The Churchill Series – Dec. 5, 2006

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

If today you could ask Churchill one question, what would it be?

Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, was recently asked that question during an interview conducted by Canadian Broadcasting Company news anchor Peter Mansbridge.

Mansbridge prefaced his question by reminding CBC viewers that Gilbert’s written not only a multivolume life of Churchill but more than a dozen other Churchill books. What’s more, Mansbridge said, it’s been estimated the total of Churchill documents Gilbert’s read weigh 15 tons.

And what question would Gilbert ask Churchill. Gilbert said:

”It would be a question he asked [in his lifetime] and I'd like to know what his answer would be. He asked a friend, ‘Do you think I spent too much energy on the German question and not enough on the Soviet question toward the end of the war?’ “

I don’t know anything about Mansbridge other than what I learned from reading a post by Canadian blogger Mike Campbell who quoted from his interview with Gilbert. But I’ll say this much: Mansbridge followed Gilbert’s answer with the question that was surely on most viewers minds: “What do you think [Churchill’s] answer would be?”

Gilbert responded:

”I'd like to feel that it would be 'No,' that he did his best but he was a very self-critical person so he probably feels that he did fail in that regard.”

What Gilbert says is, we know, speculative but it’s very informed speculation by arguably the person now alive who “knows” Churchill best.”

And once again - If today you could ask Churchill one question, what would it be?