“We have been told that Faust sold his soul for the right to command the moment to remain,” Winston Churchill told the politicians and artists gathered at the Royal Academy's summer banquet. “Without the slightest prejudice to their future destination,” Churchill continued, artists have “the power to command the moment to remain, not only for their own advantage and reputation, but for the pleasure of everyone else.”
In a single turn of phrase, Churchill managed to beatify half the room and damn the other. Whereas an artist's Faustian bargain was to capture a moment for all to enjoy, the politician's deal with the devil was for enduring power and influence. Churchill would know. By the time he offered these remarks in 1927, he had run for office as a Conservative, as a Liberal, as a short-lived “Constitutionalist,” and then again as a Conservative. Lord Asquith had already kicked him out of his government following the devastating defeat at Gallipoli, and Churchill had spent several years rehabilitating his image commanding men in the trenches of World War I Belgium.
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