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Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory QUOTES

Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory QUOTES

1 " My father, Vincent, a rumpled Bohemian who had followed his "

― Michael Korda , Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory

2 " For the first time it was clear to those who listened to Churchill’s speech—and the whole country listened carefully—that all of the easy presumptions that had shored up appeasement, among them belief in the French Army, the legendary strength of the Maginot Line, the fighting qualities of the BEF, above all the hope that a deal of some kind might be made with Hitler at the last moment, were all swept away by his stark realism, and by the fact, now suddenly clear, that across the Channel a huge, historic battle was being fought—and would very likely be lost. It is no accident that J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings took on its length and dense sweep as an epic in that year, with its central vision of the Dark Lord Sauron’s legions attacking an idyllic land not unlike Britain, as the apparently invincible armies of Hitler swept over one European country after another, taking familiar places that the British, the Belgians, and the French had fought and died for in the 1914–1918 war, ports that were well known to anyone who had ever traveled to “the Continent,” and approached the English Channel itself, advancing swiftly toward the port city of Boulogne, where Napoleon himself had once stood, waiting for the moment to launch 200,000 men at England. "

― Michael Korda , Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory

3 " This night, however, she surprised me by getting down on her “poor old knees” (as she always referred to them) beside me and told me to pray with her “for the safety of the British Army in France.” Her own palms were pressed tightly together, and there were tears in her eyes behind her gold-rimmed pince-nez. She usually said her prayers long after I had said mine and gone to bed, and she had so far as I know no relatives in the BEF. It was nothing personal—it was as if the whole nation were, for a brief moment, united in anxious prayer or, for those who did not pray, in silent thought. "

― Michael Korda , Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory

4 " I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He had an instinctive understanding of the fact that the British as a people dislike boasting, and pride themselves not on victory but on being able to “take it. "

― Michael Korda , Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory