The Churchill Factor [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION A DOG CALLED CHURCHILL When I was growing up there was no doubt about it. Churchill was quite the greatest statesman that Britain had ever produced. From a very early age I had a pretty clear idea of what he had done: he had led my country to victory against all the odds and against one of the most disgusting tyrannies the world has seen. I knew the essentials of his story. My brother Leo and I used to pore over Martin Gilbert's biographical Life in Pictures, to the point where we had memorised the captions. I knew that he had a mastery of the art of speech-making, and my father (like many of our fathers) would recite some of his most famous lines; and I knew, even then, that this art was dying out. I knew that he was funny, and irreverent, and that even by the standards of his time he was politically incorrect. At suppertime we were told the apocryphal stories: the one where Churchill is on the lavatory, and informed that the Lord Privy Seal wants to see him, and he says that he is sealed in the privy, etc. We knew the one where Sociahst MP Bessie Braddock allegedly told him that he was drunk, and he replied, with astonishing rudeness, that she was ugly and he would be sober in the morning. I think we also dimly knew the one about the Tory minister and the guardsman . . . You probably know it, but never