Bleeding Edge

Winston Churchill loved poetry and especially the kind of deep meaningful stuff and the more exotic the better.

He liked classical Persian poetry.

Such as Rumi’s poem of the desert:

“There is a desert
I long to be walking,
a wide emptiness…
Peace beyond any
understanding of it.”

And here is Hafiz poetry divan too:
“It was the proclamation of thy love
That shook the strings of Life’s most secret lyre,
And still my breast heaves with last night’s desire,
For countless echoes from that music sprang”

Or this gem from the Poems of the Divan by Hafiz:
“The nightingale with drops of his heart’s blood
had nourished the red rose, then came a wind,
And catching at the boughs in envious mood,
A hundred thorns about his heart entwined.
Like to the parrot crunching sugar, good
Seemed the world to me who could not stay
The wind of Death that swept my hopes away.

Light of mine eyes and harvest of my heart,
And mine at least in changeless memory!
Ah, when he found it easy to depart,
He left the harder pilgrimage to me!
Oh Camel-driver, though the cordage start,
For God’s sake help me lift my fallen load,
And Pity be my comrade of the road!

My face is seamed with dust, mine eyes are wet.
Of dust and tears the turquoise firmament
Kneadeth the bricks for joy’s abode; and yet . . .
Alas, and weeping yet I make lament!
Because the moon her jealous glances set
Upon the bow-bent eyebrows of my moon,
He sought a lodging in the grave-too soon!

I had not castled, and the time is gone.
What shall I play? Upon the chequered floor
Of Night and Day, Death won the game-forlorn
And careless now, Hafiz can lose no more.”

And yet there is another person in Winston’s life that loved Poetry as much as he did: This person was Prince Edward the future King, who dedicated the short sonnet bellow as a Love poem to Winston’s mother Jennie, with whom he had a life long affair and as lovers for many years, were known for their tender love towards each other. Indeed the Prince suffered from love sickness because Jennie was fickle with her attentions and charms and flying around like a butterfly from relationship to relationship… Maybe their mutual love of exotic poetry meant that they shared more than is visible with the naked eye.

“It seems that all is a dream,
the love of our timeless day…
What of our love, it has no end?”

There was a whole lot more that Edward shared with Winston besides the love of poetry, and the love of Jennie which they both shared occupying different positions in her heart, but they also shared some crucial foundational DNA, and the reason for it — can now finally be revealed to the public at large: Winston was truly the love child of Prince Edward and Jennie Jerome.

But we move too fast here, so let us digress.

And as expected this is Winston Churchill’s condensed and very personal, truth telling Biography, that is not rhapsodizing, nor fawning either, since we do not cover up the difficult subjects of his patronage, of his biological father, and of his real epigenetic, and DNA origins:

Because Winston Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the descendents of the Duke of Marlborough, who formed a branch of the ancient & noble Spencer family. They were dukes, princes, and commoners like Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, who very much like his Great, great, great, grandfather, used the simple surname “Churchill” in the sum-total of his long private & highly visible public life.

His ancestor George Spencer had changed his surname to Spencer-Churchill in 1817 when he became Duke of Marlborough, to highlight his descent from John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was a politician; and his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome) was the daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome. Winston Churchill was born on St Andrews day, the 30th of November 1874, ostensibly two months prematurely, in the old Chaplain’s bedroom on the ground floor of Blenheim Palace, in Woodstock, of Oxfordshire. A great address for any new born…

From age two to six, young Winston lived in Dublin, where his grandfather had been appointed Viceroy and employed Winston Churchill’s father as his private secretary. Winston Churchill’s brother, John Strange Spencer-Churchill, was born during this time in Ireland. It has been claimed that the young Winston Churchill first developed his fascination with military matters from watching the many parades pass by the Vice Regal Lodge (now Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the President of Ireland).  Yet it might be best to admit that this fascination with all things martial has been part of Winston’s DNA and his epigenetic information, residing in his genes, that drove him to love all things military, naval, & aerial, because he indeed loved all implements of war, as well as the sparring that involved the conflict of great ideas and civilizations, striving to bring forth their own brand of progress for humanity, and their favorable destination for such.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill lived short of a century; from the 30th of November 1874 – to the 24th of January 1965. In these short and busy 91 years of Life, he became the most common sensical, and yet the most important, resourceful and contrarian United Kingdom Leader, Parliamentarian, British statesman, and wartime Leader in history.

His pivotal and turbulent Life was interwoven with the Life of the United Kingdom, the Empire of Great Britain, and the Fate of the whole World. He was an American from his mother’s side but also because in a rare gesture, he was awarded the US citizenship from the US Congress. Churchill fought Islam, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, during all of his long life, without ever letting up, or wavering from his convictions.

