Winston Churchill on America and Britain

At the close of a world tour in 1953, Adlai Stevenson was invited by Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister for the second time, to lunch at Chequers, Churchill's official summer residence. Just before Stevenson was to return to London to address a gathering og the English-Speaking Union, he asked Mr. Churchill if he might take a special message from him to his audience. Mr. Churchill, son of an American mother and a British father, replied, "You can take back this message to your audience, Mr. Stevenson, tell them, tell them I am an English-speaking Union." Churchill's Anglo-American views, both political and personal, are presented here through his letters, speeches, and newspaper articles. His criticism of the United States, always free of malice, was often jocose: "...the dangerous, yet almost universal habit of the American people...the drinking of immense quantities of iced water." His admiration for the "unwritten alliance" between the United States and Britain was a major theme of his speeches, both during the war and after: "It is an alliance far closer in fact than many which exist in writing. It is a treaty with more enduring elements than clauses and protocols."