familiar vision of him: cigar clenched jauntily in handor flashing a V for victory. Many of these photographs have never been published before – photographs which, for better or worse, I alone have chosen. Remarkably, I found no photographs of him drinking, with the exception of one on a boar hunt; clearly, Churchill decided how he would be photographed, and, ergo, perceived.
It is my hope that the words and images on these pages
convey a bit of the bedrock strength and comfort of
Churchill – the strength and comfort that came to my
parents, and all of Britain, over the radio waves. The world
is still a scary place, and Churchill, if only in memory, has
reservoirs of strength yet to impart to us. But this strength
and comfort should come not just from the unidimensional
monolith, the thin sliver so often conveyed, but from the mix
of personalities that comprise the man within – his joyousness
and sorrow, his pugnaciousness and tenderness, his moral
certainties and doubts, his strengths and vulnerabilities.
Considered by many to be the greatest man of the twentieth
century, he was, despite it all, of flesh and blood.
San Francisco and London
Alison Carlson
Foreword by Randolph L. S. Churchill
The year 2015 marks a special anniversary for the Churchill family. Fifty years ago, my great-grandfather Winston Churchill passed away after a lifetime of service, struggle and achievement. When I consider the course of his life, it is impossible not to be awestruck. My great-grandfather spent his life in the service of Great Britain and its allies and dependencies – first as a soldier and then as a politician and statesman who helped save his homeland, if not all the world, from the Nazi menace. He forged the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom and delivered speeches that roused the nation – and that still resonate with us today. He championed democracy, early social reform and technological innovation. Churchill shaped the world we live in.
But now, fifty years later, it is important not just to consider his achievements and commemorate his death; we must also remember – and celebrate – Churchill the man. The photographs and quotations compiled in this book do just that. They help us connect with Churchill by showing us candid moments from his life. These quotations – in both his glittering witticisms and his serious reflections – bring to life the person beyond the public persona that people everywhere have come to love. Churchill was a man of warmth and humour, as well as iron determination, and together these pictures and words serve not just to reveal my great-grandfather but also to preserve his memory in a way that would have made him smile.
Introduction by Phil Reed, OBE
There have been more books written about Winston
Churchill than almost anyone else in history, and each
year sees a new crop appear, many repeating or recycling
the contents of others, adding nothing new to our
understanding of the man. Specialist texts aplenty analyse
his political career and philosophy, his writings, his travels,
his relationships (personal and political) and his strategic
skills; the density of the texts, however, ranges from
journalistic to recondite academic. Books of cartoons of
him, of his paintings, and of his habits and tastes tend to
be more approachable, though they convey only a bare
sliver of who he was. And while books of his bons mots,
quotations and extracts from his writings are legion, too
many contain misquotations and use a thin selection of
quotations to offer quick amusement (and earn a fast buck).
There is also no shortage of books of photographs of him,
charting his life and career. From his school days onwards,
Churchill courted the camera – so much so that most of the
images so familiar to us are ones that he purposely allowed
or encouraged. His view that “history will be my judge and
I will write the history” applied as much to images as to
text, and the photographs we have of him in our minds are
largely those that he wanted us to have: the stern, bullish
leader of the famous Karsh portrait; the fatherly figure of
the wartime posters; and the clown twirling his hat on his
stick. These images have been widely used – and abused – to
peddle a position or brand goods and services that have
no relationship to him and his life. They each illustrate
different aspects of his character and style and, these many
years later, their familiarity both colours and constrains our
views of the man.
Photography allows us to make judgments about a person
that prose does not; the latter dictates to us a particular
view, whereas the photograph allows us to speculate
about the character, even the thoughts, of the subject as
implied by the details of the image. But we have been
subjected to the same images of Churchill over and over
for decades; gaining new insights from images that have
become quotidian, even passé, is ever more difficult. The
Man Within offers less-known images, often ones that
were not quite so engineered by Churchill himself. When
matched with the more well-known images, they provide
a much broader picture of the man. When that range of
images is paired with a robust selection of quotations – from
pithy,
