His Finest Hour

Robbo reminds us that today is the 133rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Winston Churchill.

In a related aside, for my birthday, I received a very cool gift: The Making of the Finest Hour. This is a marvelous book for anyone who wants an insight into the way dear old Winston's mind worked. Facsimiles of the first and final draft of that marvelous speech are published in the book, and they're not just any old facsimiles---they're facsimiles of Winston's drafts. With corrections and additions in his very own handwriting. Also included is a CD recording of the BBC radio broadcast, when Winston delivered the speech to the House of Commons on June 18, 1940.

Despite the fact I've had the book for almost a month, I haven't delved too deeply into it just yet, mostly, because I still haven't the brain power to give it the attention it deserves, yet I have been savoring it, picking it up, reading a bit, and then putting it back in its place on the dining room table. I'm sure the husband thinks I haven't read it at all yet, because it doesn't look like it's moved at all, but tisn't true. It's just one of those books you take your time to work through, even when you don't have chemo brain. The reasoning behind some of his revisions is obvious; on others, however, they really make you wonder at how brilliant the man was, at how he knew he could achieve policy goals with a rework of a single sentence. Edward R. Murrow commented at the time, "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle," and it's absolutely true. Which is particularly amazing when you keep in mind what was going on at the time in terms of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, and that Churchill probably had very little time on his hands for speech editing. He used everything he had at his disposal, and if that included the language, so be it.

This book has the Cake Eater Seal of Approval. If you've got a Winston-admirer on your holiday shopping list, this is the perfect gift for them.