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LONDON (AFP) - Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real. The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth. And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey. Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported Monday. The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported. The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.

LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) -- Newly declassified British documents provide a window into heated Cabinet discussions on Iraq, Israeli-Arab relations, protecting the environment, and a secret deal on when the prime minister would step aside for his ambitious No. 2. Although many of the preoccupations are the same, these are not about Tony Blair's final months as prime minister. The Cabinet notes released Monday provide a glimpse into the back rooms of Britain's post-World War II government as the sun was setting on both the British Empire and the era of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The notebooks of Cabinet Secretary...

Every once in a while, some pollster comes up with a survey that shows what idiots Westerners can be. They especially like to pick on Americans and their rather insular attitude towards geography, being unable in large numbers to actually find Iraq on a globe or to identify the correct continent for Guyana (South America, in case anyone asks). Jay Leno has a running gag on the Tonight Show where he goes out in the street and asks people simple questions and films them getting the answers spectacularly wrong. So I have some sympathy with our friends in Britain this...

WINSTON CHURCHILL ON ISLAM - IN 1899! "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to...

1. The following was published 107 years ago in 1899. 2. It was authored by Winston Churchill who first became a household name forty years later during world turmoil leading up to WWII. 3. It was impossible for him to even imagine a fraction of the changes in technology or world politics yet to come. ~~~~~~~~~~~ "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems...

Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and not a conservative has no brains. - Winston Churchill I guess we know what old Winston would think of Chris Matthews, then. Appearing on Morning Joe today, the Hardball host turned the Churchillian maxim upside down, claiming his gut leans right but his head pulls him left.

"We will defend what is ours We shall never surrender" -Kosovo Is Serbia- Oficial Serbian Gov. bilboard

Rumsfeld Remarks at Churchill Dinner PATH TO VICTORY Refashioning Institutions for the 21st Century Remarks by Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Claremont Institute's 20th Annual Dinner in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill, November 17, 2007.This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging challenges our country and the next...

Churchill dropped from England's history syllabus Posted 9 hours 19 minutes ago Updated 4 hours 38 minutes ago Just not cricket ... the exclusion of Winston Churchill is likely to leave traditionalists aghast. (File photo) (Reuters: Toby Melville) Britain's World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says.The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the Government said.But...

The grandson of Sir Winston Churchill will tell an Ottawa audience tonight that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be disastrous for the Middle East and for western nations. That grandson, also named Winston Churchill, will deliver his address, titled "Democracy and Freedom Under Threat," at the annual forum of Kollel of Ottawa, a centre for advanced Torah study. "If the Americans admit failure and withdraw soon from Iraq, I see the writing on the wall," Mr. Churchill told the Citizen in a phone call from Britain. "Our friends and allies in the region, as well as nations throughout the...

Sir Winston Churchill, who today would be considered the master of the one-liner, understood politicians extremely well. With this simple, timeless, but quite accurate statement, Churchill captures today’s liberal Democrats in the American Congress without ever meeting any of them: “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” The cacophony of parrot-jabber coming out of the House and the Senate is deafening and the racket doesn’t stop there. There has been plenty of blather coming from the green zone in Iraq as well. Like a herd of donkeys, some Democratic presidential hopefuls stampeded into Iraq so that they...

The rap on George W. Bush is that he can't make a rousing speech like Winston Churchill, and indeed he can't. But who can? Not Hillary, not "the husband of," not John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, or even Barack Obama, worthies all. Churchill marshaled the language and sent it off to World War II. He was sui generis, one of a kind, an orator who played rhetoric like Babe Ruth hit home runs and Brooks Robinson played third base. But Churchill, the electrifier of frightened audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, had an advantage that neither George W. nor...

