Tag: Churchill

The New York Times and Boston Globe Rave about ‘The Roar of the Lion’

Published on by CIGH Exeter

churchill

Marc-William Palen

In case you missed it, the newest book by the Centre’s own Professor Richard Toye, The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s Wartime Speeches (2013), has been featured in the New York Times and the Boston Globe this past week, the most recent in a flurry of high-level reviews, which include the Financial Times and the Daily Mail.

The New York Times concludes that what Toye ‘has found deeply complicates, and in many cases utterly destroys,’ Churchill’s ‘popular image of 1940’: Continue reading “The New York Times and Boston Globe Rave about ‘The Roar of the Lion’” →

Winston Churchill – Liberal Imperialist?

Published on by CIGH Exeter3 Comments

Richard Toye

JamesCHURCHILLandEmpireIn the introduction to his new book Churchill and Empire, Lawrence James refers to Winston Churchill’s ‘essentially liberal imperialism’. James does not really explain what he means by this, but his comment is intriguing. Previously, in a Daily Mail article, he decried the ‘hand-wringing and breast-beating’ of modern-day critics of Empire, or, as he describes them, the ‘tribunes of political correctness’. From this, one would not think that he is someone who would in general view ‘liberal’ as a term of praise; yet his use of it in this instance is clearly not intended as a criticism of Churchill. Rather, one deduces, he sees ‘liberal’ in this particular context as a synonym for ‘moderate’ or perhaps ‘humane’. If that is indeed what he means – in other words, that if Churchill was a liberal imperialist then his imperialism must have been benign – the equation is highly problematic. Continue reading “Winston Churchill – Liberal Imperialist?” →