# Churchill  ## Metadata - Author: [[Paul Johnson]] - Full Title: Churchill - Category: #books ## Highlights - Churchill also ate heartily, especially steak, sole, and oysters. He daily sipped large quantities of whiskey or brandy, heavily diluted with water or soda. Despite this, his liver, inspected after his death, was found to be as perfect as a young child’s. Churchill was capable of tremendous physical and intellectual efforts, of high intensity over long periods, often with little sleep. But he had corresponding powers of relaxation, filled with a variety of pleasurable occupations, and he also had the gift of taking short naps when time permitted. Again, when possible, he spent his mornings in bed, telephoning, dictating, and receiving visitors. ([Location 69](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=69)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Five of the first seven dukes were victims of pathological depression. Winston, it is true, complained of periodic dark moods, which he called “the Black Dog.” But these were occasioned by actual reverses, and were soon dispersed by vigorous activity. ([Location 97](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=97)) - Tags: [[blue]] - It was, rather, from his mother that Winston derived his salient characteristics: energy, a love of adventure, ambition, a sinuous intellect, warm feelings, courage and resilience, and a huge passion for life in all its aspects. ([Location 102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=102)) - Tags: [[blue]] - cabinet. But if he never became a classicist, he achieved something much more worthwhile and valuable: fluency in the English language, written and spoken. Three years in the bottom form, under the eager tuition of the English master, Robert Somervell, made this possible. Winston became not merely adept but masterly in his use of words. And he loved them. They became the verbal current coursing through his veins as he shaped his political manhood. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=146)) - Tags: [[blue]] - if you sat still, expecting wars to come to you, you might be starved of action. You had to go to the wars. That became Churchill’s policy. ([Location 164](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=164)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Once in India, he looked about him for action. But he was not idle while waiting for opportunities. He was conscious of his ignorance and begged his mother to send him big, important books. She did. ([Location 178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=178)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Action and reading. Action and reading. Need to find a balance between the two and always pursue both - He then went back to the war in earnest, showing an extraordinary amount of physical energy. Before the Boers surrendered Johannesburg, Churchill contrived to tour the city on bicycle, speeding up when he saw armed parties of the enemy. We tend to epitomize Churchill by his later sedentary existence. In youth he was hyperactive. ([Location 206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=206)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill’s experiences as a young warrior confirmed and intensified his imperialism. The empire was a splendid thing: enormous, world-embracing, seemingly all-powerful, certainly gorgeously colorful, exciting, offering dazzling opportunities for the progress and fulfillment of all races, provided the white elite who ran it kept their nerve and self-confidence. ([Location 233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=233)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He was “alarmed,” he said, by the “composure,” even “glibness,” with which MPs and, worse, ministers talked of a possible European war: “A European war cannot be anything but a cruel, heart-rending struggle, which, if we are ever to enjoy the bitter fruits of victory, must demand, perhaps for several years, the whole manhood of the nation, the entire suspension of peaceful industries, and the concentration, to one end, of every vital energy in the community.” He added: “Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than the wars of kings.” ([Location 257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=257)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He was not a party man. That was the truth. His loyalty belonged to the national interest, and his own. ([Location 277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=277)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Whatever the reason, fidelity was a godsend and an important contributing factor to Churchill’s success, for he was saved all the worry and emotional storm which adultery provokes. ([Location 346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=346)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill had always prepared his set speeches carefully but not word for word. In 1904, however, he had the horrible experience of “drying up” in the Commons, when apparently in full flow. Thereafter he learned everything by heart, rehearsed and timed himself, and left nothing to chance. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=364)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill was never a supporter of abolition of capital punishment. He thought long incarceration much more horrible. But the night before a hanging he brooded on the condemned man’s fate: it was one of the very few worries which ever robbed him of his sleep. ([Location 425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=425)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill later admitted that he relished the years before the First World War more than any other period of his career. We tend to think of them as a halcyon age of peace, prosperity, and pleasure, the last in English history. In fact it was an age of turbulence, and that is one reason Churchill enjoyed it so much. It was not the world war which ended the ancien régime but the years before it: the war was merely one of the symptoms of the change. ([Location 427](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=427)) - Tags: [[blue]] - There were many hundreds of naval establishments and bases in the British Isles and the Mediterranean alone. Thanks to Enchantress, Churchill visited every one of them, spending eighteen months on board her during his three peacetime years as first lord. He looked into everything and everyone. He often worked eighteen hours a day, and absorbed the new technology of naval warfare with impressive speed. It was exactly the kind of existence he loved. ([Location 481](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=481)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Germans began building their High Seas Fleet, as they called it, in the late 1880s, and continued to increase the rate of ship construction, especially of armored, big-gun battleships, over the next twenty years. ([Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=501)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Napoleon could never match England on the seas. This seemed aimed to rectify that failing. Build up the navy before making a move to expand. But navy building takes decades, you need people who grew up on boats to staff your navy. And there aren’t many opportunities to grow up on boats in Germany - Churchill was also concerned by the German decision to build large numbers of U-boats (as they called them). What were they for? The answer was unmistakable. Britain had the largest merchant navy in the world and imported a greater percentage of her food than any other great power. The German U-boat was a potential war-winning weapon which could starve Britain to death. Churchill began to hate the U-boat passionately, and near the end of his life he declared that in both world wars the submarine threat had worried him more than any other. The only answer was to build large numbers of U-boat destroyers, or destroyers for short, very fast and equipped with a new weapon, the depth charge. ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=508)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When war came Churchill was ready, prepared psychologically and in every way, for what he realized would be the biggest conflict in history. He was like a man who had long schooled himself for a job and was now told to do it. And he had got the vast machine for which he was responsible geared up, too. ([Location 539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=539)) - Tags: [[blue]] - It was the only time in his life that Clemmie Churchill made a dramatic appeal on behalf of her husband. She wrote to Asquith: “Winston may in your eyes, and in those with whom he had to work, have faults, but he had the supreme quality which I venture to say very few of your present or future Cabinet possess—the power, the imagination, the deadliness, to fight Germany.” ([Location 628](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=628)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He discovered, as other sensible people have done, that painting is not only the best of hobbies but a sure refuge in time of trouble, for while you are painting you can think of nothing else. His first painting, The Garden at Hoe Farm, with Goonie in the foreground, survives. Soon, misery began to retreat. His mind, his self-respect, his confidence were restored. ([Location 653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=653)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Without Churchill it is very likely Israel would never have come into existence. It is not given to many men to found, or help preserve, one new state: his score was three. ([Location 760](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=760)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Thus, seven years after the Dardanelles disaster, Churchill was again sent to the bottom. Or rather, it was like a game of snakes and ladders, and he had now gone right down a snake and had to face the task of wearily climbing the ladder again, for the third time in his life. It was not so easy now he was nearing fifty. For one reason or another the orthodox Liberals, under the battered but revengeful Asquithians, the Lloyd George Liberals, Labourites, and the Tories all hated and distrusted him. He now had a long record. Seen in retrospect, in the twenty-first century, it seems a record of astonishing variety, most of it admirable. Seen in 1922, it appeared alarming. Nothing daunted Churchill, determined to get back into the Commons. Without that, nothing was possible. With it, and his astonishing powers of persuasion and sheer oratory, everything was possible. ([Location 789](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=789)) - Tags: [[blue]] - one of Churchill’s strengths, both as a man and a statesman, was that politics never occupied his whole attention and energies. He had an astonishing range of activities to provide him with relief, exercise, thrills, fun, and, not least, money. ([Location 802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=802)) - Tags: [[blue]] - However, if Churchill lived well, he never had much cash in hand or saw his investments rise to a point when he could feel secure for life, or even for the next year. ([Location 846](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=846)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill was by nature an expansionist, especially in his private finances, where he never stinted but simply worked harder to pay the bills. ([Location 903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=903)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Keynes attacked him with a famous pamphlet, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill. After World War II, when Keynesianism became the orthodoxy, Churchill was condemned on all sides and he himself admitted he was wrong. Later still, however, when Thatcherism became the vogue, Churchill was vindicated. By then, of course, he was dead, but the Iron Lady was delighted to come to the aid of his memory: she adored “Winston,” as she always called him. We can now see that there is much to be said for the gold standard. It encouraged entrepreneurs to switch from old, low-productivity industries to new ones—electrics, automobiles, aeronautics, high-technology research—and provided the capital to finance such efforts. The kind of advanced industry which came into existence in the thirties, eventually producing the Spitfire and the Lancaster, the jet engine and radar—the new technology which proved so vital in the Second World War—owed a good deal to the gold standard. ([Location 904](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=904)) - Tags: [[blue]] - If Churchill had no special animus against the unions, the prospect of Bolshevism in Britain filled him with horror. “Of all the tyrannies in history, the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst,” he had said, “the most destructive, the most degrading.” They “hop and caper like troops of ferocious baboons amid the ruins of cities and the corpses of their victims.” The Russian regime was “an animal form of barbarism,” maintained by “bloody and wholesale butcheries and murders, carried out by Chinese-style executions and armoured cars.” This was true enough: even under Lenin, there had been 3 million slaughtered. Churchill warned that a soviet in London would mean “the extinction of English civilisation.” ([Location 928](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=928)) - Tags: [[blue]] - It was class warfare: the upper and middle classes showing class solidarity on the lines of the trade unionists. Above all, Churchill kept up the supply of information to replace the lack of newspapers caused by a printing strike. His original plan had been to commandeer the British Broadcasting Corporation and run a government radio. But Sir John Reith, its director general, flatly refused to let him on the premises and ran a strictly neutral emergency service. So Churchill seized the Morning Post presses instead and the reserve supplies of newsprint built up by the press barons, and contrived to produce and distribute a government propaganda sheet called the British Gazette, which reached an eventual circulation of 2,250,000. Churchill, having been put in charge of the negotiations, brought about a settlement, which represented a victory for the forces of order. ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=940)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill had enjoyed himself hugely. His enthusiasm embarrassed his more sophisticated colleagues and evoked jeers and fury from the Labour Party, but in a debate on the strike he dispelled the rancor with a witty and hilarious speech which dissolved the Commons in tempests of laughter. Then he went back to his good behavior: moderation and emollience. ([Location 947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=947)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: He attacked a tenuous situation with vigor and abandon. Biding his time during peace, and ferocious when needed - Why Churchill did not protest against this antagonism of Japan and the drastic weakening of Britain’s naval position in the Pacific, which was to have appalling consequences in 1941-42, is a complete mystery. At this stage of his life he seems to have been completely blind to any danger from Japan. On December 15, 1924, flush with his new office as chancellor and determined on economy, he wrote a letter to Baldwin which used long arguments backed by statistics to show there was no need at all to consider a possible war with Japan: I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime. The Japanese are our allies. The Pacific is dominated by the Washington Agreement . . . Japan is at the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security in any way. She has no reason whatever to come into collision with us . . . war with Japan is not a possibility which any reasonable government need take into account. Churchill’s blindness to the power and intentions of the Japanese extended to the vulnerability of the new base being built in Singapore. ([Location 969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=969)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the twenties were a splendid period in Churchill’s life. Baldwin, constantly full of his praise in his letters to the king, called him “the star of the government.” The press formed the habit of describing him as “the Smiling Chancellor.” His budgets became the “great events of the parliamentary year” (the Times). He seemed to Lord Winterton, MP, hitherto a sharp critic, “a man transformed . . . head and shoulders above anyone else in the House (not excluding Lloyd George) . . . he has suddenly acquired, quite late in Parliamentary life, an immense fund of tact, patience, good humour and banter on almost all occasions; no one used to ‘suffer fools un-gladly’ more than Winston, now he is friendly and accessible to everyone, both in the House and in the lobbies, with the result that he has become what he never was before the war, very popular in the House generally.” ([Location 981](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=981)) - Tags: [[blue]] - it was his philosophy of wealth which he set down in the twenties: The process of the creation of new wealth is beneficial to the whole community. The process of squatting on old wealth, though valuable, is a far less lively agent. The great bulk of the wealth of the world is created and consumed every year. We shall never shake ourselves clean from the