Now there's some sense. I would love to know what Hastings response to that question. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
-----Original Message----- From: Carey Stronach <[email protected]> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 03:40:11 To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [ChurchillChat] WINSTON - THIS ONE IS WORSE THAN THE TELEGRAPH !! Wasn't one savior of western civilization from one specific family enough? What does this claque expect? Carey E. Stronach, Ph.D. ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 00:28:09 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Re: [ChurchillChat] WINSTON - THIS ONE IS WORSE THAN THE TELEGRAPH !! I have to say I agree with you. I always considered Max Hastings to be an accurate source of knowledge with a non-bias to politics when it came to reporting history. Clearly, if this is an example of his writings, maybe the accuracy of his books should be questioned by professional historians who regard factual history as imperative, not optional. I feel saddened to write this comment and would be grateful if you would post it on the blog. You know, if not for Winston, don't these insensitive fools care about his family? Thanks, Jonathan Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: richard geschke <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 22:33:07 To: <[email protected]> Subject: RE: [ChurchillChat] WINSTON - THIS ONE IS WORSE THAN THE TELEGRAPH !! Max Hastings is a well known historical Author who is well known and respected in his field. However, this piece he has written is highly opinionated and in essence rather uppity and snobbish. Even his thoughts in his book "Armageddon" were critical of the Western Allies armed services in World War II. In retrospect his books are well researched but he also forms opinions which are just that, opinions. In this instance Hastings should have taken the better course of valor and pass on writing his opinions of Winston Churchill the grandson. Richard C. Geschke From: [email protected] Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 23:46:07 -0500 Subject: [ChurchillChat] WINSTON - THIS ONE IS WORSE THAN THE TELEGRAPH !! To: [email protected] debate Like so many who live in the shadow of greatness, Winston the Younger was cursed from birth By Max Hastings Last updated at 10:13 AM on 04th March 2010 Should you wish to lay a blessing on a child, pray that he or she may bear a name nobody knows. Winston Churchill, who died on Tuesday at the age of 69, was cursed with one that no man could live up to. The grandson of the greatest of Englishmen, his life was spent shackled to his birthright as if to a ball and chain. Young Winston might have been happier had he become a tree surgeon or a stamp collector. As it was, in his youth he tried being a war correspondent, and people shrugged that he wrote nothing as good as his grandfather's dispatches from South Africa. Hard act to follow: Winston Churchill never matched his grandfather He became a Conservative MP in 1970 before he was 30, and the world waited in vain for him to deliver great speeches. He aspired to be a statesman, but never even achieved ministerial office because he persistently defied his party's leadership in pursuit of ill-judged, Right-wing causes. His own father Randolph asserted bitterly: 'Nothing grows in the shadow of a great oak tree.' The strain of bearing a name that was instantly recognised from Canberra to Calcutta, of fulfilling expectations beyond the reach of most mortals, burdened young Winston from the cradle to the grave. It would have pained his grandfather immeasurably to see how little happiness or respect the family heritage brought him. A cynic might suggest that great men should take care to have no progeny. Try to imagine what it is like to be surrounded from infant-hood by people for ever invoking the spirit of one's parent or ancestor. The sorrows that beset the Churchill family are familiar to many towering figures of history. Emperors and kings, generals and statesmen, writers, painters and tycoons have alike discovered that their offspring often suffer for their own fame and achievements, because brilliance so seldom passes from one generation to the next. Among the legendary figures of old Winston Churchill's time, President Franklin Roosevelt's four children led notably unsuccessful lives. Stalin's son, renounced by his father, died as a prisoner of the Nazis, while his daughter Svetlana wrote an entire book about why she hated Russia's warlord. As adults, the children of almost all the great commanders of World War II achieved at best obscurity, at worst notoriety. Try to imagine what it is like to be surrounded from infant-hood by people for ever invoking the spirit of one's parent or ancestor, saying - as they often did to young Winston - 'Your grandfather would have done this'; 'Your grandfather would have wanted that'; 'Your grandfather would have done that differently.' Such people usually intended no ill-will. They merely wished to worship at the family shrine. But their words bore heavily on the name-bearer. Few of history's geniuses have been wilfully unkind to their progeny. Most of their family problems have derived from circumstances, not malevolence. Legacy: Sir Winston Churchill Old Winston's life was dominated by memories of the