Month: April 2011

“Alles sal reg kom”: Churchill on the Royal Wedding

“Alles sal reg kom”: Churchill on the Royal Wedding

HOUSE OF COMMONS, 22 OCTOBER 1947— “I am in entire accord with what the Prime Min­is­ter has said about Princess Eliz­a­beth and about the qual­i­ties which she has already shown, to use his words, ‘of unerr­ing gra­cious­ness and under­stand­ing and of human sim­plic­i­ty.’ He is indeed right in declar­ing that these are among the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Roy­al House. I trust that every­thing that is appro­pri­ate will be done by His Majesty’s Gov­ern­ment to mark this occa­sion of nation­al rejoic­ing.  ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and mil­lions will wel­come this joy­ous event as a flash of colour on the hard road we have to trav­el.…

Read More Read More

Arrington McCardy 1947-2011

Arrington McCardy 1947-2011

Self-trained, he had unorthodox techniques. On a steep hill, the standard tactic is to shift up two cogs and stand up, adding your body weight to the downstroke, using your arms to wiggle the bike from side to side to help the upstroke. We never saw Arrington stand. Instead he would hunker down in the saddle and simply power his way over the hill. And he always left us in the dust. I was hoping to watch this technique in the White Mountains when he and Hazel were to visit us in New Hampshire.

Read More Read More

Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

The sig­na­ture on a  fan­tas­tic auto­graphed pho­to of Win­ston Churchill at Chartwell, which a friend framed and kept on his wall and hid from the light, has fad­ed to noth­ing­ness. Even ambi­ent room light will fade ancient inks, and there is noth­ing to be done.

Back when I was senior edi­tor at Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly, I res­cued a won­der­ful big 3×2-foot pho­to of the great Grand Prix cham­pi­on René Drey­fus (the world’s last great French­man), and his Type 35 Bugat­ti, from the dust­bin and brought it over to Le Chante­clair, his won­der­ful French restau­rant on 49th Street, Man­hat­tan, for him to inscribe to me.…

Read More Read More

Churchill’s Speech Problem: A Lisp, not a Stutter

Churchill’s Speech Problem: A Lisp, not a Stutter

What many thought was stut­ter­ing was a prop, not a handicap.

Churchill’s speech prob­lem was a lisp. He could not pro­nounce the let­ter “S” and nev­er real­ly learned to do so—so he turned it into a prop, exag­ger­at­ing words like his famous “Narz­zsseess” for “Nazis.”

What some peo­ple thought was stut­ter­ing was his habit of turn­ing over a word or phrase in an under­tone before set­tling on the final words. He often used this tech­nique in speech­es, because he found that it would stir peo­ple to renewed inter­est in what he was about to say next.

Exam­ple is a quote from his speech at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, 6 Sep­tem­ber 1943:“Man has part­ed com­pa­ny with his faith­ful friend the horse, and has sailed into the azure on the wings of eagles—eagles being rep­re­sent­ed by the infernal….uh,…

Read More Read More

RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks

Links on this page may earn commissions.