August 12, 2013

Finest Hour 118, Spring 2003

Page 13

Send your questions to the editor

Q: Where and when did Churchill ”say: “Of all the small nations of this earthy perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind?”

A: We don’t know. Will a reader lease advise us?

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Q: I am looking for a biography that focuses on Churchill’s personality! character, i.e., on the man rather than the politician. In particular I am interested how he coped with his failures and how he dealt with the “Black Dog” [his name for depression]. I would appreciate a recommendation.

A: From the upcoming Annotated Bibliography of Works About Sir Winston Churchill by Curt Zoller, to be published this spring:

A336. Taylor, A.J.P. et al. Churchill: Four Faces And The Man. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1969, 274 pp; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973, paperback. Churchill Revised. New York: Dial Press, 1969, 274 pp. Contributors: Rhodes James, Robert: “The Politician.” Liddell Hart, Basil: “The Military Strategist.” Plumb, J. H.:” The Historian.” Storr, Anthony: “The Man.” Taylor, A. J. P.: “The Statesman.” These famous authorities take a mildly revisionist look at Churchill the politician, strategist and historian. Anthony Storr offers a controversial psychological profile, which has been criticized for overplaying Churchill’s periods of depression on the grounds that Storr never knew the patient he describes. Storr later published Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind, New York: Grove Press 1988 1st ed., 310 pp. In this book Storr revisits his 1965 essay on Churchill and depression in Four Faces and the Man, but makes far more of “Churchill’s lifelong depression” than WSC himself made of it.

Some of the broader biographies give a thoughtful appreciation of Churchill’s character: Violet Bonham-Carter, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him, 1965 (American title Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait); Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography, 2001; William Manchester, The Last Lion (2 vols.), 1982/88; and Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, 1994. Bonham-Carter goes only up to 1916, but knew Churchill intimately. Gilbert offers many inside observations from people interviewed by the official biographer, with much insight and information not available elsewhere.

Q: Did Churchill contemplate the possibility of transferring the British government to Canada in the event of a Nazi invasion of the U.K.?

A: lt was probably planned as a contingency at lower levels, but was certainly never considered seriously by Churchill himself. He had every intent to go down at the door of No. 10 with a gun in his hand. There were plans to sail the Fleet to Canada or the U.S. should the worst happen. Pick up a copy of Churchill’s second volume of war memoirs, Their Finest Hour, which deals with this period in detail.

Q: Where in his speeches did Churchill talk of a “House of Many Mansions,” and what did he mean?

A: “The day will come when the joybells will ring again throughout Europe, and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition, and in freedom, a house of many mansions, where there will be room for all.”

Churchill delivered this House of Commons speech on 20 January 1940, while he was still First Lord of the Admiralty. We do not find this speech listed in the bibliography of speeches produced on records, although we do seem to remember hearing this particular excerpt.