Churchill in Moscow

Text of the day: “But which one? I have whole corridors of ancestors. Huge men in dark and gleaming armour in huge paintings on huge horses, along with their duchesses, heads of feathers, death-white shoulders, vast satin dresses. The gloom of the house. The endless rainy afternoons. The lake through the windows like a sheet of lead. A mother dreaming of another country, sitting in an electric blue ball gown by a rainy window. A father behind locked doors, locked in rage. In the nursery, tin soldiers, dead still across the carpet, fighting Waterloos forever. A little boy living with history. Yes.” (Churchill in Howard Brenton’s Churchill in Moscow)

absent fathers anger aristocracy Battle of Waterloo Blenheim Palace British history childhood Churchill in Moscow class Englishness Howard Brenton marriage mothers national identity nostalgia toy soldiers Winston Churchill