March 2015 - Richard M. Langworth

“The Vintage Triumph” and Triumphs in My Life

30 March 2015 Comments 0 Comments

All Triumphs All the Time: Issue 150 of The Vintage Triumph magazine, 2015

Harry Barnes was to have been our first editor, but quickly decided he couldn’t do it. I was elected, producing issues 1-18 from 1974 to 1977. Looking at those productions, I’m struck that while Triumphs haven’t changed much else has in half a lifetime.

Annual dues were $10—equal to $48 today, but didn’t buy as much. Imagine a world without computers! You printed off sheets of clean, “camera-ready” type. We couldn’t afford typesetting; those who didn’t have electric typewriters put a brand new ribbon in their Remingtons and banged hard on the keys.…

Churchill’s Common Touch (5)

21 March 2015 Comments 2 Comments

concluded from part 4…

Part 5: Loyalty

Churchill had “a reputation for brusqueness strengthened by his handling of the common folk,” his postwar bodyguard Ronald Golding continued.

He had the habit of summing people up after two sentences of conversation. They were classified, it seemed to me, as either “interesting” or “uninteresting.” With the former, conversation ensued; with the latter, Churchill would ignore them. On such occasions Mrs. Churchill frequently came to the rescue, engaging the luckless in conversation. If they were tongue-tied she would do most of the talking until it was time for them to leave.…

Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

20 March 2015 Comments 3 Comments

continued from part 3…

Part 4: “Being Shouted At”

“I think being shouted at was one of the worst things to get over,” said Grace Hamblin, secretary to Winston and then Clementine Churchill from 1932, typical of the common Kentish folk who loved them. “I’d come from a very quiet family and I’d never been shouted at in my life. But I had to learn it, in time.”

In the midst of dictation one day, Grace told me, Churchill commanded: “Fetch me Klop!” Klop? she thought—what could it mean?

Finally, proudly, she struggled in with Onno Klopp‘s 14 giant volumes, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart. “Jesus…