03-11-2009, 09:51 PM
Paul Rigby Wrote:Churchill the anti-semitic conspiracy theorist
As the spook-dominated BBC is about to subject viewers to yet another sanitised slop of Churchilliana...
The highlighted line below captures rather well the unadulterated inanity of the Churchill cult as propagandised for by British MSM. I'm glad I missed it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2...-the-storm
Quote:Into the Storm and The Great Escape: The Reckoning
That Winston Churchill, he was good at making speeches, wasn't he, says Sam Wollaston
Were you watching, Gordon? Into the Storm, on BBC2? That's how to do it. So there aren't enough helicopters to fight the Taliban? Did a lack of boats prevent the evacuation of Dunkirk? Of course it didn't. Even members of the war cabinet took a couple of days off work, headed down to the Isle of Wight where their yachts were moored, and got over there. Someone has to have a spare chopper, don't they? What about Lord Sugar?
And get on the radio. We won the war because Churchill wrote, and gave, good speech. He'd come up with a fine line: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", perhaps, and note it down. Later, he would flesh it out, dictate it to someone. He'd pace up and down, practising his speech to himself or maybe to Clemmie (dear Clemmie), perfecting rhythm and intonation so that he sounded like Laurence Olivier (dear Larry) playing Nelson in That Hamilton Woman, Churchill's favourite film. Then he'd head down to Broadcasting House and deliver it to the nation, who, huddled around their wireless sets, were so moved and inspired they summoned up the collective pluck required to bash the Boche.
Some might argue that victory had something to do with the Americans joining in. But they only did so because Winston went over there and delivered some fine words to them, in person. And flashed his Lyndon Johnson at Franklin Roosevelt when his towel slipped after a bath. "You see, Mr President, I have absolutely nothing to hide from you!" Churchill said. Yeah, and don't pretend you hadn't practised that one, too, Winston (probably, almost certainly, to Clemmie, dear dear Clemmie). It worked, though: the Americans got involved and saved our ass, not because of Pearl Harbor but because of Winston's chopper.
Brendan Gleeson does a lovely Churchill. He has the prowl and the scowl, the lovable curmudgeonliness, the KBO. He does the infuriating, the stubborn and the twinkly; hopeless at peace and family, not at all bad in a fight. And he's perfected the delivery, the little rises and pauses, the poetical timing. It's like listening to a famous piece of music, waiting for the passages that everyone knows – the New World Symphony and the bit from the Hovis advert. There it is, the Few speech, tick it off. And we know what's coming. "We shall go on to the end . . . " Here it comes, here it is: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." No, it's not Dvorak, but the Enigma Variations, and Nimrod, of course. There is something Elgarian about Howard Goodall's score, too, as a pair of Spitfires take off to take on the Luftwaffe.