Advertisement
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Churchill and Orwell Thomas E. Ricks, 2017-05-23 A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini men we could do business with, if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holidays! |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Last Man in Europe Dennis Glover, 2017-11-14 This “riveting novel about Orwell’s last days” takes readers inside the renowned author’s mind as he creates his final dystopian masterpiece (New Statesman). April, 1947. In a run-down farmhouse on a remote Scottish island, George Orwell begins his last and greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Forty-three years old and suffering from the tuberculosis that within three winters will take his life, Orwell comes to see the book as his legacy—the culmination of a career spent fighting to preserve the freedoms which the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century have threatened. Completing the book is an urgent challenge, a race against death. In this masterful novel, Dennis Glover explores the creation of Orwell’s classic work which defined the twentieth century for millions of readers worldwide—and has continued to prove its unnerving relevance in the twenty-first. Simultaneously a captivating drama, a unique literary excavation, and an unflinching portrait of a writer, The Last Man in Europe will change the way we understand both our enduringly Orwellian times and Orwell’s timeless masterpiece. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Generals Thomas E. Ricks, 2013-10-29 A New York Times bestseller! An epic history of the decline of American military leadership—from the bestselling author of Fiasco and Churchill and Orwell. While history has been kind to the American generals of World War II—Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley—it has been less kind to the generals of the wars that followed, such as Koster, Franks, Sanchez, and Petraeus. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In chronicling the widening gulf between performance and accountability among the top brass of the U.S. military, Ricks tells the stories of great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and generals who failed themselves and their soldiers. In Ricks’s hands, this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill Tim Wendel, Richard Langworth, 2010-10 Charismatic, erudite, and often controversial, Winston Churchill was one of the most inspiring leaders of the twentieth century, and one of its greatest wits. His much-celebrated sense of fun and mischief has led to many of his jokes and ripostes becoming almost as well known as his famous wartime speeches. Gloriously comprehensive, The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill includes all Churchill's most famous quips and witticisms, and even an appendix of quotes falsely attributed to Churchill. The only book of its kind to be sanctioned by the Churchill estate and to track down each quotation to its source, it captures the great statesman at his most eloquent, witty, and engaging and makes a great gift for the holidays and special occasions year-round. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Fiasco Thomas E. Ricks, 2006-07-25 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading. —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The best account yet of the entire war. —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: A Soldier's Duty Thomas E. Ricks, 2002-06-11 From one of America’s most esteemed military correspondents and the author of Making the Corps comes a “briskly paced, engrossing tale” (Los Angeles Times) about a brutal brushfire war in Afghanistan that sets off a titanic struggle for the soul of the twenty-first-century American military. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Orwell on Truth George Orwell, 2017-11-23 A selection of George Orwell's prescient, clear-eyed and stimulating writing on the subjects of truth and lies. With an introduction by Alan Johnson. 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.' This selection of George Orwell’s writing, from both his novels and non-fiction, gathers together his thoughts on the subject of truth. It ranges from discussion of personal honesty and morality, to freedom of speech and political propaganda. Orwell’s unique clarity of thought and illuminating scepticism provide the perfect defence against our post-truth world of fake news and confusion. 'The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.' Includes an introduction by Alan Johnson and passages from Burmese Days, The Road to Wigan Pier, Coming Up for Air, The Lion and the Unicorn, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s letters, war-time diary, criticism and essays including ‘Fascism and Democracy’, ‘Culture and Democracy’, ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’, ‘As I Please’, ‘Notes on Nationalism’, ‘The Prevention of Literature’, ‘Politics and the English Language’ and ‘Why I Write’. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Of The People, By The People Roger Osborne, 2011-11-17 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.' Churchill had more reason than most to rue the power of democracy, having been thrown out of office after leading Britain to victory in 1945. Democracy, when viewed from above, has always been a fickle master; from below it is a powerful but fragile friend. Most books on democracy focus on political theory and analysis, in a futile attempt to define democracy. Of The People, By The People takes the opposite approach, telling the stories of the different democracies that have come into existence during the past two and half millennia. From Athens to Rhaetia, Jamestown to Delhi, and Putney to Pretoria, the book shows how democratic systems are always a reflection of the culture and history of their birthplaces, and come about through seizing fleeting opportunities. Democracy can only be understood through the fascinating and inspiring stories of the peoples who fought to bring it about. