Churchill hits the bin

On November 7th 2010 I bought a 7 volume history of Churchill, which I never studied closely enough to realise until today that volume 8 was missing (probably making it worthless; proper book collectors are more picky beasts). I am clearly going to fail the coveted M.Phol.. I did come across an odd companion volume from the dozen or so available over the intervening period, but had the good sense not to buy them.

And I did make an effort with the first volume at around the time of purchase, and was entertained by his doings as a young man - for example having a Royal Navy cruiser at his beck and call as he toured east Africa together with a train from the very front of which he went hippopotamus shooting or some such; the great white hunter. But the effort flagged and I have not opened one for some time.

But yesterday, new purchases piling up in the study, they failed to make the cut and all two feet of them are now in the garage awaiting delivery to the Oxfam skip at Kiln Lane. Will the book sorters at the Kingston Oxfam - from whence the book came in the first place - think it worth lugging them back there? I celebrated by buying a handsome art book from behind Churchill's Iron Curtain for £2.50 from the charity shop operated by the Childrens' Trust Tadworth, an enterprising outfit running to an online shop at http://www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/. An art book which was published in 1956 and which is indeed handsome, with pictures of lots of handsome churches dating from the 12th century (which I had not expected), but a book in which the Jewish population of Poland in the period in question is very nearly invisible. I grant that much of their built heritage may have been destroyed, but it is still a poor reflection on the Polish nationalist mood of the time. Maybe it will get better on closer inspection.

I close with two Churchill anecdotes from a long standing customer of TB, whose father was in the Navy during the war. He hated Churchill on two counts. First, in the early stages of the war, he ordered the bombing of a U-boat towing boated survivors of one of its attacks to safety, held by the customer to be an unwarranted breach of the conventions and customs of sea warfare. I am not so sure. Second, in the later stages of the war, he appeared at a naval parade at Gibraltar visibly drunk. The assembled men, grizzled long service veterans all, were not impressed that this was the best that he could do, given what they had to put up with. I imagine they all voted Labour in the subsequent election.