He fought Islam and he compared that virulently hateful ideology with “Rabbies in the mind of man” and he offered the same choice words for National Socialism, Communism, and Fascism.

He always fought at the head of the battle, because early on, he declared himself invincible. And thereafter he always took outsized risks with both his Life and his Destiny. He chased his Fortune, and sought to make his mark in the world. This was his idea of success, but above all else, he was a Man of Ideas. He was a Lover of Country, Liberty, and the Republic, and of the unwritten English Constitution. He fought and shed blood for Liberty and Great Ideas all around the World… without once complaining of hurt or tiredness.

In his maturity, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill helmed the Soul of Democracy — the Parliament of England, when the world was crashing down all around him. Yet he persisted to the bitter end and he came-out the other side of Hell dusty, but unscathed, and Victorious, having vanquished the most evil of his enemies: The Nazis. The national Socialists of that artless Austrian colonel, named Adolf Hitler.

Churchill took the reins of power for the whole of the Western Civilization, as the World around him was collapsing, and he held firmly those reins, to steer us to a safe course to victory, and the end of the War.

He personally fought in four, or five different continents, depending on how you count them; during those points in history that he was a fighting man. He was fired upon and survived all manner of artillery attacks, cavalry charges, sword slashes, flying bullets, bayonets, machine gun bursts, aeroplane crashes, anti-aircraft fire, booby traps, explosives, accidents, and shrapnel wounds — far too many times to count. This was the Winston Churchill who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the defining moments of the second World War, as he was the point man in this Conflict of Civilizations.

He was declared the Father of Victory and became again the Prime Minister from 1951 to 1955, and during that time he modernized the English Society and laid the foundations for modern era services, for the National Health System, and for the beneficial social & civil society as well. Winston Churchill was from the beginning and always an Orator, a Thinker, a Parliamentarian, a Soldier, an Officer in the British Army, an astute Historian, and a serious Writer.

Winston Churchill, was so prolific and astute as a writer, that he won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1953, for his overall, lifetime body of work. In 1963, he was the first of only eight people to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

Winston Churchill was born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the Churchill – Spencer family. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.

At the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of Asquith’s Liberal government. During the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He then briefly resumed active army service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. It is then that he fought in the terrible trench warfare at the Battle of the Somme, and he witnessed and participated in the awful carnage that gave him the entrepreneurial idea to design a ship for land that will cross over the trenches and thus make static trench warfare obsolete. He reasoned that this new weapon will enable the British army to win and thus shorten the terribly bloody trench warfare and thus save millions of lives.

In that he was fully successful and as his Innovative designs for a landship like a destroyer that rolls over the trenches came to be designed and built with maximum effect as “the Tank” his innovation indeed shortened the war significantly by giving a huge advantage to the Allies by driving the Germans back across the River Rhine.

Most people do not know that he invented the military tank that has changed the face of warfare for ever. And today History does not even credit Winston Churchill with that Innovation either. But he has far more things to be Grateful for that History indeed gives him credit for… so “No Worries” here.

Eventually Winston Churchill, returned to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin’s Conservative government of 1924–1929, controversially returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure on the UK economy.

Out of office and politically out “in the wilderness” during all of the 1930s because of his staunch opposition to the politically correct ideas about “increased home rule for India” and also due to his resistance to the 1936 abdication of Edward VIII – Winston Churchill took the lead in warning England and America, about Nazi Germany’s war preparations and he campaigned tirelessly for British naval & military readiness and for all English people’s rearmament, across the globe, in order to prepare for the massive threat that he alone was able to foresee…

The threat to the World’s Peace posed by the government of the party of National Socialism of Germany, and it’s vicious leader, the German Fuhrer; otherwise known as Adolf Hitler, the “Austrian Corporal” who was inimical to all human values the Western Civilization embodied.

Winston Churchill gathered all sorts of qualified military intelligence about the German re-armament, and the militarization of the German Society. He sought information about the specifics of Germany’s advanced stages of military-naval-air force build-up, and munitions war preparations and was so dangerously alarmed by them — that he took a perilous, peripatetic and surreptitious journey to GERMANY — alone and in secret, at the height of these dangerous pre-war years.

Going alone without diplomatic cover to Germany Winston Churchill took a heavy risk. The main risk was that in order to find out all the information he needed he was to travel in areas that were forbidden to foreigners, and also he had to ask difficult and sensitive questions, about the best kept secrets of the third Reich. In short he spied on Germany’s High Command in a way, that if he were to be found out and arrested as a spy, he might be interned and executed.

