Churchill

Churchill’s reading programme began with Edward Gibbon’s 4,000-page The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – which he was to re-read twice more over the course of his life, and parts of which he could quote from memory. He followed it with Gibbon’s autobiography and then read Macaulay’s six-volume History of England, which he loved (except for the attacks on the 1st Duke of Marlborough) and the Lays of Ancient Rome.40 After that he read Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Republic, and the key texts of Schopenhauer, Malthus, Darwin, Adam Smith, Henry Hallam, Samuel Laing, William Lecky, the Marquis de Rochefort and very many others – though no novels. The sheer breadth of his reading matter was astonishing, and it gave him enormous intellectual self-confidence, to add to the other kinds he already had. A friend recalled lending Dr Welldon’s translation of Aristotle’s Ethics to Churchill. It was very good, he rejoined, ‘But it is extraordinary how much of it I had already thought out for myself.’41 Churchill told his mother that he wanted his reading to give him ‘a scaffolding of logical and consistent views’.42 She replied to say that his bank had bounced a cheque for £11, which she would nonetheless honour. Churchill’s autodidacticism meant that there were inevitably gaps in his knowledge. As late as 1906 he had not heard of Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, and he confused the poet William Blake with the admiral Robert Blake. But once this was pointed out, a friend recorded, ‘the next time I met him, he had learned not merely this, but all the odes of Keats by heart – and he recited them to me mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable!’ (Location 1367)

In the three volumes for 1874, 1875 and 1876, which covered all the legislation debated in Parliament at the time of his birth and infancy, he even wrote out the speeches that he would have delivered had he been in politics at the time, which he then pasted into the books.44 The Scotch Church Patronage Bill, the Endowed Schools Act Amendment Bill, the Judicature Amendment Act: nothing was too obscure for Churchill’s considered reactions. (Location 1385)

For all the later Nazi propaganda, and his own jokes about his drinking, Churchill had an extraordinary capacity for alcohol and it rarely affected his judgement. ‘A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration,’ he was to write. ‘The nerves are braced; the imagination is agreeably stirred; the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces a contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility. So it is with war, and the quality of both is best discovered by sipping.’69 The overwhelming evidence is that Churchill loved alcohol, drank steadily by sipping, had a hardy constitution and was only very rarely affected by it. (Location 1484)

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable … A meeting of grave citizens, protected by all the cynicism of these prosaic days, is unable to resist its influence. From unresponsive silence they advance to grudging approval and thence to complete agreement with the speaker. The cheers become louder and more frequent; the enthusiasm momentarily increases; until they are convulsed by emotions they are unable to control and shaken by passions of which they have resigned the direction … It appears there are certain features common to all the finest speeches in the English language … Rhetorical power is neither wholly bestowed nor wholly acquired, but cultivated. The peculiar temperament and talents of the orator must be his by nature, their development is encouraged by practice. The orator is real. The rhetoric is partly artificial … The orator is the embodiment of the passions of the multitude … Before he can move their tears his own must flow. To convince them he must himself believe. He may be often inconsistent. He is never consciously insincere.85 (Location 1554)

Churchill believed there were five ‘elements’ to great oratory. First was the ‘exact appreciation of words’, that is, ‘the continual employment of the best possible word’. He instanced ‘dour’ to describe the Scots. He believed in using ‘short, homely words of common usage’. Although the words should be short, sentences did not need to be, provided they had an internal rhythm. The second element of oratory was sound: ‘The influence of sound on the human brain is well known,’ he wrote. ‘The sentences of the orator when he appeals to his art become long, rolling and sonorous. The peculiar balance of the phrases produces a cadence which resembles blank verse rather than prose.’89 His reference to blank verse reflects his lifelong love of Shakespeare, whose works had a profound effect on his oratory, written style and sense of British exceptionalism, and influenced his later practice of writing out his speech notes in blank-verse form. (He also playfully developed a line in cod-Shakespeare, which often fooled those less familiar with the plays than he was.) The third element in oratory was the steady accumulation of argument. ‘A series of facts is brought forward all pointing in a common direction,’ he wrote. ‘The crowd anticipate the conclusion and the last words fall amid a thunder of assent.’90 Fourth was the use of analogy, which can ‘translate an established truth into simple language’, and of which he gave examples from the speeches of Lord Salisbury and Macaulay, as well as his own father’s remark that ‘Our rule in India is, as it were, a sheet of oil spread over and keeping free from storms a vast and profound ocean of humanity.’91 Churchill used analogy constantly in his speeches, seemingly naturally, but, as this essay shows, it was all part of a highly considered artistry. ‘A tendency to wild extravagance of language – to extravagance so wild that reason recoils – is evident in most perorations,’ Church...

