Winston Churchill: The portrait of a rare political personality

On 24 January 1965, one of the most iconic and influential political personalities of modern world history leaves life. The English politician and leader of Great Britain, Winston Churchill. One common, timeless, and certainly guilty secret in the ranks of journalists is the preparation of eulogy texts and tributes for important personalities before they even migrate. The information that a prominent person’s health condition is particularly critical is enough to start writing obituaries. This tactic, however, and human fate reserved a highly ironic game between Winston Churchill and a major political opponent of his, Labour Anjorin Bevan. Bevan was a member of the Combat Arms Committee, while post-war he was Minister of Health of the Clement Atley government and vice president of the Labour Party. In 1960, Churchill had again been on the brink of death resulting in the Observer newspaper asking Bevan for an obituary for Churchill. But the obituary was written, Churchill survived, so the text stayed in the drawer. A few months later Bevan died. His obituary for Churchill was published two years later, in the last hours of Churchill’s life. A dead man was already saying goodbye to a dying man. But not with hagiography, but with deep frank criticism, through which all aspects of this so rare political personality are presented.

“THE STEP”, 23.1.1965, Historical Archive “THE STEP” | “THE NEWS”

” Churchill preferred the official reasons and did not excel in the improvised discussions. His spirit was working with a very slowness. The reason, following the spirit, was expressed in a way more formalistic, more studied, that left him much less flexibility.

>” He needed to turn hard on the opponent, like a giant cannon. (…) His reasons were developed on a broad front, striking an argument here, one there, paragraph to paragraph within a grand development.

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” Churchill’s method had the advantage that no opponent could eliminate his argument with a unique and well-balanced blow. (…) He was a very small-value operator: he had no subtlety, self-control and did not understand what was happening to the spirit of his colleagues, friends and opponents. However, some of the greatest moments of Churchill’s life were within Parliament. Some of his reasons are impossible to describe.

” I remember the reason he gave at a closed-door meeting after the French fleet was destroyed by the Englishman in Mers el Kempir. He particularly insisted on relations with France. He was wonderful. Inside the hall was History in person and he spoke to us

” Everyone who heard this was upset. That was Churchill’s forte. No one ever spoke in the name of History as he did”

” As a historian, under the academic sense of the term, one could certainly not trust him. His analyses were very selective, very subjective and always reflected a very acute awareness of Churchill’s personal position in comparison to the situation he described.

>” He often wrote History not as it was but as he saw it – often even as he thought it had to evolve. But when he used his talent for the honest description of what really happened he was insurmountable. The past became a foggy background, ahead of which the event described radiated as a beacon and was inevitably seen to stand out in the dim light like a thin shadow, Winston Churchill’s silhouette. And if he tried to avoid it, he wouldn’t do it. But he avoided trying. During the 1939 war (p. Second World War), Churchill argued that it was the voice of England – not, in his expression, the lion but the myth of the lion. I don’t believe it was. He expressed not what the thousands of British and British felt, but what he thought the “historical” simple man should feel in similar circumstances.

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>” underlined too much glory and not enough pain. He saw the pain, but he described it only with poetic phrases.

” What he saw was the poetic blow of the sword, not the terrible and humiliating anguish of men and women who had been crushed in the mud by the tanners, who had been buried alive under the ruins of their bombed house or died of hunger in a concentration camp.

” Winston was a sensitive man who understood the pain and pain, but in fact he was not interested in them except if they were epic. It didn’t matter to him despite what was dramatic, poetic, romantic or could be. “THE STEP”, 26.1.1965, Historical Archive “THE STEP” While standing, behind a prognosis, they gave him a paper. He ran through it with his eyes, raised his head and made a dramatic pause. And behold, he said in front of the assembly suddenly occupied by concern, “a message that came directly from the depths of the desert, written by the general himself, in his tent, and in the meager light of a candle.” There is no doubt that the message had been typed by a blonde secretary in a room located next to Cairo’s Shepherd hotel bar, but Churchill impresario of History, did not want to know in any way. (…)

” If Churchill was a poet, he wasn’t a orator. The orator relies on the relationship he knows to create between his audience and him. (…) This relationship was of no interest to Churchill.

“The power he sought was not exercised in moderns, but in later generations. He was less interested in making people of his time act and more of a place in his manuals of 3,000.

” Churchill was a wonderful essayist who had the gift of reading his texts with warmth and who possessed enough of the journalistic feeling to give to what he wanted to say a logical appearance of news. He prepared his words in finesse, polishing and re-washing every phrase, until the text became a literary jewel. He was the greatest artist ever to enter the political arena”

” As he was a great artist he was obviously not a great man of action. All his life he believed he was, but that was just one of the illusions that determined his personality. How could it be? The man of action is necessarily a realist. He may dream, feed on visions, but for him two and two always make four and the materials of his activity will be the events of life.

>” Churchill’s greatest contribution was instead that he convinced people to forget the facts. It would be possible for the English people to be left to be exhausted from the bitter reality of Dunkirk (p. I defeated and agonizing departure of the English from France at the Battle of Dunkirk). Churchill persuaded him not to think but Queen Elizabeth and the defeat of the Armada. (…)

” Churchill’s value was to attack a British flag over five tanks and urge his people to behave as if they were fifteen”

” Churchill was so little interested in the facts that he could not be a man of action. Even in politics, where words can often replace action, they failed often.

” He was fully deceived as to the nation’s mentality at the end of the war and that made him lose the election.

” He never stood up for the slightest opposition. Talking with him was like interfering in his way, which caused him childhood violence reactions. (…)

>” It was hard to hate him, even his opponents – at least in the House of Commons. I say “in the House of Commons” because those who remember the activity with which he reorganized the armed forces in 1926, to enable them, in case of need, to crush the strikers, considered him a monster. However, in the House of Commons, despite the cruelty he sometimes demonstrated, it was impossible to hate him at all.

” His anger and strangeness were often almost unforgivable, so childish, but they ended up almost always in an explosion of rage after which Churchill forgot and forgiven as generously as political life allowed.

” As a war leader in a democratic country, he is placed without doubt among the older, but I would admire him even more if he did not seem to enjoy war so much.

>” Not that he was thirsty for blood or that he felt comfortable but in massacres, He simply liked the exercise of his powers so much that he forgot to rejoice when the horror ended. (…)

“The war saved Churchill from political oblivion and gave him wings. He flew. His big chance was war. He grabbed her. When it was over, I’m sure he thought (…) that what would follow would only be a postscript without meaning.”

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