Surely he tempted fate when he stayed in the same Munich Hotel where Hitler himself was always taking his afternoon meetings. Many people might have thought him mad to take this risk — Yet Winston Churchill reasoned that he had to do this, in order to find out the facts for himself.

Still in his own way, he went about it, privately and quietly, and he visited Bavaria, Munich, the Rhineland, Berlin, Heidelberg,and the rest of Germany on an Incognito fact finding mission, always ‘masked’ as a tourist.

In that trip he saw everything there was to see, and was fully informed about the advanced stages of war preparations the German nation was engaged onto. By doing this through his own eyes — he was to become an eyewitness to the reality of Hitler’s colours, war cries, stripes, and hue…

After seeing all there was to see in Germany and after discovering the Fuhrer’s ill intent — all that was left for him, was to return home and inform the Western World of this giant threat to world stability and safety.

Yet once Winston Churchill left Germany and returned home safe, after his perilous journey as a private spy — he railed against the looming German threat and asked the Intelligence Services to help find ways to rid Germany of her evil doers, and especially her Evil Meister but nobody would listen.

He organized debate after debate — yet at the time nobody was willing to listen… to that “has been politician” and currently ‘washed-out,’ old militant and war mongering hawk, Winston Churchill.

Much later in a reality check, about these pre-war times, his wife Clementine Churchill would quietly and wisely point out, that “During the days of Lloyd George and his Budget Debates, and during the discussions about the House of Lords Reform, Winston Churchill, was ostracized by the British Society and Leadership, same as Oswald Mosley the ‘English-Nazi’ (English National Socialist Leader) is now. Three times Winston’s political career has lain in ruins, and three times he has made an apparently impossible comeback.”

Of course to a degree, his stormy passage has been the natural result of his own fierce partisanship, because to Winston Churchill the excitement of life has always lain in the clash of wills and the dangerous struggles which have fashioned the outline of history. He never played for safety, and as he was endowed with a highly emotional nature, he usually acted on impulse and intuition rather than on calculation or even logic.

He was often incapable of assessing a situation dispassionately, but
once he has taken a stand he has never been at a loss to find closely reasoned arguments to support it. Thus on paper he appears to be a cool and highly rational being, while on the political stage he often seems rash and impetuous. This apparent contradiction has always perplexed his contemporaries, who regard him as the most incalculable figure in public life.

Yet there is one constant note in his character which is the very essence of his nature and of his genius as well: That is his Romanticism, stemming from his indomitable romantic nature as is well exhibited from his single minded pursuits of Life partner, Ideas, and Long Held Friends…
It may well be that in the years to come historians will describe him as the last great Romantic that England produced – but let’s not count on it.

Winston Churchill is incapable of seeing life in terms of monotones. Whatever subject his mind touches is at once transformed into shimmering lights and colours, because just as when he paints he has little use for the dull browns and greys – so as a politician and a writer he feels compelled to reach out for the vivid hues of brilliant colour.

For Winston did not see life in any other way, because every subject his mind touched is at once transformed into a brilliant drama. His world is a world of good and bad, dark and light, black & white, and a world of righteous causes and shining swords, full of dark and evil foes.

There is always a hero and a villain, and the fact that Winston Churchill never fails to cast himself in the leading role, not only annoys his opponents but often irritates his colleagues as well — and they in turn cast him as the perpetual villainous man of war. Yet n all reality Winston Churchill always strived for Peace and Stability. Yet his combative nature, allowed for the excesses of his character to be shown here i their best light.

And although Winston Churchill’s Romanticism undoubtedly is the natural consequence of a brilliant fancy and a highly emotional nature, it was bred in him as well from Blenheim Palace, where he was born, as it was kindled in his mind through the splendour of past military exploits, of Marlborough. And in some lesser measure of his father’s sensational career that opened his eyes to the fame that awaits the good Orator. Yet when he had to choose, between the two careers — soldiering attracted him the most and he followed his footsteps to Sandhurst Military Academy. Surprisingly enough, until he was nearly forty years old, he dreamed of glory on the battlefields. That is why in the 1914 war he begged to resign his office as First Lord of the Admiralty, in order to take charge of Antwerp; and that is also why when he joined a regiment in France fighting in the trenches, a year later, he was bitterly disappointed not to be allowed an important field command.