...ill wrote of his fifth and last element. ‘The emotions of the speaker and the listeners are alike aroused and some expression must be found that will represent all they are feeling. This usually embodies in an extreme form the principles they are supporting … The effect of such extravagances on a political struggle is tremendous. They become the watchwords of parties and the creeds of nationalities.’92 He cited speeches by William Pitt the Elder and the great American orator William Jennings Bryan, arguing that the orator cannot ‘resist the desire to express his opinions in an extreme form or to carry his argument to the culmination’. (Location 1574)

was critical of British generalship, though not of Bindon Blood himself. ‘The general who avoids all “dash”,’ he wrote, ‘who never starts in the morning looking for a fight and without any definite intention, who does not attempt heroic achievements, and who keeps his eye on his watch, will have few casualties and little glory.’ (Location 1646)

As was so often the case in Churchill’s life, what looked like a reverse at the time turned out in retrospect to have been good fortune. Had he squeaked into the House of Commons in 1899, he would not have gone to South Africa and would not have had the opportunity to make not just a local or national reputation for himself, but a truly international one. (Location 1914)

… when the prospects of a career like that of his father, Lord Randolph, excited him, then such a gleam shot from him that he was almost transfigured. I had not before encountered this sort of ambition, unabashed, frankly (Location 1931)

was during this period of his captivity that Churchill came to understand why the Boers had such an aversion to British rule, which he put down to ‘the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man’.73 Churchill had no sympathy for the aggressive white supremacism of the Afrikaner, from which his own paternalistic instincts were entirely different. (Location 1994)

His second Commons speech, on 13 May, came almost three months after his maiden. ‘I learnt it so thoroughly off by heart’, he told a journalist, ‘that it hardly mattered where I began it or how I turned it.’26 He did not refer to his notes once in the entire hour he spoke.fn3 (Location 2285)

‘My piece of advice is,’ he said of Tariff Reform in Manchester in January 1905, ‘in politics when you are in doubt what to do, do nothing. In politics when you are in doubt what to say, say what you really think. If the Prime Minister from the beginning of this controversy had acted on these principles it would have been much better for our country, much better for his own reputation, and much better for the party organization to which he attaches such extraordinary and undue importance.’ (Location 2624)

In the years that followed, Churchill did not allow others the necessary archival wherewithal to contradict him. Foster believes there was ‘a good deal of judicious weeding before the papers were made publicly available’, so ultimately the portrait that emerges was one in which ‘Churchill not only discovered his father, but also refashioned him in his own image.’10 Uncomfortable facts were not allowed to get in the way of Churchill’s elegant recruitment of his dead father as a posthumous mentor for himself. (Location 2711)

At a speech in Glasgow in October 1906, Churchill discussed his political philosophy. He said that he had opposed socialism all his life, but had come around to the idea that ‘The State should increasingly assume the position of the reserve employer of labour.’46 He also supported ‘the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit’.47 This ‘minimum standard’ concept, which was also being adopted at that time by other influential Liberals such as David Lloyd George and Charles Masterman, was later to evolve into the modern welfare state. (Location 2859)

Uncounted generations will trample heedlessly upon our tombs. What is the use of living if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? … Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on – swinging bravely forward along the grand high road – and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun. (Location 3262)

