"Very often the eagles have been squalled down by the parrots." —Churchill, House of Commons, 18 January 1945
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29701767 This is such a rote performance, all too typical. First, they tee up Churchill as the savior of 1940. Then they tear him down with the familiar litany of myths. One doesn’t mind the BBC addressing popular controversies—many of us do it all the time. But to quote his supposed racist views, the rude things he said about Gandhi (but not the nice things, or what Gandhi said about him), and the Sidney Street episode as examples of the "top ten" is intellectually dishonest. The *real* controversies of Churchill's career include the Dardanelles, Russia 1919, Versailles, the Middle East, the Gold Standard, Disarmament, the Rhineland, Munich, Singapore, strategic bombing, Hiroshima, and a postwar Russian summit, among others. The BBC is a product of a media catering to their perceived audience, which dotes on popular myth, not research. And I don't think Churchill gets a fair shake in some of their explanations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2922747/We-shall-fight-BBC-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-imagines-Churchill-mincemeat-Paxman-interview.html Good grief, we ran something like this back in *Finest Hour *in the early 1980s. It is moire amusing than the *Daily Mail*'s usual fare. Sadly, though, Churchill never said he could only deal with one s**** at a time....And "Jaw-jaw is better than war-war" was said by Macmillan, not Churchill. On the cacophony of drivel emerging on this anniversary, I am impressed and guided by a great and balanced historian, Paul Addison, whose books on Churchill remain standard works on the subject: ”Don't worry about attacks on Churchill. He is alive and kicking and haunts the British imagination like no other twentieth century politician. He will always be caricatured, as he was in his lifetime. But freedom of speech and expression was one of the things he fought for, and in his time he gave as good as he got. The more provocative comments about him are a backhanded tribute, as they work on the assumption that most people admire him. My own personal view is that he was even greater as a human being than he was as a politician, a role in which he did make mistakes as we all do. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