debts of the past, and break into a definitely larger period, except by the energetic creation of new wealth. He called for “a premium on effort” and “a penalty on inertia,” and he certainly practiced what he preached. ([Location 995](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=995)) - Tags: [[blue]] - A month later all had gone with the wind as the great Wall Street crash reverberated through the skyscraper canyons. He was present to hear a dinner host address a table full of top businessmen with the words “Friends and former millionaires.” He added: “Under my window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to pieces.” McGowan had been investing his funds “on margin” (something Churchill did not understand), so he not only lost all his money but had to buy himself out of the mess. He considered selling Chartwell, but it was “a bad time.” Instead he redoubled his writing output, negotiating fresh contracts and lecture tours. His earnings rose to over £40,000 a year, an immense income in those days. But his confidence had been shaken, and in his bruised condition he began to make political mistakes again. ([Location 1013](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1013)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: £40k is the equivalent of roughly £3.2 million today, so this is a truly massive amount of money. Also shows how debts and struggle can push one to immense heights of productivity. - Churchill found his majority doubled but he seems, for the moment, to have been without direction in politics, obsessed with the need to make money. So he returned to America to lecture and write. ([Location 1032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1032)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Debts and struggle can be the impetus to push you to new heights of productivity, but they can also consume you with thoughts about money - On December 13, 1931, crossing Fifth Avenue in the dark, he looked the wrong way, as in England, and a fast car, coming from the opposite direction, knocked him down. He was badly damaged on the head, thigh, and ribs, and in terrible pain. But he remained conscious and when a policeman asked what had happened insisted it was entirely his own fault. He was in fact lucky to be alive. A taxi took him to hospital, and he was a long time recovering. He was very down. He told Clemmie: “I have now in the last two years had three very heavy blows. First the loss of all that money in the Crash. Then the loss of my political position in the Conservative Party and now this terrible physical injury.” He was afraid he would never recover from these blows. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1033)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: This now the SECOND time on his life that it looked like he had peaked and was now reaching rock bottom. He very nearly lost his political career twice, lost all his wealthy, and, in this case, nearly lost his life. Hard work and sticking to a goal can take you extraordinarily far. Most would have given up after these setbacks and never have reached the heights that Churchill would later reach. Here again we see that effort and determination are, in many ways, the main determiners of success - I certainly suffered every pang, mental and physical, that a street accident or, I suppose, a shell wound, can produce. None is unendurable. There is neither the time nor the strength for self-pity. There is no room for remorse or fears. If at any moment in this long series of sensations a grey veil deepening into blackness had descended upon the sanctum, I should have felt or feared nothing additional. Nature is merciful and does not try her children, man or beast, beyond their compass. It is only when the cruelty of man intervenes that hellish torments appear. For the rest, live dangerously, take things as they come. Fear naught, all will be well. ([Location 1040](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1040)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The future Lord Longford, then a young man, provided a vignette of Churchill in autumn 1935, entertaining young people to lunch at Chartwell. He had spent the morning writing and laying bricks (he told Baldwin he could do two hundred bricks and two thousand words in a day) ([Location 1068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1068)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Maniacal productivity, both mental and physical. This should be your metric for LIFE. 200 reps and 2000 lines of code - It was one of Churchill’s skills that he could distinguish between levels of power and threat, at any rate in Europe. He thought it was important to keep Italy on Britain’s side, as it had been in the Great War, and so keep the Mediterranean firmly under the control of the Royal Navy and the imperial lifeline to India safe. The fuss the government made over Abyssinia, getting the League to impose sanctions (which, of course, did not work), had no effect other than to turn Mussolini into a bitter enemy. He and Hitler signed “the Pact of Steel” and began to coordinate war plans. The Italians had a large fleet and air force, and Churchill realized it would now be necessary to keep half the British fleet in the Mediterranean. He also noted, “The Germans and Italians have 800 bombers between them. We have 47.” ([Location 1118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1118)) - Tags: [[blue]] - For the first time in nearly forty years, his entire political career, Churchill lost his optimism completely. “I am now greatly distressed,” he wrote to a Canadian friend, “and for the time being staggered by the situation. Hitherto the peace-loving powers have been definitely stronger than the Dictators, but next year we must expect a different balance.” ([Location 1193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1193)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Despite