How To Be a C-Suite Churchill BusinessWeek A hot-to guide to applying Sir Winston Churchill's leadership tactics to the workplace.
World War II Mines are Harmless The BBC Police said the remains of the mines, which have been inspected by bomb disposal experts on Lusty Glaze beach, near Newquay, are harmless.
Key Allied Figures History.com Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 1874-1965), Great Britain's greatest 20th-century statesman, best known for his courageous leadership as prime minister during World War II.
Churchill Reports Time Magazine In the next secret debate in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill faces a showdown on his conduct of the campaign in Greece. On Sunday he stepped up to a microphone to report to the people of Britain and the U.S. about it and about how the war was going. When he finished, most of the people of both countries were satisfied with Winston Churchill, anyhow.
Churchill Dies The BBC News of his death was announced on the BBC shortly after 0800 GMT. Within half-an-hour, crowds began to gather near his home to pay homage to Britain's greatest wartime leader.
The Time 100 Time Magazine The political history of the 20th century can be written as the biographies of six men: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
February 04, 2008
After putting some great names through the Perseverance filter, the name that kept persevering was Sir Winston Churchill.
As much for what he had to overcome as what he went on to accomplish.
He was born two months premature, to a brilliant but brittle father, who hated him on sight and a socialite American mother, Jenny Jerome, who ignored him throughout his life.
He certainly didn't get off to a flying start with his early schooling. Crumbling under his father's unrelenting pressure to be a "Churchill," young Winston was a mediocre student at a small private school, where his tantrums got him caned. Although a glimpse of his oratorical skills was evident when he memorized 1,200 lines of poetry and won a school prize even though he couldn't pronounce his S's.
His father tried to make a man out of him, sending him to military school at Sandhurst. And he was admitted to the Cavalry Class only because he was able to provide his own horse.
As a correspondent during the Boer War, he made a daring escape when he was taken prisoner, and emerged as a bit of a hero. Since he didn't have the grades for Oxford, he chose politics; he was good at it and he would switch parties until he found someone who agreed with him.
He blew his one decent job as Admiral of the Navy. During the first few months of World War I, his Dardanelles Straits strategy cost over 200,000 Allied casualties and his job. But if Churchill was anything (as we have noted) he was persistent. He returned to the Conservative Party again and was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer under Baldwin. When the party collapsed, he was now an ex-Exchequer.
Going broke when the American stock market collapsed didn't stop him. Nor did a speech impediment, enough vices to render anyone else incapable of thought, a father he never could please, or being virtually "banished" to the family home in Chartwell and sentenced to a lifetime of growing artichokes.
In fact it was this very period, when he held no political office, which was one of the most important periods in Winston Churchill's career. Documented by his own words in "The Gathering Storm" and in William Manchester's "The Last Lion," he railed against the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany, led by Neville Chamberlain. For almost a decade, Churchill, even though his ideas were considered by most to be delusional, continued to warn against the encroaching tyranny of Hitler - telling Britain to shore up its defenses and prepare for war.
After Chamberlain's Munich Agreement was signed, giving Hitler virtually everything he wanted, Churchill said to parliament, "One pound was demanded at the pistol's point. When it was given, two pounds were demanded at the pistol's point. Finally, the dictator consented to take one pound, 17 shillings and sixpence, and the rest in promises of good will for the future."
When Hitler, ignoring the treaty, marched into Czechoslovakia, he had according to Churchill's words, broken every tie of good faith with the British and French who tried so hard to believe in him.
When Churchill proved to be right all along, the British public remembered the jaunty little man, with the omnipresent cigar, who had counseled them all with utterances like, "If a dog makes a dash for my trousers, I shoot him down before he can bite."
And proved he wasn't so delusional after all.
He became Prime Minister on May 13, 1940, at the age of 65, uttering those famous words to his cabinet; "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Armed with a new set of dentures that enhanced his distinctive public speaking style, he mobilized the English Language, as Edward R. Murrow said, and sent it to battle.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
Championing the Churchillian Spirit Churchill's Parrot "I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." -- Sir Winston Churchill
"Winston Churchill" by John Keegan BlogCritics To get a feel for how Churchill's early public life shaped his later public life, you can either wade through Manchester's readable books, or you can pick up John Keegan's sketch, Winston Churchill,
Cabinet War Rooms Churchill Museum Shortly after becoming Prime Minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill visited the Cabinet War Rooms to see for himself what preparations had been made to allow him and his War Cabinet to continue working throughout the expected air raids on London.
The Churchill Memorial http://www.churchillmemorial.org/ The Memorial is located on the college campus in Fulton, Missouri, the site of Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech. The Memorial was founded in 1969 to honor the life and legacy of one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century.
A Nobel Prize in Literature Nobel Prize.org "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"
We'll Fight Them on the Beaches YouTube Churchill's "Beaches" Speech became one of the most famous -- and inspirational -- of World War II.
Quotes jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu 44 of the best Churchill quotes.
One of my favorite Churchill quotes sums up his dedication to perseverance. This is from closing...
February 04, 2008 3:05 PM
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One of my favorite Churchill quotes sums up his dedication to perseverance. This is from closing remarks in a speech at the Harrow School in 1941.
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
more on the honor rolltone33s said...
Churchill had a number of great quotes. My favorite is:
"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. "
Iggylicious said...
I've got a different fave.
Actually too many to count but I'm gonna stick with, "Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room."
Stephen M Cox MD said...
My brother was walking in Chicago 30 years ago and saw an enormous stack of 8x10 photographs in refuse cans on the curb in front of an old building. Being a photographer, they caught his eye as being old. He fingered through one or two and they were of Churchill. ALL of them were of Churchill! He rescued them from destruction. As far as anyone knows they are originals. Perhaps they are the only prints in existence of the grand old man. My brother gave to me a nice Xerox ( my brother is stingy with the actual photographs ) of Winston trying to light his cigar in the wind in front of a bomber.
Churchill was one of those men that all real men emulate. He's up there with the big boys like Chesterton and the like.
I enjoyed so much your thoughts. Ever since I met you decades ago I've enjoyed watching you drink deeply from the font of Life, while those around you seem to just swish and spit.