2015 - Richard M. Langworth

Praise for “Avoidable War”

23 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill and the Avoidable War will cost you the price of a cup of coffee. You can read it in a couple of nights. You may then decide if Churchill was right (or wrong) that World War II could have been prevented. Click on “Buy Now” under the book image at right on this page.

Here is an excellent survey of the key “what if” junctures where history could have taken a different turn. What I like about it especially is that it conscientiously steers away from any definitive pronouncements about one zig or zag making all the difference in preventing World War II.…

Paris, 13 November 2015: A Churchill Moment for M. Hollande

21 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

“A Churchill Moment for M. Hollande” is Expanded from my article in The American Spectator, 18 November 2015.

Dear M. Hollande…

The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune. Nothing will alter our feelings towards them or our faith that the genius of France will rise again. —Winston S. Churchill, 4 June 1940

On the November 13th Paris attacks: With every murderous threat to civilization we are asked: “Where are our Churchills?” There isn’t one, and we should not expect one.…

“Never Surrender,” by John Kelly

17 November 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain’s Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940, by John Kelly. Scribner, 2015, 370 pp., $19.88, Kindle $14.99.

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May 1940: Lord Halifax “sounded like a nervous solicitor reading from a half-thought-out brief….When Churchill spoke of fighting on alone, the mantle of history—Agincourt, Waterloo, Trafalgar, the Armada—sang through his sentences.”

Here is a well-written and organized review of mainly well-known events, retold with dramatic prose and crisp analysis. It’s an ideal book for young people unfamiliar with the scope of Churchill’s achievement in 1940, and, indeed, for anyone who wants a good account of the events that saved Western civilization.…