On my recent book tour for my new book, Secrets of Adulthood, I did an event at a space that featured a large photograph of Winston Churchill. Seeing that photo got me reflecting on Winston Churchill—his words, his actions, his legacy.
Years ago, I wrote a biography of Churchill, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill. What a joy it was to write that book! What a subject, what a time in history. In that short, unconventional biography, I tried to capture the complexity of Churchill—his gifts and virtues, his weaknesses and limitations, and his contribution.
I enjoyed doing the research for that book tremendously, and one major reason was that Churchill himself was such an exceptional writer. His command of language, of story, of metaphor was absolutely extraordinary. I learned so much from studying his style; it’s so vivid, so compelling, so funny. He could use magnificent phrases to reach transcendent heights, and he could use short, simple words to strike the heart.
(As a side note: As a writer myself, I sometimes feel exasperated when some towering figure in another field, such as art, politics, or finance, is also an exceptional writer. When I read something like the journals of artists Eugene Delacroix or Anne Truitt, or the Letters to Shareholders of Warren Buffett, I think, “Gosh, you got a double helping of genius.” But I digress.)
Because I’d started thinking about Churchill, for pure pleasure I went back to my giant Churchill research document to refresh myself by re-reading some of my favorite passages from his writings and speeches. Here are some that I sought out.
Of course, his work reflects the historical times and circumstances in which he wrote.
In a February 9, 1941, BBC broadcast addressed to the United States, Churchill said:
Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under Providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
In a 1938 letter, Churchill wrote, “We seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at present.”
He described a fellow politician as possessing “the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought.”
In a speech to the House of Commons on November 11, 1947, Churchill observed: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
One of his most famous lines comes from a speech he made to the House of Commons in 1940. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” (A while back, I did an episode of “A Little Happier” on the moving story behind that line.)
While discussing the advisability of making use a general who was widely disliked, Churchill observed, “Remember, it isn’t only the good boys who help to win wars; it is the sneaks and the stinkers as well.”
Here’s an interesting observation he made, and I’ve debated in my mind about whether I agree:
In all great business very large errors are excused or even unperceived, but in definite and local matters small mistakes are punished all out of proportion….Those who are charged with the direction of supreme affairs must sit on the mountain-tops of control; they must never descend into the valleys of direct physical and personal action.
It’s hard to believe that Churchill had time to do anything other than be a statesman and writer, but he was also a dedicated painter. In his delightful little book Painting as a Pastime (Amazon, Bookshop), he observed, “To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.”
Of a fellow politician’s modesty, Churchill said, “But then, he has a great deal to be modest about.”
He advised a fellow politician, “Never stand when you can sit and never sit if you can lie down.”
Here are a few of my favorite similes he invoked, from two different times in his life, when he had lost or was about to lose a position of power: “Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure.” Years later he described himself, just before his final resignation as Prime Minister, he described himself: “I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight, in the dusk, with petrol running out, in search of a safe landing.”
On September 11, 1940, during the terrifying days of the Blitz, Churchill broadcast to the nation about the threat posed by Hitler:
This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatreds, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed.
On August 16, 1945, in the House of Commons, Churchill raised the issue of the use of the atomic bomb against Japan:
For this and many other reasons the United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world. I rejoice that this should be so. Let them act up to the level of their power and their responsibility, not for themselves but for others, for all men in all lands, and then a brighter day may dawn upon human history.
And here is perhaps my favorite passage from Churchill, from his June 4, 1940, address to the House of Commons:
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.
Finally, about himself, I will quote a line that he wrote about someone else: “We do not see his like nowadays, though our need is grave.”
If you’re thinking to yourself that you have powerful objections to things that Churchill said or did, never fear. Read Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, and you’ll see that I wrote about those things, too.
We can admire someone yet also acknowledge that not everything they did was admirable.