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WRITING LEFT TO OTHERS
Phillip Adams exposes Winston Churchill:
It turns out that he left much of the writing of his most famous work to others, whose roles were kept secret ...
I’d be inclined to believe Phil on this; after all, he’s an expert.
(Via Alan R.M. Jones)
Fat Phil writes:
While waging the war, Churchill knew that history was watching and wrote memos to his generals and public servants accordingly.
This is sage advice for anyone. History is watching you, no matter how humble your station. It may only be your children to which your legacy matters but you will be judged upon your death and ever after by what you said and did when you lived.
Churchill was the Man of the Century. What will be said of Adams? A gluttonous, spiteful, petty, mean, bitter untalented hack?
Phill is an expert
X being an unknown quantity and spurt being what a dick does under pressure.
And I suppose he ghost wrote all his other works as well.
This from a man whos literary triumphs include such seminal works as…/help me out here someone, I know he put his name on a couple of joke books.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 10 14 at 10:57 AM • permalinkAdams states:
“The work continued when he returned to Number 10 in 1951, and remained a race against time and poor health. And he just made it, living long enough to win the Nobel Prize for Literature,”
Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 and died in 1964.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2006 10 14 at 10:58 AM • permalinkMoonbats scorn. Moonbats denigrate. Moonbats deconstruct.
History judges.
I’ll stick with Winnie on this one. I wonder how many biographies will be written on Mr. Adams? Will anybody remember Adam’s name 40 years after his death? I have to keep scrolling up to remember it for this comment.
I can think of a one word legacy for Mr. Adams (is shitforbrains one word), but I be hard put not to write another book for Churchill.
One of the major challenges to writing a Churchill biography is reading everything he wrote. He had a decades-long career as a journalist and writer and a prodigious, high quality output. By the time you’ve read everything he’s written you’re close to slipping the mortal coil yourself.
Posted by Ernst Blofeld on 2006 10 14 at 01:05 PM • permalinkWill anybody remember Adam’s name 40 years after his death?
I wouldn’t joke trainer. With his recent work Adams may stand a good chance of winning the 2007 Man Booker prize for fiction.
Posted by Chris Mann on 2006 10 14 at 01:10 PM • permalinkWhile waging the war, Churchill knew that history was watching and wrote memos to his generals and public servants accordingly.
Leftie translation: People only do the right thing when somebody is watching. Especially Right leaning people who are doing nefarious things like protecting this racist relic called Western civilization, and dummying up the documentation in order to preserve their “legacies”.
This is pure projection on the part of the Left.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 10 14 at 01:31 PM • permalinkAnother point, Churchill did NOT win the Nobel Prize for his war memoirs. The last volume was not published till 1954. Also Adams gives a false impression that Churtchill did not acknowledge any assistance.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2006 10 14 at 01:33 PM • permalink“What will be said of Adams? A gluttonous, spiteful, petty, mean, bitter untalented hack?”
JDB, aren’t you even slightly ashamed at this obsequious puffery? Surely you don’t actually think this highly of Adams. Are you angling for a job or somehting?
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 10 14 at 01:34 PM • permalinkWell, Mr. Adams, maybe he had some other things on his plate, like fighting WWII.
What have you done other than write Mr. Adams?
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 10 14 at 01:46 PM • permalinkAdams also overlooks the fact that prolific writers often use assistants. This is like saying Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, Barbara Cartland, et al (sorry for the odd juxtaposition, but you understand what I’m trying to say) didn’t write what they wrote because they dictated to secretaries and typists.
It’s full of revelations such as a plan called Operation Unthinkable, in which Hitler’s army would join forces with the Brits and the US to attack the Soviet Union
Not much of a revelation - Gen. George Patton:
Hell, why do we care what those goddamn Russians think? We are going to have to fight them sooner or later, within the next generation. Why not do it now while our Army is intact and the damn Russians can have their hind end kicked back to Russia in three months? We can do it easily with the help of the German troops we have, if we just arm them and take them with us. They hate the bastards.[92]
Footnote [92] Farago, 207. Patton was one of the first persons in the public eye to come out and say this; however, many of the people in our nation [England] felt this way.
