The Greatest Writers Passed Over for the Nobel Prize in Literature

The Greatest Writers Passed Over for the Nobel Prize in Literature

Many of the best writers of the past 112 years have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, but there have been some astounding omissions right from the start. The list of great writers who were alive after 1901 but never received the prize is shocking.

Winston Churchill’s Famous Sense of Humor

Winston Churchill's Famous Sense of Humor

Winston Churchill was one of the most eminent and one of the most debated men of the 20th Century. Churchill was greatly admired at this time of his career (having just won the war) and recaptured his seat in Parliament to represent the Woodford constituency. The British people nevertheless were exhausted of war and didn’t regard Churchill and the Tory Party as the party to “lead the peace”. Therefore, even though Churchill was in Parliament, his party moved to the backbenches as the Labor Party took power and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister.

Churchill won the Second World War, but in the election of July 1945, he was defeated. Many thought that the British public showed flagrant thanklessness. Churchill was still a Member of Parliament, his party lost control of Parliament and thus by tradition the right to the position of Prime Minister.

When the news came out, Churchill was taking a bath (was there ever a statesman who spent more time in the bath?) He commented, “They have a perfect right to kick me out. That is democracy”. When he was offered the Order of the Garter, he asked, “Why should I accept the Order of the Garter, when the British people have just given me the Order of the Boot?”

Recollect Winston Churchill’s prominent dictum from a oration he made at the House of Commons on 11-Nov-1947: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Churchill returned to power in 1951. The remark about democracy was made when he had lost power and had every reason to be bitter. Fortunately, he kept his sense of humor even in the most trying circumstances.

Best Books about Winston Churchill

The Black Madonna Icon of Czestochowa in the Jasna Gora Monastery, Poland

Czestochowa, Poland

Outside Czestochowa, in an industrial area, is the Jasna Gora Monastery that houses the famous Black Madonna Icon. Over the years, this famous shrine to the Virgin Mary in Poland has become the most important center of pilgrimage for the Polish people and for Roman Catholics.

Legend has it that this portrait of the Black Madonna icon traces its origin to Luke the Evangelist. St. Luke is believed to have painted this portrait of the Blessed Virgin on a bench that was produced by Jesus when Jesus was a trainee-carpenter learning under the guidance of St. Joseph. Following the crucifixion of Jesus, this bench was brought to the Holy City of Jerusalem. After Jerusalem fell to the invading Romans, some Christian monks hid the Black Madonna icon during their itinerant travels.

Empress Helena, the wife of Emperor Constantius and the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great discovered this bench in the fourth century when searching for the relics of the True Cross and brought the picture to Constantinople, modern Istanbul. From the third century to the eighth century, this portrait remained in Constantinople.

Jasna Gora Monastery, Czestochowa

In the eight century, during the rise of Islam in the Middle East and the following the siege of Constantinople, some Christian holy men carried the portrait to Belsk in east-central Poland. During the looting that followed the 1382 Tartar invasion, the portrait remained hidden because a mysterious cloud enveloped the chapel that housed this portrait. After the Tartars abandoned their siege of Belsk in 1384, a Prince of Belsk took the Black Madonna icon to a then-obscure parish called Czestochowa and entrusted it with the Pauline monks of St. Paul of the Desert at the Jasna Gora Monastery near Czestochowa. Over the course of time, Jasna Gora became a centre of pilgrimage for Polish Christians and Catholics.

In 1430 The Hussites attached Czestochowa and embezzled the Black Madonna icon. Legend has it that as the Hussites were leaving Czestochowa, their horses mysteriously halted at the edges of the village and they could not be spurred to move forward without abandoning the Black Madonna portrait. When the Pauline monks found the portrait stained by mud and blood, they could not find any water in the wells of the village because the all the water had been used to fight a big fire incited by the invading Hussites. Then, a miraculous fountain initiated itself to aid the monks. This spring is said to have magical powers.

Kaplica Cudownego Obrazu, Chapel of Our Lady

After the Hussite invasion the Poles fought for three hundred years with the Teutonic Crusaders, and all the decisive victories won by the Polish nation in these battles are attributed to the miraculous help of the Holy Virgin. Thus the safety of the shrine of Czestochowa is identified with the very safety and independence of the whole nation.

