Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill: Defender of Democracy.

The rows were explosive, the challenges enormous, but Churchill led Britain through World War Two with unique assurance - his cigar always in place. 'Winnie' changed his country's military approach from defensiveness to aggressive attack, and so altered the course of history. The historian Geoffrey Best describes how he did it.

A statesman transformed

At the beginning of the Second World War the reputation of Winston Churchill was that of a gifted politician who had twice changed parties, an impulsive man prone to impractical enthusiasms, and a Conservative backbencher who opposed the foreign policy of his leader - the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.

Six years later, Churchill towered above all contemporaries as a statesman of international renown. He was known as the champion of freedom and civilisation, and the victorious leader of the British nation and empire at war. How did this transformation happen?

The change did not begin to happen until 1940, when the war was nine months old. Even his enemies had recognised that Churchill would have to be brought into the government in the event of war - his military expertise was universally acknowledged, and his criticisms of Chamberlain's policy of appeasement had after all proved justified - and he had been made First Lord of the Admiralty. In this capacity he was given charge only of the Royal Navy, a position that, after ten years in the political wilderness, he was content to accept.

Had the war ended before May 1940 (as some people wanted it to do, although it would have meant sacrificing Poland in the wake of Czechoslovakia), history would now know Churchill as an average First Lord, with an embarrassing share of responsibility for the failures of the Norwegian campaign. But by a strange turn of history, this failure led to the increased unpopularity of Chamberlain, and gave Churchill his big chance. On 8th May 1940, the Commons began to debate the government's poor performance in the campaign. Then on the 10th, Germany began its invasions of the Low Countries and France - the 'phony war' was over.

Threat of invasion

Chamberlain resigned, the man whom most Conservatives wanted in his place (Lord Halifax) declined to serve, and Churchill took on the job. It was astonishing, and a measure of his uniqueness, that he did so with calm assurance and a conviction that this, at last, was the realisation of his destiny: to lead his beloved nation in an all-out war for survival and for the universal values it represented.

If the challenge looked formidable on 10th May, it looked infinitely worse six weeks later. The British army's escape from capture at Dunkirk was hailed as a salvation but of course it was, in military terms, a shocking setback. The continental ally whom Britain had relied on to face the German army had surrendered, Italy had come in on the German side, and Hitler was master of Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Bay of Biscay.

In addition, the French navy was likely to fall into German hands, German U-boats would soon have bases on the Atlantic, German bombers would be able to take off from bases close to Britain's coasts, and, worst of all, now that the Germans were able to mass on the Belgian coast, Britain was facing the first serious threat of invasion since 1805. It was easy in such circumstances to despair and to look for a way out of a war that seemed impossible to win.

Any leader but Churchill would probably have done so - with no other imaginable consequence than that Britain would have become (like Vichy France) a subordinate cog in Hitler's imperial machinery, with a subservient right-wing authoritarian government dedicated to racial discrimination. Churchill, however, saved his country from that humiliation.

Unfailingly brave

Churchill persuaded cabinet and parliament that Britain and its empire could survive. His inspiring speeches encouraged the British people to be courageous and hopeful, and he invited the rest of the world - especially the United States, whose support he hoped to secure - to back them up. He forbade defeatist talk and refused to be put on the defensive. Even in those fraught days, he ordered planning to begin for attacking German power by means of heavy bombing, commando raids, and the Special Operations Executive (SOE)-aided resistance by Germany's victims.

His public demeanour was unfailingly brave and heartening. The Conservative Party came round to him, the British people (except for the communists) were solidly behind him; and by the end of October the worst of the dangers of that year were past. The 'Battle of Britain' had been won (though only just), invasion was no longer imminent, and Londoners were beginning (painfully) to learn how to survive 'the Blitz'.

Having successfully brought his people through that baptism of fire, Churchill now had to manage a war that was going to be long and hard. Despite his years (he was approaching 70 by now), he proved to be very good at it, earning universal respect as one of the most remarkable war leaders of modern history.

Man of the people

The first of the four fields in which he had to lead was, literally, the popular one. The British people had to be kept united. The impression they got of their leader would be crucial. Churchill remained as heartening, even endearing, a figure through the years 1941-45 as he had been in 1940. He was a popular character, an eccentric of traditional type. His sonorous and rousing speeches were unlike anyone else's, and his manner of delivery lent itself to admiring imitation. Except when dressing up as a warrior, he wore distinctive clothes: old-fashioned pinstripes with a bow tie, or funny clothes like the 'siren suits' his wife got made for him. He was often seen, never without his cigar, around the cities of Britain and wherever the armed forces were encamped. Good stories were told (or made up) about him and people familiarly referred to him as Winston or 'Winnie'. He appeared to be a man of the people.

