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in 1915.
但他一直想当将军。这一雄心壮志可以追溯到他在学校放假时，在布伦海姆宫(Blenheim Palace)的走廊里，在他英雄祖先的挂毯下，与玩具士兵一起玩耍的日子。他一定是高兴的时候,在1911年,他成为了英国海军大臣,甚至更多的所以当英国海军大臣,甚至更多,所以当第一次世界大战给了他机会在加利波利计划大规模的军事进攻,1915年。
Gallipoli was a disaster, costing Winston his job and nearly his sanity. This was the onset of his first major bout of depression, a curse of his first major bunt of depression, a curse he called his “black dog”. Thankfully he now had a wife, Clementine, to help him through it. She was 11 years younger than him, beautiful, clever and unswervingly loyal. She kept him together, but he got himself out of it, in true Churchillian fashion. To make amends for his mistake, he took himself off to the trenches of France to fight. He must be one of the few soldiers to have written home from the First World War that he had “found happiness and content such as I have not known for months”. He was a man made for war.
加里波利是一场灾难，温斯顿失去了工作，精神几近崩溃。这是他的第一次大萧条的开始，第一次大萧条的诅咒，一个他称之为“黑狗”的诅咒。幸运的是，他现在有了妻子克莱门廷来帮他度过难关。她比他小11岁，美丽、聪明、忠诚。她使他保持在一起，但他却摆脱了，以真正的丘吉尔式的方式。为了弥补自己的错误，他亲自到法国的战壕里去战斗。他一定是第一次世界大战期间少数几个写信回家的士兵之一，信中说他“找到了几个月来我都不知道的快乐和满足”。他是为战争而生的人。
By the time Churchill returned to England, he’d already achieved many great things. He’d been a successful journalist, he’d fought for his country and he’d held high office, as he was to do again in the 1920s as Chancellor of the Exchequer. But by 1930, Labor was in power and he was on the backbenches, a nobody and a has-been. He largely sat out the 1930s at his country retreat Chartwell.
当丘吉尔回到英国时，他已经取得了许多伟大的成就。他是一名成功的记者，他为国家而战，
身居要职，正如他在20世纪20年代再次担任财政大臣时所做的那样。但到了1930年，工党执政，他是后座议员，一个无名小卒和过时人物。上世纪30年代，他基本上是在自己的乡间别墅查特韦尔(Chartwell)度过的。
In September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) famously brandished an agreement he’d signed with Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and declared he’d secured peace in our time. You could almost hear the sighs of relief. But not from Winston. He’d predicted – long before anyone else – what German nationalism was leading to. By the time he was proved right, and war had been declared, King George VI (1895-1952) knew that “there was only one person I could send for to form a Government who had the confidence of the country. And that was Winston”. When the call came, Churchill was 65 years old. It had been a long wait, but destiny had arrived.
1938年9月，英国首相内维尔·张伯伦(1899 -1940)著名地挥舞着他与阿道夫·希特勒(1899 -1945)签署的一份协议，宣布他在我们这个时代确保了和平。你几乎可以听到如释重负的叹息声。但温斯顿没有。他早在别人之前就预测到了德国民族主义的走向。当事实证明他是对的，战争宣告结束时，乔治六世国王(1895-1952)知道“我只能派一个人来组建一个对国家有信心的政府。”那就是温斯顿。”当电话打来时，丘吉尔已经65岁了。这是一个漫长的等待，但命运已经到来。
People talk of 1066, of the Armada, of Trafalgar. But 1940 was the most important year in British history. It was the year of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz. It was the year when every single Briton, civilian as well as soldier, found themselves at war. The cause appeared hopeless, yet Winston, reviving the V sign for victory form the field of Agincourt 500 years before, told us we could win.
