…the most illustrious maverick the world has prob’ly ever known carried the name Winston Spencer Churchill… the prefix ‘Sir’ was added on April 24th, 1953… in the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature… when I was a youngster growing up in Docklands Govan in Glasgow I idolised the man, and still use him as a guiding force, especially his, ‘Never, ever give up…’ …for sure he screwed up many times in his career, including disastrously over the Gallipoli Campaign during the First World War, and consistent blind-sidedness over the Irish Independence issue… one other phrase among many gems encapsulates what the man meant, and continues to mean to me… ‘…I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat…’ …there’s a powerful message in there for emb’dy who cares to take it aboard… for we quill-scrapers, isolated for great swathes of our personal…