Artillery of Words

The Writings of Sir Winston Churchill

Frederick Woods

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military Classics
• Year: 1992
• Print ISBN: 9780850522983
• eBook ISBN: 9781473811973
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

An analysis of the writings of the iconic twentieth-century statesman from the author of Young Winston's Wars. Only a part-time author, Sir Winston Churchill wrote fifty books and over eight hundred feature articles. He even received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Now, Frederick Woods, an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of Churchillian writings, presents a full-length appraisal of Churchill's literary output, while putting the writings in the context of Churchill's public life. Churchill's words were weapons, argues Mr. Woods, written deliberately to win a battle, whether that battle was over the future of India, the fate of the freedom-loving world, the rehabilitation of renowned ancestors, or his own fluctuating reputation. In every case Churchill strove mightily to win, and often presented his case with less objectivity than that expected of one popularly considered to be a major historian. Artillery of Words is not only an illuminating and often witty analysis of Churchill's writings; it is also an important and revealing contribution to Churchillian studies in general. Praise for Frederick Woods's A Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill
"[Reveals] a mastery of both research and presentation." —Martin Gilbert, bestselling author of Churchill: A Life

CONTENTS

	ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
	PREFACE
	INTRODUCTION
I	Beginnings
II	Self-education and the early campaigns
III	The later campaigns
IV	Savrola
V	The speeches
VI	Journalism
VII	The biographies
VIII	The histories
IX	Summary
	APPENDICES
I	Churchill’s method of writing
II	The Second World War: publishing and printing history
III	The British Gazette
IV	The contributions of A. Marshall Diston and Edward Marsh
	WORKS CONSULTED
	NOTES
	INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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I must express my gratitude to the Churchill Estate for permission to quote from copyright works; and to Anthea Morton-Saner for her hard work in settling the many problems involved.

I must also thank Dr Desmond Flower and Dr Martin Gilbert for their early encouragement, and for making my studies possible; Trevor Jones for his unobtrusive but stimulating guidance; Dr E.F. Slade for his understanding forbearance; Margaret Bird for expert help in Keele University Library; Councillor Peter Nurse for his unselfish efforts on my behalf; Leo Cooper and Tom Hartman for everything (and more) that good publishers do; Michael Wybrow for his free book service; and last but not least, the University of Keele for accepting me.

And, above all, to Nicky, for her unfailing support and constancy.

PREFACE

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As a matter of course, I have used throughout the first editions of Churchill’s works. Two exceptions, however, should be noted: for Marlborough I used the 1947 two-volume edition (the text is unchanged), and for The Second World War I used the first English edition; although the American edition claims precedence, it only contrived this by premature publication, and the text is by no means Churchill’s final version.

INTRODUCTION

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Sir Winston Churchill published fifty books, one hundred and fifty pamphlets, well over eight hundred feature articles and three short stories; he contributed forewords, introductions and articles to eighty-three other books, wrote a film script, supplied notes to a series of jigsaw puzzles about famous battles and had twenty long-play and thirty short-play records to his credit.

Both his sales and his earnings ran into millions. Few authors in the history of serious literature can have sold more copies or earned more money. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

Both his sales and his earnings ran into millions. Few authors in the history of serious literature can have sold more copies or earned more money. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

Sir Winston Churchill was only a part-time author.

In 1906, with six books already behind him, the young Churchill addressed the annual dinner of the Authors’ Club as follows:

‘Authors are the happy people in the world, whose work is pleasure. No one can set himself to the writing of a page of English composition without feeling a real pleasure in the medium in which he works, the flexibility and the profoundness of his noble mother tongue. It is a privilege to sit at a table on a sunny morning and feel that there are four hours of uninterrupted security, with plenty of white paper and a pen, away from the vexations of daily life. What does it matter to a man in that position what goes on outside his study door? The House of Commons may do what it likes, and so may the House of Lords; the American market may have its bottom knocked out; the heathen may rage in every part of the globe; Consols may fall, and the suffragists rise; but the author is secure as almost no other man is secure… I have sometimes fortified myself amid the vexations, vicissitudes and uncertainties of political life by the reflection that I might find a secure line of retreat on the pleasant, peaceful and fertile country of the pen, where one need never be idle or dull.’¹