Besides being a popular leader, Churchill was also an emphatically democratic one. Parliament continued to sit throughout the war, and the war's progress was publicly debated. Churchill assumed full responsibility and, during the dark months of 1941-42, when he often had to report disasters, he had to bow a bit to his critics. The normal peacetime freedoms of the citizen were of course restricted but rarely beyond the limits of reason. The world could see no hypocrisy in Churchill's claim to be fighting for democracy and human rights against tyranny and barbarism.

Grand alliance

In foreign affairs, his greatest achievement was to engage the sympathy of the United States, without whose material help - and, better, military alliance - Britain, he well understood, had no chance of winning. America came safely on board in December 1941. A more unexpected ally had already been found in the form of the Soviet Union: an uncomfortable ally, indeed - but given Britain's grim situation in mid-1941, Churchill prudently bowed to necessity. Once this 'grand alliance' was formed, Churchill became both the pivot and mainspring of it. Stalin and Roosevelt, left to themselves, would never have come together to decide grand strategy and to try to sort out problems. It was Churchill who did the journeying (40,000 miles during the war) to keep the 'big three' together; it was he who invented the 'summit' meetings of national leaders (those at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam are the most famous) - and these have remained a feature of international affairs ever since.

The fourth dimension of Churchill's war leadership, the one that continues to excite more debate than the others, concerned the military. Constitutional principle, joined with his experience of the First World War, convinced him that military men could not be allowed to use their armed forces free from ultimate civilian political control. Britain's military chiefs for their part sought no such freedom; but they did expect freedom to decide by themselves, with the advice of their own staffs and experts, what was militarily possible and what was not. Churchill, a soldier himself in earlier life and with naval experience, liked to press his own ideas upon the army and navy staffs and insisted on them being exhaustively considered. This wasted much time and temper. The memoirs of the army Chief of Staff, Lord Alanbrooke, are only the most choleric of many accounts of the rows that punctuated the army's relations with its ultimate master.

Achievements of war

There is no doubt some of Churchill's ideas were impractical, even silly. On the other hand, some were good, and others were politically necessary. He was surely right, moreover, to believe that the generals tended to plan too stolidly and move too slowly, and that without his zeal for aggressive activity early on, the British armed forces would have lapsed into mere defensiveness. When large-scale offensives did become practical, in 1943, his big idea was, oddly enough, one that appealed to Alanbrooke: the idea of attacking Germany through Italy and, if possible, the Balkans.

Undertaken with maximum force, this would have been at the expense of the 1944 Normandy landings upon which the Americans had fixed their aim. Whether Churchill's 'Mediterranean strategy' was a good or a bad idea remains controversial; as do the questions of whether more or less resources should have been put into the costly bombing offensive gallantly conducted by the RAF, encouraged by Churchill, and of the rights and wrongs of its methods. In this fourth dimension of his leadership, one has to conclude that Churchill's achievement was not as indisputably great as in the other three. But overall, as is almost universally agreed, his achievement in the war to save democracy and the liberties of Western Europe was enormous.

Socrates

Socrates (469-399), despite his foundational place in the history of ideas, actually wrote nothing. Most of our knowledge of him comes from the works of Plato (427-347), and since Plato had other concerns in mind than simple historical accuracy it is usually impossible to determine how much of his thinking actually derives from Socrates.

The most accurate of Plato's writings on Socrates is probably the The Apology. It is Plato's account of Socrates's defense at his trial in 399 BC (the word "apology" comes from the Greek word for "defense-speech" and does not mean what we would think of as an apology). It is clear, however, that Plato dressed up Socrates's speech to turn it into a justification for Socrates's life and his death. In it, Plato outlines some of Socrates's most famous philosophical ideas: the necessity of doing what one thinks is right even in the face of universal opposition, and the need to pursue knowledge even when opposed.