On July 14, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain addressed the nation on BBC Radio. The last month had seen the complete collapse of French and British resistance to German aggression on the continent of Europe. The French Army had been decisively defeated, and the Allied armies had been evacuated back to Britain from the coastline at Dunkirk. On June 14, the Nazis had marched into Paris. In the aftermath of the string of devastating defeats that had isolated Britain and left Europe prostrate before Hitler, Churchill spoke. "Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid...

I was rewriting history, while walking along some cold lakeshore the other day. My thought was: if Churchill had only come to power in 1937, Chamberlain would have been installed to replace him in 1940. Had Churchill been in power, and refused to sign Munich, he would have been blamed for the outbreak of war. I can just hear the prattle in an English pub, circa 1950. "He pushed Hitler to it! Had it not been for Churchill, Hitler would have been satisfied with the Sudetenland, and England would never have had to surrender. Everything was Churchill's fault!" Today, everything...

You have a problem. It’s a problem shared by Jews in Hebron, Serbs in Kosovo, Hindus in the Kashmir, Catholics in Lebanon, and Americans walking the streets of New York. Consider the inter-connectedness of the following incidents, all of which took place in the past few months: In Indonesia, three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded. In Iraq, a Syrian Orthodox priest was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. In Somalia, a nun was shot to death as she left the hospital where she worked, tending the sick and dying. In Lebanon, just days ago, a cabinet minister was assassinated. In Britain, authorities uncovered...

A notebook kept by Sir Winston Churchill's nurse has revealed a regimented routine in his final years which included her looking after his pet budgerigar. Muriel Thomson looked after Sir Winston as he neared death and, in addition to making sure he had his cigars and whisky to hand, was expected to put the bird 'to bed'. The former prime minister was an animal lover and it seems that, towards the end of his life, his budgie was seldom far from his side, even accompanying him to dinner. "Whisky and soda, specs, cards; bird to be brought into dining room...

JACKSON, Tenn. (BP)--Radical Islam poses to Western civilization a threat similar to that of the Nazis and the Soviets, Winston Churchill said Sept. 26 at Union University. Churchill -– author, journalist, former Member of Parliament and grandson of the former British prime minister -– spoke before about 1,800 people at Union’s 10th annual Scholarship Banquet to raise funds for students scholarships. “Together we have overcome far more powerful enemies than those that assail us today,” Churchill said. “I have every confidence that, in confronting this new challenge, America and Britain -– together with our allies -– can prevail and shall...

WINSTON CHURCHILL IN A SPEECH IN 1899! -- 107 years ago: "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every...

Editor's note: Seldom I disregard the editorial policy of dealing exclusively with issues of my country. The recent escalation of violence in the Middle East against Israel however merits our attention for the issue goes far beyond a dispute between the Islamofundamentalists of Hezbollah and Israel; it isn't about Israel's future and safety anymore, rather a 'holy war' between deranged people and freedom; between terror and the values and liberties the civilised and rational inhabitants of this world hold dear. Someone sent the following speech -originally published March 03, 2006, which I have decided to post for it couldn't have...

Bill Engvale is a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. For years he’s been doing a routine about stupid things that people say. Each example ends with the tag line, “Here’s your sign.” That means a big sign with STUPID written on it. Although geopolitics are not Bill’s metier, he offers a way to cut through the twaddle about the beginning of WW III. Let’s start with Howard Dean. (Remember him? He was in all the papers.) Dean cropped up today giving a fire-breathing speech to the faithful (and forlorn), screaming that we wouldn’t have these problems in the...

Thanks to the manner in which the Ivory Tower makes poster children of its most problematic professors and the zeal with which college administrators excise “dead white guys” from their curricula, Winston Churchill is probably not as well known on many American college campuses as Ward Churchill. Indeed, I found foundations, scholarships, institutes, centers and even high schools named after Great Britain’s most famous prime minister but few classes on his life and work. About the only college course on Winston Churchill that I could find on a quick Google search was one at Hillsdale. Perhaps some of the great...

