Keith Robbins - Churchill

Churchill

Churchill

Keith Robbins

First published 1992 by

Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Pearson Education Limited 1992

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

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIT 4LP

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book can be obtained from the Library of Congress

ISBN 13: 978-0-582-43759-3 (pbk)

PREFACE

As the years pass, the editorial in the February 1991 Newsletter published by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust sadly suggested,

it is becoming increasingly evident that the average British citizen is less and less aware of Sir Winston Churchill his life, his character, his contribution to this country and his legacy to the world. Personal memories of him are beginning to fade, and the school teaching of history or current affairs does not sufficiently cover his commanding role in national and world affairs in the first half of the 20th century. This lack of knowledge often proves embarrassing to Fellows not only during their Fellowship interviews, but also when their hosts enquire about the origins and aims of the Trust.

I was myself the grateful holder of a Travelling Fellowship from the Churchill Trust in 1990 and it enabled me to carry out an extensive programme of travel and interviews in many European countries. Since I met many modern historians in the course of my journey, it is perhaps not surprising that they possessed a greater knowledge of Churchill than the gloomy editorial feared. I also came across a new first translation into Magyar of Churchills The Second World War testimony to the fact that he still has something to say to the changing Europe of our time. Yet, there can be no doubt that the underlying contention of the editorial is correct. The name and face of Churchill are known all over the world, but the average British citizen would find it difficult to come to a balanced appreciation of his greatness. He seems at once a contemporary and a remote figure.

This book will not supply the average British student with everything that is to be known about Winston Churchill. In keeping with the objectives of this series, however, it seeks to give an outline of his career but, more fundamentally, to uncover what made possible that commanding role in national and world affairs in the first half of the 20th century. His own attributes were given expression in an extraordinary empire in the final phase of its life. He lived long enough to experience the implications for his own creed which were inherent in its demise. He had an acute sense of the fluctuating fates of individuals and nations. Power could not be explained, but its achievement and its loss could be felt, both individually and nationally. Churchill did not seize power but he mingled with men who did. He had, indeed, at times a commanding role but he was not so foolish as to suppose that even a man of power could shape the pattern of history. Meditation on his own career, however, with its unpredictable changes of fortune, suggested that there was a tide in the affairs of men which could be taken at the flood. Yet the victory which he helped to achieve had about it the smell of defeat. In his Indian Summer, it was not clear whether his long political journey led to the birth of a new Britain or merely the death of an old. There was plenty of evidence and plenty of doubt.

Professor Martin Pugh kindly performed an editorial task for the general editor, but mistakes or misjudgments are mine. This volume is dedicated to my former colleagues in Glasgow for their stimulus and friendship in the dozen years I spent with them. Doing history in a university over such a period of change has not been without some toil, tears and sweat but happily it has been without blood and with more than an occasional element of laughter!