2015 - Page 4 of 5 - Richard M. Langworth

Driving in Britain Then & Now

15 May 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Drive…if you dare

A friend headed for England who heard about their speed cameras asks how many he’ll encounter. Answer: a lot. Even out in the country, they’ll snap away at you.

Since 1974 I’ve logged 80,000 UK road miles, from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Islands from Jura in the Hebrides to Guernsey in the Channel. For a long time it was a driver’s paradise. More recently UK driving turned from a joy to drudgery. Of course a lot has to do with the huge growth of cars on cramped roads. The modern depredations of the State are a result rather than a cause.…

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“Rats in a Hole”: Churchill’s Apology

12 May 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Imagine if the President of the United States declared, “We will dig out terrorists ‘like rats in a hole.” Many would applaud and think maybe they had misjudged him. Or would they?

A colleague sends an exchange in the House of Commons on 7 March 1916. “Colonel Churchill,” recently returned from the Front but still a Member of Parliament, was speaking about the naval war with Germany. British naval planners must provide, Churchill was saying,

against what will be a continually increasing element of the unknown. I must also just point out another argument which shows that, great as were the anxieties with which we were faced in the first four months of the War, they have not by any means been removed, or, indeed, sensibly diminished by the course of events.…

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Churchill and Professor Lindemann, Lord Cherwell

4 May 2015 Comments 2 Comments

I reviewed the 1940-45 visitors books at Chequers. I was struck by how often Lord Cherwell (Frederick Lindemann) was there—far more than family and staff. He visited more than Bracken and Beaverbrook, or the Chiefs of Staff. What do you make of him? What’s best to read on him? —A.R., London

Most frequent visitor

After the death of the F.E. Smith, the first Lord Birkenhead, Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) was probably Churchill’s closest friend. His signature is also the most frequent in the visitors book at Chartwell, where it appears 86 times, more than anyone else (Brendan Bracken only 31, although visitors usually signed only when staying overnight, and Bracken frequently returned to London).…

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Churchill’s Average Voter

28 April 2015 Comments 1 Comment

(Or: “Churchillian Drift,” Part 1,398….)

On the eve of the British General Election, Metro UK declares: “Winston Churchill said the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

This is alas a reappearance of an ever-popular red-herring quote that Churchill never said.

Churchill had thoughtful critiques of democracy. See in particular his essay on “Mass Effects in Modern Life” in his book, Thoughts and Adventures. But he also had more respect for the average voter than this non-quote suggests. In the House of Commons on 31 October 1944 he said:

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper [we still vote that way in New Hampshire]—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.…

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Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary

25 April 2015 Comments 0 Comments

The original idea for forcing the Dardanaelles was not proposed by Churchill, who initially doubted it. His First Sea Lord, Fisher, who later deserted him, at first supported it. Churchill was First Lord not “Lord” of the Admiralty; Prime Minister Asquith was not at that time a Lord. The landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula were not originally part of the plan.

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Churchill-Mussolini Non-Letters

12 April 2015 Comments 3 Comments

(Or: “You Haven’t Looked Hard Enough”)

“The Untold Story of Mussolini’s Fake Diaries” (Daily Beast, 12 April 2015) evaluates Mussolini’s supposed diaries, letters or documents peddled over the years, while raising some incriminating charges, or suppositions, about Winston Churchill:

Before the war, Churchill offered Il Duce a deal. After the war, British intelligence tried to destroy their correspondence…. When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 he tried, in a series of letters, to dissuade Mussolini from joining the Axis powers. He was ignored. Three weeks later Italy joined Nazi Germany and declared war on Great Britain.…

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“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.…

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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.…

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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…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (3)

19 March 2015 Comments 1 Comment

continued from part 2…

Part 3: Servants and Staff

Winston Churchill was a Victorian, with most of the attitudes of his class and time toward the common folk. “Servants exist to save one trouble,” he told his wife in 1928, “and sh[oul]d never be allowed to disturb one’s inner peace.”

Once before World War II he arrived in a violent rainstorm at his friend Maxine Elliott’s Chateau d’Horizon in the South of France. “My dear Maxine,” he said as she ushered him in, “do you realise I have come all the way from London without my man?”…

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