around & about - Winston Churchill

expect that gratitude or admiration would, or should,
shield him from the scrutiny of later generations.
It is the common fate of statesmen to suffer descent
into a trough of low esteem from which, indeed, some never
emerge. Nothing of the kind has happened to Churchill.
Nor should it, however fiercely this or that decision or attitude
may be criticised; for he brought to public life valour of
the highest order, not the unthinking resolution of one blind
to danger but the deliberate courage of the man who apprehends
it all too well. To that he added what is almost as rare
in high politics, constructive imagination.
Commemorative organizations like our own must by
their very nature confront a difficulty: However profound
the thoughts and decisive the acts of a great man, their relevance
to immediate situations diminishes with time. For
Churchill, the process is somewhat postponed, for in a long
life he decided much and influenced more. We need not
fear that he will fade into irrelevance. He had prodigious
industry, unmatched powers of concentration, Napoleonic
memory, high gifts as an orator and writer.
Democracies in every part of the world are treading
no smooth or easy road. They must renew their qualities
and review their failings in each generation. They depend
upon the leadership of faith and character; and in that
search, never more urgent than in the present time, they
have much to learn from Winston Churchill. ,
Neither Mission
Accomplished
Nor Mission Impossible
MICHAEL DOBBS
A
novelist’s eye looks to the inner man: not simply
what he achieves but who he is, how true and
how strong his heart beats. In my eye, Winston
Churchill had one of the most extraordinary
hearts of all time. It beat as resolutely as a drum,
and to its timbre the world marched from the jaws of Hell.
Yet that same huge heart also overcame obstacles in his
private affairs that would have crippled most ordinary
mortals. He was great not because he got everything right
(hah!) or because he was always pleasant and polite (he
wasn’t), but because he managed to save our world even
while battling with his own private demons.
Is he relevant in today’s world? Of course he is. Open
your newspaper and you will be bombarded with messages
Mr. Dobbs is author of four Churchill historical novels in which the
characters and episodes are carefully researched from life: Winston’s
War (reviewed, FH 122), Never Surrender (FH 126), Churchill’s Hour
(FH 126) and Churchill’s Triumph (FH 131).
FINEST HoUR 140 / 19
MR. DAVIDSON’S SMALL HOUSE, HARROW, 1889
(WSC at left): “If Winston were in a classroom today he
would be sitting in the back row, a child with few
friends, with a troubled home life, with learning
difficulties, with school reports that summed him
up as all but worthless, who couldn’t even make it
to university. And yet....”
about a World Crisis, a Gathering Storm, nations torn
between the appeals of meeting jaw to jaw as an alternate
to war. Some of the issues have changed, of course, but the
fundamental inspiration of Winston Churchill’s life was
that we make our own world, that the tide of history isn’t
driven by irresistible Marxist-Fascist tides and irreversible
social trends but by the passions of men and women. What
we do, you and I, and those we elect, makes a difference. In
the end, it’s up to us, and how big we find our hearts to be.
Yet it’s the nature of the man that appeals to me
most. When I talk to school children about that strange
beast Winston Churchill, I show him not just as an overlyround
sixty-something with little hair and a fat cigar who
did extraordinary things, but also as a tormented and at
times frightened child who was subjected to abuse at school
and—let’s be frank—a fair dose of parental neglect at
home. Yet still he made it through. If Winston were in a
classroom today he would be sitting in the back row, a
child with few friends, with a troubled home life, with
learning difficulties, with school reports that summed him
up as all but worthless, who couldn’t even make it to university.
And yet….
To watch the fascination of young eyes suddenly
alert, identifying with our Old Man, realising that perhaps
they, too, might find some way to overcome their own personal
challenges, never fails to be a transcending moment.
What would his message be today? I suspect it would
not be framed in terms of Mission Accomplished, but
neither would it be Mission Impossible. Wherever he is
remembered, the memory brings hope and a reminder that
nothing in the course of human affairs is beyond our reach.
He remains an inspiration to schoolchildren and statesmen,
and to the rest of us who fall somewhere in between. ,