journal of the churchill center and societies - Winston Churchill

More documents

Recommendations

Info

JUST PUBLISHED Bibliophiles are royally served with three important reference books (and one restocked) on every aspect or Churchill's books and books about him. Churchill Center New Book Service member prices beat those ofAmazon.com and everybody else we know of. Reviews have been assigned for upcoming issues o/FH. To order: Send the member price (not the "official" price) plus shipping ($6for first book, $1 for each additional) to The Churchill Center, PO Box 385, Contoocook NH 03229. Visa or Mastercard welcome. Telephone (603) 746-4433. Email: malakand@conknet. com. "NEW BIBLE" Connoisseurs Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill by Richard M. Langworth. Tells you whether the Churchill book you're holding in your hand is worth owning or not. Revised and extended from the sold-out original, with hundreds of corrections and additions to make the ultimate book about Churchill's books. A combination buyer's guide, book review and index of all editions (English, American, Canadian, Australian, foreign), it includes current values and frank aesthetic judgments about each. Over 200 photos. Nothing is left out, almost every edition is pictured, every variation described. The aim is to guide you in assembling a Churchill library, whatever your budget. 372pp., over 200 photos. Published at $40/£40. See excerpt starting on page 43. 1101. Member price $30 » THE XJTTIMATE REFERENCE Churchill Historiography & Annotated Bibliography, by Eugene Rasor. This titanic 706-page reference covers ALL literature by and about Churchill with thorough, unbiased annotations. It will keep you occupied for years. History professor Eugene Rasor (Emory & Henry College) lists archival resources, reference sources, and books galore, grouped as follows: Churchill's own writings, biographies about him, WW1, WW2, Cold War, Strategy & Command, Political, Naval and Military, British Monarchs, colleagues, friends, servants, controversies, anthologies, Amer- Rasor, Barrett & Mieder/Bryan are all published by the Greenwood Press: no dust jackets, but gilt trimmed title labels on front covers. ica, the Empire, art, historical assessments, family. Plus 300 pages of annotated bibliography and comprehensive subject and author indexes. A stupendous compilation—a MUST. Published at $ 115. 1102. Member Price $95 « FIRST BIBLIOGRAPHY SINCE "WOODS" Churchill: A Concise Bibliography, by Buckley Barrett. California State University's librarian covers both books "by" and books "about." Churchill's works are broken into three sections. Works about him are sifted into seven: literary/artistic, biographic/personal, politics/governance, foreign/military, philosophy, fiction/media and juvenile. Categories are arbitrary—some books overlap—and books are arranged in each section alphabetically by title—not chronological as in normal bibliographies. So it's more for browsing than reference, though you can find any title through the author, title and subject indices. This book's strength is its lengthy annotation: a commentary on what each book offers. At first glance they seem thoughtful and neutral. Whatever you think of Barrett's filing system, if you read or collect Churchill books, you need this book! 216 pages, published at $70. 1103. Member Price $55 • PROVERBIAL WINSTON BACK IN STOCK The Proverbial Winston Churchill: An Index to Proverbs in the Works ofWSC, by Wolfgang Mieder & George Bryan.The authors reviewed 40,000 pages to compile this unique reference to Churchill's use of proverbs, folklore and famous expressions in his books and speeches. For instance, if you look up "blood, toil, tears and sweat" you'll find that WSC joined "blood and tears" in 1900 and added "sweat" in 1931. You search the book using "key-words." When Churchill used quotemarks around an expression, the authors produce the source. Mieder and Bryan lack working knowledge of Churchill's canon and use clumsy number references to Churchill's works (001-965 in no logical order). Nevertheless, this is a singular and well-researched reference work, recommended for anyone interested in learning how Churchill's photographic memory helped him cast back for proverbs in writing his own books and speeches. Greenwood Press: 1995, 436 pages. Published at $89.50. Reviewed in FH89. 1104. Member Price $72 FINEST HOUR IOS/42