Yet throughout his long Parliamentary career he had never lost interest in the science of battle. And of the well over thirty published volumes credited to his name and to his
credit, twenty-five of them, deal with some aspect of war and battles. His conflicts are heroic and the two books that he had started and would have really liked to write, had time allowed him to do so — were the “Life of Napoleon” and the “Life of Julius Caesar.” So you get the idea… He loved war, but he fought for Peace.

That is the contradiction of this Man.

Winston Churchill had a voracious appetite for reading the Greats, and for studying their Actions that changed the World. And he always looked to learn from the Brilliant Teachers of the past, present, and somehow — of the future. Please don’t ask how… He also studied Confucianism and Buddhism as a counterbalance to his Western pedagogue, and he thrived in the masonic rituals of his Scottish fraternal order. But above all else he loved his Anglican faith and he cherished the time spent in church in communion with the Divine Spirit and in prayer to God with whom he seems to have developed a special relationship, as he always arrived late for church but early enough to get the Communion after the Eucharist was spoken and sang.
He read books like his life depended on it. Indeed he read like a madman. Especially he read and wrote in the hot days of Bangalore when serving in the Indian subcontinent — where he thrived with his reading books inside the bathtub of his most comfortable stucco Indian bungalow in the Whitefields area, called the Weaverly villa.

But he also studied Abraham Lincoln and this most important American Statesman’s Life and Beliefs. And for the rest of his Life he liked to think of Honest Abe Lincoln’s philosophy as his own and of the political philosophy of the nascent Republican party, as the right dose of Conservatism for the Republic. And he liked the Whig party origins of the politics of the Great Lincoln and of the Republican party quite well, as seen in this brief Lincoln speech…

And it is in those times that he also studied Buddhism, and Confucianism, since both of them aren’t a form of religion in the strict sense of the word and it doesn’t conflict with Winston’s strong sense of Christianity because these Oriental belief systems do not advocate faith in any particular type of god. Yet what they offer is an ethical philosophy, a code of morality on how to react with other people which should lead to a happy life, and the principles of what it truly means to be a Gentleman and not a Cad.

Confucius and the Buddha had two main ideals – applicable to Winston Churchill. One that we should treat all people as we would want to be treated if the tables were reversed. And two that all people should be true gentlemen, whatever class they might be from, and that they should maintain proper conduct towards others whilst doing so, and therefore we ought to treat them always with Kindness, Compassion, and Magnanimity.

Winston Churchill wanted to reform government so that the welfare of the people was paramount and trained men who would be able to take high governmental positions and high risk should the circumstances demanded that of them — should lead by example of personal virtue. By following his philosophy, and becoming a True Courageous Gentleman, he figured that he would earn the respect of ordinary people, and maybe the Heart of a girl as well someday.

Winston saw himself as an aristocrat and used this ideal to work towards. His basic conduct became that of a ‘true gentleman’. He believed that every true gentleman should have the top five qualities – integrity, righteousness, loyalty, altruism and goodness. Winston was keen on having and sharing his humanity as respect, compassion, and loving-kindness towards all others. He felt that if everyone tried to live up to these ideals the world would become a better and certainly more peaceful place.
The second ideal of Winston was that of proper conduct, because he believed that the practice of social etiquette should be followed.
He learned from Buddhism about the Middle Path and the Way. He saw that there should be moderation in all things. He believed that extremes always produce opposites and you should live between the two in a way that will maintain harmony and balance. He also felt that fulfilling your role in society was a case of doing your duty.
Of course always expansive Winston, expanded the idea of duty to include the filial duty to your father whom he wanted to save from the barbed attacks of his contemporaries that knew of Randolph’s peculiarities and sexual predilection towards his own sex… An uneven battle but still WInston waged it royally. His idea of duty of course had to include your family, and here Winston broke down the concept of family into five social relationships that must be honoured – master and servant, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger siblings and friends, as well as friends of friends. He did this in a most Confucian and Buddhist way because he believed that the family was the basic unit of society over individuals and was thus determined that people should love and honour their families, honor their lineage, protect their community, cherish their traditions, and fight for their sovereign & country as times demanded and according to their Circumstances. In relations to this Winston Churchill thought that honoring the lineage and your ancestors should start in a way with your parents and your immediate family and then an only then, it can also spread into reverence for your ancestors, as it was the case with his great ancestor from his established family’s father — the Duke of Marlborough, whose life and feats of valour Winston idolized, and much later managed to turn into an epic book, and a best seller at that… earning himself a royal advance for the publication of this homily to his own familiar yet not necessarily biological, ducal bloodline.

