March 2009 - Richard M. Langworth

“If you will not fight…when you can easily win…”

24 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

I remember a quip: “When will we fight. When we have no hope.” Can you help me identify the source?

Those words do not track among Churchill’s 15 million published words.. You may be thinking of:

…if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case.…

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“This great country…mooing dolefully…”

21 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

21 March 2009 (Associated Press):

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today dismissed overtures to his country from the U.S. president, Barack Obama, saying Teheran did not see any change in policy under the new U.S. administration. “They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice,” Khamenei said in his speech, broadcast live on state television. In his video message, Obama said the US wanted to engage Iran and improve decades of strained relations.

This reminded me of Harold Nicolson’s letter to his wife, Vita Sackville-West, 1 March 1938 (Nicolson Diaries, I, 328):

Winston spoke of “this great country nosing from door to door like a cow that has lost its calf, mooing dolefully now in Berlin and now in Rome—when all the time the tiger and the alligator wait for its undoing.”…

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Lectures and Book Signings

18 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill by Himself

LECTURES AND BOOK SIGNINGS

10 May 2010: Toronto. Annual Dinner, International Churchill Society of Canada.

11 September 2009: Churchill For Today: “Shall We All Commit Suicide?” and Churchill’s other futurist essays: panelist and moderator. 26th International Churchill Conference, Westin St. Francis Hotel.

7 May 2009, Boston: English-Speaking Union and New England Churchillians, Union Club, 6PM.

3 May 2009, Detroit: Winston Churchill Society of Michigan, Dearborn Inn, 5:30PM.

2 May 2009, Chicago: Churchill Friends of Greater Chicago, Fairmont Hotel, 6PM.

30 November 2008, Dallas: “Churchill by Himself.” North Texas Churchllians, Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen. Presentation and book signing.

30 November 2007, Boston: “Churchill and Ireland: Notable Pronouncements on Ireland, 1901-1948.” New…

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Definition of “Fanatic”

18 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

Can you verify whether or not Churchill said: “A fanatic is someone who won’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”? —T.M., Ontario, Canada

Sorry, it’s not Churchill. From Churchill by Himself, the “Red Herrings” appendix (unattributed quotes), page 574: “Often attributed to Churchill or President Truman. Ralph Keyes, editor, The Quote Verifier, writes: ‘It’s a quotation I see often, but without a source. I doubt that it’s Truman, or, if he ever said it, that the quotation originated with him.'”

…

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“Where does the family start?”

12 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

We would like permission to use the following quotation in a family history book we are publishing in the summer. “Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl – no superior alternative has yet been found.” The book will be published in Hebrew and English, hardback, 40 pages, colour, initial print run 1,500 in each language. —J.B.

Thanks for asking, but you don’t need permission from the Churchill literary interests to reprint a single brief quotation. However, your punctuation is a little off. It should read (with exclamation mark)…

“Where does the family start?…

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Churchill in New Orleans

12 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

I’m doing research for a video tour book on lesser known places in New Orleans. I recently heard that Winston Churchill made a visit here in 1932. Is this true? -B.K.

Yes, Churchill was in New Orleans on his 1932 lecture tour, between 16 February and 11 March, 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 February 18th-22nd, or just after the 23rd when he was in Atlanta, since train schedules would have had him in both cities within a day or so of each other.…

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Churchill’s Collected Works

11 March 2009 Comments 6 Comments

Can you direct me to a set of the “Collected Works” of Winston Churchill? If, as I suspect, this is a pricey and limited production, how can I build a complete collection of his works without spending a fortune? —G.S., Maine, USA

You refer to the Collected Works of Sir Winston Churchill, 40 volumes including four volumes of Collected Essays, published by the Library of Imperial History in London in 1974-75. (The Diner’s Club produced another collection of Major Works, but they were not complete.)

These books were discussed in my Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill.…

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The Churchill Copyright

6 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

To answer frequently asked questions, here are the rules governing copyright to the books, articles, speeches and papers of Winston S. Churchill:

1. Non-Commercial Use

The copyright in Sir Winston Churchill’s papers, literary works and those 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. Certain educational or non-profit organizations such as the Hillsdale College Churchill Project are granted the right to reproduce (with acknowledgement) copyright material without charge.…

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Depression or “Black Dog”

6 March 2009 Comments 0 Comments

What is the truth about Churchill suffering from depression, which he referred to as his “black dog”? —A.L. Kansas

Churchill himself makes a few early mentions of his “black dog,” but the expression is much older than he was. It was frequently used by Victorian nannies, like Churchill’s Mrs. Everest, when their charges were in a dark mood. One reference dates it to Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Visit the Churchill Centre search engine and enter “Black Dog”; you will be led to numerous illuminating references. The first one is by his daughter Lady Soames, who I think has it right:

A lot has been made of the depressive side of his character by psychiatrists who were never in the same room with him.…

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More Obama and the Churchill Bust

6 March 2009 Comments 2 Comments

Thanks for the amusing “Obama, Calhoun and the Churchill Bust-Out.” What do you say however about the Daily Telegraph’s speculation that Obama’s rejection of Churchill was based on the British jailing and torture of his grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, between 1949 and 1951, “during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya”? —R.P.

First, 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.…

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