人们谈到1066年，谈到无敌舰队，谈到特拉法加。但1940年是英国历史上最重要的一年。这是敦刻尔克之年，不列颠之战，闪电战。这一年，每一个英国人，无论是平民还是士兵，都发现自己身处战争之中。这项事业似乎毫无希望，但温斯顿在500年前从阿金库尔战场上恢复了胜利的V形手势，告诉我们我们能赢。
Churchill was an instinctive, daring, often infuriating war leader. He was rude and unpleasant to his staff, who struggled to keep up with his limitless capacity for hard work and hard liquor. But he was also an inspiration. When victory was finally declared in Europe on 8 May 1945, it was quickly followed by a general election. The billboards said “Cheer Churchill, Vote Labor”, and that’s what people did. That was the irony. The very democracy that Churchill was prepared to lay down his life to defend was the same democracy that knew the difference between the needs of peace and the needs of war.
丘吉尔是一个本能的、大胆的、经常激怒战争领导人。他对他的员工粗鲁无礼，让人很不愉快，而员工们正努力跟上他那无限的努力工作和喝烈性酒的能力。但他也是一个鼓舞人心的人。1945年5月8日，当欧洲最终宣布取得胜利时，紧接着就是大选。广告牌上写着“为丘吉尔欢呼，为工党投票”，人们就是这么做的。这真是讽刺。丘吉尔准备牺牲自己的生命来捍卫的民主，正是这种民主懂得和平的需要和战争的需要之间的区别。
When Churchill died in 1965, the new rock-and-roll Britain stood still. If Britain – its eccentricity, its strength of character, its big-heartedness – had to be summed up in one person, it was him. He had gone, but, thanks to him, Britain lived on. And what could be greater than that?
1965年丘吉尔去世后，新的摇滚英国停滞不前。如果说英国的怪癖、性格的力量、心胸的宽广都可以用一个人来概括，那就是他。他走了，但多亏了他，英国才得以继续存在。还有什么比这更伟大的呢?
Unit 6 Active reading (2) / P121 Why historians disagree
Most students are usually introduced to the study of history by way of a fat textbook and become quickly immersed in a vast sea of names, dates, events and statistics. From this experience a number of conclusions seem obvious: The study of history is the study of “facts” about the past; the more “facts” you know, the better you are as a student of history. The professional historian is
simply one who brings together a very large number of “facts”. Therefore students often become confused upon discovering that historians often disagree sharply even when they are dealing with the same event.
大多数学生通常是通过厚厚的教科书来学习历史的，很快就会沉浸在大量的人名、日期、事件和统计数字中。从这一经验中得出的一些结论似乎是显而易见的:研究历史就是研究关于过去的“事实”;你知道的“事实”越多，你就越适合学习历史。专业的历史学家只不过是收集了大量“事实”的人。因此，当学生们发现历史学家们即使在处理同一事件时也常常意见分歧很大时，他们往往会感到困惑。
Their common-sense reaction to this state of affairs is to conclude that one historian is right while the other is wrong. And presumably, historians who are wrong will have their “facts” wrong. This is seldom the case, however. Historians usually all argue reasonably and persuasively. And, the “facts” – the names, dates, events, statistics – usually turn out to be correct. Moreover, they often find that contending historians more or less agree on the facts; that is, they use much the same data. They come to different conclusions because they view the past from a different perspective. History, which seemed to be a cut-and-dried matter of memorizing “facts”, now becomes a matter of choosing one good interpretation from among many. Historical truth becomes a matter of personal preference.
他们对这种事态的常识性反应是得出这样的结论:一个历史学家是对的，另一个历史学家是错的。而且，错误的历史学家可能会把他们的“事实”搞错。然而，这种情况很少发生。历史学家通常都能合理而有说服力地进行论证。而且，“事实”——名字、日期、事件、统计数据——通常是正确的。此外，他们经常发现，争论不休的历史学家或多或少都同意这些事实;也就是说，他们使用的数据基本相同。他们得出了不同的结论，因为他们从不同的角度看待过去。历史，过去似乎是一件老生常谈的记忆“事实”的事情，现在变成了从众多的解释中选择一个好的解释的问题。历史真相变成了个人偏好的问题。
To understand why historians disagree, students must consider a problem they have more or less taken for granted. They must ask themselves what history really is.