May 2, 2013

Finest Hour 153, Winter 2011-12

Page 6

Datelines


“It is difficult for a man to do great things if he tries to combine a lambent charity embracing the whole world with the sharper forms of populist party strife.”
—WSC, The Aftermath, London, 1929, 128-29

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World’s Largest Theme Park

London, November 3rd— The historic gateway that links The Mall to Trafalgar Square could become a museum or a hotel under government plans, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Admiralty Arch, designed by Sir Aston Webb, was completed in 1912 as a memorial to Queen Victoria by her son Edward VII, who did not live to see its completion. It is a grade 1 listed building, decorated with the figures of “Navigation” and “Gunnery” by sculptor Thomas Brock. Nearby is Admiralty House, where Churchill lived while First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15, 1939-40), now divided into apartments for a small number of government ministers. The Arch building, last occupied by the Cabinet Office, is now largely empty.

The Admiralty Arch is now to be sold for £75 million because the government believes its 80,000 square feet will be too expensive to modernise. Stephen Lovegrove, chief executive of the Shareholder Executive, confirmed the sale at the Public Property Summit.

Lovegrove added that the government will look for alternative uses while “protecting the heritage,” creating opportunities for public access and “ensuring value for the taxpayer” from the building.

If “protecting the heritage” of central London consists of turning iconic structures into money factories, they have already gone a long way to developing the capital as the World’s Largest Theme Park. —RML

Winston at 18

London, November 11th— The firm jaw, the determined look, the hint of a confident smile are features that would later inspire the millions he led to victory over Nazi Germany. Taken when he was 18, previously unseen images of Winston Spencer Churchill have emerged through the sale of an album belonging to an anonymous titled family.

The pictures, taken when Gladstone was prime minister and photography still a preserve of the wealthy, were taken at WSC’s Aunt Cornelia’s home in Canford Magna near Bournemouth.
—Naidia Gilani, Daily Mail

Note: Although the Mail article identifies the boy at right as Winston’s brother Jack, Celia Lee, co-author of Winston & Jack, thinks it might be Ivor Guest. Jack, a keen photographer at age 12, might have taken the shots.

“The Shape of Our Illusion.”

New York, August 29th— Writing in The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/o2BOJx), Brian Morton explains our frustration with the constant bending, maiming and misrepresenting of quotes by Churchill and others: “I saw a mug with an inscription from Henry David Thoreau: ‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined!’ Thoreau was not known for his liberal use of exclamation points. When I got home, I looked up the passage (it’s from Walden). Thoreau wrote: ‘I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’

“When you start to become aware of these bogus quotations, you can’t stop finding them. Henry James, George Eliot, Picasso—all of them are being kept alive in popular culture through pithy, cheery sayings they never actually said.

“Thoreau, Gandhi, Mandela— it’s easy to see why their words and ideas have been massaged into gauzy slogans. They were inspirational figures, dreamers of beautiful dreams. But what goes missing in the slogans is that they were also sober, steely men. Each knew that thorough-going change, whether personal or social, involves humility and sacrifice, and that the effort to change oneself or the world always exacts a price.

“But ours is an era in which it’s believed that we can reinvent ourselves whenever we choose. So we recast the wisdom of the great thinkers in the shape of our illusions. Shorn of their complexities, their politics, their grasp of the sheer arduousness of change, they stand before us now. They are shiny from their makeovers, they are fabulous and gorgeous, and they want us to know that we can have it all.”

Another Musical

Lagoa, Portugal, October 1st— Two Englishmen, Trevor Holman and Derek Charles Ash, both living in the Algarve in southern Portugal, have taken a stab at a recurrent idea, a musical stage play built around Churchill.

Ash, a published lyricist and composer, and Holman, a long-established musician, record producer, composer, arranger and orchestrator, created the lyrics and music for eighteen new songs along with a two-act stage play. They sent a copy of the finished play and a demo CD to Ray Jeffery, who excitedly agreed to direct the show.

The world premiere of Churchill: The Musical (www.churchillthemusical.com) opened at the Lagoa Auditorium in the Algarve tonight with a cast of forty-two. A sell-out audience praised it as “fantastic,” “brilliant” and “emotional,” according to the film’s website.

The play stars Jonathan Reynolds as Winston, Sarah Pryde as Clementine, and Oliver Lanford as “Percy” (a fictitious aide). The props include 289 costumes and uniforms, fifty-seven specially made wigs, 189 lighting changes by designer Andy Chafer, and custombuilt sets designed by Jeffrey.

The show revived memories for older viewers, while giving insight into Churchill and the Second World War for those fortunately young enough to have missed it. There are many lighter moments, such as a dinner party scene at Chartwell; and also during an air raid, where locals are taking shelter in the Bethnal Green Underground station.

The run in Portugal was extended, and the producers will to take it to Britain in September 2012 and the United States in 2013. Still starring Reynolds and Pryde, the musical will tour the Midlands and south of England for twelve weeks before Christmas holiday, resuming after the New Year with sixteen weeks in northern England and Scotland. “Swing Extreme” will provide the dancers and Ryan François (who choreographed the Ola Jordan/Chris Hollins Charleston in Strictly Come Dancing last year) is the choreographer.

Three Days of Imagination

Cambridge, September 6th— A play entitled “Three Days in May,” with rather broad interpretations of Fringes of Power, the diaries of Sir John Colville, one of Churchill’s wartime private secretaries, is reviewed by Allen Packwood on page xx. A rave review by a local writer is posted on our website: http:// bit.ly/qc9K5F:

“It is the end of May 1940. French premier Paul Reynard [sic] flies to London with proposals for negotiations which he puts to Churchill…. [who gives] the appearance he could be up for a bit of wobbling so as to snare his key opponent, the foreign secretary of the day, Lord Halifax, who was chief cheerleader of the appeasers.” WSC appeals to former PM Neville Chamberlain: “Gently, Churchill leads him to set aside his belief that it might be possible to stop the Nazi machine by negotiation….a history lesson well worth the telling,” etc. etc.

