Quotes from Erik Larson

But fighter production lagged. England's aircraft plants operated on a prewar schedule that did not take into account the new reality of having a hostile force based just across the channel. Production, though increasing, was suppressed by the fusty practices of a peacetime bureaucracy only now awakening to the realities of total war. Shortages of parts and materials disrupted production

French endurance was the cornerstone of British defensive strategy. That France might fall was beyond imagining.

also all that has gone right, I feel sure

the queen a copy of Henry Watson Fowler's famous 1926 guide to the English language, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

Cunard tickets did not identify babies by name, possibly out of quiet resentment that they traveled free.)

One cannot possibly get accurate bombing on a selected target in this way.

Churchill had a formula for family size as well. Four children was the ideal number: "One to reproduce your wife, one to reproduce yourself, one for the increase in population, and one in case of accident.

fearing a "knock-out blow," predicted that the first aerial attack on London would destroy much if not all of the city and kill two hundred thousand civilians. "It was widely believed that London would be reduced to rubble within minutes of war being declared," wrote one junior official. Raids would cause such terror among the survivors that millions would go insane. "London for several days will be one vast raving bedlam

With the prospect of raids on London itself, U.S. ambassador Joseph Kennedy decamped. To the great disdain of many in London, he began conducting his ambassadorial affairs from his home in the country. Within the Foreign Office, a joke began to circulate: I always thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joe Kennedy.

Hunt was the janissary of a dead vernacular.

Churchill said, "Love me, love my dog, and if you don't love my dog you damn well can't love me.

By his own careful measure, he consumed up to two hundred grams of sugar a day, equivalent to forty-eight teaspoons.

Hall withdrew the manuscript, though his notes and a number of completed chapters reside today in the Churchill Archives in Cambridge, England.

As in a great castle which has long contended with time, the mighty central mass of the donjon towered up intact and seemingly everlasting. But the outworks and the battlements had fallen away, and its imperious ruler dwelt only in the special apartments and corridors with which he had a lifelong familiarity.

Look here, old fellow, do you realize this has been the greatest meeting of artists since the fifteenth century?

He slashed her throat in a Van Gogh stroke that nearly removed her head from her spine.

As the Pensacola's twenty-one-man crew readied the ship for its voyage to the city of Pensacola on Florida's Gulf Coast, two men came aboard as Captain Simmons's personal guests: a harbor pilot named R. T. Carroll and Galveston's Pilot Commissioner J. M. O. Menard, from one of the city's oldest families.

Britain's civil defense experts, fearing a "knock-out blow," predicted that the first aerial attack on London would destroy much if not all of the city and kill two hundred thousand civilians. "It was widely believed that London would be reduced to rubble within minutes of war being declared," wrote one junior official.

All the despair, terror and anguish of hundreds of souls passing into eternity composed that awful cry.

If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

than four months. She and Churchill kept separate bedrooms; sex happened only upon her explicit invitation. It was to Bonham Carter that Clementine, soon after being wed, revealed Churchill's peculiar taste in underclothes: pale pink and made of silk.

I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

One of the secrets of a happy marriage is never to speak to or see the loved one before noon." Churchill had a formula for family size as well. Four children was the ideal number: "One to reproduce your wife, one to reproduce yourself, one for the increase in population, and one in case of accident.

In laying out Central Park we determined to think of no result to be realized in less than forty years.