The distinguished Mr. Churchill

The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, compiled by Dominique Enright, is a collection of quotes and anecdotes not only from Churchill himself, but from other people about Churchill. While there is no discernable plot to this book the character formation of Mr. Churchill that occurs is outstanding. I read this book twice, once in a humorous mood and once in a somewhat cynical mood, and each time I came away with a different perspective on Mr. Churchill’s personality and character.

I do not believe that I could simply convey in my own words what Mr. Churchill’s most prominent characteristics are because, as previously stated, I came away with different perspectives of the same man from the same book. To that end I have selected some of the quotes from the book that I feel accurately portrays the Churchill that the author was trying to depict.

‘If I valued the honourable gentleman’s opinion I might get angry,’ WSC responded calmly when an Ulster Member shouted ‘Contemptible’ during an Irish Home Rule debate in the House.

‘Politics is like waking up in the morning. You never know whose head you’ll find on the pillow.’

Churchill could not resist puns, even when the circumstances perhaps did not call for levity. When on a tour of Africa in 1907, he was informed by a Colonial Governor that venereal disease was spreading at an alarming rate among the ‘natives’. ‘Ah, Pox Britannica!’ Churchill diagnosed.

On the same journey, after a march of over a hundred miles, Churchill turned to his Private Secretary Eddie Marsh and said, ‘So fari – so goodi!’

‘The whipped jackal, who, to save his own skin, has made of Italy a vassal state of Hitler’s Empire, is frisking up by the side of the German tiger with yelps not only of appetite – that could be understood – but even of triumph.’ (The jackal in this speech to the House in April 1941 is Mussolini. In November 1942 Mussolini transmogrified slightly: ‘The hyena in his nature broke all bounds of decency and even common sense.’)

A BBC broadcaster described once sitting next to Churchill as he gave a speech, keeping his audience hanging on to his every word. The broadcaster noticed, however, that what appeared to be notes in Churchill’s hand was only a laundry slip, and he later remarked upon this to Churchill. ‘Yes,’ said WSC. ‘It gives confidence to my audience.’

Margot Asquith, Herbert Asquith’s second wife, found his (WSC) vanity a bit much at times, and is said on one occasion to have exclaimed: ‘He would kill his own mother just so that he could use her skin to make a drum to beat his own praises.’

WSC on Joseph Chamberlain (father of Neville Chamberlain) ‘Mr. Chamberlain loves the working man; he loves to see him work.’

WSC on Arthur Balfour (Prime Minister 1902-6) ‘If you wanted nothing done, Arthur Balfour was the best man for the task. There was no equal to him.’

‘It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.’

WSC on Neville Chamberlain (PM 1937-40) ‘You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.’

‘Eating my words has never given me indigestion.’

‘I am not usually accused even by my friends of a modest or retiring disposition.’

‘I do not resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it parts for the time with reality.’

‘I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.’ (Churchill on his seventy-fifth birthday)

‘Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?’

It is said that at the Yalta conference in 1945, Roosevelt having made a fulsome tribute to the Soviet leader, Churchill was persuaded by an aide to follow suit (objecting the while: ‘But they do not want peace’). Getting to his feet, he proposed a toast to ‘Premier Stalin, whose conduct of foreign policy manifests a desire for peace.’ Then, in a whispered aside out of the interpreter’s hearing: ‘A piece of Poland, a piece of Czechoslovakia, a piece of Romania....’

...Churchill visited Richmond, Virginia, where a sculpture of him was being unveiled. A magnificently Rubenesque lady came up to him and cooed enthusiastically at him: ‘Mr Churchill, I want you to know I got up at dawn and drove a hundred miles for the unveiling of your bust.’ Looking upon her generous endowments, WSC answered, ‘Madam, I want you to know that I would happily reciprocate the honour.’

Another story has it that while visiting a parachute factory, Churchill absentmindedly took out a cigar. Immediately, the fire officer came running up: ‘Sir, sir, you mustn’t smoke!’ he cried out. ‘Oh, don’t worry, dear boy,’ came the reply. ‘I don’t inhale.’

