The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-40

It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.

There was, however, a difference between his mood and that of the rest of the cabinet. They felt desperate; he felt challenged.

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.

Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.

Today's Europeans and Americans who reached the age of awareness after midcentury when the communications revolution lead to expectations of instantanaiy are exasperated by the slow toils of history. They assume that the thunderclap of cause will be swiftly followed by the lightening bolt of effect.

A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it… the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts…. It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary; it fulfils the same function as pain in the human body, it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things.

GBS wired Winston: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Churchill wired back: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”61

The key to successful extramarital sex, therefore, was discretion. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, perhaps the most outspoken woman in polite society, said dryly: “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom, as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”43

Byron wrote his shortest and most eloquent poem as a testament to a titled woman who had taken leave of her husband for a nine-month romp with him: Caroline Lamb, Goddamn.

I like to live in the past. I don't think people are going to get much fun in the future

the essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.

read three or four books at a time to avoid tedium”—and

In the nineteenth century,” he observed, “Jules Verne wrote Round the World in Eighty Days. It seemed a prodigy. Now you can get around it in four, but you do not see much of it on the way.

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a Zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.

The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it becomes the past succeed only in making it seem implausible.

In Parliament a fellow MP whispered to him that his trousers were unfastened. “It makes no difference,” Winston replied wryly. “The dead bird doesn’t leave the nest.

He could not recall “any time when the gap between the kind of words which statesmen used and what was actually happening in many countries was so great as it is now.

The appeasers had been powerful; they had controlled The Times and The BBC; they had been largely drawn from the upper classes, and their betrayal of England's greatness would be neither forgotten nor forgiven by those who, gulled by the mystique of England's class system, had believed as Englishmen had believed for generations that public school boys governed best. The appeasers destroyed oligarchic rule which, though levelers may protest, had long governed well. If ever men betrayed their class, these were they. Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, Anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold all that had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.

Exploring the mind of the psychotic is impossible - the shortest distance between two points becomes a maze.

The author points out that novices to total war, and this Hitler and the British press have in common, overreact to daily events and lose sight of overall strategy.

Nazi aggression, one might think, should have lent support to Winston’s candidacy. At this, of all times, it seems inconceivable that Baldwin would pick a weak man to supervise the defense of England. Nevertheless, that was what he did. Baldwin said outright: “If I pick Winston, Hitler will be cross.” In his biography of Chamberlain, Keith Feiling writes that the Rhineland was “decisive against Winston’s appointment”; it was “obvious that Hitler would not like it.” As the prime minister’s heir apparent, Chamberlain encouraged Baldwin to think along these lines. He suggested that Baldwin choose a man “who would excite no enthusiasm” and “create no jealousies.” The prime minister agreed. On Saturday, March 14—exactly a week since German troops had crossed the Rhine—he announced that he was establishing, not a ministry of defense, but a ministry for coordination of defense. Its leader, the new cabinet member, would be Sir Thomas Inskip.

Churchill warned them now: “When you are drifting down the stream of Niagara, it may easily happen that from time to time you run into a reach of quite smooth water, or that a bend in the river or a change in the wind may make the roar of the falls seem far more distant. But”—his voice dropped a register, and only those who strained could hear—“your hazard and your preoccupation are in no way affected thereby.

He blamed it on the government who’s insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it.

Tell him I’m on the privy and can take only one shit at a time.

The Nazis, never troubled by the principle of diplomatic immunity, opened the British pouches and read these reports before they reached London. Hitler told Lord Londonderry

have the impression that the persons directing the policy of the Hitler Government are not normal. Many of us, indeed, have a feeling that we are living in a country where fanatic hooligans and eccentrics have got the upper hand.

Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind and conscience.

It is a shocking thing when a Government openly commits itself to statements on a matter affecting the public safety which are bound to be flagrantly disproved by events.

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure.

The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victims to a big lie [eine grosse Lüge] than to a small one.

Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher, later observed that the Churchill of 1940 was neither 'a sensitive lens, which absorbs and concentrates and reflects . . . the sentiments of others,' nor a politician who played 'on public opinion like an instrument'. Instead, Berlin saw him as a leader who 'imposed his imagination and his will upon his countrymen,' idealizing them 'with such intensity that in the end they approached his ideal and began to see themselves as he saw them'. In doing so, he 'transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armour.

Military exercises were considered a joke, and work unnecessary drudgery. The next step down was alcoholism. It appears to have descended upon the whole army overnight. L' ivrognerie -- drunkenness -- had made an immediate appearance, General Ruby noted, and in the larger railroad stations, special rooms had to be set up to cope with it, euphemistically known as 'walls of de-alcoholizing'. So many men were so drunk in public that Commanders began to worry about civilian morale.

Like a thespian, Churchill began to receive critical notices. When he rose from the front bench to address the House of Commons, Beverly Baxter, MP and a writer for the Beaverbrook press, compared him to 'the old bandit who had been the terror of the mountain passes . . . the fire in him was burning low. His head thrust forward characteristically, like a bull watching for the matador. He squared his shoulders a couple of times as if to make sure that his hands were free for the gestures that might come.' When Winston told BBC listeners that 'Now we have begun; now we are going on; now with the help of God, and the conviction that we are the defenders of civilisation and freedom, we are going on, and we are going on to the end,' Virginia Cowles wrote that he was 'giving the people of Britain the firm clear lead' they needed and 'had not found elsewhere.