round.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money, he would often say, quoting Dr Johnson; but of course in his case that was far from true. He also wrote because his temperament demanded it.
His creative-depressive personality meant that writing (or painting, or bricklaying) was a way of keeping the ‘black dog’ of depression at bay. He wrote for that sensation of release that comes with laying 200 bricks and writing 2,000 words a day.
Above all, he wrote his journalism and history and biography because for Winston Churchill writing was—to adapt Clausewitz on war—the continuation of politics by other means. These torrential literary efforts were his most potent weapons in his variouscampaigns, whether against Indian independence or against complacency about Hitler.
He could dramatise events and personalities in a way that was given to few other politicians, adding the emotion and colour that suited his cause. Neville Chamberlain fatefully said that Czechoslovakia was a faraway country of which we know little. Churchill had the literary and imaginative skill to bring the tragedy home—even to people who had never thought much about Czechoslovakia at all.
By the time he came into Downing Street in May 1940 he had written and read so much history as to have a unique understanding of events, to see them in context, and to see what England must do. J. H. Plumb mocked what he saw as Churchill’s simplistic understanding and complacent belief in British greatness.
‘The old Whig claptrap echoes in chapter after chapter,’ he said—and by that he means to attack the central idea that guided Churchill all his life: that there was something special about the rise of England, and of liberty in England: the process by which freedoms were won from the Crown, the growth of a sovereign and democratic Parliament.
Huh, said J. H. Plumb: ‘The past is a pasteboard pageant that indicates nothing and does not signpost the future.’ Well, I look at the world today, and I think Plumb is wrong about that. Look at the fringes of the former Soviet Union, look at what is happening in the countries of the Arab Spring—I think most people would say that those ideals are still being fought for and are still worth fighting for.
It was greatly to the advantage of this country and the world that Churchill was able to articulate that vision with such confidence. He knew what England, for all her faults, had given the world—and that gave him his certainty of eventual victory.
There are two final ways in which his literary exertions made Churchill the only man for 1940. As even Plumb admits, in his study of Marlborough, there is something orchestral about Churchill’s ability to deploy and coordinate his material: switching from Holland to Paris to London and to the Seven Seas. He knew instinctively which subject needed attention and when, while driving the central narrative along. Which was more or less how he ran the war.
Finally, let us go back to that figure in the study in Chartwell, pacing up and down and dictating to Mrs Pearman or Eddie Marsh. It takes prodigious mental effort to assemble the right words in your head, and then ensure that they are loaded on to the conveyor belt of the tongue so as to emerge in an order fit for printing.
Surely it was that endlessly repeated oral discipline which improved him not just as a writer but as a speaker. We may not read enough of his books today, but it was his speeches which galvanised the nation.
As we shall now see, the greatest orator of the modern era did not always speak fluently or well.
CHAPTER 7
HE MOBILISED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
W e join our hero on his feet in the House of Commons. He’s rhythmically thumping out a speech he will never forget. It’s an occasion that will be imprinted in his memory—the time he found a new way to leave his listeners breathless and stunned.
It is 22 April 1904, and the young thruster is at the top of his game. He is
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money, he would often say, quoting Dr Johnson; but of course in his case that was far from true. He also wrote because his temperament demanded it.
His creative-depressive personality meant that writing (or painting, or bricklaying) was a way of keeping the ‘black dog’ of depression at bay. He wrote for that sensation of release that comes with laying 200 bricks and writing 2,000 words a day.
Above all, he wrote his journalism and history and biography because for Winston Churchill writing was—to adapt Clausewitz on war—the continuation of politics by other means. These torrential literary efforts were his most potent weapons in his variouscampaigns, whether against Indian independence or against complacency about Hitler.
He could dramatise events and personalities in a way that was given to few other politicians, adding the emotion and colour that suited his cause. Neville Chamberlain fatefully said that Czechoslovakia was a faraway country of which we know little. Churchill had the literary and imaginative skill to bring the tragedy home—even to people who had never thought much about Czechoslovakia at all.
By the time he came into Downing Street in May 1940 he had written and read so much history as to have a unique understanding of events, to see them in context, and to see what England must do. J. H. Plumb mocked what he saw as Churchill’s simplistic understanding and complacent belief in British greatness.
‘The old Whig claptrap echoes in chapter after chapter,’ he said—and by that he means to attack the central idea that guided Churchill all his life: that there was something special about the rise of England, and of liberty in England: the process by which freedoms were won from the Crown, the growth of a sovereign and democratic Parliament.
Huh, said J. H. Plumb: ‘The past is a pasteboard pageant that indicates nothing and does not signpost the future.’ Well, I look at the world today, and I think Plumb is wrong about that. Look at the fringes of the former Soviet Union, look at what is happening in the countries of the Arab Spring—I think most people would say that those ideals are still being fought for and are still worth fighting for.
It was greatly to the advantage of this country and the world that Churchill was able to articulate that vision with such confidence. He knew what England, for all her faults, had given the world—and that gave him his certainty of eventual victory.
There are two final ways in which his literary exertions made Churchill the only man for 1940. As even Plumb admits, in his study of Marlborough, there is something orchestral about Churchill’s ability to deploy and coordinate his material: switching from Holland to Paris to London and to the Seven Seas. He knew instinctively which subject needed attention and when, while driving the central narrative along. Which was more or less how he ran the war.
Finally, let us go back to that figure in the study in Chartwell, pacing up and down and dictating to Mrs Pearman or Eddie Marsh. It takes prodigious mental effort to assemble the right words in your head, and then ensure that they are loaded on to the conveyor belt of the tongue so as to emerge in an order fit for printing.
Surely it was that endlessly repeated oral discipline which improved him not just as a writer but as a speaker. We may not read enough of his books today, but it was his speeches which galvanised the nation.
As we shall now see, the greatest orator of the modern era did not always speak fluently or well.
CHAPTER 7
HE MOBILISED THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
W e join our hero on his feet in the House of Commons. He’s rhythmically thumping out a speech he will never forget. It’s an occasion that will be imprinted in his memory—the time he found a new way to leave his listeners breathless and stunned.
It is 22 April 1904, and the young thruster is at the top of his game. He is
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