Churchill, chance and the 'black dog'

[A.V.]

The wartime prime minister's dark moods, plus a series of lucky encounters, may have transformed the course of human history, writes John Gray.
Towards the end of his long life, when he was staying in a house lent to him by friends in the south of France, Winston Churchill sent for a young man who was helping him write one of the books with which he occupied his retirement.
Churchill needed the young man as a researcher. But he also valued him as a companion, particularly in the evenings when he would otherwise feel lonely.
One cold night they were sitting before the fire, where pine logs were hissing and spitting as they were burnt away. Churchill watched the blaze in silence. Then he growled: "I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed."
Churchill had not one life but several. Each was full of challenge and excitement, and in one of them he changed the history of the world.


BBC News - A Point of View: Churchill, chance and the 'black dog'

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Today Churchill would get psychotherapy and antidepressants and be a happy nobody.

 

[niharjhatn]

Churchill was truly an enigma, a great war time leader, apparently courageous (shown by his coverage of the Boer War) also amongst the most racist and islamophobic British politicians of his time, and yet dragged Britain into a war against a man and a nation that only expounded his views!

Even the British people view him as a great war time politician, but did not believe him to be a good peace time leader, losing in a land slide after the war ended, and yet is one of the most recognizable British politicians of all time.

Paradoxical indeed!

 

[S.A.T.A]

Britain needed a megalomaniac who could stand up and rub shoulders with the Likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, if it was to survive the war.Its true that had it not been for the second world war and the popular disappointment with the way Britain was going about waging it,Tory's would never have elected a leader of Churchill's political temperament to lead them.One couldn't have been such an ardent advocate of the empire,as Churchill was,if you weren't a through racist.

If Hitler dreamed up a thousand year Reich,Churchill believed in a perpetual empire.They were just about the perfect contestants and both proved each other wrong.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Churchill was truly an enigma, a great war time leader, apparently courageous (shown by his coverage of the Boer War)...

And his participation in the Battle of Omdurman!