Mr. Adams is a bloody fool and Patton would have slapped him silly.
“What will be said of Adams? A gluttonous, spiteful, petty, mean, bitter untalented hack?”
Dude, you’re talking about writers here. Gotta narrow it down more than that.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 10 14 at 05:56 PM • permalinkPhat Phil, ever on top of the issues of the times. Has he ever gone after anyone who can fight back? Like, say, Islamofascists?
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 10 14 at 06:15 PM • permalinkWhat have you done other than write Mr. Adams?
He headed up an publicly listed ad agency, a big one in its time - Monaham Dayman Adams - that did a lot of work for governments. Delisted in 1987. He was also the producer of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, a cinematic work almost Churchillian in scope and depth.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 10 14 at 06:17 PM • permalinkI read this book (over a year ago, when it came out - Phil ‘on the spot’ as usual). The author states quite clearly that Churchill’s methods of writing his history in no way invalidates his achievments as a historian or as a leader - Phil of course ignores this so he can go on seeing everything as a validation of his own point of view. Wonderful what an open mind can do.
What a scoop!
Winston was really a lazy, ignorant plagiarizer, forcing his many minions to write in his lugubrious prose style - and just for money!In constrast, Adamski’s impressive claim to literary fame is to collect jokes sent to him by the public, edit and publish them in several fat volumes [True.]
Winston Churchill was the man who saw the Nazi evil for what it was when most of the people around him were prepared to look the other way.
He did more than any other single human being to preserve freedom for those who came after him.
One day, maybe, Phil will realise that and acknowledge the debt.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 10 14 at 07:02 PM • permalinkScout’s honour kae, it’s on the list. As soon as I’m done weaving the hardenbergia and trimming the elephant’s toenails, I’m on to it.
Oh yeah, I need a cake tin too. Discovered that a couple of weeks ago when I went exploring in the kitchen cupboard.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 10 14 at 07:18 PM • permalinkThe only reason I can think of is that Rivkin is dead and can’t sue.
Like Churchill
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 10 14 at 07:39 PM • permalinkAndrew Bolt, quoting Geoffrey Barker, draws together the three big blow-hards of Australian life. All elderly, all long past their use-by dates. All should have retired a decade ago.
In fact [Barry ‘Motor Mouth’] Jones acknowledges few close friends apart from Philip Adams and Gough Whitlam. Others who arguably played significant parts in his public and private life do not rate even a mention. Jones is intensely focused first and foremost on his own thoughts and achievements and enthusiasms.
They are made for each other. Jones, with Adams, was another ‘Commission for the Future’ aparatchik.
When it comes to being an self-opinionated ass Adams is a light weight compared with the noisy, superannuated and extremely annoying Jones.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 10 14 at 07:40 PM • permalinkI always figured Winston Churchill’s ghost writer was
the other Winston Churchill.Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 10 14 at 09:31 PM • permalinkGood grief,
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(novelist) ”Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2006 10 14 at 09:35 PM • permalinkPhillip Adams, critising Winston Churchill. Or anybody of substance. This from a man whose only claim to fame, was to create a fat cartoon character, in an advertising agency paid for by the taxpayer.
(circa 1987); A friend once asked, “Who is this Phillip Adams guy, you read in The Australian?” My reply was that he is really nobody, but if anything he is only News Corp’s resident entertainment monkey, and maybe Pravada’s foreign correspondent.“It has taken decades to challenge Churchill’s version of the war”
Bollox and codswallop, Churchill was severely criticised for his conduct of the war from the get go. He was virulently opposed by almost everyone before he took office, most of his own party didn’t support him when he was appointed, he faced two votes of confidence while he was prime minister and as soon as the war was over in Europe the electorate threw him out!
Where does this clown get the idea that until this book was written we all thought that Churchill farted Chanel No.5 and was infallible? Churchill made huge blunders throughout his fascinating life, his character made many many people despise him, and he was subject to more criticism and condemnation than possibly any other British politician of his generation. The appeasing right hated him every much as the appeasing left and were not shy about saying so, and they still do. Off the top of my head I can think of David Irving, Richard Lamb, Correlli Barnett, Clive Ponting, historians who have all written damning accounts of Churchill in the recent past, quite apart from the dozens of former generals and colleagues who rushed out their memoirs invariably telling us how they would have won the war single-handedly if it hadn’t been for Churchill’s interference.