And although Winston Churchill left the army at the age of twentyfour, first to earn a living, and second, because in those peaceful days it seemed unlikely that Britain would ever again become embroiled in a world-wide conflict — he brought the smoke of the battlefield with him to all of his life’s pursuits and to all of his occupations and obsessions — but above all else, he brought the smoke and the shrapnel, and his battle wounds, into the British Parliament along with himself. He studied the religion and the ideology of his enemies, in order to understand them better, and he hated with serious passion above all else, Islam, Nazism, and Communism, in that exact specific order of importance….

Indeed he fought against these terrible three “isms” all of his Life and he did so winningly. And he hated all of them, because they were what he termed “Cults of Death” and “Purveyors of Darkness” and Islam being the “Religion of Slavery”

Winston himself being a Man of Light, he clearly had to fight for it…

His zingers on Islam are myriad, but most of them are far too strong, humorous, and really politically incorrect, to be repeated here… yet methinks you get the idea why the militant Islamists were overly exercised about  this Man, as they are about yours truly.

And he reaped what he sowed, because from the very first he was a natural storm centre.

He never failed to take a stand and he usually took it in the most provocative way possible.

Even standing around doing nothing — he made people mad. By the way, I have inherited this awesome power as well, along with his other gifts of DNA and temperament.

His light was too strong, and blinded people or just made them burn themselves up like moths flying around the flame, setting their wings alight.

Especially the National Socialists of Germany who cultivated the Death camps for anyone different than themselves. How terribly banal the evil Germans of that time look now… Yet when Auswitz below, was fictional miilions of people were systematically killed here.

His natural presence was such that other men felt inferior being next to him. He walked into a room and his massive persona and XL body took over the space and sucked out all the air from the room. The fact that he was a distinguished war hero and a decorated soldier — did not help things… and to this day nobody knows whether more Assassination attempts were made against Winston Churchill’s life by the Nazis or by the Communists.

The thing is that both Nazis and Communists, failed…

Churchill was alive and well, when all of his contemporary enemies perished.

Consequently the House of Commons always crowded around him, to get his secret wisdom.

He had the Oracle within him and that he shared.

He had the all seeing eye, as seen here at Blenheim palace portico…

Constantly the members of parliament came close to Winston in order to hear what new things he had to say.

This was an unusual triumph for him, because as a young man he was not the accomplished orator that we have come to associate with his name and fame of the later years.

His lisp and incredibly strong accent, made him shy of public speaking and that is why he practiced like a new Demosthenes, by placing pebbles in his mouth and giving speeches to the wind and the sea in order to practice basic speaking and rhetoric.

And even worse for him is that although he could write a compelling speech — his delivery was very poor, and the “cut and thrust” of debate eluded him, or at least did not come easily to him.
Indeed, Arthur Balfour once taunted him with the remark that “the Right Honourable Gentleman’s artillery is very powerful, but not very mobile.”

Yet the young Winston Churchill was determined to master the art of debate and that is why he spent long hours practising his speeches out loud, with or without pebbles inside his mouth, and always pausing for interruptions, imagining a thunderous applause and cheers, and always trying to think-up appropriate and acrimonious retorts to his interrupting or jeering colleagues. Over time, gradually, and by sheer effort of will and amazing hours of practice — he developed a facility for normal speeches, for impromptu speaking, for intervention, and that is why today we can think of very few equals, because his opponents were all forced to recognize him as one of the greatest Orators and Parliamentarians England has ever produced.

He spoke often in America and even at the Congress with great aplomb and simplicity as is written here in a spirit of brevity since this speech was indeed carved in stone…

He was a great and simple Speaker of the old school. He respected the rules of Rhetoric and the proper syntax of Oratory fully and he applied all the techniques he had mastered over the years, as he plied his trade on both sides of the Atlantic pond…

But it was in parliament and the House of Commons where he excelled. Because, when he came into the Chamber, a person felt a stirring in the galleries, as if the whole atmosphere was electrified, and the people craned their necks to just see him. He used to sit on the front Government bench with his shoulders hunched, his bulldog head thrust forward, straining to catch every word, and to spring to action offering a brilliant cadence of Oratory, or a retort to an errant colleague form the other side of the aisle…

He was quick to strike, and quick to defend, and few if any opponents ever managed to score off him. Often, when he rose to speak, he begun in a deliberately low voice in order to command the absolute attention.

Once when he was Leader of the Opposition there were cries from the Labour benches: “Speak up! Don’t be afraid.” He paused and surveyed them critically. The House grew still in anticipation. Then in a whisper which could be heard from one end of the Chamber to the other, he said: “I find I speak quite loud enough to silence any of you, when I like.”