Probably under the influence of his reading of Darwin, Churchill was briefly a convinced eugenicist. In October 1910 he noted that there were at least 120,000 ‘feeble-minded people at large in our midst’ in Britain whom he thought should be ‘segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations’.39 He was interested in the possibility of sterilization, telling Asquith in December that the ‘multiplication of the [mentally] unfit’ constituted ‘a very terrible danger to the race’.40 He saw sterilization as a liberating measure that would protect the feeble-minded from incarceration, but it was never introduced in Britain. As well as being an (absent) member of the first international Eugenics Conference in July 1912, Churchill was one of the early drafters of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, which defined four grades of what it called ‘mental defectives’ who could be incarcerated, namely ‘idiots’, ‘imbeciles’, ‘the feeble-minded’ and ‘moral defectives’, although it rejected sterilization. This thinking was so uncontroversial across all the parties in those days that the Bill passed with only three votes cast against. As with his views on race, Churchill’s support for eugenics needs to be seen in the context of the scientific beliefs of the day, which were shared by thinkers on the left such as H. G. Wells, Sydney Webb, John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge and distinguished jurists such as Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Location 3624)

Lloyd George needed no persuasion to throw over his old friend and ally. The price of the Conservatives joining a national government was that Churchill should be sent to a sinecure post with no executive portfolio attached. ‘It is the Nemesis of the man who has fought for this war for years,’ Lloyd George told Frances Stevenson that day. ‘When the war came he saw in it the chance of glory for himself, and has accordingly entered on a risky campaign without caring a straw for the misery and hardship it would bring to thousands, in the hope that he would be the outstanding man in this war.’46 (Location 5186)

‘This Government of able men and opposed parties does not develop any of the qualities required for war,’ Churchill told Archie Sinclair only two months after the coalition had taken office. ‘The personal and party elements neutralize each other: and there are many opinions, much politeness, unlimited decorum – but little action. The predisposition towards the negative is very marked. Meanwhile there are restless movements which I watch attentively without joining.’110 Of course that might be because he was still considered too toxic for anyone in the Opposition to invite him to join. Lloyd George, he generously wrote, ‘is necessary to the State. He has the war-making quality. I do not intend to allow any personal feelings to prevent my working with him. But distrust based on experience is a terrible barrier. (Location 5424)

asked Balfour about the regulation of mercantile shipping; demanded more accurate figures from the Director of Recruitment; questioned Lloyd George about 18-pounder shells and compulsory military service; expressed shock to the Secretary of the War Office that nearly a quarter of a million Britons had been discharged as medically unfit for service, and asked Walter Runciman how to free some of the 200,000 people employed on the railways for service in the armed forces. He asked politicians and civil servants about population statistics and French exports, and had at his fingertips the total number of males between seventeen and forty-five in the furniture and timber trades. He questioned Rear Admiral Morgan Singer on Maxim guns on ships, Hotchkiss anti-aircraft guns, automatic fuses, shells, rifles and carbines from America, asking, ‘Are you alright for cordite now?’112 There was no subject or issue too small, and his relish for statistics was unbounded. (Location 5445)

On landing at Boulogne on 18 November 1915, Churchill visited Sir John French at his headquarters at Saint-Omer, who offered him the choice of a staff appointment or command of a brigade in the field. He gladly chose the latter, requesting only that he serve ‘a month or two in the line to measure the novel conditions’.4 As a brigadier-general he would not have faced direct contact with the enemy, and he did not want a high command without having had that first. So the Earl of Cavan, who commanded the Guards Division of the BEF, attached Churchill to the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel George ‘Ma’ Jeffreys, whose battalion was going into the line at Neuve Chapelle the next day. (Location 5577)

‘My conviction that the greatest of my work is still to be done is strong within me: and I ride reposefully along the gale,’ (Location 5702)

‘It was strange how little Winston knew of the attitude of others towards himself.’75 The next day, Churchill returned to the trenches. (Location 5834)

Clementine nevertheless stood her ground and gave Churchill some of the best advice he ever got, saying that he would look like an adventurer if he returned to the Commons too soon, whereas remaining at the front ‘you are in an honourable, comprehensible position until such time as a portion of the country demand your services for the State. If you come back before the call you may blunt yourself … my Darling Love – For once only I pray be patient. It will come if you wait … I could not bear you to lose your military halo … You are always an interesting figure, be a great one my darling.’ (Location 5855)