‘Too often the strong silent man is silent because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.’

‘A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.’

‘Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.’

Even on the most serious of occasions, Churchill could not resist little jokes, and when he arrived on the Normandy beachhead on D-Day –plus-6 (12 June 1944) to meet Montgomery, he sent Roosevelt a postcard: ‘Wish you were here.’

Winston Churchill was a politician whose political savvy was unmatched. He was in office through two world wars, one of which he held the position of Prime Minister. He led the world through the Second World War, at times kicking and screaming, never compromising his personal values and the values of his country.

Whatever one might feel about Mr. Churchill’s character and personality, I believe that no one could deny that he was the greatest and most fascinating world leaders of the 20th century.

Hemingway + Fish = Agony

I was so wrong. The last E. Hemingway book that I read, The Nick Adams Stories, was the better of the Hemingway novels I undertook to read. My latest foray into mind numbing, plotless, imagery smothered nothingness was with the novel Islands in the Stream. I felt confident that Mr. Hemingway could only get better as a writer. Oh how I was wrong.
The plot was about......hmmmm...was there a plot? The character! Yes I'm sure there is something redeeming that I learned about the character in the first 150 pages. Oh wait. There wasn't.
And then there was a fish. A forty page long fish. A forty page long fish with a cycle of events that seemed to be on repeat. Oh the agony of it!
Needless to say I did not finish this book. I have not seen torture as a course requirement in the syllabus for English Lit, so I can not bring myself to pick up its most hated pages and again submit myself to mind numbing anguish and pain.
If anyone would like to relieve me of the agony of having this, or any, Hemingway novel in my house you need only ask and it is yours!

Ernest Hemingway.........pppfffffffffttttttttttt(this is a raspberry)

The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway. A collection of stories about nothing. Stories that flit randomly throughout time. Stories about nothing and.....nothing. Unless the stories are meant to be about nothing. In which case these are everything. And nothing.
There must have been some literary genius in the past that warrents peoples affections for Mr. Hemingway. This book, however, is not it. There was no plot. The characters were, for the most part, undefined. You learn everything and nothing about everyone and no one. There was some beautiful imagery throughout the book. That is its only redeeming quality. However,that is not enough to sustain a reader through countless pages of nothingness!
This was probably by far the most frustrating book I have ever read.

Sir Arthur Conan Dolye: C.S.I. Pioneer

Sir Arthur Conan Dolye’s The Hound of the Baskervilles was my first literary foray into criminal mysteries. While reading Sir Arthur’s novel on the effects of superstition I became fascinated with the forensic pathology presented within. The book read like a hundred year old script for C.S.I.! From determining the presence of a certain person by the butt of a cigarette to revealing how a common hound was turned into a demonic phantom with the use of glowing chemicals, these ideas seemed so advanced for the age in which the novel was written.
Due to the fact that, like Jules Verne, Doyle seemed ahead of his time in the area of forensic pathology, I began to dig deeper into where his ideas were coming from. Was Sir Arthur acquainted with a detective using the latest tools in the arsenal of detecting? Was Sir Arthur himself a detective who wrote about his experiences through the eyes of his fictional Sherlock Holmes? It was in fact neither of these. Sir Arthur himself was the mastermind behind these groundbreaking forensic ideas!
Sir Arthur’s creation, Sherlock Holmes, employed the use of trace evidence, ballistics, fingerprints, handwriting analysis, and toxicological techniques in his investigations. Holmes also employed the use of psychology to determine the mental state and/or personality through the study of a person’s personal items. Sir Arthur, again through the character of Sherlock Holmes, would rail against the inefficiency of the common police investigation, concluding that they (the police) as the first ones on the scene, had contaminated the investigation almost beyond repair. The idea of preserving a crime scene wasn’t in common usage for years to come.
For those people who are addicted to the forensic pathology smothered television shows of our day, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles is a great book in which to observe the evolution of crime scene investigations.