Socrates wrote nothing because he felt that knowledge was a living, interactive thing. Socrates' method of philosophical inquiry consisted in questioning people on the positions they asserted and working them through questions into a contradiction, thus proving to them that their original assertion was wrong. Socrates himself never takes a position; in The Apology he radically and skeptically claims to know nothing at all except that he knows nothing. Socrates and Plato refer to this method of questioning as elenchus , which means something like "cross-examination" The Socratic elenchus eventually gave rise to dialectic, the idea that truth needs to be pursued by modifying one's position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. It is this idea of the truth being pursued, rather than discovered, that characterizes Socratic thought and much of our world view today. The Western notion of dialectic is somewhat Socratic in nature in that it is conceived of as an ongoing process. Although Socrates in The Apology claims to have discovered no other truth than that he knows no truth, the Socrates of Plato's other earlier dialogues is of the opinion that truth is somehow attainable through this process of elenchus . 

   The Athenians, with the exception of Plato, thought of Socrates as a Sophist, a designation he seems to have bitterly resented. He was, however, very similar in thought to the Sophists. Like the Sophists, he was unconcerned with physical or metaphysical questions; the issue of primary importance was ethics, living a good life. He appeared to be a sophist because he seems to tear down every ethical position he's confronted with he never offers alternatives after he's torn down other people's ideas.

 He doesn't seem to be a radical skeptic, though. Scholars generally believe that the Socratic paradox is actually Socratic rather than an invention of Plato. The one positive statement that Socrates seems to have made is a definition of virtue (areté): "virtue is knowledge." If one knows the good, one will always do the good. It follows, then, that anyone who does anything wrong doesn't really know what the good is. This, for Socrates, justifies tearing down people's moral positions, for if they have the wrong ideas about virtue, morality, love, or any other ethical idea, they can't be trusted to do the right thing.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is one of the most iconic figures from late Victorian society. Enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of society. His wit, humour and intelligence shine through his plays and writings. For his sexuality he suffered the indignity and shame of imprisonment. For a long time his name was synonymous with scandal and intrigue. However with changing social attitudes he is remembered with great affection for his biting social criticism, wit and linguistic skills.

“To get back my youth I would do anything  in the world, except take exercise, get up early or be respectable.”
- Oscar Wilde

As Stephen Fry wrote of Oscar Wilde.

“What of Wilde the man? He stood for Art. He stood for nothing less all his life.. He is still enormously underestimated as an artist and a thinker.. Wilde was a great writer and a great man.”

Short biography: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born on 16th October 1854. in Dublin, Ireland. His parents were well known and attracted their fare share of gossip for their extravangant lifestyles. In 1964 his father Wille Wilde was knighted for his services to medicine. However his pride in receiving this honour was overshadowed by an allegation of rape by one of his patients. Although never proved, it cast a shadow over William Wilde.

Oscar Wilde proved to be a student of great talent. He was awarded a scholarship to Trinity College Dublin. Here he studied the classics, in particular developing an interest in the Greek philosophers and the Hellenistic view of life. From Trinity college he won a scholarship to Magdalen College Oxford University. He enjoyed his time in Oxford and was able to develop his poetic sensibilities and love of literature. He also became more conscious of his bisexual nature. For his increasing “femine” dress he often received stick from more “traditional” Oxford students. He was a brilliant scholar but also increasingly rebellious. In one academic year he got rusticated for turning up to College 3 weeks after the start of term. Thus after a while he lost interest in pursuing an academic career in Oxford and moved to London. It was in London that he was able to skilfully enter into high society, soon becoming well known as a playwright and noted wit. Oscar Wilde became famous throughout London society. He was one of the early “celebrities” in some respects he was famous for being famous. His dress was a target for satire in the cartoons, but Wilde didn’t seem to mind. In fact he learnt the art of self-publicity and seemed to revel in it, at least up until his trial in 1898.

Oscar Wilde’s trial gripped the nation, the subject matter a source of intense gossip and speculation. For his “crime” of homosexual acts Wilde was subject to 2 years hard labour in Wandsworth and then  Reading Gaol. It is no understatement to say this experience deeply shocked and affected the previously ebullient Wilde. In some respects he never really recovered, on his release he left for Paris where he lived in comparative anonymity. However he retained his wit and continued to write, heavily influenced by his chastening experiences. Of these post gaol writings, his poem “Ballad of Reading Gaol is perhaps the most well known, illustrating a new dimension to Wilde’s writing.

“I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.”

..

“ I walked with  other souls in pain.
Within another ring.
And was wondering if the man had done 
A great or little thing.
When a voice behind me whispered low,
That fellows got to swing.”

Although Wilde couldn’t return to his previous level of writing  he developed new capacities, whilst retaining his sharp intellect. As Johnathon fryer commented on Oscar Wilde’s final part of life he was.

