
A Letter From Winston Churchill’s Disappointed Mother - whocansay
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/winston-churchill-mother-letter/568285/
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olivermarks
Churchill was a notorious scoundrel, constantly in debt and bailed out by
unsavoury characters [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/no-more-
champ...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/no-more-champagne-
churchill-and-money-david-lough-review/)

'...On his first day at school, Winston Churchill asked his mother for more
cash. She groused: “You do get through it in the most rapid manner… and the
more you have the more you want to spend.” He was 13, and already he was
spending more than a family “of six or seven have to live upon”.....

~~~
qubax
> Churchill was a notorious scoundrel

The topic of churchill was the first time I realized I lived in a bubble. In
the US, we laud churchill as a great statesman and take pride in that he's
half-american by his american mother. He's seen as, next to FDR, the most
important man in the fight against nazi germany to free europe. And naively we
assume the rest of the world also loves churchill. Turns out much of the world
hates churchill because the guy was virulently racist, genocidal and a war
criminal. The things churchill said and did were no different than what hitler
said and did. The first time I heard my indian colleague say something
negative about churchill, I was shocked because I was so conditioned into
thinking the guy represented good.

"As the resistance swelled, he announced: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly
people with a beastly religion." This hatred killed. To give just one, major,
example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-
winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the
British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials
begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He
raged that it was their own fault for "breeding like rabbits". At other times,
he said the plague was "merrily" culling the population."

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-
fines...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-
the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html)

Were it not for the unprecedented horrors of hitler, churchill would rank up
there with the worst of the leaders of the 20th century.

~~~
tomohawk
1943 - the British were in engaged in a multifront war against Germany, Italy,
and Japan with their very survival in doubt. Then, Japan cut off a major food
supply to Bengal. Blaming this all on Churchill is a bit much.

~~~
ironic_ali
Have you a source for Japan cutting off it's supply of food, I'd not read
about that before.

~~~
tomohawk
Wikipedia talks about it a bit:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943)

Japan occupied Burma, cutting off supplies.

Japan was also sinking British shipping - the whole empire was in extremis. It
seems likely that this whole sad episode would have turned out quite
differently without the war going on.

------
return-value
_but Winston you are old enough to see how serious this is to you— & how the
next year or two & the use you make of them, will affect your whole life_

She sounds like a terrible mother, but those lines aren’t wrong. I squandered
a lot of my youth, and I’m paying the price now. I can’t change it, and even
if I could I doubt my younger self would take it serious, but how you spend
your twenties really determine how you spend the next 40 years of your life.
That’s not to say you can’t change or catch up, Churchill is a testimony to
that, but the hard work won’t do itself.

~~~
philwelch
I don't think she sounds like a terrible mother at all. Sometimes a wayward
son needs some tough love--and I don't think that idea was the slightest bit
uncomfortable to a British mother in the Victorian era.

------
StefanKarpinski
It is unclear to me from the context whether this is an excerpt of a
fictitious letter from Churchill's mother to him as a child or if this is a
real historical letter.

Edit: to answer my own question, it seems to be an excerpt from a book of
actual letters between Churchill and his mother: [https://www.amazon.com/My-
Darling-Winston-Letters-Churchill/...](https://www.amazon.com/My-Darling-
Winston-Letters-Churchill/dp/1681778823).

------
btilly
Interesting tidbit about Winston Churchill. He was the only person in any of
the major warring powers to have held high office in both WW 1 and WW 2. In WW
1 he was in charge of the British navy (though he did resign after Gallipoli).
In WW 2 he, of course, rose to Prime Minister.

What is more surprising, perhaps, is that this is a claim that nobody else can
make. But when you examine it, it is in the nature of democracy that there is
regular turnover of those at the top. This happened in Britain, France and the
USA. And the various non-democracies involved all had changes of government
between the start of WW 1 and WW 2, which again results in turnover of those
at the top.

So he became very successful. Whether this was because of, or in spite of, his
mother's disappointment is another question. (I would be inclined on general
principle to guess "because of", but I don't know enough for an educated
opinion.)

~~~
robotkdick
Thanks for pointing this out. I knew it, but the uniqueness had not been
clear. He is an intriguing character and an anomaly in so many ways, and I
would say that is because, in large part, of his relationship with his mother,
whom he befuddled (like so many others in his life), but she nonetheless
adored him.

~~~
btilly
A strong-willed mother can be found behind many famous people. Or at least
that was one of the findings in [https://www.amazon.com/Cradles-Eminence-
Childhoods-Famous-Wo...](https://www.amazon.com/Cradles-Eminence-Childhoods-
Famous-Women/dp/091070757X). (A book I'm familiar with because my mother read
it and applied its lessons in odd ways to her parenting..)

That is why on general principle I would expect his mother to likely be a
cause for his success.

