANT

WASHINGTON, AUGUST 10TH— For the third time, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded The Churchill Centre a significant grant to support the participation of American teachers in a summer institute to study Winston S. Churchill. In summer 2010, twenty-four teachers will receive NEH stipends to spend two weeks at The Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, and one week in London, exploring the institute’s theme, “Winston Churchill and the Anglo-American Relationship.” Professor James W. Muller, chairman of The Churchill Centre’s Board of Academic Advisers, will direct the institute in collaboration with Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre.

All Churchillians owe a debt to Professor Muller, chief operating officer Dan Myers, education programs coordinator Suzanne Sigman, and the many writers of supporting letters, for the hundreds of hours of work that went into this successful grant application.

The three-week program, from July 11th through 31st, includes extensive reading, research using primary documents in the Churchill Archives, seminars with Churchill scholars and visits to important Churchill sites, including Bletchley Park, Blenheim Palace, the Churchill gravesite at Bladon, Harrow School, Chartwell and the Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms. The group will also tour Parliament, as in 2008. Churchill scholars Kevin Theakston, Piers Brendon and David Dilks, among others, will lead teachers in their inquiries into various aspects of Churchill’s life, with a focus on the Anglo-American relationship surrounding the Second World War.

Teachers will be selected through a competitive application process that includes a resume and two letters of reference. Perhaps the most important part of the application is the essay that should include any personal and academic information that is relevant: the reasons for applying to this institute; interest, both intellectual and personal, in Winston Churchill and the broader implications of his career and relationship with the United States; teachers’ qualifications to do the work of this institute and to make a contribution to it; what teachers hope to accomplish by participation, including any individual research and writing; and the relation of the study to one’s teaching. The essay should be no longer than 1250 words or five double-spaced pages.

Applications will be due on 1 March 2010. Complete details of the 2010 program will be posted on the Educator section of winstonchurchill.org by November 2009. Applications will be submitted online at the NEH website.

Readers: encourage your favorite teachers to consider spending three weeks with Winston Churchill in England next summer. In selections, first priority is given to teachers who have not attended an NEH institute in the last three years (2007, 2008 or 2009).

“RAT IN A HOLE”

LONDON, JULY 20TH— While Hitler had a proper bomb shelter, Britain’s Cabinet made do with a vulnerable one. An outraged Churchill accused civil servants of misleading him after discovering that his secret wartime bunker was not bombproof, according to a letter going on display for the first time in a new exhibition. The document, written on 13 September 1940 by Patrick Duff, then permanent secretary at the Office of Works, reveals how Churchill complained that Duff had “sold him a pup” and let him think that “this place is a real bomb-proof shelter.”

—ARIFA AKBAR, THE INDEPENDENT

Editor’s note: Churchill disliked the underground war rooms, saying he felt like a rat in a hole. But it is no secret that they were vulnerable to a direct hit. (As was Canterbury Cathedral; when the Archbishop asked what would happen in the event of a direct hit, WSC allegedly replied, “My dear Archbishop, in that case, you would have to regard it as being in the nature of a summons.”)

All that’s new in this letter is that Churchill expected better protection: another likely reason that he preferred Downing Street Annexe to the War Rooms except during the worst bombing. Visitors should look at the offices at street level to the right of the WarRooms, where filled holes can be seen that once contained the hooks or hinges for steel air raid shutters. This is “Number Ten Annexe,” where Churchill fought most of World War II.

LADY SOAMES IN DENMARK

COPENHAGEN, SEPTEMBER 1ST— Churchill Centre Patron Lady Soames will open the first Danish exhibition of paintings by her father at Sophienholm, near Copenhagen. Organizers hope to hold the exhibition, entitled “The Painter: Winston Churchill,” in 2010. The principal feature will be over thirty Churchill paintings, some provided by Lady Soames. In addition, the exhibition will contain many documents and photos about Churchill’s life and his love of painting. Benedicte Bojesen is the curator at Sophienholm, and Churchill Centre member Niels Bjerre will oversee the documentary part of the exhibition.

DON’T MENTION THE WAR

LOS ANGELES, JULY 6TH—Writing in the LA Times (“Obama’s Strategic Blind Spot”), Professor Andrew Bacevich considered the war in Afghanistan against Churchill’s experience in World War I. Churchill, he wrote, looked for alternatives to “sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders,” just as NATO should be looking for alternatives to chewing dust in Afghanistan.

Churchill’s alternative, Bacevich continued, was to launch “an amphibious assault against the Dardanelles” (a physical impossibility; what Churchill championed was a naval attack on the Dardanelles, followed by an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula), and to “support the infantry with tanks.” (Presumably, he means tanks on the Western Front, since they were not a factor on Gallipoli.)