 “beaten but not bowed, still a clown behind a mask of tragedy.”

The Life of Wilde was turbulent and volatile. Never short of  incident. It reflected his own inner paradoxes and revolutionary views. In some ways he was both a saint and sinner at the same time. Rightly or wrongly Wilde is remembered as much for his life as his writings. However he himself said.

“I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living.”

His writings reflect in part his paradoxical view of life, suggesting things were not always as they appeared. As his biographer Richard Ellman said of Wilde.

“Along with Blake and Nietzche , he was proposing that good and evil are not what they seem, and that moral tabs cannot cope with the complexity of behaviour”

Whatever one may make of Wilde’s life, his capacity for writing remains undeniable. His greatest work and comedy is arguably  “The importance of being Earnest” Here the plotline is thin to say the least but Wilde brings it alive through his scintillating repertoire of wit and biting humour.

“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

- Algernon, Act I

“Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years."

- Lady Bracknell, Act III

 

Wilde was not an overtly political commentator but through his plays there is an underlying critique of social norms that are illumined for their absurdities.

Wilde remains a fascinating character. One who lived life to the full, experiencing both the joy and tragedy of society’s vacillating judgements. With the distance of over a century it is easier to judge Wilde for his unique contributions to literature rather than through the eyes of Victorian moral standards. His quotes have become immortal a fitting tribute to a genius of the witticism

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”

• Oscar Wilde

Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist, literary critic, a socialist spokesman, and a leading figure in the 20th century theater. Bernard Shaw was a freethinker, defender of women's rights, and advocate of equality of income. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shaw accepted the honour but refused the money.

"Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court." (from G.B. Shaw's preface in Three Plays by Brieux, 1911)

George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, where he grew up in something close to genteel poverty. "I am a typical Irishman; my family came from Yorkshire," Shaw once said. His father, George Carr Shaw, was in the wholesale grain trade. Lucinda Elisabeth (Gurly) Shaw, his mother, was the daughter of an impoverished landowner. She was 16-years younger than her husband. George Carr was a drunkard – his example prompted his son to become a teetotaller. When he died in 1885, his children and wife did not attend his funeral. Young Shaw and his two sisters were brought up mostly by servants. Shaw's mother eventually left the family home to teach music, singing, in London. When she died in 1913, Shaw confessed to Mrs. Patrick Campbell: "I must write to you about it, because there is no one else who didn't hate her mother, and even who doesn't hate her children."

In 1866 the family moved to a better neighborhood. Shaw went to the Wesleyan Connexional School, then moved to a private school near Dalkey, and from there to Dublin's Central Model School. Shaw finished his formal education at the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School. At the age of 15, he started to work as a junior clerk. In 1876 he went to London, joining his sister and mother. Shaw did not return to Ireland for nearly thirty years.

In his plays Shaw combined contemporary moral problems with ironic tone and paradoxes, "Shavian" wit, which have produced such phrases as "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches", "England and America are two countries divided by a common language", "Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it", and "I never resist temptation because I have found that things are bad for me do not tempt me." Discussion and intellectual acrobatics are the basis of his drama, and before the emergence of the sound film, his plays were nearly impossible to adapt into screen. During his long career, Shaw wrote over 50 plays. He continued to write them even in his 90s. George Bernard Shaw died at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, on November 2, 1950. He was cremated and it was his wish that his ashes be mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte – she had died seven years before, "an old woman bowed and crippled, furrowed and wrinkled," as Shaw depicted her in a letter to H.G. Wells.

Since the days of the silent films, Shaw had been a fan of motion-picture. He also played in the film Rosy Rapture - The Pride of the Beauty (1914). Shaw did not like much of the German film version of Pygmalion (1935), and the penniless producer and director Gabriel Pascal persuaded the author to give him the rights to make films from his plays. "Mr Pascal, you're the first honest film producer I have ever met," Shaw told him at their first meeting and gave him a pound note.Pygmalion, produced by Pascal and directed by Anthony Asquith and David Lean (uncredited), was a great success. In one article, Pascal was picked with the Pope and Hitler as one of the ten most famous men of 1938, but his career ended in the financial fiasco of the spectacle Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). Other films inspired by Shaw's plays include Saint Joan (1927), How He Lied to Her Husband (1931), Arms and the Man (1932), Major Barbara (1941), and My Fair Lady(1964). Pascal's co-director in Major Barbara was David Lean, but for thousand pounds Lean agreed to give the full credit to Pascal.