A half-smoked cigar enjoyed by Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's war-time prime minister, was sold at auction for 365 pounds (670 dollars, 527 euros). Churchill had been puffing on the cigar when he arrived for a meeting in Blackpool, north-west England, on October 14, 1950, when he was leader of the Conservative Party in opposition, auctioneers Outhwaite and Litherland said. Upon being told he would not be able to smoke in the ballroom where he was due to give a speech, the politician stubbed out the cigar and handed it to a special constable standing next to him. The policeman kept...

The recent anniversaries of the Allied victory in Europe and Winston Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech provided the kindling for the fire set by Vice President Dick Cheney's criticisms of Russia during his visit earlier this month to the former Soviet Union. Russian president Vladimir Putin responded in kind by attacking the United States in his May 10 state of the nation speech. ... Two influential pieces appeared this spring in Russia focusing specifically on Churchill's address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and the current state of relations between Washington and Moscow. In March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov...

  Statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in straitjacket (photo: Eastern Daily Press) Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, recently voted the "Greatest Briton" ever, is being remembered this month in England with a statue of him in a straitjacket. "It's not only insulting, it's pathetic," Churchill's grandson Nicholas Soames, a member of Parliament, told the Sun newspaper. "It is grossly offensive to Sir Winston and his millions of admirers." The statue of Churchill in a straitjacket in the town of Norwich is the product of Rethink, a mental-health charity looking to draw attention to the stigma surrounding...

Fury at Churchill statue Storm ... statue has provoked fury     By JOHN TROUP THE family of war hero Winston Churchill yesterday slammed a statue of him in a STRAITJACKET. MP Nicholas Soames — his grandson — said: “It’s not only insulting, it’s pathetic.” Churchill is known to have suffered periods of depression which he called his “black dog”. And the charity Rethink put the lifesize statue on display in Norwich yesterday to symbolise how the mentally ill are stigmatised by society. But Mr Soames said: “This is probably a good cause in search of publicity and they have...

In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." Churchill's speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War. Churchill, who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945, was invited to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where he gave this speech. President Harry S. Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his...

Churchill's speech defined the world order for the next 40 years In his "Iron Curtain" speech, delivered exactly 60 years ago, Winston Churchill brilliantly defined an era. The speech may also have lessons for the present. It was a heroic but troubled time. The world was in turmoil after the most terrible conflict in human history. On 5 March 1946 Churchill was no longer the UK's prime minister but he still enjoyed a giant reputation around the world. So US President Harry Truman himself travelled 1,000 miles to Fulton, Missouri, to hear Churchill give a speech after receiving an...

Sixty years ago this Wednesday, Winston Churchill addressed the General Assembly and urged the citizens of the United States and Great Britain to stand together. * snip * .... posthumously make Britain's prime minister during World War II an honorary citizen of Virginia. * snip * Only three other notables hold honorary state citizenship - the Marquis de Lafayette, the Revolutionary War hero; John D. Rockefeller, the oil baron who underwrote the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg; and Margaret Thatcher, another former British prime minister who also once served as chancellor of the College of William and Mary. She joined the...

Westminster College announced late on Monday that Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC program “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” will be a keynote speaker during the 60th anniversary festivities of Sir Winston Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech. “We are very pleased that Mr. Matthews has accepted our invitation to join us for this momentous occasion,” said Rob Havers, executive director of the Churchill Memorial and Library. “His extensive experience in world affairs and his personal interest in Churchill should combine to make a fascinating presentation for our Saturday evening event.” Matthews, also host of the NBC show, “The Chris Matthews Show,” will...

For this magnificent and brilliant speech, delivered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the House of Commons in June 1940, the Claremont Institute has announced that it will posthumously give Mr. Churchill its prestigious Mark Steyn award. (The speech is excerpted below, click here for full text.) The British people have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can. Much of the so-called Western world will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands...