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Selina Hastings, 2012-07-01 He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the most famous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own true story has never been fully told. At last, the truth is revealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer Selina Hastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personal correspondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his only child, Hastings portrays the secret loves, betrayals, integrity, and passion that inspired Maugham to create such classics as The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage. Portrayed in full for the first time is Maugham’s disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome, a manipulative society woman who trapped Maugham with a pregnancy and an attempted suicide. Hastings also explores Maugham’s many affairs with men, including his great love, Gerald Haxton, an alcoholic charmer. Maugham’s work in secret intelligence during two world wars is described in fascinating detail—experiences that provided the inspiration for the groundbreaking Ashenden stories. From the West End to Broadway, from China to the South Pacific, Maugham’s remarkably productive life is thrillingly recounted as Hastings uncovers the real stories behind such classics as Rain, The Painted Veil, Cakes & Ale, and other well-known tales. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Liberty, Equality, and Humbug David Dwan, 2018-11-10 George Orwell is watching you and you're watching him. Britain pays its respects in the form of the Orwell Prize, the Orwell Lecture, and, more recently, Orwell Day. A statue of Orwell now stands outside Broadcasting House in London and he continues to tower over broadsheet journalism. His ghost is repeatedly summoned in the houses of Parliament and in schools across Britain. In Europe and the US, citizens confront the perennial question: What would Orwell say? Orwell is part of the political vocabulary of our times, yet partly due to this popularity, what he stands for remains opaque. His writing confirms deep and widely shared intuitions about political justice, but much of its enduring fascination derives from the fact that these intuitions don't quite add up. David Dwan accounts for these inconsistencies by exploring the broader moral conflict at the centre of Orwell's work and the troubled idealism it yields. Examining the whole sweep of Orwell's writings, this book shows how literature can be a rich source of political wisdom. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain Owen Hatherley, 2012-07-31 An anatomy of failed-state Britain, by the author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley skewered New Labour’s architectural legacy in all its witless swagger. Now, in the year of the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, he sets out to describe what the Coalition’s altogether different approach to economic mismanagement and civic irresponsibility is doing to the places where the British live. In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, Hatherley takes us from Plymouth and Brighton to Belfast and Aberdeen, by way of the eerie urbanism of the Welsh valleys and the much-mocked splendour of modernist Coventry. Everywhere outside the unreal Southeast, the building has stopped in towns and cities, which languish as they wait for the next bout of self-defeating austerity. Hatherley writes with unrivalled aggression about the disarray of modern Britain, and yet this remains a book about possibilities remembered, about unlikely successes in the midst of seemingly inexorable failure. For as well as trash, ancient and modern, Hatherley finds signs of the hopeful country Britain once was and hints of what it might become. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Churchill and Orwell Thomas E. Ricks, 2017 A New York Times BestsellerFrom two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks comes a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose farsighted vision and inspired action preserved democracy from the threat of totalitarianism. Taken together, their lives are a testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Mandela's Way Richard Stengel, 2009 Time magazine editor Stengel, who collaborated with Mandela on his bestselling autobiography, distills Mandela's wisdom into 15 vital life lessons that have the power to deepen lives. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: First Principles Thomas E. Ricks, 2021-04-07 Ricks discusses the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics--and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation ... [His book] follows [the first four U.S. presidents] ... from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers ... new insights into these legendary leaders--Publisher marketing. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Making the Corps Thomas E. Ricks, 1998 Inside the marine corps and what it takes to become One of the few, the proud, the Marines. