Jicky: google churchill ghost writer and you will find a bevy of articles, book reviews, etc on how Sir Winston put his books together. In looking through them I was surprised to see how many of them he used and especially to see that AL Rowse, a Shakespearean scholar, and JH Plumb, a longtime favorite historian of mine, were among those who lent their talents. Also mentioned are an unidentified admiral and others.
Some of their work was incorporated verbatim into English Speaking Peoples but most, I gather, was used as first drafts and re worked by the aging statesman.
There are references to Whig History. This does not mean a history of the Whig Party but rather a current in historiography in which the idea of the continuing advance of liberty is seen as the main strain in western history. This is a very appealing idea to those of us brought up on American exceptionalism and has a long and noble history in our own country's historiography. Fehrenbach's Lone Star, for example, is a good example of whig historicism.
Regardless as to who wrote what in Churchill's works, he was a splendid speaker and writer and his ideas, though they changed greatly over the course of his long life, were nowhere better expressed than by him and in his speeches. As I said in the earlier post, reading a book of his speeches is a thrill. Then listen to the "debates" put on by our parties and fear for the future of our country.
