Word: biafra
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Wilson's woes are largely self-made. His surprising clumsiness in foreign affairs, ranging from the preposterous invasion of tiny Anguilla in the Caribbean to his own ineffectual journey to Nigeria, where he tried vainly to serve as statesman-broker between rebel Biafra and the Nigerian federal government, has made Britain a figure of world ridicule. At home, Wilson is locked in a particularly bitter battle with British unions, which are incensed by his union-reform bills-and especially at the bill's penal provisions against wildcat strikers...
...world was a measure of De Gaulle's outsize scale, his legerdemain in making France count for more than her resources and her population of 50 million people really justified. It mattered to Britain, which he had twice imperiously barred from the Common Market. It mattered to tiny secessionist Biafra, which he had kept alive with arms shipments against federal Nigerian forces for the, past nine months. It weighed heavily in the Middle East, where he was virtually the only partisan Western friend that the Arabs had. It certainly mattered to Washington, which had felt his sting almost ceaselessly...
There is a trace of boyishness in Churchill's sandy hair, freckles and blue-eyed charm, but he is neither naive nor gullible. He doggedly pursued both sides of the confused and rumor-fed struggle in Nigeria, checked federal claims in Lagos against observable fact in Biafra. He carefully outlined his own clear conclusions in a long four-part series for the London Times. Churchill had started with the impression that starvation was exaggerated, bombing of civilians a myth and a federal victory imminent. He wound up appalled at the extent of the Ibo people's suffering...
Unattached Feet. Churchill's style is less graceful and literary than that of his grandfather, whose own career was similarly launched in journalism. Young Winston writes more directly, though not as well.* He described hunger victims in Biafra: "Their bellies were as large as a pregnant woman's, their limbs like matchsticks, and some had testicles swollen to the size of a large grapefruit." His ear is attuned to the poignant quote, such as the plea of a starving boy who approached a priest and asked: "Father, what is happening to my body?" He lets unadorned facts convey...
While his Biafra series finally established Churchill as a respected professional, his words have seen print ever since he graduated from Eton in 1959 and took a summer job in New York writing headlines for the Wall Street Journal. He earned a modern-history degree from Oxford, then joined an expedition through the Sahara. That trip led to his first bylined story, which appeared in the London Sunday Express...