Tuesday 24 July 2012

Winston Churchill - The Tony Bliar Of His Day




One of the worst political biographies I've read was Lord Jenkin's Churchill. It was tedious to the maximum and totally avoided any colouring in of Winston's personal life. A lobotomy of a biography in other words, but one detail I never forgot. 

On Winston's first contact with the enemy in the Boer war (pictured  above) he threw up his arms and surrendered. This fits in perfectly with the picture portrayed by David Irving in this wonderful (and slightly subdued) lecture on the arsehole with the cigar and the witty one liners.

Maybe Winston was the Groucho Marx of leaders? A cartoonish figure stumbling about pissed while on official duty but always sober when writing his important books that are absent of a personal diary for reference.

Who knows, but in this presentation Irving also goes into the gritty details of FDR's hold over Churchill but not his knowledge that Churchill forged paintings to make money and pay for Chartwell House which was crippling him when he was in political nowhere land. At that time he was also taking back handers from an Anti German group that eventually dragged the UK into a needless war costing a half million British lives. 

In Churchill's favour though FDR had plans to rip the British Empire from the UK and I don't think that would have been a bad idea.