JOHN CHARMLEY ON CHURCHILL

John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory (London: Hodder

and Stoughton; 1993; p. 649).

‘[Churchill] had destroyed the awful tyranny of Hitler, but what had risen in its place?

Perhaps his own comments to Macmillan in Cairo in 1943 about Cromwell indicate a degree of self-knowledge: “he made one terrible mistake.

Obsessed in his youth by fear of the power of Spain, he failed to observe the rise of France.

Will that be said of me?” If “Germany” is substituted for “Spain” and “Russia” for “France”, then the answer to Churchill’s rhetorical question might well be “yes”. . . . Churchill stood for the British Empire, for British independence and for an “anti-Socialist” vision of Britain.

By July 1945 the first of these was on the skids, the second was dependent solely upon America and the third had just vanished in a Labour election victory. [I]t was indeed the end of glory.’

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