December 30, 2016

Finest Hour 174, Autumn 2016

Page 46

Tom Curran, Grand Deception: Churchill and the Dardanelles, Big Sky Publishing, 2015, 416 pages, $29.95. ISBN 978–1925275001

Iain Sproat, Adam Sykes, Pat Morgan, editors, The Wit & Wisdom of Sir Winston Churchill, G2 Entertainment, 2015, 134 pages, £8.99, $14.95. ISBN 978–1909040052

Review by David Freeman

David Freeman is the editor of Finest Hour.

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Hard to find and hardly worth it, the latest “wit & wisdom” book came out in 2015 as an obvious attempt to capitalize on events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Churchill’s death. Paradoxically, the book’s initial availability through online sellers seemed harder to nail down than the smoke from Sir Winston’s cigar. By 2016, though, the book had been remaindered and sold at a steep discount.

Churchill quote books have proliferated for decades. Most are worthless, and this is no exception. The editors provide a list of books at the end from which they apparently have drawn their material. Most quotations are not cited, however, except for a few extracts from speeches. Unsurprisingly, then, the text includes its fair share of misquotes and misattributions. Once again, readers are reminded that their best resource for this genre is Richard M. Langworth’s Churchill in His Own Words.

At least The Wit & Wisdom editors were well-meaning. In Grand Deception: Churchill and the Dardanelles, author Tom Curran starts with an attitude of pure malevolence. The word among academics down under is that the Australian branch of Cambridge University Press expressed an interest in publishing what was originally a doctoral dissertation and sent it to the UK office for review, which said no. Some believe it was because Cambridge UK was unwilling to publish anything critical of Churchill, but this seems unlikely. In any case, it has been published with the financial assistance of the Australian army’s historical section.

Cambridge probably declined to publish Grand Deception because it is simply a truly awful book—the worst sort of amateur rubbish and shocking to think someone got a Ph.D. for it. Ironically, the author died prematurely before publication of the book, which was edited by an academic mentor. Curran accepted as gospel truth every criticism of Churchill he ever read, no matter how flimsy the evidence, and dismissed out of hand anything remotely positive. And he made some outrageous errors (e.g., quoting Martin Gilbert’s words and attributing them to Churchill). A puckish Churchill might have termed these “attributions of inexactitude.”