To this day, people say that no man or woman had a deeper respect for the power of the House of Commons than Winston Churchill. And even when he was offered the Lordship of London — he refused saying to his Queen that he wascommon man and thus  always a Man of the House of Commons, he must remain.

He always observed parliamentary procedure with care, but this did not prevent him from employing his talent for abuse and ridicule to the fullest and he often whipped the Chamber into such an uproar with insults and accusations hurled back and forth, that the Speaker had to rise-up and use his ‘outdoors’ voice, while waving his mallet for emphasis, in order to maintain order in the House. Following one of these hubbubs in 1947, several letters appeared in the Daily Telegraph deploring the fact that Winston Churchill was not accorded the deference of the Elder Statesman. Clearly, the newspaper writers didn’t understand the man’s temperament; for if the day ever comes when Winston fails to draw the fire of the other side, he will consider his usefulness in Parliament having come to an abrupt end.

In fact, his provocations are often such carefully planned traps, that Labour MPs are sometimes instructed by the Whips not to interrupt him during a debate so that he will not have the opportunity of getting the better of them.

Seems that the secret of Winston Churchill’s parliamentary mastery lies in his ability to change the mood of the House, because although he can provoke an angry storm — he can also turn the storm into roars of laughter by a sudden shaft of wit. His rhetoric always caused deep and sudden emotional mood swings to the listeners unrivaled by any other Speaker except the changeable London weather. ‘If you don’t like it — just wait ten minutes, for it will change’

And what about his caustic abusive and dark English humour he employed as a cudgel to maul his opponents?
Mind you, Winston’s humour is not the cold, polished variety; but it smacks much more of the Pub, the Gym, or the Tavern, with comic, impish, even schoolboy jokes, which few people can resist. In 1939 when he was serving as First Lord of the Admiralty he told his friends with relish how a destroyer had dropped a depth charge, but instead of finding a submarine, bits of an old wreckage had come to the surface. ‘And would you believe it,” he added with a grin: “there was a door bobbing around with my initials on it.”

“I wanted to recount this important occurrence in a speech, but Mr Chamberlain cut it out.” He added with a twinkle: “He thinks my taste is questionable.”

On another occasion, near the end of the war, when he was reminiscing about his career and the fact that he had changed his Party affiliation more than a couple of times, or at least twice, he is remembered to have startled his luncheon guests by proclaiming solemnly: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”

In the House of Commons his humour often was masked in the emphasis and in the hesitation of his voice. Sometimes he treated the assembly to an act which borders on pantomime. Once when a Labour Minister rose to speak Winston Churchill suddenly began feeling in his pockets with an air of consternation, then looking down towards his feet. The eyes of the members left the speaker and began to follow his puzzling movements, and soon even the people in the Galleries were craning in his direction.
Suddenly with an elaborate start he apologized to the Minister: ‘I was just looking for “my jujube” he explained innocently.

An example of his ability to turn an awkward situation into a humorous one was illustrated well; when over the controversy about American and British naval commands, and when Churchill was Leader of the Opposition he had attacked the Labour Government body for having consented to an American Admiral as Commander of the Atlantic, insisting that the British should have the Atlantic and the Americans the Mediterranean.

When, however, he lost the arguments about the Atlantic he dismissed
the reasons he had advanced about the advantages of an American fleet in the Mediterranean and insisted that the Mediterranean must remain under British control.

The Socialists could not resist baiting him about his change of mind. In order to force him into a corner, one of them asked him to state categorically whether or not his views were the same now as they had been twelve months previously. “My views” he began . . . “Change” interjected a Socialist. “My views” Winston continued placidly: “are subject to a harmonious process which keeps them in relation to the current movements of events.”

Even the Labour and the Socialist backbenches could not refrain from laughter amid the ensuing merriment that followed his guffaws.

Of course, time and age mellowed Winston Churchill and greatness has softened the antagonism of his opponents. As a young man he was far from popular, and that was part of his Romanticism because from his earliest days he believed he had been put upon earth to fulfill some great purpose. This presentiment led him into many disastrous blunders, for he was not merely ambitious as other men are, but openly and impatiently in search of Fame. As a result he gave the impression of seizing issues indiscriminately in order to project himself into the limelight. This seems to be the case as indeed no other man in public life seemed to have a greater facility for veering from the role of statesman to that of politician.

Back in 1945 Winston Churchill gave a striking example of this dual capacity, by opening the election campaign with the sensational warning that Socialism would mean “A Nazi state” and “A Gestapo in England.”

