The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (517 page)

*
When, in 1960, Churchill was told of Bevan’s death, he mumbled a few words of moderate respect, then paused for effect before asking, “Are you
sure
he’s dead?”

*
A reference to Dr. Frank Buchman, an American evangelical who relocated to England and formed the Oxford Group to preach his creed of reaching God through the practice of frequent and robust confession—“sin and tell,”
Time
called it (Jan. 18, 1943). By the late 1930s Buchman’s theology formed the underlying creed of Alcoholics Anonymous.

*
Churchill wrote of the Englishmen of his generation who either would not or could not pronounce the letter “r.” In
My Early Life,
he described an attempt by the commanding officer of the 4th Hussars, Colonel John Brabazon, to catch a train: After waiting for some time on the station platform, Brabazon turned to the stationmaster and asked, “Where is my
twain?
” Told that his train had already gone, the colonel responded, “Gone?
Bwing
me another.”

*
Persia had taken the name Iran in 1935. To avoid possible confusion with Iraq in official communications, Churchill ordered that “Persia” be used rather than “Iran” in all wartime memos regarding Iran.

*
Oh, the grand old Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,

And when they were down, they were down,

And when they were only halfway up,

They were neither up nor down.

*
This was not an exaggeration, if both civilians and soldiers are included. Every three months, more Russians died than did Americans in all the wars in American history.

*
“The antlers of the deer.”

*
Although he frequently spoke of a “United States of Europe,” Churchill did not specify whether that entity would be a loose confederation or a federal system, with member states bound together by a constitution. He continued to speak only in broad and imprecise terms even while championing a “united” Europe after the war.

*
Coward was finally knighted in 1969.

*
In September 1959, Lord Cherwell offered to a colleague that he had finally “buried the hatchet with Tizard…. But,” the Prof added, “I know where to find the handle.” Tizard died the next month (Moran, p. 813).

*
In Britain, the publishing of a report such as Beveridge’s as a “white paper” signifies HMG’s overall intent (without necessarily announcing a time frame) to analyze, debate the merits of, and possibly act upon some or all of the recommendations made.

*
As with many of the Americans who visited the Churchills, Stettinius brought them a Virginia ham, from his own farm. When he learned that the maximum weight he could bring on board the Pan American Clipper out of New York was forty pounds, he trimmed the fat off the ham. In London, a colleague told him, “Ed, you should have left your shoes at home if necessary, but not the fat off that ham.” Churchill, thanking Stettinius for the diminutive ham, peered into the bag, smiled, and told him
never
again to trim the fat.

*
Cooper had been a minister without portfolio since the fall of Singapore, where he had been resident cabinet minister.

*
The destruction, Bomber Harris later wrote, “must have been even more cataclysmic than the bursting of the two atom bombs over Japanese cities.” (Sir Arthur Harris,
Bomber Offensive
, p. 179)

*
Promulgated in 1917 by Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, which called for HMG to support “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine with the guarantee that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

*
The operation almost unraveled when the fake Montgomery was seen “swaggering about half-drunk in Gibraltar, smoking mammoth cigars like a chimney.” The real Montgomery—a nonsmoker and teetotaler—took great umbrage with his portrayal. (Butcher,
My Three Years with Eisenhower
, pp. 549, 583)

*
The British government paid the final £100 million installment on the loan in December 2006.

*
Since 1921, both Arab and Jewish citizens of Palestine referred to themselves as Palestinian; the concept of an Arab Palestinian people evolved in the 1960s.

*
Later Lady Jane Williams, she was the niece of both R. A. (“Rab”) Butler and Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, later Viscount Portal of Hungerford.

Churchill inspects bomb damage during the Blitz. More than 800,000 Londoners lost their homes during the bombing raids. (
Getty
)

Between May 26 and June 3, 1940, a flotilla of almost 1,000
British ships, large and small, evacuated more than 330,000 British and French
troops from Dunkirk. (
NARA
)

At the height of the Blitz in the autumn of 1940, more than 150,000 Londoners took shelter in the Underground nightly. By war’s end, 60,000 British civilians had been killed by German bombs and rockets. (
Getty
)

London, during the Blitz, autumn 1940. St. Paul’s Cathedral is wrapped in a cowl of smoke as London burns. (
Associated Newspapers/Rex USA
)

Churchill, Brendan Bracken (middle), and Harry Hopkins, 1941. Bracken had been Churchill’s “fixer” for two decades; Hopkins served Franklin Roosevelt in the same capacity. (
Getty
)

A Vichy cartoon takes a jab at Churchill’s bombing policy. (
Kenneth Rendell
)

Max Beaverbrook. As minister of aircraft production, he gave Churchill the fighter planes he needed in order to defend England, and the heavy bombers to take the fight to Germany. (
Getty
)

John (“Jock”) Colville. But for a stint in the RAF, 1942–1943, Colville served as private secretary to Churchill throughout the war and again during Churchill’s premiership from 1951 to 1955. (
Getty
)