But the Dardanelles/Gallipoli strategy, Bacevich continued, “prolonged the war and drove up its cost….Churchill and his Cabinet colleagues had spent four years dodging fundamental questions. Fixated with tactical and operational concerns, they ignored strategy and politics. Britain’s true interest lay in ending the war, not in blindly seeing it through to the bitter end. This, few British leaders possessed the imagination to see. A comparable failure of imagination besets present-day Washington.”

Bacevich writes thoughtfully. At minimum, a people who opt for war, like other government enterprises, should pay the bills, rather than foist the debt onto their grandchildren. But his Churchill examples are not entirely comparable.

First—with no disrespect to those who have died—to equate the butchery of World War I trench warfare with the relatively low casualties of Afghanistan-Iraq is preposterous. Every village in Britain, Alistair Cooke once reminded us, has its memorial to the Great War dead—to say they were decimated is perhaps an understatement since in many cases the losses were greater than one in ten.

Second, Churchill’s Dardanelles adventure was an attempt to shorten World War I—and might have, had it succeeded. The premise was that the Fleet, which hoped to sail through the Dardanelles to Constantinople (Istanbul), would cow Turkey into surrender and relieve the bottled-up Russians, redoubling the forces deployed in the east against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Churchill’s failure (as he later admitted) was trying to drive a major wartime operation without plenary authority to direct every aspect of it—something he avoided in World War II.

Third, the tank (which Bacevich rightly identified as a Churchill concept) was never a factor early in World War I. Tanks were not used significantly until 1917, and then only briefly, though they did ease the horrific carnage of “over the top” charges against entrenched artillery—the salient feature that (fourth) made World War I much worse in terms of human losses than World War II.

Churchill drew many more appropriate lessons applicable to the present war in Afghanistan, notably about the features of the terrain and the determination of the enemy, in his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He also wrote presciently about the nature of Islam, concluding that no people were braver in battle, or more easily misled by religious fanatics. The Middle East, he remarked in 1921, was unduly stocked “with peppery, pugnacious, proud politicians and theologians, who happen to be at the same time extremely well armed and extremely hard up.”

BUCKLEY ON CHURCHILL

JULY 15TH— Charles Crist writes: “In his new book, Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement, Richard Brookhiser asserts that Buckley disliked Sir Winston. I queried Brookhiser who replied: ‘WFB’s obit for Churchill in NR was notably grudging, and reflected I think his youthful America First convictions.’ As these two men are my only heroes living or dead, I was disappointed to read such an assertion from someone who apparently knew Buckley very well.”

Mr. Brookhiser is accurate, but likely not dispositive. Buckley’s attitude to Churchill almost certainly mellowed over time, and we think The Churchill Centre had a minor role in this.

We wanted Buckley (and Arthur Schlesinger) as keynote speakers a long time before we got them, at our 1995 Boston conference. We first approached Bill Rusher, former publisher of National Review, who had spoken to us earlier.* “You have to remember,” Rusher warned, “that the Buckleys were all America Firsters before the war, not to mention Irish—not natural allies of Churchill.” He admitted that he’d often had debates with WFB on the subject. (Rusher’s college roommate was Henry Anatole Grunwald, who produced the superb American Heritage documentary, Churchill: The Life Triumphant, in 1965. If you don’t have it, get one.)

Buckley’s antipathy probably preceded the America First movement (which, in the late 1930s, argued for America keeping out of the Hitler war). As a boy, his father sent Bill to boarding school in England, which he hated, especially the upper-class masters who looked down their noses at Yanks. He got even, so to speak, in his first novel, Saving the Queen, through his fictional hero, Bradford Oakes, who, like Bill, was whipped by his English Headmaster— “courtesy of Great Britain, Sir.” Thus Saving the Queen finds Oakes getting to know the fictional Queen Caroline in the biblical sense—”courtesy of the United States, Ma’am.” Very droll…

National Review once referred to Churchill as a “peacetime catastrophe, “which from Bill’s standpoint (not rolling back Labour socialism, campaigning for a “settlement” with the Soviets) he was. At our 1995 conference, we ended his talk with questions. One of us quoted the “peacetime catastrophe” line and asked whether he had reconsidered. Bill amusingly replied: “I have often been asked to reconsider my judgments, but try as I might I have never found any reason to cause me to do so.”

