Airstrip One

John Charmley

I had the privilege of listening to John Charmley expound on his favourite subject, Churchill, in a lecture and dinner that I attended on Monday. The broadbrush approach did not falter over erroneous details but the entertaining quotations and impressions of a historian familiar with his subject were rewarding.

Charmley points out that there were no appeasers left by 1945 and that Churchill gave all of those who were preparing to learn German in 1940 a myth of national defiance. His utterances have provided baubles of wisdom for three generation of political diplomats who wish to justify their policies in populist terms: by standing on a moral soapbox and denouncing dictatorship in grandiloquent rhetoric without ever spelling out realistic alternatives. Sound familiar?

Remember that after Churchill made his 'iron curtain' speech at Fulton, Missouri, he was attacked as a "warmonger" by the United States press. Yet, within one year, they hailed his foresight and ideological perceptiveness, and turned away from Kennan's support for 'communist nationalism'.

This does not decry Churchill's courage but history needs to winnow out the man from the myth if we are ever to set a course away from the shadow of this diplomatic Ozymandias.