Sergeant Clay: Afghanistan Vet and Adopt-A-Soldier Adoptee in the UK November 22, 2005: A Fourth Hour Phone Call Download Windows Media PlayerListen to Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Sergeant Clay calling from the UK, the United Kingdom. Welcome, sergeant, to the program. It's an honor to have you with us. CALLER: Oh, my gosh! Hey, Rush. Professor Limbaugh, mega-mega-megadittos if ever such a thing there could be. We owe it all to you, brother. I just wanted to call and to let you know I've been listening to you since 1989, and I've been a...

Over the past few days, my beach reading has consisted of a 175-page 1976 Harvard undergraduate thesis titled "Old and New Liberalism: The British Liberal Party's Approach to the Social Problem, 1906-1914." Scintillating stuff, and I can safely say that I would have happily lived my life in comparative ignorance if it hadn't been written by a recent Supreme Court nominee, John G. Roberts.The fact that President Bush's supposedly conservative nominee chose to author his undergraduate thesis on a decidedly liberal topic is worth a few hours of August analysis. While left-wing activist groups have been preparing for an ideological...

When Britain stood alone against the fascist dictators early in 1941--Pearl Harbor was nearly a year away--Franklin Roosevelt, beset by an isolationist Congress, sent his aide Harry Hopkins to shore up the morale of the British. Winston Churchill entertained Hopkins toward the end of his visit at a state dinner. He and the cabinet were nervous about what Hopkins might report back to Washington, since Britain could not hope to sustain the fight without American aid. The slight and diffident Hopkins rose to speak with words that are as vivid and memorable today in the light of the atrocities wreaked...

Evidently “moderate Muslims” in the UK didn’t read my column last week—either that or they really dropped the ball, as London has once again been slapped by terrorists. As of Friday, July 22nd at 3pm, we have pictures, but we do not know for certain what religion the bombers were or if the bombings were even religiously motivated. But I’m feeling risky, so . . . I’m going to venture out there and say that the bombers were Muslim. Whaddya’ think? I’m sure there is a chance they might be rabid tee totaling English Baptists that were really ticked off...

I spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the French High Command failed to withdraw the northern Armies from Belgium at the moment when they knew that the French front was decisively broken at Sedan and on the Meuse. This delay entailed the loss of fifteen or sixteen French divisions and threw out of action for the critical period the whole of the British Expeditionary Force. Our Army and 120,000 French troops were indeed rescued by the British Navy from Dunkirk but only with the loss of their cannon, vehicles and modern equipment. This loss...

Bush: U.S. Had Hand in European Divisions By JENNIFER LOVEN RIGA, Latvia - President Bush said Saturday the Soviet domination of central and eastern Europe after World War II will be remembered as "one of the greatest wrongs of history" and acknowledged that the United States played a significant role in the division of the continent. Bush said the agreement in 1945 at Yalta among President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact." The decisions at Yalta led to the division of...

Since we have just finished celebrating Pesach and our exodus from Egypt over 3,300 years ago, I thought it might be interesting to look at our impact on the world through the eyes of those who we have impacted! Here are some thoughts for your consideration: "Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world." -- Winston Churchill-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting...

On the 40th anniversary of the wartime leader's death, historians are reassessing the complex figure who carried Britain through its darkest hour Chartwell must have been a heady place to be in exile. Standing on the manor's back lawn on a misty autumn day, buffeted by brisk, sweet winds, it is easy to imagine the appeal these panoramic views of the Weald of Kent must have had for Winston Churchill, luring him away from London's political battlegrounds. During much of the 1930S, Churchill, who had been denied cabinet position and governmental power by his own Conservative Party, was stubbornly locking...

Douglas J. Feith was becoming excited. After spending an afternoon discussing the war in Iraq with him, I asked what books had most influenced him. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and a prominent neoconservative, raced across his large library and began pulling down gilt-edged volumes on the British Empire. Behind his desk loomed a bust of Winston Churchill. It was a telling moment. In England right-wing historians are portraying the last lion as a drunk, a dilettante, an incorrigible bungler who squandered the opportunity to cut a separate peace with Hitler that would have preserved the British...

