The study of history – not an exact science
Yesterday as a ‘token’ Christmas present from my daughter I received a small paperback book entitled Churchill in Quotes – Wit And Wisdom From The Great Statesman, produced by Ammonite Press with images provided by the Press Association, first published in 2011.
To appropriate a phrase from Geoffrey Willians’ immortal Nigel Molesworth, any fule – let alone anyone who reads or studies history – would already have known probably 80% of those presented and yet I thoroughly enjoyed my flick through its pages in the period between ‘exchange of presents’ and the imbibing of giggle-water fizz and canapes in advance of our 2.00pm Christmas Day feast.
One plus was that the slim volume’s uncredited authors had done their best to avoid an ever-present danger with this particular former Prime Minister – the apocryphal attribution of witty/perceptive bon mots to him out of misguided reverence on the basis their quality was/is sufficient enough that, if they didn’t actually come from him, they were worthy of having done so – a self-imposed restraint signalled by their assiduous citing of references.
Among the examples that were new to me – and here I add the necessary caveat that said description covers both those which were genuinely novel to me and those I may have come across previously but since forgotten – were a number of classics.
I especially liked his phone call to ‘Reception’ during a WW2 visit to Russia, after being told by his security officers that his hotel room may have been bugged: “This is Winston Churchill speaking. If you have a microphone in my room, it is a waste of time. I do not talk in my sleep.”
Never a man to shirk an argument or an exchange of insults – as one who in his time receiving a lorry-load of “incoming fire” from practically every quarter, he was quite happy to both dish it out as well as take it – among his oeuvre were these ‘put downs’: (in 1923 on former Premier Arthur Balfour) “If you wanted nothing done at all, Balfour was the man for the job” and (in 1925 on Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin) “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened …“
When it came to the weight of history Churchill was conscious of both its importance (1927, “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward …“; and 1920, “History is written by the victors“) and the quality/accuracy of it’s recording (1948, in a House of Commons speech, “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history …“.
I was reminded of the above today when I spotted this report upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