People were shocked because they remembered the many tributes he had paid to Attlee, Morrison, Bevin, and other Socialist leaders, when they were serving in his wartime coalition Government only a few weeks before. Yet to turn on them so wildly, in order to cadge votes was considered almost beyond the pale, and somehow “UnEnglish.”

It was at moments like this that one could not help recalling the lines H. G. Wells once wrote: ‘There are times when the evil spirit comes upon him and I think of him as a very intractable, a very mischievous, dangerous little boy, a knee-worthy little boy. Only thinking of him in that way can I go on liking him.”

Winston Churchill’s egoism and impetuosity filled the public with a deep, distrust which proved a fatal stumbling block to him for nearly four decades.

People became convinced that he was less interested in a cause for its
merits, than as a vehicle for his own ambitions; and the fact that he changed his political party parliamentary affiliation twice, did not help to dispel that impecunious impression. His opponents took the opportunity and branded him as a cynic and an opportunist; while his colleagues, disconcerted by the fact that he found it difficult to serve as a member of a team because of his basic instinct of reaching out for the reins of power — openly referred to him as a trouble-maker.

Still Winston Churchill always acting from the heart; after and sometimes before ‘consulting with the head,’ was completely unaware and thus never got accustomed to his vast ‘unpopularity.’ Consequently, he was genuinely hurt and astonished by the animosity he aroused all around him, for he was always absorbed by the causes he espoused, by his rhetoric, and by the fiery speeches that he always delivered, in order to turn the hearts and minds of the English public around, in an effort to inform them of the incoming ‘deluge” of fascism and war.

He was the lone voice in the wilderness, and like all prophets who vocalized their oracles widely — he was shunned. His writing, his projects, and his various plans, were all now focused on the message, so that he gave very little thought to the complexities of human nature, and the fact that like a new ‘John of the Desert,’ some influential people and especially Muslims sought his ‘head’ detached from his body.

Still for Winston Churchill, this was the cost of being who he is. He always said that ‘we are who we are’ and as a thinking person, it was always ideas, and not people, that interested him, and as a result, the reactions of his fellow human beings invariably sprung upon him as a complete surprise.

A towering figure amongst small minded men, Winston was often times pensive, moody, and preoccupied, scarcely paying attention to anybody and stepping on all kinds of people’s feet and sensitive toes. Buttercups, and snowflakes, were all particularly flattened when he walked around with his oversized shoes, paying scant attention to them and their special needs for a safe space. There was no safe space around Churchill, and he behaved pretty much like a bull elephant in heat all the time. And at most other times during his difficult years — he was so tactless and aggressive, that he frequently wounded people’s feelings and sensibilities, without even knowing that he had done so. His pen, and his speech, were so strong and caustic that sometimes his secretaries would change the whole letters after he signed them and sent a more serene and conciliatory toned letter instead. Otherwise all his friends and allies would think that he wanted to liquidate them if they didn’t behave exactly as he wanted them to. Indeed his mind was so sharp and angular that in his correspondence in the interest of the state, he was openly hostile and aggressive and he came to be known as the archetypal politically incorrect man out there. You can understand that this was a fierce warrior, and he expressed himself that way — when at war. But in Love, he was the gentlest soul and the most proper gentleman. This could be the two sides of the coin of Churchill, all co-exisitng fully, in the same person, and at the same time.

He was honest to goodness. He was a true friend and genuine ally to those he liked. Yet he was the most ferocious enemy when he was crossed. As a person he was incapable of betrayal of any kind; for any cost and for any cause; and he expected others to be the same way. He hated betrayals in Love and War more than anything else in this Life. Once he told General De Gaul — the de-facto leader of free France, during France’s occupation by the German Nazis, this simple threat in his peculiarly idiomatic French: “Si vous double crosserez moi — Je liquidaire toi”

“If you double cross me — I will liquidate you”

And the thing is he fully meant it. And as De Gaul remembered quite well, what had happened in Oran, in Algiers, not too long ago — from then on, he behaved himself accordingly to Winston’s high and exacting standards…

Churchill strategized, schemed, and used all of his cunning subterfuge, and even the oddest imaginative stratagems, for accomplishing his goals, and for reaching the ends of his work, towards the interests of the Empire and the maintenance of the Civilized World. But he never schemed nor used his tremendous diplomatic gifts, for his personal gain. Nor he utilized his not insignificant skill of diplomacy in his personal life. Never did he take advantage of a woman for personal pleasure. Indeed he helped the vulnerable and the fragile damsels to recover, and only after their emotional recovery would he deign to consider intercourse. Once  he even cried out mournfully: “I have never joined an intrigue. Everything that I have got I have fought for. And yet I have been more hated than anybody else.” And indeed he was hated the most by the militant Islamists, the errant Mussulmens, the jihadist Mohammedans, and their ilk all around the world because he offered all of the women and children subject to their useless sharia rules — the freedoms afforded all subjects of the British empire. That was of course an affront to the Muslims who wanted to treat their wives as goats and other less prized barnyard animals. Instead Churchill advocated for education for all girls and women fully knowing that women’s education is the best antidote to that hateful ideology, of perpetual war, enslavement, & subjugation.

