Dartblog

John Rassias used to cite the Surrealist playwrights and assert that if we hadn’t already been writing plays for four or five years, we were too late. One might also say that the qualities of imperiousness, conviction, resolve, vanity and pride were visibly evident in this seven-year-old boy, known to his classmates as “Carrots” for his red hair. This picture and many other wonderful ones appear in Barry Singer’s book, Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill, a slim volume that captures something essential about the man who passed away 48 years ago today: a passion and self-confidence that saved the world.

The book also describes in detail Churchill’s intellectual and sensual breadth, and his “constantly probing and questioning nature”: he was an eager and wide-ranging reader, a happy imbiber of fine wine, Champagne and brandy; a snappy dresser; a polo player (until age 52); a lover of the countryside; a tireless bricklayer; an accomplished painter from a fairly early age until the end of his life; and most of all, an admirer of the English language.