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Why Orwell Matters Christopher Hitchens, 2008-08-06 Hitchens presents a George Orwell fit for the twenty-first century. --Boston Globe In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, the masterful polemicist Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. True to his contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture toward which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the seven decades since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens' polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Macaulay Zareer Masani, 2013 Was Thomas Macaulay a cultural imperialist or a prophetic moderniser? He always inspired both admiration and hostility. He introduced English education to India, creating a class of westernised Indians often reviled as 'Macaulay's children', but today many former 'Untouchables' literally worship him as their liberator from caste tyranny. This new biography gives a vivid insight into one of the towering intellects of Victorian Britain, a brilliant, complex, self-made man, who rose from middle-class origins to the highest circles of the world's largest empire. We follow his meteoric journey from child prodigy to Whig parliamentary orator, playing a major role in the passing of the Great Reform Act of 1832, then imperial administrator and liberal reformer in India, and later Cabinet minister, revered elder statesman and famed historian back in Britain. We also get a revealing portrait of his personal life as a bachelor romantically attached to his sisters. Masani reclaims Macaulay as a pioneer of globalisation based on the English language and Western values. A strong advocate of liberal interventionism across the globe, he was the ideological precursor of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Western military interventions in the world's trouble-spots. But he was also the architect of the 'soft power' through which the West permeates the rest of the world. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Notes on Nationalism George Orwell, 2018-02-22 'The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs' Biting and timeless reflections on patriotism, prejudice and power, from the man who wrote about his nation better than anyone. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: George Orwell: a Life Bernard Crick, 2019-05-30 First published by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, a part of Vintage. Vintage is an imprint of the Penguin Random House Group of companies--Title page verso. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Disraeli Sarah Bradford, 1996 Sarah Bradford s stylish and readable biography traces the flamboyant career of Benjamin Disraeli. She follows Disraeli s progress from Byronic dandy to confidante of Queen Victoria, describing en route how bouts of fierce parliamentary fighting and intrigue alternated with periods of intense creativity which produced Vivian Grey, Coningsby, Sybil and the worlds best- seller Lothair. Using previously unknown letters and papers, she throws new light upon Disraeli s relationships with the women in his life. She also brings to life the parliamentary debates through which Disraeli destroyed Peel as leader of the Conservative Party, split the Conservatives, duelled with Gladstone and achieved power as one of England s greatest prime ministers. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom , |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Poisoned Pens Gary Dexter, 2010-08-24 From what Byron really thought of Keats to Cocteau's damning view of Victor Hugo, to Hemingway's evisceration of Wyndham Lewis, here is an anthology of writers on writers, eloquently giving vent to their least charitable feelings in outbursts of spleen, rancour, venom, bitterness, abuse, mockery and petulance. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Orwell D. J. Taylor, 2015-07-28 Winner of the Whitbread Biography Award: A “profoundly moving [and] definitive” portrait of George Orwell, author of 1984 and larger-than-life literary genius (The Daily Telegraph). It was not easy to bury George Orwell. After a lifetime of iconoclasm, during which he professed no interest in religion and no affiliation with any church, he asked to be buried in an Anglican churchyard—but none would have him. Orwell’s friends fought for him to have a proper grave, however, and the author of 1984, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia, among other brilliant works of prose, poetry, and journalism, was laid to rest in a quiet country cemetery. Almost immediately, his legacy was in dispute. Orwell did not want any biographies written of him, but that has not stopped scholars from trying. Of all those published since the author’s death in 1950, D. J. Taylor’s prize-winning book is considered the most definitive. Born in India, Orwell spent his forty-six years of life traveling the British Empire and confronting the world head on. From the trenches of Spain to the top of bestseller lists, Taylor presents Orwell fully—as a writer, social critic, and human being. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Hannibal Patrick Hunt, 2017-07-11 One of the greatest commanders of the ancient world brought vividly to life: Hannibal, the brilliant general who successfully crossed the Alps with his war elephants and brought Rome to its knees. Hannibal Barca of Carthage, born 247 BC, was one of the great generals of the ancient world. Historian Patrick N. Hunt has led archeological expeditions in the Alps and elsewhere to study Hannibal's achievements. Now he brings Hannibal's incredible story to life in this book |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Grant and Sherman Charles Bracelen Flood, 2005-10-01 This dual Civil War biography presents “[a] powerful and illuminating study of a military collaboration that won the war for the Union” (Josiah Bunting III, Washington Post). “We were as brothers,” William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship to Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and the deep friendship that made it possible. They were prewar failures: Grant was forced to resign from the Regular Army because of his drinking, and Sherman had moved from one job to the next in the years before the conflict. But heeding the call to save the Union, each struggled past political hurdles to join the war effort. And after taking each other’s measure at the Battle of Shiloh, they began their unique collaboration. Often together under fire on the war’s great battlefields, they also supported each other in the face of mudslinging criticism by the press and politicians. Sharing the demands of family life and the heartache of loss, they built a mutual admiration and trust which President Lincoln increasingly relied upon. Though their headquarters were hundreds of miles apart, they communicated almost daily, strategizing the final moves of the war and planning how to win the peace that would follow. