Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Churchill is a Stark Not a Lannister
The death of Winston Churchill occurred 50 years ago this month. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396877/last-lion-remembered-victor-davis-hanson#!
William Manchester famously called him "The Last Lion."
Others have noted that he is not the "Last" Lion if by that it is meant the great souled men that were the beau ideal of the Ancient World http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/01/churchill-not-the-last-lion.php#!
To give you some idea of where my head is, as I saw all those references to the Last Lion all I could think of was--no way he is House Stark!
First, he was constantly broke and other people paid his debts.
Second, he was a Romantic Conservative in the line of the Stark's rather than the prosaic Machievels of Lannisterdom.
Third, his children had terrible marriages and mostly, deaths.
Fourth, he was well aware of the God's of the Copybook Headings which is the British equivalent of Winter is Coming.
I just finished the third and last volume of William Manchester's Churchill biography. I recommend it to you, JJV, as a worthwhile read - although a bit gossipy for my taste, and too quick to adopt the general hagiographic view of Bernard Law Montgomery that is fairly common to the English, rare in Americans like Manchester and his co-author (for the final volume) Reid.
ReplyDeleteChurchill is fascinating. So wrong about so many things, yet deeply right about the threat of fascism - he was truly the right man in the right place at the right time.