rumors by his enemies that he was “looking old” and “past it,” Churchill worked fanatically hard—out on inspections most days, “Naval Conference” from 9 :00 to 11:00 p.m., then dictating late into the night. On September 24 he recorded: “During the last three weeks I have not had a minute to think of anything but my task. They are the longest three weeks I have ever lived.” Clemmie wrote: “Winston works night and day. He is well, thank God, and gets tired only if he does not get his 8 hours’ sleep—he does not need it at a stretch, but if he does not get that amount in the 24 he gets weary.” One of his staff, Kathleen Hill, testified, “When Winston was at the Admiralty the place was buzzing with atmosphere, with electricity. When he was away on tour it was dead, dead, dead.” ([Location 1216](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1216)) - Tags: [[blue]] - I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Ten years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms. My warnings over the past six years had been so numerous, so detailed and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all and I was sure I would not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams. ([Location 1247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1247)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He also observed all the cabinet procedural rules. Above all, he treated Parliament, especially the House of Commons, with reverence and made it plain he was merely its servant. These were not mere formulae. Insofar as Churchill had a religion, it was the British constitution, spirit and letter: ([Location 1276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1276)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Even with absolute authority, he abided by Parliament. This is a mistake that previous dictators made - if you don’t pay homage to the living power structures, you may never have a chance to exercise that absolute authority - All this balanced and sanctified the huge power he possessed and exercised. Unlike Hitler, he operated from within a structure which represented, and was seen and felt to represent, the nation. He was never a dictator, and the awful example of Hitler was ever present before him to prevent him from ever acting like one. ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1278)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In another key respect Churchill did the opposite of Hitler: all his orders, without exception, were in writing and were absolutely clear. When issued verbally they were immediately confirmed in written form. All Hitler’s orders were verbal and transmitted by aides: “It is the Führer’s wish . . .” Churchill’s system of clear written orders, and his punctiliousness in observing the demarcation lines between civilian and military responsibility, is one reason the service chiefs were so loyal to him and his leadership, and indeed revered him, however much his working methods—especially his late hours—might try their patience and bodies. ([Location 1284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1284)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He added, in the same speech, that his aim was quite simple and clear: “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” ([Location 1292](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1292)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill himself began to set a personal example of furious and productive activity at Ten Downing Street. He was sixty-five but he looked, seemed—was, indeed—the embodiment of energy. He worked a sixteen-hour day. He sought to make everyone else do likewise. In contrast to lethargic, self-indulgent old Asquith (“the bridge-player at the Wharf,” as Churchill called him) or even Lloyd George, who had high tea instead of a proper dinner to discus strategy and went to bed at nine o’clock, Churchill began to wear his own form of labor-saving uniform, a siren suit, easy to put on or take off, in which he could nap if he wanted during long nighttime spells at work. ([Location 1310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1310)) - Tags: [[blue]] - the siren suit was the everyday wartime wear and proved a masterstroke of propaganda. In it the prime minister worked within days of taking over, as the first brief and pointed memos and orders flowed out under the famous headline: “Action This Day.” So did the endless series of brief, urgent queries: “Pray inform me on one half-sheet of paper, why . . .” Answers had to be given, fast. Churchill had teams of what he called ([Location 1320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1320)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill’s sheer energy and, not least, his ability to switch it off abruptly when not needed were central keys to his life, and especially his wartime leadership. But it must be admitted that he killed men who could not keep up—Admiral Pound, for instance, and General Sir John Dill—just as Napoleon Bonaparte killed horses under him. ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1327)) - Tags: [[blue]] - We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. ([Location 1346](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1346)) - Tags: [[blue]] - After France capitulated, he struck again with memorable words: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1354)) - Tags: [[blue]] - he toured the troops and bombed cities. So the first true victory Britain won in the war was the victory of oratory and symbolism. Churchill was responsible for both. ([Location 1361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1361)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As early as August 20 he scented victory and was able to report to the Commons in a speech which contained the memorable tribute to the RAF fighter pilots: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” ([Location 1378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1378)) - Tags: [[blue]] - By this time, thanks to possession of the Nazi encryption machine Enigma and the British decoding center at Bletchley, he was getting regular intercepts of top-level Nazi messages. This was the most closely guarded secret of the war, and it says a lot for the precautions Churchill personally took, and his own discretion, that the Nazis never suspected their codes were broken and continued to use them to the end. The excerpts persuaded Churchill that Hitler intended to invade Russia in May. By coming to the aid of Italy in Greece, Hitler was forced to postpone the invasion till the second half of June 1941, which in practice made it impossible for him to take Moscow and Leningrad before the winter set in. So the attack on Russia, instead of being a blitzkrieg, became a hard slog. ([Location 1415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1415)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Churchill had an uncanny gift for getting priorities right. For a statesman in time of war it is the finest possible virtue. “Jock” Colville, his personal secretary, said, “Churchill’s greatest intellectual gift was for picking on essentials and concentrating on them.” But these essentials were always directed toward the destruction of the enemy. ([Location 1437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1437)) - Tags: [[blue]] - By the end of 1942 Churchill, who had been thinking about postwar geopolitics ever since the Battle of Britain had been won, was actively working to create a world capable of containing the power of the Soviet Union. He did this, to the best of his ability, through the summit system, a form of negotiation he loved—the top men face-to-face, surrounded by their staff and experts (he often traveled with eighty people). ([Location 1491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1491)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In the second half of the war, confident in its outcome, Churchill was chiefly preoccupied with keeping as close as possible to the United States while steering it in the direction he wanted to go. He was conscious of the huge superiority of American power but hoped by his ingenuity, powers of argument, and skillful use of his prestige—as when he addressed both houses of Congress—to “punch above my weight,” a phrase he coined. ([Location 1527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1527)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The delay occasioned by Churchill’s ensuring the invasion succeeded necessarily meant the Western forces were behind the Russians in pushing into the heart of the Nazi empire. This had grave political consequences. Churchill sought to mitigate them by demanding a full-speed drive to Berlin by the Anglo-American forces. This was supported by Montgomery, the army group commander, who was sure it was possible and would end the war in autumn 1944, with the West in Berlin first. But Eisenhower, the supreme commander, thought it was risky and insisted on a “broad front” advance, which meant that the war continued into the spring of 1945, and that the Russians got to Berlin first—and Prague, Budapest, Vienna, too. In his last weeks of life, FDR, despite Churchill’s pleas, did nothing to encourage Eisenhower to press on rapidly. Montgomery wrote sadly: “The Americans could not understand that it was of little avail to win the war strategically if we lost it politically.” That was exactly Churchill’s view. ([Location 1604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1604)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As he saw it, his main global task during his period of opposition was twofold. First to arouse the world, and especially the United States, to the dangers presented by the power of Stalin’s Soviet Union. In America he was universally popular. On March 6, 1946, invited by President Truman, who became a firm friend and a warm admirer, to make a major speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, his home state, Churchill responded with a call to vigilance in response to the Soviet peril. “An iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” he said. Whether he invented the term “iron curtain” is a matter of dispute. He certainly popularized it, as well as “cold war”—“A cold war against Russia has replaced the hot war against Germany,” as he put it. But Churchill equally saw his second task was to promote dialogue across the cold war iron curtain. He wanted summits, as always. A favorite saying of his was “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” ([Location 1682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1682)) - Tags: [[blue]] - But the chief activity of the postwar Churchill was writing. This is the main reason Clementine was right to say the 1945 defeat was a blessing in disguise. He had always believed—he said so explicitly in May 1938—“Words are the only things that last for ever.” Between 1941 and 1945 he had performed great deeds. Now he needed to write the words to ensure that the deeds were correctly described and so made immortal. ([Location 1725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1725)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Both the hero AND writer of his own story - Churchill called his creative formula “the three Ds—documents, dictation and drafts.” The book was a documentary history as well as a personal memoir. He had from an early age always hoarded papers (as did George Washington), and Chartwell had been refashioned by him partly to house this archive efficiently. What he learned from writing The World Crisis was the need to make the earliest possible use of official papers, and if possible to get physical possession of them as well as the legal