Word: booked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Guts & Gumption. There were three main actions in the Leyte Gulf battle, and each had its special tone, which Historian Morison perfectly captures. The battle of Surigao Strait might be called Operation By-the-Book. The first section of the Japanese southern force sailed into a night slaughter of destroyer torpedoes and heavy fire from cruisers and old battleships, with a single Jap destroyer surviving to join the second section, which simply turned tail...
...YEARS WITH CHURCHILL (167 pp.)-Norman McGowan-British Book Centre...
...young Norman McGowan's finest hour when he was called upon in 1949 to be Churchill's valet and provide some of these necessary things. Recollecting his three years of service with the grand old man, McGowan has written an ingratiating book, seemingly almost by inadvertence. It is the English story on the classic theme of master and man that has been exploited by everyone from Shakespeare to Wodehouse. But no Jeeves is McGowan, no Wooster Churchill...
About those cigars. The book discloses to the world that Churchill smoked them only halfway: it was Norman's duty to collect the halves and take them in a special box to Kearns, one of the Chartwell gardeners, who smoked them in his pipe. Churchill smoked only nine cigars a day, says Norman, on the defensive about his guv'nor's habits, but he admits they were strong enough to make Prince Georg of Denmark (a nonsmoker) violently sick after three puffs. As for whisky. Churchill was always at it. But Norman explains that the mixture (with...
Addicts of Churchilliana will read this valet's valedictory for bits of backstage gossip like this, yet the book is more than just another footnote to the Churchill legend. It stands in its own right as a comedy of character. On foreign travel Norman hardly ever went to hear the guv'nor's speeches-he heard enough of his master's voice as it was. Yet Churchill always gravely consulted the young man after a speech: "I thought it went rather well, didn't you?" Invariably, Norman would answer, "Yes sir, very well indeed." Norman...