As regular readers of the Corner will know, after a tough fight Winston Churchill survived the Diana challenge and was selected as the greatest Briton in a recent BBC poll. In an article on this vote in the November 30th London Spectator, Frank Johnson discusses Churchill’s tactics during his ‘finest hour’ (that’s the summer of 1940, by the way, not the BBC vote) and comes to this conclusion:
“We sense, however, that at the deepest level Churchill – unlike Chamberlain, Halifax and most of the others – knew in 1940 that Britain would be rescued by something turning up. Like a true Englishman, the strategist who inspired him was not Bonaparte or Clausewitz, but Micawber. That is why it is fitting that he should be the Greatest Briton. ”
Churchill as Micawber? Well, they certainly shared the same approach to money.