But his great speech on that occasion caused us to think that he had by now taken a longer view, considering Churchill indispensable in the battle with Hitler, if not effective in later battles against socialism and the Soviets:

Mr. Churchill had struggled to diminish totalitarian rule in Europe which, however, increased. He fought to save the Empire, which dissolved. He fought socialism, which prevailed. He struggled to defeat Hitler, and he won. It is not, I think, the significance of that victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that causes the name of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster….it is the roar that we hear, when we pronounce his name. It is simply mistaken that battles are necessarily more important than the words that summon men to arms, or who remember the call to arms. The battle of Agincourt was long forgotten as a geopolitical event, but the words of Henry V, with Shakespeare to recall them, are imperishable in the mind, even as which side won the battle of Gettysburg will dim from the memory of those who will never forget the words spoken about that battle by Abraham Lincoln. The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy….It is my proposal that Churchill’s words were indispensable to the benediction of that hour, which we hail here tonight, as we hail the memory of the man who spoke them; as we come together, to praise a famous man.**

In fairness, it should also be said that Bill considered Stalin a more virulent disease than Hitler: “My thought has always been that Nazism had absolutely no eschatology, and would wither on the vine. Only the life of Hitler kept it going, and I can’t imagine he’d have lasted very long. The Communists hung in there for forty-six years.” Not everyone would agree with that. —RML

ERRATA, FINEST HOUR 142

• Editor’s gaffe: On pages 5 (four paragraphs from end) and 8 (above the “Cherie” report). For “factoid” read “fact.” Sorry! (“Factoid” means, not a trivial fact, but “an assumption repeated so often that it becomes fact.”)

• Page 11, two old website locations have been replaced. The Metamark.com abbreviations for the new locations are: “Churchill’s Dagger: A Memoir of La Capponcina,” by Michael Wardell. “Churchill the Great? Why the Vote Will Not Be Unanimous,” by Douglas Hall.

•Page 62, column 3, line 2: the website given for the he-man club is incorrect. 

RON CYNEWULF ROBBINS 1915-2009

VICTORIA, B.C., MARCH 9TH— I knew Ron Robbins only by letter or over the phone, but on countless occasions for twenty years I was glad to have him there. Ron had observed Churchill as a young reporter in the House of Commons, and knew him with an intimate appreciation that was never diminished by firsthand experience. Ron was Old School, possessing neither computer nor cell phone. He preferred to send fastidiously typed contributions, now and then corrected with White-Out. For that reason, when FH senior editors began to communicate frequently by email, we bumped him to Editor Emeritus, and he did us the honor to accept.

He was a dear friend, and even though he made it to 93, it is very sad to know those contributions must now end, though a couple are on file and remain to be published. His generosity to the magazine was profound, his praise of its editor deeply encouraging. Herewith by kind permission of the Globe and Mail, secured through the efforts of Terry Reardon of ICS Canada, a report by someone who knew him well.

JOURNALIST AND POET

NICK RUSSELL

Who knew he was a prize-winning swimmer, or a Royal Navy veteran and survivor of a prisoner-of-war camp? Or a poet and a novelist? Robbie Robbins was a tough and competitive journalist, and later the founder of a journalism school, but his past lives were intensely private. Even those who knew him well were rarely able to draw him out.

If pressed he might admit that he was born on a Welsh sheep farm and that his first news story was published in a Welsh daily when he was 9. (He was still writing when he was 90.) After school, he moved to Hertfordshire, became a correspondent for The Times, then joined British United Press on Fleet Street. He loved the urgency of reporting and the drama of watching news unfold, and developed a life-long admiration for Sir Winston Churchill from covering his speeches in the House of Commons.

Robbie volunteered early for the Royal Navy. He told me his 1955 novel, Blood for Breakfast, was closely based on his own experience. Certainly his stray references in conversation to the Nazis sinking his ship, his capture, the attempted “mutiny” and subsequent trial for “treason,” his years in POW camp and a 200-mile forced march across Upper Silesia, all occur in the book. He refused to dwell on the hell of Stalag XXB, preferring to recall creating a secret camp newspaper, News from Nowhere, typed on a Nazi typewriter while officially recording 3000 names for the Red Cross. News items were gathered via a radio stolen from a freight train and hidden in the latrines, which were so filthy, he would gleefully say, that the Germans never ventured there.

After the war, he worked for the Press Association and the BBC. In about 1952, he emigrated to Canada with Kay, whom he met in school and to whom he was married for forty-seven years, and joined the Canadian Press in Toronto and then the CBC International Service in Montreal. With the explosive postwar growth of TV news, he moved to CBC National News in Toronto, eventually becoming national news director. Robbie helped build a young TV news operation into a goliath known for breaking stories and for outstanding election coverage.