Messines, but most of the year was spent in a bloody stalemate.123 Churchill continued to put immense effort into his speeches. ‘He never appeared at his hostess’s table until tea-time,’ a journalist reported. ‘All day he might be heard booming away in his bedroom, rehearsing his facts and his flourishes to the accompaniment of resounding knocks on the furniture.’124 He performed so well at the secret session – a debate where only MPs were allowed into the Chamber, while strategy was discussed – that it put his career back on track. (Location 6029)

In 1945, Churchill admitted privately, ‘The biggest blunder of my life was the return to the Gold Standard.’131 The almost total unanimity of the financial experts in favour of it, when set alongside the views of the admirals about the convoy system, and those of the generals about how to fight both the Boer War and Great War, led Churchill seriously to doubt the wisdom of experts. (Location 7435)

he only became less dangerous on the roads when he became prime minister and had a ‘clanger’ (that is, bell) to warn other drivers of his approach.5 He was a compulsive risk-taker in peace and war, at the gambling tables and in the stock market, and his all-or-nothing attitude towards driving along roads and staking everything to win the General Strike was no different. On occasion it led to crashes, but in the last case it had helped bring victory. (Location 7585)

You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the War. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in life’s fighting line. Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. ‘The earth is yours and the fulness thereof.’ Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities … Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations. (Location 8141)

Churchill’s huge political capital in later years rested on the public perception that he told unpopular truths as he saw them, followed his heart, took a lone stand and did not make a personal calculation; rather, he did what he thought right at the time. The battle over the Government of India Bill proved just as much a preparation for later trials as those battles where he had been on the winning side. The public trusted him in 1940 not because they believed he had always, or even generally, been right – all too clearly he had not – but because they knew he had fought bravely for what he believed in, while many other, more self-serving politicians had not. (Location 8184)

Every prophet has to come from Civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then must serve periods of isolation and meditation. That is the process by which psychic dynamite is made. (Location 8190)

wonderful skill in falling without hurting himself. He falls, but up he comes again, smiling, a little dishevelled, but still smiling … I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury bench. (Location 8201)

The article distilled a number of Churchill’s thoughts about the nature of Mankind, and reiterated his belief that human nature was not improving at anything like the same rate as technological knowledge was advancing. This could ultimately prove disastrous. ‘Certain it is that while men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing and measureless speed,’ he wrote, (Location 8354)

their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. The brain of a modern man does not differ in essentials from that of the human beings who fought and lived here millions of years ago. The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress – starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy – the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.38 (Location 8358)

On 9 March, Churchill was interviewed by CBS Radio in New York. ‘I think in most people’s lives good and bad luck even out pretty well,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, what looks like bad luck may turn out to be good luck and vice versa … I’ve done a lot of foolish things that turned out well, and a lot of wise things that have turned out badly. The misfortune of today may lead to the success of tomorrow.’ (Location 8432)

‘They seem delighted. But what a mystery this art of public speaking is! It all consists in my (mature) judgment of selecting three or four absolutely sound arguments and putting these in the most conversational manner possible. There is apparently absolutely nothing in the literary effect I have sought for forty years!’88 (Location 9049)

Churchill’s central message was that ‘It is very much better sometimes to have a panic feeling beforehand, and then to be quite calm when things happen, than to be extremely calm beforehand and to get into a panic when things happen.’ (Location 9069)

‘The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just they are often no longer strong,’ (Location 9259)

‘He was indeed a dweller upon the mountain tops where the air is cold, crisp and rarefied, and where the view on clear cold days commands all the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,’ Churchill wrote in his obituary. ‘Just as an aeroplane only flies by speed and pressure against the air, so he flew best and easiest in the hurricane. He was not in complete harmony with the normal. The fury of the Great War raised the pitch of life to the Lawrence standard. The multitudes were swept forward until their pace was the same as his. In this heroic period he found himself in perfect relation both to men and events.’ (Location 9396)

The most tremendous monuments or prodigies of engineering crumble under the hand of time. The Pyramids moulder, the bridges rust, the canals fill up, grass covers the railway track; but words spoken two or three thousand years ago remain with us now, not as mere relics of the past, but with all their pristine vital force.’ (Location 9929)

