April 7, 2015

Finest Hour 133, Winter 2006-07

Page 44

‘”STUDY HISTORY, STUDY HISTORY,’ CHURCHILL IMPLORED. American kids are not the only ones who do not, English kids are no better, and the French are even worse. A few weeks ago I tried to talk to an educated Parisian couple about Georges Clemenceau. The only connection they could think of was the Clemenceau subway station in Paris!” —JL


Jim and Lydia Lancaster live in the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, France, close to Utah Beach, where the 7th U.S. Corps Airborne and Infantry Divisions landed on 6 June 1944. Jim was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, so favoured by Winston Churchill and his nanny Mrs. Everest, not far from Chartwell, on 21 December 1942—the day Churchill and Roosevelt made plans to meet in Casablanca. Many years later he went to Marlborough, and then to Balliol College, Oxford, followed by a peripatetic career in business and consulting.

When Jim moved to the United States in 1975 he took his first serious steps towards becoming a graduate Churchillian. He started to build a library—reading copies and first editions. He did this the old-fashioned way, by exploring secondhand bookshops in New York, San Francisco, London and a great many other towns. It was a lot of fun, and it still is.

What attracted him to building a Churchill library, having first built a Samuel Johnson library? Three main reasons: a passion for history, the pleasure of reading words writ well, and an ever deeper admiration for the life and work of Winston Spencer Churchill. Over time Jim has become an impenitent, unreconstructed Churchillian, building up a “quiver full of arrows in debate.”

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Today Jim is doing his best to thank Churchill for his very being, and to keep the memory alive. He has recently written sixteen essays for the new Discover Churchill website sponsored by The Churchill Centre—a pedagogic site aimed at high school students. His essays are designed to introduce young people to many different aspects of Churchill’s extraordinary life.

Jim has also taken over the ChurchillTrivia column, now named ChurchillQuiz, in Finest Hour, starting this issue (page opposite). As before there will be typical quiz questions, such as “When was Great Contemporaries first published?” Other questions are specifically designed to inspire readers, for example, “What did Churchill describe in a speech to the House on 5 October 1938 as ‘a total and unmitigated defeat?'” Such questions will encourage readers to explore with growing interest the life and work of a man who, in his finest hour, saved our world from unimaginable tyranny.

Before creating the new ChurchillQuiz column, Jim entered all previous Q&As in a database to avoid repetition. None of his questions will have appeared in any previous edition of Finest Hour. Surprisingly, many simple ones, such as “When was Winston Churchill born?,” have never been asked before.

And the questions are easier! Also important—in each Quiz the easier ones come first. This is intentional. It encourages all readers to tackle the ChurchillQuiz, and inspires the brave to persevere “even unto the end.”

Not only is Jim doing this; and writing features (Churchill and Lloyd George in our next issue); and contributing to Suzanne Sigman’s new educational Churchill website; and helping the editor find gems for his new book of Churchill quotations, maxims and reflections. He is also digging out quotations that stump the editor, such as, from a researcher in Belgrade: “When did Churchill refer to the Serbs as ‘the Prussians of the Balkans?'” He really has left us with no other choice but to name him, with pride and affection, Finest Hour‘s newest Senior Editor.

A tribute, join us

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