After twenty-five years with TV news he retired, and was quickly headhunted by the University of Regina to found a new journalism school. He rose to the challenge with fierce energy and commitment, designing classes, hiring teachers, setting up scholarships, chairs and internships, and harassing people from coast to coast for donations. The result was a small but respected school that made a significant impact, particularly to Prairie newsrooms.

As a youth, the feisty little Welshman with the amazing eyebrows was a prize-winning swimmer, and kept swimming into his 80s. He and Kay were keen tennis players, and played into their 70s. But perhaps they were happiest fishing together: Robbie once boasted they had caught fish in every Canadian province! He was bereft when she died fifteen years ago.

He disliked cars and I believe he never drove, but despite his war experience he loved the sea—swimming, fishing, sailing—and lived within yards of it in Victoria. As he wrote in a poem titled Land-Locked, “If I can but die within sight of the sea, That old dogwatch death won’t harry me.”

Robbie may have been faintly embarrassed about Blood for Breakfast. (At least, he’d never lend me a copy!) But he was quite comfortable about his poetry, and published an anthology called Out of Solitude, and dozens of other poems over subsequent decades.

It would be fascinating to know when Ronald William Robbins adopted “Cynewulf” as his middle name. It was a grand gesture, and he seems to have used the name of the Anglo-Saxon bard for all his poetry and writings on Churchill. Answering the phone, he’d simply bark, “Robbins!,” the subtext being, “Don’t waste time, we’ve got stories to tell and deadlines to meet!”

Robbie carried his respect for Churchill into his retirement, and was a frequent contributor to Finest Hour. But despite friends’ encouragement, he refused to write his own memoirs, for the same reason he rejected a funeral for himself, or even a memorial service. “Journalists report the news,” he’d say crisply, with a faint Welsh lilt. “They don’t make the news.” End of discussion.

His instructions regarding life-support at the end were equally pithy: “Pull the plug, old boy. It’s no fun being a vegetable.” Fortunately, when he succumbed at 93, it happened quickly. While most of his friends and family predeceased him, he always welcomed visitors to his classy retirement home, which he irreverently referred to as “my dump.” He was fully aware of his own mortality, and was more than ready to “go and join Kay” after organizing one last project: He left his entire estate to the School of Journalism at the University of Regina, for a scholarship in Kay’s name. He leaves a cousin and a sister-in-law in England.

Ron Robbins in Finest Hour

In Ron’s memory, webmaster John David Olsen has posted all these on our website:

Brendan Bracken: A Journalist’s Recollections, FH 63, 2nd Qtr., 1989.

Sir William Stephenson: “This One Is Dear to My Heart” FH 67, 2nd Qtr., 1990.

Reporting Churchill: A Journalist Remembers, FH 76, 3rd Qtr., 1992.

Great Contemporaries: Reith of the BBC, FH 82, 1st Qtr., 1994.

The Schooldays of Churchill’s Friends, FH 86, Spring 1995.

Douglas MacArthur: Churchill’s Caesar, FH 91, Summer 1996.

Unswerving Resolution, Glinting Intellect, FH 97, Winter 1997-98.

Churchill as Artist, FH 100, Autumn 1998.

His Genius Had a Philosophical Foundation, FH 101, Winter 1998-99.

The Mission (Poem), FH 104, Autumn 1999.

Sixty Years On: The Atlantic Charter, FH 112, Autumn 2001.

Operation Sea Lion, FH 134, Spring 2007.

Articles filed:

“Churchill, Military Intelligence and the War on Terrorism.”

Great Contemporaries: Harry Hopkins, “Lord Root of the Matter.”

OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY

Hillsdale College has reached Volume V and its hitherto rare companion volumes in its noble project of reprinting Sir Martin Gilbert’s ultimate authority for every phase of Churchill’s life.

Not only are these books affordable (biographic volumes $45, companions $35) but you can buy all eight Biographics for $36 each and all twenty (eventually) Companion Volumes for $28 each by subscription.

Better yet, if you subscribe for all thirty volumes, you get the biographic volumes for $31.50 and the companions for $24.50. That includes the three 1500-page companions to Volume V, first editions of which have been trading for up to $1000 each.

How can you not afford these books? Order from the Hillsdale website or telephone toll-free (800) 437-2268.

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*These can be found by using the Churchill Allies search

**William F. Buckley’s entire speech can be found in Churchill Proceedings 1995-1996; in the Buckley collected speeches, Let Us Talk of Many Things; and on our website.

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