This book is a dual biography of two of the most influential people of the 20th Century. I'll be taking notes as I read. If the Great Man version has any validity, it certainly applies to Winston Churchill. Orwell's influence is literary, but oh how influential his body of work has been.
The author dedicates the book to all those who seek to preserve our freedoms. We need these kind of people as much as ever these days.
The Great Man theory of history isn't much respected today, but it has merit. The author points out a traffic accident in NYC in 1931 in which Winston Churchill could have been killed. Could there have been a 20th Century as we know it today without Churchill? P. 1
One day in the 1950's one of Churchill's grandson's found his way into Churchill's study and asked Grandpa if he were the greatest man in the world. He answered, "Yes, and now bugger off." P. 4
Churchill was a "troublesome" boy, an indifferent student, and did not appear that he was on his way to amounting to much as a child. He did not go to college. His father took little notice of him, and his mother was too much in society to bother with him. P. 6
Despite his less than exemplary record as a student, Churchill learned how to write and was a lifelong lover of the English language. P. 8
His father writes him a devastating letter in August of 1893 putting him down brutally. P. 9
With his father's death, a fuse seems to have been lit in Winston. P. 10
It is a mistake to read too many books when quite young. P. 10
He did not attend a university. He was an autodidact. P. 10
Greatly influenced by Gibbon. P. 10-11
Intoxicated by language using four or five words with the same meaning. P. 11
As an autodidact there were many gaps in his knowledge. He knew what he knew, but did not know what he did not know. P. 12
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result. P. 13
Escape in Africa. P. 16
Nothing quite correct in breeding, character, and temperament. P. 17
Marrying Clementine perhaps the wisest choice in his life. P. 19
George Orwell was born Eric Blair in India in June of 1903. P. 23
He was a liberal working as a "policeman" in Burma. P. 27
The oppressed are always right and the oppressors are always wrong. P. 31
Orwell was living in a time when the wealthy could ignore the plights of those living around them. (What has changed). P. 32
Orwell was always very sensitive to odor. P. 35
His book "Down and Out" is about how the struggle to get by grinds people down day by day. P. 36
Orwell wrote his bad books early and saved the best for last. P. 38
"To see what is front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." P. 40
The 30's created a sense that a new Dark Age was coming. P. 45
Orwell wondered whether the British ruling class was wicked or stupid. P. 48
Eventually the jig was up, and Germany and Great Britain were in a life and death struggle. P. 63
Hemingway: Boozy, preoccupied with image rather than reality. P. 75
History is facts according to what really happened rather than what happened according to a party line. P. 78
Churchill became "Churchill" at the beginning of his time becoming PM in May of 1940. The acme of his career was the first 7 months when he found his enduring place of history in saving Britain in the famed Battle of Britain. P. 84
His party did not warm to him at first when he succeeded his disgraced predecessor. P. 91
Churchill danced a big after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor as he knew the war would be won. P. 148
He achieved his two great war aims: to keep Britain going and to bring the US into the war. P. 149
One of the great subtexts of this book and the war was the relationship between Churchill and FDR. In retrospect it would seem like a good relationship was meant to be, but like a marriage, the two had to learn to work together and they went thru ups and downs. P. 160
British condescension toward Americans. Snobby British! P. 162
Should I read "Animal Farm" again? P. 174
"The struggle to see things as they are is perhaps the fundamental driver of Western Civilization. There is a long but direct line from Aristotle and Archimedes to Locke, Hume, Mill, and Darwin, and from there through Orwell and Churchill to the "Letter from Birmingham City Jail." It is the agreement that objective reality exists, that people of goodwill can perceive it, and that other people will change their views when presented with the facts of the matter." P. 269-270
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