The Churchill Series – Dec. 18, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

The following passage is found on page 2 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online’s Churchill biographical entry:

A self-assurance redeemed from arrogance only by a kind of boyish charm made Churchill from the first a notable House of Commons figure, but a speech defect, which he never wholly lost, combined with a certain psychological inhibition to prevent him from immediately becoming a master of debate. He excelled in the set speech, on which he always spent enormous pains, rather than in the impromptu; Lord Balfour, the Conservative leader, said of him that he carried “heavy but not very mobile guns.”

Balfour’s metaphor is wonderful, isn’t it?

The entire Britannica Online entry is here.