March 22, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 11


Proof that Churchill’s The Second World War needed a book about it (David ReynoldsIn Command of History) is obvious from In Command’s reviews. Max Hastings’ referred to WSC’s volumes as a History and was accompanied by a cartoon referring to The World Crisis. Frank McLynn’s (The Times) and Ian McIntyre’s (The Independent) perpetuated the myth that Churchill won the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature for his war volumes. McLynn was upset that “Churchill employed a team, underpaid them and pocketed most of the loot. What emerged was a farrago of tendentious, tunnel-vision judgments, burnished with the benefit of hindsight and flavoured with phoney counterfactuals designed to show Churchill as wise and omniscient.” And now for the facts: see FH’s own review on page 38!

The New York Times, never wont to call George W. Bush a “great leader,” now records that unlike President Reagan, “who largely accepted the expansions in government made by his liberal predecessors, Mr. Bush is the first conservative whose policies would gradually unwind major commitments like Social Security and progressive taxes. It is increasingly clear that Mr. Bush embraces the view of Winston Churchill that great leaders should set great goals.”

Donald Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice,” was panned by Professor M.A. Simpson on www.health.24.com for its banal assignments and crass greed: “The sole criterion of success is money. And what is that odd hand-signal Trump so often flashes? Is it a hippie-era peace sign, or a feeble imitation of Winston Churchill’s symbol for victory? And notice how, even though it is warm summer weather, he prefers to be seen wearing a large black executive overcoat?” Er, no, we didn’t, ah, watch…

Nobel Literature Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek (Austria) refused to attend the award ceremony: the fourth literature laureate to fail to show up. Previous absentees were British-born Australian Patrick White in 1973, Ernest Hemingway in 1954, and Winston Churchill in 1953 (who was in Bermuda meeting with Eisenhower). Jelinek’s excuse was certainly not one Churchill ever used. She said she had a “social phobia.”

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Anty Dougan in the Evening Times (London) Online: “Churchill: The Hollywood Years” (84mins) is a lame comedy spoof with Winston Churchill reimagined as a Christian Slater action hero, winning the war aided by our own dear Queen. With Neve Campbell, Anthony Sher, Harry Enfield. Worst film of the year.” (Our review is on page 44.)

Writing in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Murray Campbell recalled the near-disaster when Churchill, visiting the front on 25 March 1945, insisted on being allowed to cross the Rhine: “As he peered through binoculars at the shattered ruins of Wesel, a German artillery shell landed just 50 metres away. The group around him said he seemed more perturbed about lighting his cigar in the wind than he was about the shellfire falling around him. ‘He finally lit that big cigar and walked away as if nothing had happened,’ U.S. Army Lieutenant Ellsworth Kerrigan said.”

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