But Paul Reynaud never flew to London, and Churchill never gave an appearance of wobbling, nor did Chamberlain need convincing: his support of Churchill was a key factor. Much of this sounds like superfluous embroidery, deployed for what the producer thinks is a need for drama.

When it comes to May 1940, reality was drama enough. For what really happened, read John Lukacs’ Five Days in London, (FH 105:37) and on our website: http://bit.ly/o040Xn.

Sas War Diary

London, September 23rd— The newly released Special Air Service War Diary has disclosed previously unheard WW2 accounts. One of the more daring is the targeting of Field Marshal Rommel, arguably the Third Reich’s finest commander, at a French chateau shortly after D–Day in 1944:

“If it should prove possible to kidnap Rommel and bring him to this country the propaganda value would be immense and the inevitable retaliation against the local inhabitants might be mitigated or avoided….To kill Rommel would obviously be easier than to kidnap him….” Unfortunately, the day before the SAS team was due to parachute in, Rommel returned to Germany, having been injured when his staff car was hit by RAF planes.
—Thomas Harding in the Daily Telegraph; See http://bit.ly/ptu0lm

Romney’s Gaffe

New York, September 29th— In Business Insider (http://read.bi/mQVAKr), Grace Wyler reports a Churchill misquote by presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Defending himself from charges that he is a “flip-flopper,” Romney “confused the Brit every Republican loves with the Brit every Republican loves to hate.”

Romney said: “In the private sector, if you don’t change your view when the facts change, you’ll get fired for being stubborn and stupid. Churchill said, ‘When facts change, I change too, madam.'” That was not Churchill, Wyler notes, but John Maynard Keynes, whose actual words were: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” (See “Churchill and Keynes,” page 21.)

We heard Romney’s gaffe with only a small clang, instead of the large one we usually hear when Churchill is misquoted, because Romney at least had the sentiments right. WSC, like Keynes, changed his mind fairly often. He changed parties twice (opposing some of the people, all of the time). In his article “Consistency in Politics” he explained: “The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.”

All that is literally true. But it is important to note that while he sometimes changed positions on a particular issue, Churchill maintained his purpose: the defense of liberty.

On 5 May 1952, chided for changing his mind in the Commons, Churchill retorted: “My views are a harmonious process which keeps them in relation to the current movements of events.”

The following year, when the Queen was crowned, Churchill recalled his diehard support for her uncle, Edward VIII, who had abdicated in 1936 in favor of his brother, Britain’s wartime sovereign: “I’m glad I was wrong. We could not have had a better King. And now we have this splendid Queen.”

The main reason Churchill flipped on certain issues was the extraordinary length of his political career. In fifty years, times change. When after World War II the Labour Party wished further to curb the power of the House of Lords, Prime Minister Attlee quoted what Churchill, long a Tory, had said about the Lords as a Liberal, in 1911. Churchill had called the Lords “one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee.”

Churchill replied: “Really, I do believe there ought to be a statute of limitations on my remarks. I’m willing to be held responsible for anything I’ve said for the past thirty years, but before that I think a veil should be drawn over the past.”

Whether Governor Romney has been around long enough to make that claim is doubtful. As the late William Rusher said (FH 151:29): “How many politicians last long enough to make that particular request?”

Quote Marathon

New Hampshire, October 10th— Last year (FH 145:10) we began an entry-by-entry review of my quotations book, Churchill By Himself, which is moving toward digital format in combination with the Churchill Archives-Bloomsbury Publishing digital research system, and an ebook plus a new edition. My goal is to link all quotes in the book to the research site.

Churchill By Himself (Churchill in His Own Words in the next edition) is the only quote book with each entry attributed. It is also one of the few subject to ongoing review.

Before the 2008 publication we found that a transcriber had made errors. Despite a mammoth last minute effort, paid for with most of my advance, we did not get them all. We also found detail variations in wording or punctuation between what Churchill records in his own speech volumes and other sources. I found most errors to be trivial and not affecting Churchill’s meaning. Some misquotes were synonymous, as if the transcriber’s mind were wandering: odd synonyms were put in. Weird.

Editors are nitpickers and fussbudgets, and I am determined to have the final text exact. The British second edition corrected much, but there are more, ranging from an errant comma to a mangled word or phrase. I have not tried to reconcile English-American variations like “organisation/organization,” which even Churchill used interchangeably; or non-critical missing commas. You can do only so much rationalizing before you go mad.

Barbara Langworth, Dave Turrell, David Dilks and four students have helped immeasurably. We will soon have a comprehensive errata sheet. Up-to-date errata sheets are available; for details, see http://bit.ly/nQWLqn. As always, I welcome hearing the comments of readers. —Editor

Tweet @Winstonc?

Washington, October 18th— If Churchill were here, would he Tweet? One British MP believes so, and used Churchill to defend Tweeting by MPs. The House of Commons was considering banning Tweets from inside Parliament, but MPs defended the practice, saying it connected them to their voters. But Kevin Brennan (Lab., Cardiff West) remonstrated: “There is nothing new in political communication in trying to get a message across in a pithy, memorable way, as Twitter enables us to do. In fact, I think that it was a certain Winston Churchill who said: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ If that statement was issued as a Tweet, it would leave 66 of the 140 characters available on Twitter still to play with.”

Brennan’s argument worked. The House of Commons voted against the motion to ban Tweeting.
—Melissa Bell, The Washington Post Blog Post.

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