Churchill The Prophet

Winston Churchill, aged 16 (1890?), to a fellow Harrovian, Murland Evans.

"I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world; great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as one cannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger - London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London....I see further ahead than you do. I see into the future. The country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion...but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and the Empire from disaster."

 

Quoted in Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2003), p.292.

We shall fight them on the beaches

Text reads: "Now I expect you're all wondering why I've gathered you here today!"

Richard Holmes, In the Footsteps of Churchill (London: BBC Books, 2005), p.21.

"Winston...in 1911, when Home Secretary, had circulated a memorandum (which had little to do with his departmental responsibilities, but was triggered by that summer's Agadir crisis) that accurately predicted the German army would march into France through Belgium in a wide flanking sweep that would be stopped and reversed on the fortieth day. This proved to be only a slight overestimate: Germany declared war on France on 3 August 1914, and the battle of the Marne was fought on 6-10 September."

The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill, "Moses", from the collection of essays Thoughts and Adventures, first published November 1932; (London: Odhams, 1947 edition) pp.224-5:

"Every prophet has to come from civilisation, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made."