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Churchill, Roosevelt & Company Lewis E. Lehrman, 2017-01-30 During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s grins and Winston Churchill’s victory signs, the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the two nations. Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked--and occasionally did not work--by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own and thwarting others’. This was the domain of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with his boss; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill, who had the difficult task, not always well performed, of managing their subordinates and who frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves. Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy at the core of the Anglo-American alliance. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Kremlin's Candidate Jason Matthews, 2022-02-22 Russian counterintelligence chief Colonel Dominika Egorova has been an asset of the CIA for over seven years. She has also been in a forbidden and tumultuous love affair with her handler Nate Nash, mortally dangerous for them both, but irresistible. In Washington, a newly installed administration is selecting its cabinet members. Dominika hears whispers of a Russian operation to place a mole in a high intelligence position. If the candidate is confirmed, the Kremlin will have access to the identities of CIA assets in Moscow, including Dominika. Dominika recklessly immerses herself in the palace intrigues of the Kremlin, searching for the mole's identity and stealing secrets before her time runs out. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Battle of Britain , 2008-10 |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Palmerston David Brown, Professor of Modern History David Brown, 2011-02-01 A grand and fascinating figure in Victorian politics, the charismatic Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) served as foreign secretary for fifteen years and prime minister for nine, engaged in struggles with everyone from the Duke of Wellington to Lord John Russell to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, engineered the defeat of the Russians in the Crimean War, and played a major role in the development of liberalism and the Liberal Party. This comprehensive biography, informed by unprecedented research in the statesman's personal archives, gives full weight not only to Palmerston's foreign policy achievements, but also to his domestic political activity, political thought, life as a landlord, and private life and affairs. Through the lens of the milieu of his times, the book pinpoints for the first time the nature and extent of Palmerston's contributions to the making of modern Britain. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Road to Serfdom , 2015-12-26 Over Two Million Copies Sold The Road to Serfdom By Friedrich A. Hayek Condensed Edition The Road to Serfdom is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) between 1940-1943, in which he [warns] of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning. He further argues that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a dictator, and the serfdom of the individual. Significantly, Hayek challenged the general view among British academics that fascism (and National Socialism) was a capitalist reaction against socialism. He argued that fascism, National Socialism and socialism had common roots in central economic planning and empowering the state over the individual. Since its publication in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has been an influential and popular exposition of market libertarianism. It has sold over two million copies. The Road to Serfdom was to be the popular edition of the second volume of Hayek's treatise entitled The Abuse and Decline of Reason, and the title was inspired by the writings of the 19th century French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville on the road to servitude. The book was first published in Britain by Routledge in March 1944, during World War II, and was quite popular, leading Hayek to call it that unobtainable book, also due in part to wartime paper rationing. It was published in the United States by the University of Chicago Press in September 1944 and achieved great popularity. At the arrangement of editor Max Eastman, the American magazine Reader's Digest published an abridged version in April 1945, enabling The Road to Serfdom to reach a wider popular audience beyond academics. The Road to Serfdom has had a significant impact on twentieth-century conservative and libertarian economic and political discourse, and is often cited today by commentators. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality Richard M. Langworth, 2017-07-14 Winston Churchill, indispensable when liberty was in peril, died in 1965. Yet he is still accused of numerous sins, from alcoholism and racism to misogyny and warmongering. On the Internet, he simmers in a stew of imagined misdeeds--using poison gas, firebombing Dresden, causing the Bengal famine, and so on. Drawing on the author's fifty years of research and writing on Churchill, this book uncovers scores of myths surrounding him--the popular and the obscure--to reveal what he really said and did about many issues. Churchill had two personas--one that thought deeply about the nature of humanity, and one that helped solve seemingly intractable problems. In his many decades in public life, he made mistakes, but his faults were well eclipsed by his virtues. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Fascism and Democracy George Orwell, 2021-09-28 'The feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world ... this prospect frightens me much more than bombs' On the 70th anniversary of George Orwell's death, a new collection of his brilliant essays written during the Second World War Fascism and Democracy collects five brilliant examples of Orwell's writing during the darkest days of World War Two. Grappling with the principles of democracy and the potential of reform, the meaning of literature and free speech in times of violence, and the sustainability of objective truth, Orwell offers a compelling portrayal of a nation where norms and ideals can no longer be taken for granted. Like the best of Orwell's writing, these essays also serve as timeless reminders of the fragility of freedom. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: We Shall Not Fail Celia Sandys, Jonathan Littman, 2003 The granddaughter of Winston Churchill provides insights into the life, character, and leadership skills of the English politician and prime minister, focusing on his constant drive for self-improvement. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Mine Were of Trouble Peter Kemp, 2022-03-14 The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil Española). Escalating violence between left- and right-wing political factions boils over. Military officers stage a coup against a democratically elected, Soviet-backed, government. The country is thrown into chaos as centuries-old tensions return to the forefront. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards choose sides and engage in the most devastating combat since the First World War. For loyalists to the Republic, the fight is seen as one for equality and their idea of progress. For the rebels, the struggle is a preemptive strike by tradition against an attempted communist takeover. Thousands of foreigners, too, join the struggle. Most fight with the Soviet-sponsored International Brigades or other militias aligned with the loyalist Republicans. Only a few side with the rebel Nationalists. One of these rare volunteers for the Nationalists was Peter Kemp, a young British law student. Kemp, despite having little training or command of the Spanish language, was moved by the Nationalist struggle against international Communism. Using forged documents, he sneaked into Spain and joined a traditionalist militia, the Requetés, with which he saw intense fighting. Later, he volunteered to join the legendary and ruthless Spanish Foreign Legion, where he distinguished himself with heroism. Because of this bravery, he was one of the few foreign volunteers granted a private audience with Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Kemp published his story... one of the only English accounts of the war from the Nationalist perspective, after a prestigious military career with the British Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Discovering Hall Marks on English Silver John Bly, 1976 |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Saving Freedom Joe Scarborough, 2020-11-17 The host of MSNBC's Morning Joe reveals how President Harry Truman defended democracy against the Soviet threat at the dawn of the Cold War. Harry Truman had been vice president for less than three months when President Franklin Roosevelt died. Suddenly inaugurated the leader of the free world, the plainspoken Truman candidly told reporters he, felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me. He faced a hostile world stage. Even as World War II drew to a close, the Cold War was around the corner. The Soviet Union went from America's uneasy ally to its number one adversary. Through shrewd diplomacy and military might, Joseph Stalin gained control of Eastern Europe, and soon cast an acquisitive eye toward the Balkans--and beyond. Newly liberated from fascism, Europe's future was again at risk, its freedom on the line. Alarmed by the Soviets' designs, Truman acted. In a speech before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, he announced a policy of containment that became known as the Truman Doctrine--a pledge that the United States would support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. In Saving Freedom, Joe Scarborough moves between events in Washington and those in Europe--in Greece, where the U.S.-backed government was fighting a civil war with insurgent Communists, and in Turkey, where the Soviets pressed for control of the Dardanelles--to analyze and understand the changing geopolitics that led Truman to deliver his momentous speech. The story of the passage of the Truman doctrine is an inspiring tale of American leadership, can-doism, bipartisan unity, and courage in the face of an antidemocratic threat. Saving Freedom highlights a pivotal moment of the Twentieth Century, a turning point where patriotic Americans worked together to defeat tyranny. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell, 2021-02-22 A delightfully humorous and caustic satire on the rule of the many by the few. Animal Farm, The Guardian. I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing; and yet, such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down. - V. S. Pritchett of Nineteen Eighty-Four. One cannot help but be struck by the degree to which he (George Orwell) became, in Henry James's words, one of those upon whom nothing was lost. By declining to lie, even as far as possible to himself, and by his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, he showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage. -- Christopher Hitchens We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. ... There will be no art, no literature, no science. ... There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always, always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. This little volume contains two of the most prophetic and chilling novels of the twentieth century--Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell clear-sightedly looks at humanity and human nature and shows us what could go terribly wrong. Orwell wrote Animal Farm - A Fairy Story in three months from November 1943 to February 1944. It was only published in August 1945 because it was seen for what it was: a critique of Stalin's Soviet Union, which, much to Orwell's disgust, was a strategic ally of the United Kingdom. In his compelling dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell created the world of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, 2 + 2 = 5, and the memory hole: indeed, a complete Orwellian society. In the twenty-first century, in a world of fake news and ubiquitous state and corporate monitoring of citizens, in which vast regions of the world are governed by totalitarian regimes, Nineteen Eighty-Four is even more relevant than when it was written. It is essential reading. George Orwell (born Eric Blair, 1903, Motihari, Bengal, died Jan 1950, London)was a leading British writer of the twentieth century. He studied at Wellington College and Eton (1917-1921) where he was a King's Scholar. After Eton, he followed family tradition and joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, until 1927 when, disgusted by imperialism, he resigned to pursue his boyhood dream of being a writer. He published an autobiographical book Down and Out in London and Paris, with Victor Gollancz Ltd. under his pen name of George Orwell. This established his literary career. Orwell was a prolific journalist, essayist, novelist and nonfiction writer. He is remembered for his prescient writing and his unwavering commitment to truth and clarity of expression. His last two novels--Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four--have placed him at the pinnacle of British literature. |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: The Somme Martin Gilbert, 2007-05-29 One of our most distinguished historians delivers an authoritative and vivid account of the devastating WWI battle that claimed more than 300,000 lives. At 7:30 am on July 1, 1916, the first Allied soldiers climbed out of their trenches along the Somme River in France and charged out into no-man’s-land toward the barbed wire and machine guns at the German front lines. By the end of this first day of the Allied attack, the British army alone would lose 20,000 men; in the coming months, the fifteen-mile-long territory along the river would erupt into the epicenter of the Great War. The Somme would mark a turning point in both the war and military history, as soldiers saw the first appearance of tanks on the battlefield, the emergence of the air war as a devastating and decisive factor in battle, and more than one million casualties (among them a young Adolf Hitler, who took a fragment in the leg). In just 138 days, 310,000 men died. In this vivid, deeply researched account of one history’s most destructive battles, historian Martin Gilbert tracks the Battle of the Somme through the experiences of footsoldiers (known to the British as the PBI, for Poor Bloody Infantry), generals, and everyone in between. Interwoven with photographs, journal entries, original maps, and documents from every stage and level of planning, The Somme is the most authoritative and affecting account of this bloody turning point in the Great War. “A steadily astonishing piece of work that acts as a worthy remembrance.” —New York Post “His superbly written, absorbing re-creations of innumerable small life-and-death struggles make this book a fitting commemoration of the tragedy.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: CHURCHILL AND ORWELL , 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, with a focus on the pivotal years from the mid-1930s through the 1940s, when their farsighted vision and inspired action in the face of the threat of fascism and communism helped preserve democracy for the world.-- |
churchill and orwell the fight for freedom: Waging a Good War Thomas E. Ricks, 2022-10-04 #1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. “Ricks does a tremendous job of putting the reader inside the hearts and souls of the young men and women who risked so much to change America . . . Riveting.” —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian In Waging a Good War, the bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the Movement’s triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance—involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement’s adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool—the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement’s later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America’s civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change—and one that offers vital lessons for our own time. |
Winston Churchill - Wikipedia
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill[a] KG OM CH TD DL FRS RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of …
Winston Churchill | Biography, World War II, Quotes, Books,
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a British statesman, orator, and author. During his first term as prime minister (1940–45), he rallied the British people and led his country from the brink of …
Winston S. Churchill - Biography, Death & Speeches | HISTORY
Oct 27, 2009 · Winston Churchill was one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated …
Winston Churchill Biography - life, family, death, history, school ...