There isn’t a country in the world from Australia to Ireland, from the US to India which doesn’t house it’s own lefty hate list against something Churchill did, yet still they come forward with their attacks on him as if they have suddenly thought up this brilliant new iconoclastic idea all on their own.
Listen Adams, let me give you some adive, we Churchill fans know all about our hero’s faults, they are writ large in his character and his life, we’ve heard about them all a thousand times, but in spite of these faults or perhaps because in relation to them his grandeur seems so much more majestic, we still know that he was the greatest man of his time - without exception, and no amount of droning from midgets like you will in any way detract from our humble and awe struck admiration of the magnificent Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
Posted by Harry Flashman on 2006 10 14 at 11:13 PM • permalinkHas David Reynolds been “peer-reviewed”?
Just asking.Don’t know how many ghost writers had the fate of their nation on their shoulders day after day and night after night.
Filed under-if you ever get to London. Visit WC’s sumptuous underground accomodations where he spent much of the war. He slept in someting like an eight by twelve room that was just big enough for a cot and a small desk if I remember correctly.
A Yojimbo will take WC and lay the points over Adams and Reynolds any day of the week.
Good gracious. Such earthshattering revelations from the individual of earthshattering footsteps.
If Operation Unthinkable deserves a shocked exclamation mark in his mind (probably would shock an old commie that anyone could have anything against the beloved Rodina ;)) then I wait with baited breath for next week’s revelation of the Adams expose of Dropshot.I expect that the column on the implications of Venona will not ejaculate from Phil’s pen anytime soon though.
Posted by Simon Darkshade on 2006 10 15 at 08:21 AM • permalinkI attended the 2004 International Churchill Conference in Portsmouth UK where David Reynolds was guest speaker; I enjoyed his talks very much. I’ve also read his excellent book, “In Command of History” which has been very well received into the Churchillian canon. Despite what people like Adams might think, Churchillians are interested in the facts about Churchill’s life, not hagiography.
Reynolds’ book won the 2005 Farrow Award which is given by the Churchill Center for excellence in Churchillian studies.
One thing that Reynolds made clear was that Churchill had to deal with many of the people he mentioned in his memoirs in the post-war years and this certainly had an effect on what he said about them. Confusion with respect to notes had to do with some errors in Churchill’s memoirs. Another important point is that Churchill’s memoirs were a response to critical memoirs from others that appeared immediately after the war.
I’d recommend everyone read Reynolds’ book and see how much it changes or effects your view of Churchill. He ends his book with “... In death, as in life, Winston Churchill continues to glow. He remains in command of history.”
Oops, I wanted to add a couple of points.
First, just for interest, at the time of their publication, Churchill’s war memoir was the biggest book deal in history. Part of Reynolds’ book is the very interesting tale of how the deal(s) came to be.
Second, I think its worth keeping in mind that these were Churchill’s memoirs. He states that they were not to be seen as a full history of the war, but, rather, his own view.
Thanks in part to my first point, Churchill’s memoirs were seen as being the definitive history. Reynolds points out that we even view the stages of the war based on the way Churchill broke up the six volumes (that said, Churchill’s structure was certainly based on a logical view of the war, but also with an eye to his publisher’s demands).
Norman Rose’s “An Unruly Life” (It carried the title “Unruly Giant” in the US) covered the writing assistance issue at length, as have other works. It’s not news at all.
It’s charming to read about Churchill’s work habits when he was writing. He would usually sit in bed all day with assistants scurrying around him, dictating page after page in perfect, balanced sentences.
Phatty ain’t a fly speck on Churchill’s bootlace. He’s a gluttonous, vain, verbose plagiarizing, multi-millionaire socialist jerk-off.
Posted by Bearded Mullah on 2006 10 15 at 11:16 PM • permalink
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I believe Mr. Adams suffers from a remarkable case of pen envy.