WOODS CORNER THE SECOND WORLD WAR PARTI: A CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDE TO THE BOOK OF THE CENTURY RICHARD M. LANGWORTH Let us begin by recording all the major criticisms of Winston Churchill's most famous book. 1) It is not history. 2) It is filled with grandiose prose, which was inflicted on apathetic readers who only wanted peace and a quiet life. 3) It is highly biased—the author never puts a foot wrong, and publishes hundreds of his own memoranda and directives but few replies to them. 4) It moralizes incessantly about dictators and their empires—but not die British Empire. 5) The impact of the war on Britain and the details of Cabinet meetings are vague; Churchill alone confronts the appeasers, the French, Hitler, the Soviets, the Americans. As one critic says, "Every instance of adversity becomes an occasion for the narrator's triumph." In die words of former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, these indictments contain much that is true and much that is trite, but what's true is trite, and what's not trite is not true. Professor J.H. Plumb, in Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (London: 1969, published as Churchill Revised in New York: 1969), refers to Churchill's work as A History of the Second World War and then says it is not histoiy. The faux title is often repeated. Churchill himself insisted, "This is not Excerpted from the New Revised Extended Edition of A Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (London: Brasseys 2000), published at £40, member price $30 (see page opposite). Tine author is editor of Finest Hour. The Chartwell Edition of Volume I, The Gathering Storm: the most desirable of all editions, comprising the final revised text. history—this is my case"—his "life effort," on which he was "content to be judged." In other places he calls it "a contribution to history." Some of his admirers would say he dissembles and is too modest. Professor John Keegan, in an introduction to a recent new edition, calls The Second World War "a great history" of "monumental quality..extraordinary in its sweep and comprehensiveness, balance and literary effect; extraordinary in the singularity of its point of view; extraordinary as the labour of a man, already old, who still had ahead of him a career large enough to crown most other statesmen's lives; extraordinary as a contribution to the memorabilia of the English-Speaking Peoples." If that seems too pro-Churchill a FINEST HOUR IOS/43 view, consider die verdict of Malcolm Muggeridge, longtime editor of Punch and no mean critic, who wrote that the volumes are "historic rather dian historical." Or of Manfred Weidhorn, that eminent and measured judge of Churchill's screed, in his famous Sword and Pen: "a record of history made rather than written....No odier wartime leader in history has given us a work of two million words written only a few years after the events and filled with messages among world potentates which had so recently been heated and secret. Britain was led by a professional writer." As a professional writer wishing to build up "the Churchill Legend," goes another familiar refrain, our author ignored or buried unpleasant facts, or twisted them to suit his purpose. Have you ever read a memoir that didn't Yet few memoirs are so magnanimous, as illustrated by a principle Churchill adopts in his preface: "never criticising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it." The effect, Keegan remarks, "is to invest the whole history with those qualities of magnanimity and good will by which he set such store, and the more so as it deals with personalities." Churchill's prose "could often be aversive [sic] to modern readers," wrote another recent analyst, and, by the time the books appeared, "the world had moved on into an exhausted flatness continued overleaf..
Page 1 and 2: JOURNAL OF THE CHURCHILL CENTER AND
Page 3 and 4: AUTUMN 2000 JOURNAL OF THE CHURCHIL
Page 5 and 6: DATELINES QUOTE OF THE SEASON "...I
Page 7 and 8: DATELINES Trust has a dual responsi
Page 9 and 10: Local and National... keep the Yank
Page 11 and 12: DATELINES Franta Belsky 1921-2000 B
Page 13 and 14: Churchill's Greatness (4) EXPLODING
Page 15 and 16: 'Serious thought ousts Einstein and
Page 18 and 19: 100-75-50-25 YEARS AGO One hundred
Page 20 and 21: Churchill s World HOTEL LA MAMOUNIA
Page 22 and 23: i IIaa I aa^a a Designed in 1922 by
Page 24 and 25: Winston S. Churchill to Clementine
Page 26 and 27: 2000 Heritage Fund Appeal: A Specia
Page 28 and 29: Wit& Wisdom / LUCE LUCID ON LEONARD
Page 30 and 31: FROM BRITISH CASSANDRA TO AMERICAN
Page 32 and 33: • / • • ' ! • " ' • • .
Page 34 and 35: CASSANDRA TO HERO... York Times, wr
Page 36 and 37: Watch Tkis Space! CABINET WAR ROOMS
Page 38 and 39: Succeed Admirably, Fail Anyway Rich
Page 40 and 41: Light Souffle... celebrity as Presi
Page 44 and 45: The Second World War... that had li
Page 46 and 47: CHURCHILLIANA "IN WHAT SHAPE THEY C
Page 48 and 49: INSIDE THE JOURNALS "I passed out o
Page 50 and 51: CHURCHILLTRIVIA By Curt Zoller (zcu
Page 52: IMMORTAL WORDS The Japanese onslaug

journal of the churchill center and societies - Winston Churchill

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?