A History of the English-Speaking Peoples - Churchill

When it rains it pours...Blog while the sun shines, as they say...

So, anyway, I am almost finished reading Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume 1: The Birth of Britain.  (My project is to read all four of Churchill's volumes and then finish reading Andrew Roberts's follow-up of history since 1900 over the coming year.)

It has been a real pleasure to read so far.  I've encountered a lot of the subject matter before, but Churchill reaches across the decades and speaks of history with a unique voice to all of us.  I keep thinking, though, of what a rarity and treasure Churchill was, and how I cannot think of any one individual with the same level of achievements mixed with intellect in the past 100 years.  Maybe Teddy Roosevelt...But even that's stretching it.

Churchill originally began writing this series in the 1930s in order to stress the culture that the British and Americans shared.  For obvious reasons, he had to put it down in 1939.  He finally published it in 1956.

And as I read it I am also reminded of how things have changed and stayed the same since he originally wrote it:

If a native of Chester in Roman Britain could wake up to-day [1939] he would find laws which were the direct fulfillment of many of those he had known.  He would find in every village temples and priest of the new creed which in his day was winning victories everywhere.  Indeed the facilities of Christian worship would appear to him to be far in excess of the number of devotees.  Not without pride would he notice that his children were compelled to learn Latin if they wished to enter the most famous universities.  He might encounter some serious difficulties in the pronunciation.

...He would have the same sense of belonging to a society which was threatened, and to an imperial rule which had passed its prime.  He would have the same gathering fears of some sudden onslaught by barbarian forces armed with equal weapons to those of the local legions or auxiliaries.

One wonders what Churchill, or the native of Chester, would think were he to wake up today.

On the King Arthur Legend:

...If we could see exactly what happened we should find ourselves in the presence of a theme as well founded, as inspired, and as inalienable from the inheritance of mankind as the Odyssey or the Old Testament.  It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides.  And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.  Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.

He also reminds us of what true tyranny looks like when he discusses the murder of Thomas a Becket and compares and contrasts to contemporary events and regimes:

It is a proof of the quality of the age that these fierce contentions [the struggle between Church and Crown], shaking the souls of men, should have been so rigorously and yet so evenly fought out.  In modern conflicts and revolutions in some great states bishops and archbishops have been sent by droves to concentration camps, or pistolled in the nape of the neck in the well-warmed, brilliantly lighted corridor of a prison.  What claim have we to vaunt a superior civilisation to Henry II's times?  We are sunk in a barbarism all the deeper because it is tolerated by moral lethargy and covered wit a veneer of scientific conveniences.

Well, they don't make them like that any more...Do they?

Comments

[Mark Holland]

Have you been up to Chartwell JG? I recommend it highly.

[James G]

It is on my long list of places to visit before I leave...

[Cobb]

Ah. This is definitely on my booklist for this year. In fact, thanks for getting me to think about putting one together.

[James G]

Yeah, I have my list of must-read-before-I-die books which I am alternating with something lighter in between. Some things end up at the top for this year, like some of the Greeks and Churchill's series. And I have Gulag Archipelago staring at me in my to-read pile, as well. It's a good thing I have an hour and a half commute.

[James G]

by the way, I'll get to that meme you tagged me with tomorrow. I stayed up in London today for the AGM of Republicans Abroad UK. Didn't get home until a half hour ago, and now I'm off to bed.

[Laban]

It should be compulsory at schools - both for the broad sweep and the style.

I think he has his tongue in his cheek a lot, when he talks of slaughtering the foul barbarians. Earlier, describing the Iron Age, he writes :

"At this point the march of invention brought a new factor upon the [British] scene. Iron was dug and forged. Men armed with iron entered Britain from the continent and killed the men of bronze. At this point we can plainly recognize across the vanished millenniums a fellow- being. A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modem eyes a man and a brother. It cannot be doubted that for smashing skulls, whether long-headed or round, iron is best."

[James G]

I thought that was a good one, myself.