April 24, 2013

RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMAS: FINEST HOUR 150, SPRING 2011

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Q: A year or so ago BBC Newsnight showed a very rare video of Winston Churchill preparing for a broadcast. He forgot his lines and instead, with a twinkle in his eye, ad-libbed a poem directly into the camera. I felt this short clip told more about the man than anything else I had seen. I believe the video was going into a collection somewhere. Do you know where this clip is held, and is it possible to get a copy? —KEITH BRAITHWAITE, ENGLAND

A: Since we know of no footage of WSC preparing for a radio broadcast, we think you are referring to the television screen test released by the BBC in November 1986. From Finest Hour 55, Spring 1987:

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Television viewers in Britain, America and the Commonwealth were variously amazed and amused to find Sir Winston on television, in a 1955 screen test released after thirty years by the BBC. The original was made by the mother of Humphrey Crum Ewing of Reading, a member of the TV Unit of the Conservative Central Office, who kept a copy.

Mr. Crum Ewing said: “It was very hush-hush at the time, because he was considering how he was going to announce his retirement. It is well known that all his speeches were very well prepared….But there was no autocue on the cameras then and when it came to reading a poem about ducks in St. James’s Park he had his head down, looking at the script. He looked as if his eyes were shut. He was an old man then. The techniques he had learned were not suited to television.”

Viewers [in 1987] were not shown the poem recitation, but they did see a nervous WSC ad-libbing in a three-minute sequence. Churchillians have often said that Sir Winston would be quickly demolished by the modern media and their agencies. For many of us, this excerpt proved how easy the job would have been.

If the excerpt you saw the poetry reading, it must be a longer version of the one we reported. The best source to consult would be the BBC Archives.

Q: I plan to buy a copy of Great Contemporaries, but remain undecided: is the revised edition with four new essays the best choice? —GILBERT MICHAUD, QUEBEC

A: If you’re going to own only one copy, definitely get the revised edition, for the sake of completeness: it adds four essays, on Fisher, Parnell, Roosevelt and Baden-Powell. Among first editions, both the 1937 and 1938 volumes are rare and pricey in fine jacketed condition, though ordinary worn copies have remained reasonably priced. If the 1930s originals are beyond your means, look for the very inexpensive postwar editions by Odhams, which contain all the 1938 essays. Avoid wartime editions by Macmillan or the Reprint Society, which eliminate Roosevelt, Trotsky and Savinkov out of political considerations for Churchill’s wartime allies.

Also, you need to watch for the new edition due from ISI Books, edited with a new foreword by James Muller, and important footnoting by Muller and Paul Courtenay. This edition will contain five further essays by WSC: H.G. Wells, Charlie Chaplin, Kitchener of Khartoum, King Edward VIII and Rudyard Kipling.

A few notes on Great Contemporaries from Langworth, A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (1998, 2001): In Bargaining for Supremacy (1977), James R. Leutze accused Churchill of being “oddly unaware of other people’s reactions…not much interest in others.” That charge has stuck, and rare is the Churchill critic who fails to repeat it. The reader of Great Contemporaries will come away with the opposite impression. No one could have written such vivid essays on the great personages of his time without comprehension, understanding and, in some cases, regard.

Take for example the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, with whom Churchill (the preceding Chancellor) hotly debated all the great issues of socialism vs. capitalism in the 1920s and 1930s. After a lengthy account of their antagonisms, Churchill adds: “…never have I had any feelings towards him which destroyed the impression that he was a generous, true-hearted man….the British Democracy should be proud of Philip Snowden.” A noble tribute—and typical of Churchill.