On February 11, 1945, World War II's "Big Three" — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin — ended their final summit in the Crimean seaside town of Yalta. President Bush never mentioned Yalta in his inaugural address or in his State of the Union speech; but the truth is that his vision of the future means undoing what happened at that meeting 60 years ago. Happily, two parts of Yalta's legacy — the Cold War and a Russian empire in Eastern Europe — are already history. But we are still haunted by the rest, from the prison camps of...

The first museum dedicated to the life and times of Sir Winston Churchill has been opened by the Queen. The £6m museum has been built in the underground Cabinet War Rooms, where the prime minister directed British forces during World War II. Paying tribute to Churchill, the Queen said he had given the country "the hope, the courage and the confidence" to survive the war. The museum opens to the public on Friday and is set to be popular. Giving a short speech, the Queen said: "I am very pleased to be able to visit today the Cabinet War Rooms,...

The governor of Colorado yesterday called for the resignation of the University of Colorado professor under fire for comparing the victims of the 9-11 World Trade Center terror attacks to Nazis while praising the suicide hijackers for their "gallant sacrifices." Gov. Bill Owens sent the letter to the president of the University of Colorado College Republicans, Isaiah Lechowit, who was scheduled to read it at a rally in opposition to professor Ward Churchill. "All decent people, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, should denounce the views of Ward Churchill," wrote Owens. "Not only are his writings outrageous and insupportable,...

Winston Churchill was born in the grandest private house ever bought with public money. Blenheim Palace was built by his ancestor, John, Duke of Marlborough, with funds voted by a nation grateful for his military victories. The birthplace suited the character. In Churchill's genes lay what people nowadays call "a sense of entitlement". He expected a life of power, prominence, luxury and excitement, which he linked, with egotistic magnificence, with the future of his nation, and of its Empire.As seen in his expectation of military command, of high political office, of an endless audience for his speeches and books, through...

Biography The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and an American mother, was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. After a brief but eventful career in the army, he became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900. He held many high posts in Liberal and Conservative governments during the first three decades of the century. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty - a post which he had earlier held from 1911 to 1915. In May, 1940, he became Prime Minister and Minister of...

All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our Forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth. --Robert E. Lee Why do Americans continue to remember their past? Perhaps it is because it was a time when truth was spoken. Men and women took their stand to give us the freedoms we now enjoy. God bless those in military service, who do their duty around the world for freedom. The Hall of Fame for great Americans opened in 1900 in New York City. One thousand...

The Eastern Question that haunted the chancelleries of 19th-century Europe has returned to haunt George Bush and Tony Blair; or rather, the consequences of the failure to find a satisfactory answer to it have blighted all attempts to create a new international order in the aftermath of the cold war. This book is required reading for anyone wanting to have an informed opinion on recent events in Iraq; the fact that its author worked for Blair's "Strategic Futures Unit" makes one wonder why the prime minister did not spend more time reading history and less commissioning dodgy dossiers. There are...

Introduction by Alex SpanosI am delighted to be here this evening because I just love Rush Limbaugh. (Cheers and applause) I love his courage. I love his principles. And most of all, I love that his heart is as big as his compassion and generosity. I have seen Rush give of his time and resources to help others many times over. My friends, he is truly one of a kind. Rush Limbaugh's influence on American politics is unrivaled by any other person in the media world. (Applause) Although he holds no elected office, he commands the attention of millions of...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Washington Give the man his due: George W. Bush is emerging as one of the boldest, most audacious presidents in modern history. Whether he is also wise is a question that will preoccupy us for another four years, but the reshuffling of his team in recent days makes clear that he intends to stretch the powers of his office to their limits. Woodrow Wilson once wrote that "the president is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.'' President Bush comes Texas-sized. By sending members of his White House...