Passages from Marlborough have their counterparts in Churchill’s war speeches, and vice-versa. He was also prime minister before the invention of the term, and a leader of a coalition of nations that opposed French hegemony. Up until 1710, Marlborough was Captain-General of the Army. So it was for Britain after the Dunkirk evacuation in the Second World War. “It was a war of the circumference against the centre,” he wrote of the War of Spanish Succession. Of course, the same charge was constantly made against Churchill throughout his life.Ĭhurchill’s strategic views, already profoundly affected by the Great War, developed significantly as he considered how his ancestor approached coalition warfare. Macaulay’s main charge was that Marlborough was solely self-serving. He went so far as to state of Macaulay: “We can only hope that Truth will follow swiftly enough to fasten the label ‘Liar’ to his genteel coat-tails.” This provoked Churchill’s friend Alfred Duff Cooper: “You reduce yourself to the level of a mischievous schoolboy cocking a snook at the master behind his back,” Cooper scolded. Defense and strategyĬhurchill vigorously defended his ancestor’s reputation against the “sneers, calumnies and grave accusations” of the mid-Victorian Whig historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their triumphs, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness. We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. The death of Churchill reminds us of the limitations of our craft, and therewith of our duty. Strauss went on to elaborate a wider appreciation of Marlborough’s importance to students and scholars: The great classicist and philosopher Leo Strauss saw yet more in Marlborough, in his own eulogy in class at the University of Chicago, 25 January 1965 “Not a whit less important than his deeds and speeches are his writings, above all his Marlborough-the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding, which should be required reading for every student of political science.” The broader messageĭr. Churchill’s own experiences had been vital, Ashley later wrote: “He could perceive how the minds of statesmen and commanders moved in those far-off times.” When Harold Macmillan delivered Churchill’s eulogy to The Other Club in February 1965, he argued that WSC’s “ten years out of office, when he was writing the life of his great ancestor, Marlborough, laid the basis for his greatness.” He wrote for example, as a supporter of the National Government in the early 1930s, of how during the early 1690s Marlborough “had sunk now to the minor and unpleasant position of being a critic of mishandled affairs whose main intention he agreed.” Churchill’s primary researcher was the young Oxford historian Maurice Ashley. Like all of Churchill’s works, Marlborough tells us as much about the author as the subject. But otherwise his time devouring every book published on Marlborough ensured that his book was remarkably accurate. It was Great Trill in Devon, not Ashe House a mile away. All this came from someone whose father had said: “He has little to cleverness, to knowledge or any capacity for settled work.”Ĭhurchill got Marlborough’s birthplace wrong. Mastering foreign language documents, he produced an outstanding work of history as well as literature, one that appealed to an academic as well as to a popular audience. The one-million-word book, published in four volumes between 19, took him as long to research and write as it took Marlborough himself to fight the War of the Spanish Succession.Ĭhurchill told the story of his ancestor in beautiful Augustan Age prose, but also discovered new sources and corrected earlier historians’ errors. In early October 1933, Winston Churchill published the first volume of Marlborough: His Life and Times. Oil on canvas by Robert Alexander Hillingford, 1825-1904. “Marlborough signing the Victory Despatch” after the Battle of Blenheim, 13 August 1704.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |