Richard
There is a tailpiece to all of this. WSC and Clementine attended the
Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on 12th May 1937 (the date
originally set for that of King Edward VIII). Afterwards, as they left
Westminster Abbey, WSC is reported to have said to his wife: "You were
quite right, Clemmie: I see now that the other one wouldn't have done."
Presumably he was referring to Wallis rather than Edward VIII, but I can't
remember the source: any ideas?
As for the film, the main theme was very well done, but there were too many
peripheral historical inaccuracies: the director may have thought that
these were part of his artistic licence, which is a pity. The one which
really set my teeth on edge was when Baldwin came to see George VI and said,
"I have come to tender my resignation; Neville Chamberlain will succeed
me." How crass can you get? [For any puzzled reader, it is up to the
Sovereign to choose the Prime Minister, who will be the person he/she judges
to be able to command the support of the House of Commons. He/she is not
bound to ask the outgoing Prime Minister for formal advice on the choice of
a successor and he may or may not have asked for Baldwin's official
recommendation on this occasion, but he almost certainly did so, knowing
perfectly well what the answer would be. Baldwin would never have
trespassed on the royal prerogative by pre-empting the question as depicted
in the film.]
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Editor/Finest Hour" <[email protected]>
To: "ChurchillChat" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 9:54 PM
Subject: [ChurchillChat] Re: The King's Speech
(Revised by sender)
WASHINGTON, JANUARY 25TH— A new film, The King's Speech (reviewed next
issue) “is riddled with gross falsifications of history” according to
Christopher Hitchens, writing in SLATE (www. slate.com/id/2282194/).
The production, Hitchens says, whitewashes Churchill by painting WSC
as an ally of George VI, who succeeded his brother, the egregious Nazi
sympathizer Edward VIII, when in fact the “bombastic” Churchill stuck
with Edward unto the end, at the expense of his political capital as
an anti-appeaser. Once Edward abdicated, the Royal Family was
rehabilitated: “Almost the entire moral capital of this rather odd
little German dynasty is invested in the post-fabricated myth of its
participation in ‘Britain's finest hour.’”
We were all set to send SLATE a rebuttal to Hitchens’ characteristic
rants, as over his Atlantic article in 2002 (FINEST HOUR 114,
http://xrl.us/bif47u), which labeled Churchill “incompetent, boorish,
drunk and mostly wrong.” But many readers of SLATE who responded on
their website have already done so.
If the film emphasizes Churchill’s instinctive support for the
monarchy, however undeserving the monarch, its representation is
accurate. “Mr. David Windsor” was indeed a regrettable character, and
contrary to Hitchens wasn’t even controllable as Governor of The
Bahamas, where some locals still recall the several kettles of fish
left in his wake when he quit Nassau.
But George VI was hardly alone in supporting Chamberlain and
appeasement—a whole generation had been wasted in the last war. A more
sensitive evaluation is the one by Alistair Cooke at the 1988
International Churchill Conference: “The British people would do
anything to stop Hitler, except fight him. And if you had been there,
ladies and gentlemen—if you had been alive and sentient and British in
the 1930s—not one in ten of you would have backed Churchill.” One can
only imagine what a 1930s Hitchens say about the “bombastic” Member
for Woodford. Come to think of it, some did.
King George VI’s deportment in World War II won him the lasting
respect of his people and Churchill, eclipsing his mistaken beliefs
before 1940. Churchill’s setback after defending Edward VIII was brief
and insignificant; his comeback as a “Prophet of Truth” was soon back
on track as events proved he’d been right all along.
Gross falsifications of history? All we have here is the grossly
iconoclastic Chris Hitchens, current personification of the Member of
Parliament described by Arthur Balfour: “The hon. gentleman has said
much that is trite and much that is true, but what’s true is trite,
and what’s not trite is not true.”
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