right to use them. From the start in World War II, he applied this lesson assiduously. It is likely that many of his wartime writings—memos, orders, assessments, and strategic directives—were written by him with a view to future use in his memoirs. It was one reason he always gave or confirmed his orders in writing. ([Location 1735](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1735)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Extreme attention to detail in crafting his image. Very similar to Napoleon in this regard - In effect, the period of revisionism did not start until the decade after Churchill’s death. By then many of the verdicts he sought to impose had become deeply embedded in the received version of history, taught in schools and universities, and the heroic epic of Churchill, largely written or inspired by himself, had passed into the public historical memory. ([Location 1753](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1753)) - Tags: [[blue]] - By giving his version of the greatest of all wars, and his own role in it, he knew he was fighting for his ultimate place in history. What was at stake was his status as a hero. So he fought hard and took no prisoners. On the whole he won the war of words, as he had earlier won the war of deeds. ([Location 1766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1766)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He met President Eisenhower in Bermuda and paid an official visit to Washington in June 1954. The young vice president, Richard Nixon, left a vivid verbatim account of his conversation on that occasion covering the French predicament in Vietnam, the war against Communist guerrillas in Malaya, colonialism, imperialism, nuclear weapons, who was running Russia, and many other matters. “He enjoyed himself thoroughly,” Nixon wrote, “and was one of those rare great leaders who relished small talk as much as world-shaking issues.” ([Location 1819](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1819)) - Tags: [[blue]] - In his ninety years, Churchill had spent fifty-five years as a member of Parliament, thirty-one years as a minister, and nearly nine years as prime minister. He had been present at or fought in fifteen battles, and had been awarded fourteen campaign medals, some with multiple clasps. He had been a prominent figure in the First World War, and a dominant one in the Second. He had published nearly 10 million words, more than most professional writers in their lifetime, and painted over five hundred canvases, more than most professional painters. He had reconstructed a stately home and created a splendid garden with its three lakes, which he had caused to be dug himself. He had built a cottage and a garden wall. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, an Elder Brother of Trinity House, a Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a Royal Academician, a university chancellor, a Nobel Prizeman, a Knight of the Garter, a Companion of Honour, and a member of the Order of Merit. Scores of towns made him an honorary citizen, dozens of universities awarded him honorary degrees, and thirteen countries gave him medals. He hunted big game and won a score of races. How many bottles of champagne he consumed is not recorded, but it may be close to twenty thousand. He had a large and much-loved family, and countless friends. So Winston Churchill led a full life, and few people are ever likely to equal it—its amplitude, variety, and success on so many fronts. ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1877)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The first lesson is: always aim high. As a child Churchill received no positive encouragement from his father and little from his mother. He was aware of failure at school. But he still aimed high. He conquered his aversion to math, at least enough to pass. He reinforced success in what he could do: write a good English sentence. Conscious of his ignorance, he set himself to master English history and to familiarize himself with great chunks of literature. ([Location 1888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1888)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Lesson number two is: there is no substitute for hard work. Churchill obscured this moral by his (for him) efficient habit of spending a working morning in bed, telephoning, dictating, and consulting. ([Location 1897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1897)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Third, and in its way most important, Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster—personal or national—accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down. His powers of recuperation, both in physical illness and in psychological responses to abject failure, were astounding. ([Location 1908](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1908)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Fourth, Churchill wasted an extraordinarily small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meannesses of life: recrimination, shifting the blame onto others, malice, revenge seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas. Having fought hard, he washed his hands and went on to the next contest. ([Location 1916](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1916)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Finally, the absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill’s life. His face could light up in the most extraordinarily attractive way as it became suffused with pleasure at an unexpected and welcome event. Witness that delightful moment at Number Ten when Baldwin gave him the exchequer. Joy was a frequent visitor to Churchill’s psyche, banishing boredom, despair, discomfort, and pain. ([Location 1922](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002Q6XUPS&location=1922)) - Tags: [[blue]]