He spoke openly offending everybody and anybody, but he was still perturbed when the people who  he thought benefited from his efforts, hated him, or declared a jihad against him, as the Grand Mufti had initiated. He also couldn’t understand why ordinary Germans who obviously had benefited from his magnanimity given to the vanquished enemy, still hated the very sight of him and they always asked him to not set foot in Germany after the war — ostensibly for Security reasons.

But he still went, and laughed at them, saying that “If anything untoward ever happened to me — I would at least get another crack in beating Hitler again, in the great hereafter. Something that I enjoyed doing immensely, the first time we beat that Austrian little man…”

But he was still flabbergasted when he found out people hated him, or simply didn’t like him, and he would always seek them out and ask: Why?

“Why?”

He always looked for ways to improve his demeanor, and these protestations about is popularity, came from the heart, not only because Winston Churchill himself was a rather friendly and open person — but because he was remarkably free of malice towards anyone, and especially towards his enemies, and he couldn’t understand how people came to be this petty and hateful. He hated the passive aggressive politically correct types and he was certainly full of compassion, and love for all of humanity. And he had an extra deposit full of whole lots of love, towards his friends, his posse, and his family. Indeed his apparent lack of interest in the human element that motivates all of us — had eliminated all pettiness from his nature, and made him a respected Leader and a voice of reason to all concerned. Indeed, his frequent, yet sudden, and fully unexpected, emotional surges of generosity, have disarmed more than one of his many enemies, and opponents, and all those who truly met him and either ‘loved him or hated him’ because they all recognized that he was magnanimous to a fault.

Case in point: Once when Ernest Bevin was Foreign Minister he paid Churchill a heartfelt tribute in the House, and the latter was so moved he could not keep back the tears. On more than one occasion during the 1945-51 Parliament, when Mr Attlee was Prime Minister, Churchill entered the smoking-room, sometime after a particularly acrimonious debate, saw Atlee sitting at a table, and promptly joined him and congratulated him on his speech. The then Members of the Parliament also remembered how in 1951, when his most formidable critic, Mr Aneurin Bevan, opened the Defense Debate, he sat attentively in his place admiring the brilliance of the speech. Then Mr Bevan began to liken some of his methods to those of the Nazis. Churchill put up his hand in protest “I had nothing to do with the Nazis” he beamed. “Do not spoil a good speech now.”

As of his volcanic temper — we best not talk about it, lest we make him look like a Monster. But very much like Zeus, he could throw his thunderbolts with one hand and still make love with the other…

But generally speaking — you wouldn’t want to be in the room, or even in the general vicinity of one of his famous flashes of his steely sword and tongue when directed towards the idiots, the fools, and the miscreants that operated on his behalf and caused failures. He was especially hard on all those who contemplated surrender as his steel was sharp, and penetrating. Methinks, you wouldn’t want to taste the flint of his sword either.

When at the end of his Life someone close by asked him what he thought he had accomplished in his tenure as a human being on this planet, he responded by saying that all his life he was tasked with guarding “Thermopylae” and that is all that he did. He did this by fighting all his life, the enemies of Christianity, and Western Civilization, to the very end. And just like another Leonidas, he “fell” while doing his duty.

He did what he saw that he had to do and those were the last words that came out of his mouth before exiting this mortal coil and moving on to another and far better world.

But he was not haughty and he would never tempt the fates with hubris. He was not a proud man and he always sought the betters of him to uphold but never himself. Proof of that came often but it’s far more poignant to remember that one day when Churchill visited his old school, Harrow as an old man — the boys asked him who he thought was the greatest man who had ever lived?

Winston answered thus: “Julius Caesar, because he was the most magnanimous of all the Conquerors.”

He never thought of himself as a conqueror, or as anything else but a common man, a divinely ordained common man — but a common man none-the-less. And he word played that with saying that he was always a Man for the House of Commons. Still in both jest and in actual reality, Churchill would never put himself in the same league as the Caesars — although today we all know that his impact upon History is far greater than whatever old Julius ever accomplished, or could have even imagined…

To be continued…