An idyllic picture of the writer’s life. Probably not Churchill’s, however, because already his writing life was a lot more pugnacious than those of his audience. A good dinner, some good wines, an excellent cigar, a civilised ambience, a cultured audience, all these would have sparked in Churchill a vision of a literary ‘sunlit upland’. The view is essentially an escapist one, happily ignorant of the sheer struggle of writing to make a living. By 1906 Churchill was already well launched upon his career and his view of the writer’s life can only have been tailored for his audience. If there was one thing that he was not, it was a writer whose only pleasure was the sheer joy of writing.

In spite of his words, Churchill was never the writer in the ivory tower. Maybe he felt that vision as a subliminal tug, but for him writing was always a much more practical matter. His speech gives an altogether too placid picture of authorship as far as he was concerned, and I cannot believe that he felt any envy for those few whose lives might have been like that.

So if, in spite of his loving description of the writer’s life, he was not that sort of writer, what sort of writer was he?

In the year in which Churchill won the Nobel Prize, the then Managing Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Colin Coote, wrote: ‘Churchill is certainly the King of the freelances, but he is not a professional’.² It is difficult to see, even from the context, precisely how Sir Colin was using the world ‘professional’. In one sense it is clearly inapt, as Churchill was in his day the most highly paid writer in the history of British journalism. The statement is, therefore, presumably pejorative, implying that Churchill failed to achieve certain unspecified standards; as such it is a prime example of the curious general reluctance to grant him professional status in any field except politics.

One can also cite Professor J.H. Plumb’s edgy judgment: ‘In those fields where his work challenges comparison with professional history, Churchill remains, by the most generous assessment, a gifted amateur.’³ It is further significant that, when Churchill was made Royal Academician Extraordinary, specific mention was made of his ‘amateur’ standing.

The British are, of course, as notoriously suspicious of polymath brilliance as they are of popular success: to demonstrate the former merely evokes the phrase ‘master of none’, while to achieve the latter is to sacrifice all hope of serious consideration. And Churchill was a successful and brilliant polymath; what was worse was that he was an autodidactic polymath, which is even more suspect.

Quality was discernible in his writing as early as 1898, when his despatches from the Sudan showed a sudden maturing of an already noticeable gift. Recognition was almost immediate and continued throughout his long and varied life. Small wonder, then, that there have been instinctive reactions against such a blatantly multistranded record of success.

Certainly a blindly adulatory attitude towards Churchill does him no service whatsoever. Criticism is not only possible, it is essential. The truth inevitably lies somewhere between the heady acclaim of the wartime and immediately postwar years and the unyielding denigration that has too often opposed it. And this is as true of his writing as it is of his painting, his politics and his oratory.

From the first precocious but remarkable war books to the bravura swan-song of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, Churchill’s literary career seems to be studded with brilliant achievements, record sales and lavish fees. But no author, particularly one whose life-span was so considerable and who had so many other preoccupations, can maintain a totally unblemished level of creation. To recognize this in considering the works of Sir Winston Churchill is to take the first step towards a true appraisal of his literary status.

Quite so; unfortunately, it isn’t quite as uncomplicated as all that. If it were, judgment would be relatively simple. One would examine and assess the progress of his literary style, his linguistic skills and (though with circumspection) his public reputation and sales performance. And, if one wished to be fashionable, his structures (though with even more circumspection!)

But Churchill was never a pure writer – if, indeed, such an animal has ever existed. He was a writer in whom the man, the life, the beliefs, the prejudices were of paramount importance; and one must treat his writings almost as oeuvres à clef from which the truth cannot be found without first uncovering the motivation behind each one.

To a varying degree, of course, this is true of many writers. Can one assess Seven Pillars of Wisdom without a detailed knowledge of T.E. Lawrence’s complex and self-tortured life, and of the Mesopotamian campaign? Can one judge, to cite two widely disparate examples, Villette or The Ballad of Reading Gaol without knowing the personal backgrounds involved? Indeed, dare we even evaluate such contemporary historians as A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper without first knowing their quirks a...

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