In the seventeenth century, the Black Madonna icon is credited with saving the Jasna Gora Monastery when the Swedish army took siege of Czestochowa for more than six weeks during The Deluge. Even though this event is not significant from a military perspective, the event inspired the Polish unity and independence over the centuries. On 1-Apr-1656, the King of Poland Jan Kazimierz consecrated Poland to the protection of the Mother of God and proclaimed Her the Patron of his kingdom and acclaimed her the Queen of Poland. That preserved Czestochowa’s reputation as the spiritual capital of the nation of Poland.

Black Madonna Icon of Czestochowa

The Jasna Gora Monastery is a functioning Monastery inside which the ‘Kaplica Cudownego Obrazu’, or the Chapel of Our Lady, holds the venerated Black Madonna Icon, Poland’s most revered icon. The unveiling ceremony is held at 06:00 and 13:30 on the weekdays and at 06:00 and 14:00 on Saturdays and Sundays. The veiling ceremony is held at 12:00 and 21:20 on the weekdays and at 13:00 and 21:20 on Saturdays and Sundays.

A museum holds, among many artifacts, arsenals, and religious objects of interest, the medal from the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize received by Lech Walesa, the Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist.

Bertrand Russell Critique of Christianity and Religion

British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell argued very persuasively through his writings and speeches that religion was merely a fallacy and, notwithstanding any positive effects that religion might have on a person’s emotional or psychological well-being, the concept of religion is for the most part detrimental to people. Bertrand Russell resolutely believed that religion and a religious point of view serve to hinder knowledge and cultivate a fear of anxiety, fear, and dependency.

Bertrand Russell, like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other critics of religion who came after him, held that religion was to blame for war, coercion, tyranny, and misery that have weighed down the world. Here is an excerpt from his essay, “Why I Am Not A Christian”, first a lecture delivered by Russell on 06-Mar-1927 at the Battersea Town Hall (now the Battersea Arts Centre in London) to a gathering of the National Secular Society, South London Branch.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes … . A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

Bertrand Russell on Belief and the Value of Religion

TV Interviewer: Why are you not a Christian?
Bertrand Russell: Because I see no evidence whatever in any of the Christian dogmas. I have examined all the stock arguments in favor of the existence of God and none of them seem to me to be logically valid.

TV Interviewer: Do you think there is a practical reason for having a religious belief for many people?
Bertrand Russell: There can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true. I rule it out. It is impossible. Either a thing is true or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe in it. If it isn’t, you shouldn’t. And if you can’t find out whether it is true or it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. It seems to me fundamental dishonesty and fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it is useful and not because you think it is true.

TV Interviewer: I was thinking of those people who find that some kind of religious code helps them to live their lives — it gives them a very strict set of rules — the right and the wrongs.
Bertrand Russell: People are generally quite mistaken. Great many of them do more harm than good and they would probably be able to find rational morality that they could live by if they drop this irrational traditional taboo morality that comes down from savage ages.

TV Interviewer: But are we, perhaps, the ordinary person, perhaps, is not strong enough to find his own personal ethic. They have to have something imposed upon them from outside.
Bertrand Russell: I don’t think that is true. What is imposed on you from outside is of no value whatever. Doesn’t count.

TV Interviewer: You were brought up, of course, as a Christian. When did you first decide that you did not want to remain a believer in the Christian faith?
Bertrand Russell: I never decided that I did not want to remain a believer. Between the ages of 15 and 18, I spent almost all my spare time thinking about Christian dogmas and trying to find out whether there was any reason to believe them. By the time I was 18 I had discarded the last of them.

TV Interviewer: Do you think that that gave you an extra strength in your life?
Bertrand Russell: No, I don’t know. No I shouldn’t have said so. Neither it’s a strength nor the opposite. I was just engaged in the pursuit of knowledge.

TV Interviewer: As you approach the end of life, do you have any fear of some kind of afterlife?
Bertrand Russell: No, that is nonsense.

TV Interviewer: There is no afterlife?
Bertrand Russell: None whatsoever.

TV Interviewer: Do you have any fear of something that is common among atheists and agnostics who have been atheists or agnostics all entire lives, who are converted just before they die to a form of religion.
Bertrand Russell: Well, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as religious people think it does. Because, religious people, most of them, think that it is a virtuous act to tell lies of the deathbeds of agnostics and such. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t happen very often.

Bertrand Russell’s Books on Religion, God, and Atheism