What is the use of Parliament if it is not the place where true statements can be brought before the people? What is the use of sending Members to the House of Commons who say just the popular things of the moment, and merely endeavour to give satisfaction to the Government Whips by cheering loudly every Ministerial platitude, and by walking through the Lobbies oblivious of the criticisms they hear? People talk about our Parliamentary institutions and Parliamentary democracy; but if these are to survive, it will not be because the Constituencies return tame, docile, subservient Members, and try to stamp out every form of independent judgment. (Location 10409)

That day, Churchill lunched with Maisky at Randolph Churchill’s apartment, where he ‘expressed his view that Hitler’s move against Czechoslovakia by no means signified a turn towards the East. Before striking a serious blow to the West, Hitler simply had to secure his rear.’59 It was another brilliantly counter-intuitive piece of analysis and prediction. (Location 10419)

Over the next five years he sent 1,161 messages to Roosevelt and received 788 in reply, averaging one exchange every two or three days for the rest of Roosevelt’s life. Nearly two years of this epistolary friendship prepared them both for their historic meeting in August 1941. (Location 10789)

His delivery was really amazing and he sounded every note from deep preoccupation to flippancy, from resolution to sheer boyishness. One could feel the spirits of the House rising with every word. It was quite obvious afterwards that the Prime Minister’s inadequacy and lack of inspiration had been demonstrated even to his warmest supporters. In those twenty minutes Churchill had brought himself nearer the post of Prime Minister than he has ever been before. In the Lobbies afterwards even Chamberlainites were saying, ‘We have now found our leader.’ Old Parliamentary hands confessed that never in their experience had they seen a single speech so change the temper of the House. (Location 10873)

Yet Churchill was never defeated by such setbacks in Cabinet. Leslie Hore-Belisha later claimed that part of his success in politics came from the fact that he approached meetings completely differently from other politicians. ‘He knows when he enters a Cabinet or committee meeting what he wants done. He has a scheme, a plan, a solution. Not for him the patient hearing while others sort out their views. He takes the initiative with a proposal of his own for others to support or, if they are so inclined, attack.’98 Churchill always tried to ensure that policy discussions were framed around his own agenda and proposals. He also made powerful use of graphs, statistical tables and maps to appeal to his audience’s visual imagination. ‘If he cannot win his way in an argument he will probably propose the adjournment of the meeting to another day,’ Hore-Belisha noted, ‘when he will appear again, reinforced with new and weightier evidence, facts and information, and renew the attack.’99 Meetings were intended to promote his agenda and confound those of his rivals, not to reach objective conclusions after due consideration of all the alternatives. (Location 11058)

‘Thirty-five is the lowest figure that can be accepted’ for the number of U-boats sunk and damaged, ‘and is practically admitted by the Germans themselves,’ which it certainly had not been.111 ‘There are two people who sink U-boats in this war, Talbot,’ he said. ‘You sink them in the Atlantic and I sink them in the House of Commons. The trouble is that you are sinking them at exactly half the rate I am.’112 In a similar spirit, Churchill told Captain Pim, ‘Our submarines are, unfortunately, sometimes sunk, but please remember that U-boats are destroyed.’113 (Location 11110)

Churchill, it led to a ruthlessness in his opposition to the ideas of others that he felt stood in the way. To get his own way he used every device, and brought the whole battery of his ingenious, tireless and highly political mind to the point at issue. His battery of weapons included persuasion, real or simulated anger, mockery, vituperation, tantrums, ridicule, derision, abuse and tears, which he would aim at anyone who opposed him or expressed a view contrary to the one he had already formed, sometimes on quite trivial questions. (Location 11132)

