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.…

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Arrington McCardy 1947-2011

Arrington McCardy 1947-2011

You don’t real­ly know a road until you’ve bicy­cled it. On a bike, every­thing is mag­ni­fied: the sur­face, con­tour and cam­ber; the hills and val­leys; the ruts and pot­holes; even the shoul­der. Rid­ers pay atten­tion to the shoul­der, because it’s always pos­si­ble that we might quick­ly have to occu­py it.

Arring­ton McCardy, founder of the Eleuthera Long Rid­ers, who died of a total­ly unex­pect­ed heart attack on the April 9th “Ride for Hope,” joked that they should rename the Queen’s High­way for him because he knew every inch of it bet­ter than any­one else. He loved rid­ing so much that some nights dur­ing the full moon, he would bunk at a friend’s place in Ban­ner­man Town and leave at 3am, ped­al­ing along in the moon­light, head­ed for Span­ish Wells, 100 miles away.…

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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.…

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