March 28, 2015

Finest Hour 131, Summer 2006

Page 42

Winston Churchill’s Imagination, by Paul Alkon
(Bucknell University Press, 2006).

Although Churchill is a 1953 Nobel laureate in literature, his famous speeches have overshadowed his other writing. FH contributor Paul Alkon concentrates on key works in modes other than political rhetoric to show how Churchill engages readers with those words and ideas that are hallmarks of his imagination. Chapters include his literary relationship with Lawrence of Arabia; his intense, little-known involvement with cinema in his essay on Charlie Chaplin; and as a script writer and consultant for Alexander Korda; his evocation of paintings as templates for narrative in his first history and his only novel; his imaginative engagement with science and science fiction; the depiction of time, duration, and alternative history in Marlborough; and Churchill’s last testament in the realm of imagination, The Dream. (FH 126:45).

Finest Hour has asked historian Ted Hutchinson, editor of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (see p. 14), to continue this column in order to help us keep track of upcoming works.