Month: October 2015

Churchill’s Choice: Hitler vs. Stalin

Churchill’s Choice: Hitler vs. Stalin

I find the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Churchill quite dis­gust­ing. It is typ­i­cal British-Amer­i­can arro­gance to ignore the out­come of WW2 for the peo­ples of East­ern Europe, not to speak of the Ger­mans. Churchill knew from the begin­ning about the ter­ri­ble fate of the Rus­sians and many oth­er East Euro­pean peo­ples under Bol­she­vist dic­ta­tor­ship. He obvi­ous­ly didn’t care. He was obsessed with anti-Ger­man hatred. Know­ing that he bombed Ger­man cities, killing thou­sands of civil­ians long before the Ger­mans were retal­i­at­ing, makes him in my opin­ion even worse than Hitler. Why  did he go into alliance with Stal­in against the Ger­mans?…

Read More Read More

Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian

Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian

Remem­ber­ing Grace: 1908-2002

Beloved by all Churchills, Grace Ham­blin died at her home in West­er­ham, Kent, aged 94. Aware she was ail­ing, I had just sent her some lit­tle thing in the post; Car­ole Ken­wright at Chartwell said it arrived in time, and she was able to read from it for a few minutes.

Grace Ham­blin was the longest serv­ing and most loy­al­ly devot­ed of Churchill’s inner cir­cle, arriv­ing at Chartwell in 1932 as an assis­tant to then-prin­ci­pal pri­vate sec­re­tary Vio­let Pear­man. She spent vir­tu­al­ly her entire career as pri­vate sec­re­tary, first to Win­ston and from 1939 to Clemen­tine. In 1966 she became the first Admin­is­tra­tor of Chartwell, serv­ing through 1973. In…

Read More Read More

The Duke of Marlborough 1926-2014

The Duke of Marlborough 1926-2014

The Eleventh Duke: Memories. 13 April 1926 – 16 October 2014

“You shouldn’t call him ‘Your Grace,’ you know.”

It was 2005. Lady Soames was coach­ing me on a let­ter to her cousin the Duke of Marl­bor­ough. It was to ask (again) for the lease (at a friend-of-the-fam­i­ly dis­count) of the Great Hall at Blenheim Palace. Anoth­er black tie din­ner crown­ing anoth­er Churchill Tour.

“What should I call him, then? I can’t call him ‘Sun­ny,’ as you do!” (The fam­i­ly nick­name stemmed from one of the Duke’s ear­ly titles, Earl of Sun­der­land.)

“Of course not. But ‘Your Grace’ is too for­mal, or for ser­vants.…

Read More Read More

Churchill @ Hillsdale CCA, 4-7 Oct. 2015

Churchill @ Hillsdale CCA, 4-7 Oct. 2015

I was pleased to be part of a program with Timothy Robert Hardy, the most inimitable and genuine actor to ever play the role of Winston Churchill; and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston's granddaughter-in-law, an expert on Churchill's oil paintings. We were joined in presentations by two outstanding scholars, Andrew Roberts and John Maurer. CCA events are open to Hillsdale students, faculty and members of the College's President's Club.

Read More Read More

Robert Hardy’s “Wilderness Years”

Robert Hardy’s “Wilderness Years”

5 Octo­ber 2015: Turn­ing 90 this month and as viva­cious as ever, Tim­o­thy Robert Hardy spoke tonight on “My Life with Churchill” at a Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill sem­i­nar, attend­ed by over 500 reg­is­trants and 200 stu­dents, spon­sored by Hillsdale’s Cen­ter for Con­struc­tive Alter­na­tives. That after­noon I had the priv­i­lege to play Alis­tair Cooke, and intro­duce four excerpts from Tim’s inim­itable por­tray­al in the doc­u­men­tary, “Win­ston Churchill: The Wilder­ness Years.” Here is the intro­duc­tion to the first excerpt, which may be viewed on YouTube (first 12 min­utes). All four excerpts will be pub­lished lat­er by The Churchill Project for the Study of Statesmanship.…

Read More Read More

RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks

Links on this page may earn commissions.