‘People say Churchill is tactless,’ Lord Crawford wrote three days after the Guildhall lunch for the crews Exeter and Ajax, that his judgements are erratic, that he flies off at a tangent, that he has a burning desire to trespass upon the domain of the naval strategist – all this may be more or less true but he remains the only figure in the Cabinet with the virtue of constant uncompromising aggressive quest of victory. He delivers the massive killing blow, encourages the country, inspires the fleet – the more I see and hear of him the more confident I am that he represents the party of complete … victory!132 (Location 11186)

although Clementine had finally given up hope in June 1937 of her husband ever becoming prime minister, he himself never had. That hope had animated him and driven him even when there seemed no likely path leading him to Downing Street. ‘In the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the capital and save the Empire,’ he had told Murland Evans when he was sixteen.66 At the time of Eden’s resignation, he had described himself as the unofficial leader of the Opposition, and until the last eight months he had, perhaps (Location 11696)

Churchill worked into the night constructing his first Government. ‘I was conscious of a profound sense of relief,’ he later wrote. ‘At last I had the authority to give direction over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial … I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. (Location 11816)

In these dark days the Prime Minister would be grateful if all his colleagues … would maintain a high morale in their circles; not minimizing the gravity of events, but showing confidence in our ability and inflexible resolve to continue the war until we have broken the will of the enemy to bring all Europe under his domination. No tolerance should be given to the idea that France will make a separate peace; but whatever may happen on the Continent, we cannot doubt our duty and we shall certainly use all our power to defend the Island, the Empire and our Cause.172 (Location 12483)

‘This afternoon Winston made the finest speech that I have ever heard. The House was deeply moved.’207 She replied, ‘It sent shivers (not of fear) down my spine. I think that one of the reasons why one is stirred by his Elizabethan phrases is that one feels the whole massive backing of power and resolve behind them, like a great fortress: they are never words for words’ sake.’ (Location 12625)

‘My object is to preserve the maximum initiative energy,’ Churchill said. ‘Every night I try myself by court-martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground – anyone can go through the motions – but something really effective.’ (Location 13437)

Their first stop was an air-raid shelter where forty people had been killed and many more wounded by a direct hit the previous night. There, Ismay remembered, we found a big crowd, male and female, young and old, but all seemingly very poor. One might have expected them to be resentful against the authorities responsible for their protection; but, as Churchill got out of the car, they literally mobbed him. ‘Good old Winnie,’ they cried. ‘We thought you’d come and see us. We can take it. Give it ’em back.’ Churchill broke down, and as I was struggling to get to him through the crowd, I heard an old woman say ‘You see, he really cares: he’s crying.’5 (Location 13514)

Part of Churchill’s genius in 1940 was not only keeping Britain in the war, but infusing the country with a belief in ultimate victory while having no convincing rationale – apart from a general belief in bombing – for how it would come about. (Location 13757)

Churchill now knew that a German invasion was unlikely. He said that he woke up in the mornings, ‘as he nearly always had, feeling as if he had a bottle of champagne inside him and glad that another day had come’.9 The British people, who unlike the Prime Minister had no access to Ultra decrypts, still believed an invasion was likely; that month 62 per cent of them told the Gallup organization that they thought the Germans would indeed attempt one. When asked who would win the war, however, 82 per cent thought it would be Britain, 10 per cent thought there would be a stalemate, 8 per cent had no opinion and 0 per cent said Germany. (Location 14360)

He was at pains to draw a distinction between two distinct types of military mistakes: ‘There is the mistake which comes through daring, what I call a mistake towards the enemy, in which you must always sustain your commanders, by sea, land or air. There are mistakes from the safety-first principle, mistakes of turning away from the enemy; and they require a far more acid consideration.’ (Location 14873)

Churchill’s use of the sign came naturally to a politician from the Victorian era who understood the power of symbols. His cigars, bow-ties, square-crown bowlers and canes were powerful images which he used consciously, and which made him instantly recognizable in cartoons and newspaper illustrations. His father had worn high collars and a handlebar moustache, and Joseph Chamberlain a monocle and orchid, for much the same reason. One problem with the V-sign was that it was only the turn of a wrist away from a rude gesture, and Churchill did not always remember that. More seriously, the Russians somehow interpreted it as meaning that he was about to open a Second Front. (Location 15189)

When things are going well, he is good; when things are going badly, he is superb; but when things are going half-well, he is hell on earth. (Location 16068)

He also insisted on taking Marshall to see a demonstration of low-level strafing near Warminster, despite the fact that a Spitfire pilot had killed several spectators in a practice run the previous day. (Location 16548)