cruelty and remoteness of his own father, Lord Randolph Churchill, who predicted the worst for his sluggish schoolboy son, and died before the boy embarked on his path to glory. In old Winston's last years, his daughter Mary asked if he had any unfulfilled ambitions. He answered slowly, and intolerably movingly: 'I should have liked my father to live long enough to see that I made something of my life.' The scars were still there. The great statesman, by contrast, lavished love on his own five children. On his only son Randolph, in particular, he heaped passionate hopes and ambitions. >From Randolph's earliest years, his father made him a privileged companion, >inciting his precocious dinner table rants, forgiving his drunkenness, >promoting a starry political future for him. The consequences were disastrous. Randolph, grossly indulged, learned to bellow intemperate opinions at the most unsuitable moments. He gambled as recklessly as a young duke, acted the boor among great and humble folk alike. When he underwent surgery for a tumour which was found to be non-malignant, Evelyn Waugh famously observed that it was a typical triumph of medical science 'to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it'. Randolph's cleverness and fluency were undoubted, but he was bankrupt of judgment. He possessed all his father's vices, but only a smidgeon of his gifts, notably as a talented writer. When Randolph briefly became an MP in 1940, the U.S. military attache; in London wrote in his diary: 'Young Churchill is probably the least-liked son of a famous father in this country and only got into the Commons by virtue of his father's position.' Randolph's extravagance was appalling, and beyond his father's means. In 1942, Lord Beaverbrook paid his gambling debts. What would the world say today if a prime minister's son turned to a press lord to fund his lifestyle? When he underwent surgery for a tumour which was found to be non-malignant, Evelyn Waugh famously observed that it was a typical triumph of medical science 'to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it'. Winston once grumbled wretchedly: 'I love Randolph, but I don't like him.' This, surely, was a dreadful remark for a father to be driven to make about his son. Randolph married the famously beautiful Pamela Digby, an aristocratic showjumper whose athleticism soon extended to other fields. But the alliance did not last. Winston Churchill was often compared to his grandfather, pictured in 1946 In her later years, an unkind wit described her as 'a world expert on rich men's bedroom ceilings'. She married the U.S. millionaire Averell Harriman, and eventually became U.S. ambassador in Paris during the Clinton presidency. These two, then, were young Winston's parents. He himself was born at the summit of his grandfather's glory, in October 1940, the hour of victory in the Battle of Britain. It was a cruel kindness of his parents to confer on him the greatest name on earth. In adulthood, he strove clumsily to be worthy of it. Yet again and again, he attached himself to bad causes, or at least pleaded good causes without wisdom. His character was flawed by a strand of silliness, the more injurious because his name ensured that his utterances could always gain an audience. An ardent Cold Warrior, he espoused a brand of cheap nationalism which often embarrassed his party. Though he never earned much money, he sought to sustain a rich man's lifestyle by exploiting the family heritage. He severely tarnished his reputation by promoting a nasty deal for the family trust's sale of the Churchill papers to the nation for £12.5 million, when the nation properly owned many of them already. His personal life sometimes verged on the tawdry, not least during his much-publicised affair with Mrs Adnan Khashoggi, the wife of a Saudi arms dealer. Young Winston was not a bad man, but he did some bad things, because he possessed a conceit unsupported by many brains. Few of us would judge him too harshly, however, because his predicament deserves sympathy. The Churchill name brought him little happiness or contentment, only the knowledge that the world was saying brutally: 'Well, he's no chip off the old block.' Among Winston Churchill's five children, the only one to achieve real fulfillment and to confer lasting honour on her generation is, of course, the youngest, Mary Soames. She was a brilliant wife to Christopher Soames as politician, Paris ambassador and EU Commissioner, a fine chairman of the National Theatre, and a pillar of innumerable good causes. Prodigious Mary has shown us that it is possible to bear fame without pretension, to spread fun and goodwill everywhere in her path, to carry the torch for her awesome parents as if it was feather light. Few people can glimpse her at a party or spend an hour in her company without falling under her spell. She has shown how a great legacy can and should be worn. Poor young Winston was less lucky, partly because he was less gifted. If we were to wish him one stroke of fortune in the place to which he has now gone, it might be that no one up there should be told who his grandfather was. Print this article Read later Email to a friend -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat?hl=en. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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