Churchill Winston - The literary Churchill: author, reader, actor

Copyright 2014 Jonathan Rose

The right of Jonathan Rose to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Rose, Jonathan, 1952

The literary Churchill: author, reader, actor / Jonathan Rose.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-300-20407-0 (cl : alk. paper)

1. Churchill, Winston, 18741965Literary art. 2. Great BritainHistory 20th century. I. Title.

DA566.9.C5R649 2014

941.084092dc23

2013041979

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Illustrations

The English Rose, at the Adelphi Theatre in the Penny Illustrated Paper, 9 August 1890.

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She prayed for the victory of the rebel she loved over her husband, the president and Antonio Molara lay on the three lowest steps of the entrance of his palace. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

A cartoon of the imagined exploits of Churchill in the Boer War. Churchill Archives Centre, CHAR 2/129.

The Home Secretary at Sidney Street. Wikipedia Commons.

Churchill, self-portrait, c.1920. Reproduced with permission of Anthea Morton-Saner on behalf of Churchill Heritage Ltd Churchill Heritage Ltd.

David Low, If Bolshevism came to England in the Evening Standard, 19 July 1928. British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, and Solo Syndication/Associated Newspapers Ltd.

Max Beerbohm, The ChurchillWells Controversy, 1920. Houghton Library, Harvard University, pf MS Eng 696 (20).

Will Dyson, Take my child, but spare, oh spare, me! in the Daily Herald, 1938. British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, and Solo Syndication/Associated Newspapers Ltd.

David Low, Trial of a new model in the Evening Standard, 14 October 1938. British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, and Solo Syndication/Associated Newspapers Ltd.

David Low, Triumphal Tour in the Evening Standard, 30 May 1940. British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, and Solo Syndication/Associated Newspapers Ltd.

John F. Kennedy with Spencer Tracy, November 1940. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

1 Churchill's favorite Irish melodrama, The English Rose (Penny Illustrated Paper, 9 August 1890).

2 Churchill was in the audience for Jules Verne's spectacular melodrama Michael Strogoff, which portrayed an invasion of Russia a half-century before Operation Barbarossa.

3a and 3b From a 1908 illustrated paperback edition of Savrola.

4 A highly romanticized contemporary newspaper cartoon imagines Churchill's exploits in the Boer War.

5 The Siege of Sidney Street which in a sense was the reenactment of Savrola.

6 Self-portait in self-doubt, around 1920.

7 David Low imagines Churchill as a British dictator commanding all authors to serve his cult of personality (Evening Standard, 19 July 1928).

8 The ChurchillWells Controversy, pencil and wash drawing by Max Beerbohm, 1920. Churchill: You were only 14 days in Russia! Wells: Your mother's an American!

9 The Will Dyson cartoon that so upset Joseph Goebbels and Lord Halifax (Daily Herald, 1938).

10 David Low on pro-appeasement censorship, with Duff Cooper, Anthony Eden, and Churchill casting a cold eye (Evening Standard, 14 October 1938).

11 After the surrender of the Belgian Army, David Low meant to ridicule Hitler's prophesies of victory, but this cartoon may have had the opposite effect on British morale (Evening Standard, 30 May 1940).

12 Young John F. Kennedy autographs his early assessment of Churchill, Why England Slept, for actor Spencer Tracy, November 1940.

Acknowledgments

The superbly organized Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College Cambridge was, of course, indispensable to this project. But no less important were the Interlibrary Loan staff at Drew University Library, whom I ran ragged. I thank the Churchill Estate, Firestone Library at Princeton University, the Special Collections Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for permission to quote from unpublished documents. Quotations from Churchill's published and unpublished writings are reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill, Winston S. Churchill.

I am equally grateful for access to the book and manuscript collections at the British Library, the New York Public Library, the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University, Columbia University Library, Yale University Library, the Library of Congress, the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University, Syracuse University Library, Ball State University Library, the Guildhall Library, the Archive of British Publishing and Printing at the University of Reading, and the Forbes Collection. Images were supplied by the Churchill Archives Centre, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Getty Images, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Trust, the British Cartoon Archive, Argenta Images, Solo Syndication/Associated Newspapers Ltd., the Max Beerbohm estate, and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.