March 2009 - Richard M. Langworth

Lecture and Book Signing Events 1999-2017

18 March 2009

Churchill in 1932 was a lecture specialist. He especially liked Nashville, Atlanta, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Ann Arbor: “And who would miss Chattanooga,” he wrote, “lying in its cup between the Blue Ridge and Lookout Mountain?” East, west, north, and south he rode the rails, “living all day on my back in a railway compartment and addressing in the evening large audiences.”

Read More Read More

Speaker — Holding forth on “National and Imperial Defence,” City Carlton Club, 26 September 1935. (Hillsdale College Press)

Winston Churchill’s Visit to New Orleans, 1932

12 March 2009

Churchill was in New Orleans on his 1932 lecture tour, between 16 February and 11 March. It was during the last hectic leg of his abbreviated schedule. (In December he was nearly killed by a car in New York and had recuperated in the Bahamas through 22 January.) On 11 March he boarded the Majestic in New York and sailed home. His New Orleans appearance would likely have been around 18-22 February. Or just after the 23rd,

Read More Read More

Churchill’s Collected Works

11 March 2009

In the 1990s I found and began binding several hundred remaining sheets in leather as well as vellum, but those too are now out of sight. Also, the general editor of the series, the late Fred Woods, edited many of the texts (making changes discussed in detail in the Connoisseur's Guide), which makes them useless as a source of Churchill's original words. The great advantage of the enterprise was the four-volume Collected Essays, the only collection of Churchill’s periodical articles (other than those reprinted in his books) ever published in volume form, with a fine introduction by the late Michael Wolff.

Read More Read More

words — A collection of Churchill’s books in various editions easily fills a wall. (Author photo)

The Churchill Copyright

6 March 2009

The copyright in Churchill's papers, literary works and papers of which he was the author, did not form part of the 1995 purchase by the British Government, but remains (under the terms of Sir Winston's will) the property of his family, except where it has been separately assigned. No charge is made in the case of reproduction for academic research.

Read More Read More

More Obama and the Churchill Bust

6 March 2009

First and foremost, the Daily Telegraph did not connect Obama's grandfather's jailing with the Mau Mau rebellion. The Telegraph report is very careful on this point: "It was during Churchill's second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather."

Read More Read More

“The Last Lion” Volume III is Published

5 March 2009

Paul Reid has not written a biography, but rather an old-style “life & times” narrative with guns and bullets, political conniving, oft-repeated (but worth repeating) anecdotes, lovely touches of the personal, and the most important asset—a hero. It is a nice cruise down a rather lengthy river that you’ve sailed before. Still, it is a lovely and literate view of familiar territory that massages old stories, nurtures legends, and points gently to miscalculations and mistakes of the hero—who flawed though he was, remains a hero.

Read More Read More

President Obama and the Churchill Bust – Out

4 March 2009

James Kirkup reported in the March 2nd Telegraph that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was presenting the President with "a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill." ("Seven volumes" was a typo; Sir Martin was short Volume V, but Chartwell Booksellers in New York City helped him out and the full eight volumes were delivered.) So now, effectively, "Winston is Back" in the White House, and President Obama has arguably more Churchilliana than President Bush had.

Read More Read More

Eleuthera Byways: The Queen’s Baths

3 March 2009

PoOn the Queen’s Highway a few miles north of Gregory Town, about 300 yards before the Glass Window bridge, pull off the road across from a sandy track leading up the hill toward the Atlantic on your right. You can’t miss it: the Ministry of Tourism has recently erected a marker. You’ve arrived at the Queen’s Baths.

Walk up toward the Atlantic as the bush thins out and the sand takes over. Soon the sand thins and you’re walking on bare coral. Watch your step to avoid the uneven surface and pockmarked holes. As you approach the ocean, work your way to the left (north), keeping Harbour Island on the horizon ahead of you.…

Read More Read More

Eleuthera Byways: Edwin’s Fishlake

3 March 2009

First published in The Eleutheran, September 2008; Edwin’s Turtle Lake Marine Preserve, with a fine new dock and the bottle shack restored in December 2014.

Edwin’s of old

Three miles south of Governor’s Harbour, on the right side at the S-bends as the road plunges toward Palmetto Point, is a large saltwater lake. Passersby who stop to investigate will find the remains of a curious shed built of mortar and beer bottles, the amber, green and clear glass sorted by colour, bottoms facing out. A few yards away, obscured by bush and weathered by the years, was a wooden sign whose words were just legible:

Edwin’s Fishing Lake

Established March 10th 1954

The First Fishlake of the Bahamas

Over 20,000 fish of 32 varieties have

been placed in this lake.…

Read More Read More

“Correrai Ancor Piu Veloce…” Beverly Rae Kimes 1941-2008

3 March 2009

None who read it will ever forget "Man on Fire!": Beverly Kimes’s biography of Tazio Nuvolari. It was one of those signal experiences when you remember where you were. I read it in galleys on the "Broadway Limited" en route to Chicago: started in Newark and put it down somewhere west of Harrisburg. She wound up with the legend on the great racing driver's tombstone: Correrai ancor piu veloce per le vie del cielo. (You will travel faster still upon the highways of heaven.) "Ah Tazio," she ended: "Godspeed." And that's all that really matters in the end: thoughts of old and good times, which eventually blot out the last sad ones. Ah Bev...Godspeed.

Read More Read More