The next day, when the imposition of the colour bar by the American Army on British restaurants was discussed in the Cabinet, Lord Cranborne said that one of his black officials in the Colonial Office could no longer go to a restaurant because American officers had imposed a whites-only policy there. ‘That’s alright,’ Churchill said, ‘if he takes a banjo with him, they’ll think he’s one of the band!’129 Having made this insensitive joke, Churchill went on to address the situation with the seriousness it deserved, and the Cabinet concluded that the US Army ‘must not expect our authorities, civil or military, to assist them in enforcing a policy of segregation. It was clear that, so far as concerned admission to canteens, public houses, theatres, cinemas, and so forth, there would, and must, be no restriction of the facilities hitherto extended to coloured persons as a result of the arrival of United States troops in this country.’130 (Location 17227)

exterminated by Einsatzgruppen murder squads in eastern Europe. Yet seven months later in Cabinet, Oliver Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, accused the Jews of Palestine of being ‘totalitarian, aggressive and expansionist’ in the way that they were ‘wedded to … the adoption of a Jewish State. They are trying to run a state within a state much on Nazi lines.’109 ‘I’m committed to the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine,’ Churchill replied. ‘Let us get on with that; and at the end of the war we shall have plenty of force with which to compel the Arabs to acquiesce in our designs. Don’t shirk our duties because of difficulties.’110 (Location 17698)

such as ‘Triumphant’, or, conversely, which are calculated to invest the plan with an air of despondency, such as ‘Woebetide’, ‘Massacre’, ‘Jumble’, ‘Trouble’, ‘Fidget’, ‘Flimsy’, ‘Pathetic’, and ‘Jaundice’ … Names of living people – ministers or commanders – should be avoided; e.g., ‘Bracken’ … Intelligent thought will readily supply an unlimited number of well-sounding names which do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called ‘Bunnyhug’ or ‘Ballyhoo’. Proper names are good in this field. The heroes of antiquity, figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the constellations and stars, famous racehorses, names of British and American war heroes could be used, provided they fall within the rules above. An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters.164 (Location 17895)

Death is the greatest gift that God has made to us.’ (Location 18103)

Churchill was also of the view that the Chamber should be capable of fitting only two-thirds of its members, because ‘If the House is big enough to contain all its Members, nine-tenths of its debates will be conducted in the depressing atmosphere of an almost empty or half-empty Chamber. The essence of good House of Commons speaking is the conversational style, the facility for quick, informal interruptions and interchanges.’30 Elsewhere he said of MPs, ‘They must have to crowd to get to their seats. And when it is a great occasion they must stand in the passages, and in the gangways. There must be an air of excitement. Why, even a nightclub can’t succeed if you have a place where everybody could sit or dance.’ (Location 18115)

‘narrow thrust’ approach of going deeper and faster towards Berlin. For all of his fascination with strategy, however, Churchill had remarkably little input into decision-making in the European theatre once the Allies had gone ashore at D-Day. By March 1945, Rowan thought that the Prime Minister was even ‘losing interest in the war, because he no longer has control of military affairs. Up till Overlord he saw himself as Marlborough, the supreme authority to whom all military decisions were referred. Now, in all but questions of wide and long-term strategy, he is by force of circumstance little more than a spectator.’107 He had not been deliberately sidelined, and he could have caused a good deal of trouble if he fundamentally disagreed with the overall approach, but Eisenhower was the supreme Allied commander and did not require Churchill’s input on issues even as fundamental as whether to adopt a ‘broad front’ strategy for invading Germany or a ‘narrow thrust’ one. (Location 19039)

view. But as Churchill had told the Octagon press conference, telegrams were ‘simply dead, blank walls compared to personal contacts’. (Location 19095)

When Colville confessed his error, Churchill gracefully said it had been his own fault for keeping Colville up so late.158 It was an integral part of Churchill’s leadership code never to scapegoat subordinates. (Location 19256)

