This Was Their Finest Hour

This past Saturday was the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill.

... the one on the right, short and squat. King Henry II floated between them [in heaven].
Henry took his first look at [his wife] Eleanor [of Aquitaine] in eight hundred years. He looked her over from toe to brow. Then he spoke, "Good grief, madam! One of these men says that he is a Mr. Winston Churchill and that he governed England. How can a common man govern?"
"This one did quite well, actually," Eleanor replied.

E. L. Konigsburg, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (1973)

And I have to admit, according to all I have heard and seen about the man, he did quite well. Speaking for myself, I can say he is one of the small handful of people I ADMIRE -- this is important. Besides being a successful politician (who still had his failings and plenty of them, from the sixth grade to Gallipoli) and an exceptional writer (whom leaders today could stand to emulate) and an outstanding human being ... man, this was supposed to be an exercise in hearty approbation and lavish praise without laying it on too thick, but what I think I am going to write and post and what I end up writing and posting are so often two different things! Welcome to our world.

We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth.

Winston S. Churchill, The Birth of Britain (1956)

When I was at work Saturday I read an op-ed piece by Cal Thomas about Churchill, and I had to double check the date -- it was indeed Saturday the twenty-fourth of January, 1965, when Winston Churchill died. I had some time to ... I hate the word kill (too much of that sixth commandment engrained in me) but it is pretty final. Anyway, I got to go to a local bookstore's used book section and found this four-volume collection of Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, the author's historical account from the first Roman contact with Britain to the beginning of World War I, and I was more than willing to part with five bucks to get it.

By the way, I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.

Winston Churchill
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
in his first address to a join session of the United States Congress
December 26, 1941

I'd read the fourth volume years ago, The Great Democracies which goes from Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo to World War I, so I'm starting over from the beginning. The quote right above this paragraph is my starting point for my planned National Novel Writing Month story, titled "President Churchill". Making Winston's father American and his mother British would I think change ... not as much as you might think, but a lot. Transposing events that happened to the real Churchill to American settings will be one of the big tasks -- already I have in mind that his Boer War imprisonment will be his Filipino War imprisonment -- but I believe I am up to the challenge.

I wish that I could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influence on the development of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass them by with a polite and very respectful bow. England however is in a different position. What the people of that small island have done during the last five hundred years has shaped history in every corner of the world. Without a proper knowledge of the background of English history, you cannot understand what you read in the newspapers.

Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Story of Mankind (1921)

Apart from the fact that most of the newspapers I read are IN English, and are likely to be for the immediate future no matter what multiculturalists say. Tonight after Martha gets off work she will be going to a dentist appointment for her front teeth, tonight after work I'll be meeting the family at Bethany for the local Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby -- Jeffrey's car looks really great, by the way, we picked it up Saturday morning! But as to Churchill (today's title is from his June 18, 1940 speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister) I want to make sure I do him, in any reality, justice. Today Lord knows we need another finest hour.

I am sure there will be inconsistencies, but you will appear to not notice them.

David