May 31, 2013

Finest Hour 116, Autumn 2002

Page 11

Send your questions to the editor


Q: What did Churchill say about those who trade honor for peace having neither in the end?

A: Two quotations spring to mind. “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” was tracked to Benjamin Franklin by two members of our Churchill Listserv (email discussion group), Evan Quenon and Anthony Calabrese. Bartlett’s (http://www.bartleby.eom/100/245.l.htm) says it was used during the American Revolution, as early as 1755. The second likely quotation was truly by Churchill, originating in August 1938, before Munich: “I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very little doubt what the decision will be.” (WSC to Lloyd George, 13 Aug ’38. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V Part 3: 1117.)

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A month later Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne: “We seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at present.” (11 Sep ’38, explaining why visiting Moyne in Antigua might be problematic, op. cit., page 1155.) It is often believed that Churchill addressed this remark to Chamberlain directly after Munich. It appears not so.

Q: I would be keenly interested in knowing the contents of Churchill’s library. Does Chartwell have an inventory? —Judy Dean

A: Years ago I spent a day in the Chartwell libraries with the late Michael Wybrow, checking oddball foreign language editions, but the books present are not representative of books in Churchill’s day. When WSC died his son Randolph inherited the library and took away many books which he later sold with a bookplate, “from the library of Sir Winston Churchill.” Some shelves at Chartwell were filled with odds and ends, packed tight to discourage tampering: multiple copies of The Anglo-Saxon Review, for example. When we last asked, Chartwell’s staff were not keen about returning the library to original standards, but there are some things to look for when you visit. The glass case in the study contains some very fine editions and presentation copies. The “museum” section of the former kitchen houses a representative collection of Churchill’s books donated by Governors of The Churchill Center. WSC had collections of books on his father and the First Duke of Marlborough, which he donated to the Library at 10 Downing Street (see Trivia #1196, FH 112/113). Now at Churchill College is his collection on Napoleon, whose biography he wanted to write but never found the time.

Q: What books did Winston Churchill read?

A: lt depends on what period you mean. Lord Moran discovered Churchill in bed in 1949 reading Orwell’s 1984, for what was already his second time. Anthony Montague Brown selected books for Churchill to read in retirement, including Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. Someone once got into a car with the PM during the Second War and found him with a copy of Huckleberry Finn. I have often wondered if it was from the inscribed “Complete Works” he was given by Mark Twain himself at the turn of the century. —David Freeman

Violet Bonham Carter relates in her Winston Churchill As I Knew Him/An Intimate Portrait (1965) that she quoted “Ode to a Nightingale” to WSC, who had never heard of it; next time they met “he had learned not merely this but all the odes of Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable.” At the same time, of course, he had “brushed up his Shakespeare.” —Evan Quenon

Churchill read Punch as a youngster. He was captivated by the political cartoons, especially those depicting the American Civil War. When he was nearly 13, Winston asked his mother for a copy of General Grant’s memoirs which, thanks to Mark Twain, were published. He certainly read G.F.R. Henderson’s history on Stonewall Jackson, in 1898, and much else of that ilk. When Sen. Harry F. Byrd, Jr. of Virginia visited Churchill in 1951, he was astonished by how much the PM knew about our Late Unpleasantness. —Richard H. Knight, Jr.

Q: I am assisting Jon Meacham of Newsweek with a book about Churchill and Roosevelt, and we are wondering if there were any books they both read as schoolboys? —Mike Hill

A: First, look in Churchill’s autobiography, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, first published in 1930 but currently in print and widely available. Concentrate on the chapters up through “Education at Bangalore.” Next, look in the official biography, especially vol. 1 and its companions. Third, you might glean something from my essay, “Backward and Precocious,: Winston Churchill at School,” The World & I, vol. 12, no. 12 (December 1997), pp. 290-317; reprinted as “Winston Churchill at School” in Morton A. Kaplan, ed., Character and Identity: Sociological Foundations of Literary and Historical Perspectives (St. Paul: Paragon House Publishers, 2000), pp. 83-111. —James W Muller

It would certainly be interesting to learn of any books which both Churchill and Roosevelt read in their youth. While FDR’s boyhood books may very well be intact at Hyde Park, Churchill’s are alas scattered to the winds. Unfortunately, Harrow’s curriculum in 1888-1892 is not the full picture: young Churchill tended to read what he liked—which was not always what was assigned to him at school. Certainly both must have read a lot of American Civil War literature (see above). Churchill as a boy was a fan of Henty and Rider Haggard novels; does anyone know if young Franklin Roosevelt was also? —RML H 

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