Year: 2011

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.

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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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Churchill on the Middle East

Churchill on the Middle East

Churchill By Him­self, p. 437: “The Mid­dle East is one of the hard­est-heart­ed areas in the world. It has always been fought over, and peace has only reigned when a major pow­er has estab­lished firm influ­ence and shown that it would main­tain its will. Your friends must be sup­ported with every vigour and if nec­es­sary they must be avenged. Force, or per­haps force and bribery, are the only things that will be respect­ed. It is very sad, but we had all bet­ter recog­nise it. At present our friend­ship is not val­ued, and our enmi­ty is not feared.”…

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Bahamas Fishing Haul, Spanish Wells

Bahamas Fishing Haul, Spanish Wells

My friend Bruno Under­wood called March 18th to ask if we were up to fish—his only oppor­tu­ni­ty to take us out since he’s work­ing round the clock. We have been enjoy­ing fish­ing char­ters with Bruno for five years. On March 19th he and his dad, Baron, met us at Gene’s Bay, north Eleuthera, at 9 and off we went to their favorite spots, plot­ted by GPS. We were in from 12 to 25 feet with 25 lb.-test spin­ning tack­le and cut bait (gog­gle-eyes).

For the first half hour, only nib­bles; Baron said these were yel­low­tail steal­ing our bait, but ”they’ll soon be full and will move on for the big boys.”…

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The Alcohol Question (Again)

The Alcohol Question (Again)

Ref­er­ence to Churchill and abuse of alco­hol. When my father and I had lunch with Churchill at the House of Com­mons in 1952, I cer­tain­ly did not see Churchill drink any more than the usu­al lunch time glass of wine. My father nev­er men­tioned his exces­sive use of alco­hol in any form.—R.W.

He had an impres­sive capac­i­ty but you’re right. Except for a body­guard who helped him and Eden tot­ter home after a night of toasts with the Rus­sians at Teheran, no one close ever saw him the worse for drink. (Well, Alan­brooke some­times wrote in his diary that the boss was ine­bri­at­ed.…

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Hitler’s Sputtering Austrian Anschluss: Opportunity Missed?

Hitler’s Sputtering Austrian Anschluss: Opportunity Missed?

Excerpt­ed from “Hitler’s ‘Tet Offen­sive’: Churchill and the Aus­tri­an Anschluss, 1938″ for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. If  you wish to read the whole thing full-strength, with more illus­tra­tions and end­notes, click here.

Bet­ter yet, join 60,000 read­ers of Hills­dale essays by the world’s best Churchill his­to­ri­ans by sub­scrib­ing. You will receive reg­u­lar notices (“Week­ly Win­stons”) of new arti­cles as pub­lished. Sim­ply vis­it https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/, scroll to bot­tom, and fill in your email in the box enti­tled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email remains strict­ly pri­vate and is nev­er sold to pur­vey­ors, sales­per­sons, auc­tion hous­es, or Things that go Bump in the Night.…

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