The central messages of his speech were that ‘No boy or girl should ever be disheartened by lack of success in their youth, but should diligently and faithfully continue to persevere and make up for lost time,’ and that ‘Expert knowledge, however indispensable, is no substitute for a generous and comprehending outlook upon the human story, with all its sadness and with all its unquenchable hope.’ (Location 20196)

Churchill received £50,000 and the National Trust £35,000 for the property. In fact, Clementine moved out soon after Churchill’s death, but it meant that his beloved house was safe, and moreover that he received a huge payment that he could spend on an increasingly aristocratic lifestyle, which already included splendid holidays and gambling at Monte Carlo, but was also soon to include horse racing. Churchill turned a summerhouse at Chartwell into a butterfly house soon after the war, stocking it with the larvae of Red Admiral, Peacock, Tortoise Shell, Clouded Yellow, Painted Lady and Vanessa butterflies. (Location 20355)

In a debate on 28 October 1947, Churchill clearly set out an almost libertarian Tory alternative to socialism, with yet another phrase that was to live on. ‘Establish a basic standard for life and labour and provide the necessary basic foods for all,’ he said. ‘Once that is done, set the people free. Get out of the way, and let them all make the best of themselves, and win whatever prizes they can for their families and for their country … Only in this way will an active, independent, property-owning democracy be established.’ (Location 20389)

Although Churchill worked with Deakin most days in Morocco, he did it in the sunshine and clean air away from the London winter. ‘I do not need rest,’ he told Clementine, ‘but change is a great refreshment.’ (Location 20516)

virtually anything within the generalized soubriquet Imperium et Libertas. The rest can be explained by his statement in 1927 that ‘The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.’ (Location 21964)

He could also place Britain’s predicament in 1940–41 in its proper historical context, telling the British people that they had been there before in the past, and had ultimately prevailed. His speeches about how Drake had foiled the Armada and Nelson had destroyed the invasion threat posed by Napoleon were all the more powerful coming from a prime minister who was also an historian and biographer. His historical imagination was powerful, but it was also practical; it was intended to instruct and inform. This was true of every history book he wrote, and part of the reason why by his death he had sold more history books than any other historian in history. (Location 21983)

Like Roosevelt, Churchill came from the highest echelon of his society. ‘People will not look forward to posterity’, he liked to quote Edmund Burke as saying, ‘who never look backward to their ancestors.’33 Churchill constantly looked back to his own. His aristocratic background sits uncomfortably today with his image as the saviour of democracy, but had it not been for the unconquerable self-confidence of his caste background he might well have tailored his message to his political circumstances during the 1930s, rather than treating such an idea with disdain. He never suffered from middle-class deference or social anxiety, for the simple reason that he was not middle class, and what the respectable middle classes thought was not important to the child born at Blenheim. (Location 21998)

But one cannot pick and choose with Churchill; one has to take him all or nothing (‘totus porcus’, as Fisher put it in a different context). The man who defied Hitler and proclaimed the virtues of Liberty was the same man who was nauseated by Mahatma Gandhi. One cannot simply deplore his obstinacy and bullheadedness, because those were equally on display over India in the 1930s and the Nazis in 1940: they are the same man and in his mind he was defending the same Empire. ‘We would like genius to be discerning and moderate, to be a little bit more like the rest of us,’ wrote the historian Manfred Weidhorn. ‘Few geniuses have been so. Churchill had the vices of his virtues.’43 (Location 22072)

‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,’ George Bernard Shaw wrote in ‘The Revolutionist’s Handbook’; ‘the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ (Location 22135)

In that sense, Churchill was one of the greatest individualists of modern times, because he approached everything in life completely as an individual rather than as part of a group, from the moment he left his officers’ mess in 1899 onwards. He despised school, never attended university or worked in trade or the Civil Service or the colonies, served in six regiments (so never became slavishly attached to any of them), was blackballed from one club and forced to resign from another, left both the Conservative and Liberal parties and was not in any meaningful sense a Christian. Despite being the son of a chancellor of the Exchequer and the grandson of a duke, he was a contrarian and an outsider. He even refused to subscribe to the clubland anti-Semitism that was a social glue for much of the Respectable Tendency, but instead was an active Zionist. The reason his contemporaries saw him as profoundly perverse is because he truly was. (Location 22143)