The English statesman and author Sir Winston Churchill led Britain during World War II (1939–45) and is often described as the "savior of his country." Sir Winston Churchill's exact place in the …
The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College
Winston Churchill produced nearly 600 paintings during his lifetime. Nine of his artistic works, along with memorabilia from his life, were displayed at Hillsdale College in early 2017 as part …
Winston S. Churchill - U.S. National Park Service
Churchill became known for his fierce opposition to concessions to Hitler in his conquest of Europe, as well as his bold proclamations on the perils of the Third Reich.
Winston Churchill "Prime Minister" - Age, Children and Married
Mar 9, 2025 · Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was a prominent British politician, military officer, and prolific writer, most famously known for his dual tenure as Prime Minister of Great …
10 Winston Churchill Accomplishments and Achievements
Jan 26, 2025 · Winston Churchill was a towering figure of the 20th century whose legacy extends far beyond his wartime leadership. Known for his indomitable spirit, brilliant oratory, and prolific …
Who was Churchill? - International Churchill Society
Winston Churchill was voted the Greatest Briton in a UK 2002 BBC poll, primarily for his efforts to inspire the British people during the Second World War. He received more votes than Princess …
Winston Churchill Biography - America’s National Churchill …
Read about Winston Churchill's family life and relationships, hobbies, and ultimate resting place, provided by the National Churchill Museum.
Winston Churchill - Wikipedia
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill[a] KG OM CH TD DL FRS RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of …
Winston Churchill | Biography, World War II, Quotes, Books,
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a British statesman, orator, and author. During his first term as prime minister (1940–45), he rallied the British people and led his country from the brink of …
Winston S. Churchill - Biography, Death & Speeches | HISTORY
Oct 27, 2009 · Winston Churchill was one of the best-known, and some say one of the greatest, statesmen of the 20th century. Though he was born into a life of privilege, he dedicated …
Winston Churchill Biography - life, family, death, history, school ...
The English statesman and author Sir Winston Churchill led Britain during World War II (1939–45) and is often described as the "savior of his country." Sir Winston Churchill's exact place in the …
The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College
Winston Churchill produced nearly 600 paintings during his lifetime. Nine of his artistic works, along with memorabilia from his life, were displayed at Hillsdale College in early 2017 as part …
Winston S. Churchill - U.S. National Park Service
Churchill became known for his fierce opposition to concessions to Hitler in his conquest of Europe, as well as his bold proclamations on the perils of the Third Reich.
Winston Churchill "Prime Minister" - Age, Children and Married
Mar 9, 2025 · Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was a prominent British politician, military officer, and prolific writer, most famously known for his dual tenure as Prime Minister of Great …
10 Winston Churchill Accomplishments and Achievements
Jan 26, 2025 · Winston Churchill was a towering figure of the 20th century whose legacy extends far beyond his wartime leadership. Known for his indomitable spirit, brilliant oratory, and prolific …
Who was Churchill? - International Churchill Society
Winston Churchill was voted the Greatest Briton in a UK 2002 BBC poll, primarily for his efforts to inspire the British people during the Second World War. He received more votes than Princess …
Winston Churchill Biography - America’s National Churchill Museum
Read about Winston Churchill's family life and relationships, hobbies, and ultimate resting place, provided by the National Churchill Museum.