CHURCHILL OUT OF HIBERNATION, WEEKS 40/41
Last week we celebrated Chartwell Bookseller’s 38th Birthday (on April 11, to be exact). No big to-do. We’re just glad we’re still here.
This week, we resume our Churchill Out of Hibernation tour of Winston Churchill’s book-length works with EUROPE UNITE.
Published in 1950, Europe Unite gives us Winston Churchill’s ongoing eloquence as Leader of the Opposition; which he was from 1945 until his ultimate return to Downing Street as PM in 1951. Fifty-two speeches and broadcasts are collected in Europe Unite, and Churchill’s clarity of purpose and devastating wit are again and again on display. The subjects addressed were momentous, as Churchill dueled with the Labour majority over…well, virtually everything that, in Churchill’s eyes, Labour was mismanaging — from its Minister of Fuel and Power, Hugh Gaitskell’s, suggestion that the British people economize by taking fewer baths (Churchill took daily baths as a matter of preference and principal), to the Labour government’s violent suppression of the Zionist cause in Palestine.
The title subject was Churchill’s dominant theme, captured most movingly in his address, “The Congress of Europe,” delivered at The Hague on May 7, 1948: “If we allow ourselves to be rent and disordered by pettiness and small disputes, if we fail in clarity of view or courage in action, a priceless occasion may be cast away for ever. But if we all pull together and pool the luck and the comradeship – and we shall need all the comradeship, and not a little luck, if we are to move together in this way – and firmly grasp the larger hopes of humanity, then it may be that we shall move into a happier sunlit age.”
We wish you all ongoing vaccination, masked, and in good health, as we pool luck and comradeship on our way to a happier sunlit age.