2015 - Page 5 of 5 - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill’s Common Touch (2)

18 March 2015 Comments 1 Comment

Continued from Part I…

Part 2: Alice Bateman

Two other Westerham common folk who benefitted from Churchill’s characteristic kindliness were Tom and Alice Bateman, farmers who scratched out a living near Chartwell. Percy Reid, a stringer for a London newspaper, who kept an eye on Chartwell doings after World War II, wrote charmingly of a cattle sale in his book, Churchill: Townsman of Westerham (Folkestone: Regency, 1969):

Capt. and Mrs. [Mary Churchill] Soames—who then lived at Chartwell Farm—were at the sale most of the time and [their children] Nicholas and Emma were also taking a child’s interest in what was going on.…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (1)

17 March 2015 Comments 4 Comments

Part 1: Mr & Mrs Donkey Jack

A recent book by a distinguished historian suggests that Winston Churchill disdained common people. It cites another Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, during World War I, providing a tow to a broken-down motorist and giving two children a lift in his car. The writer adds: “It is hard to imagine Winston Churchill behaving in such a fashion.”

It is not hard at all. In fact, Churchill did frequent kind things for ordinary people he encountered, privately and without fanfare. We know about them only through his private correspondence, thanks to the official biography, Martin Gilbert, or the testimony of observers.…

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Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, 1936-2015 (2)

4 February 2015 Comments 1 Comment

The time you won your town the race, We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up, The still-defended challenge-cup. —Housman

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Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, 1936-2015 (1)

4 February 2015 Comments 2 Comments

Each one of us recalls some little incident—many of us, as in my own case, a kind action, graced with the courtesy of a past generation and going far beyond the normal calls of comradeship. Each of us has his own memory, for in the tumultuous diapason of the world's tributes, all of us here at least know the epitaph he would have chosen for himself: "He was a noble historian, a kind and decent man."

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Churchill’s Funeral, 50 Years On: His Words Still Call to Us

26 January 2015 Comments 0 Comments

In the time since his funeral I learned that Churchill’s life and thought—the eerie relevancy of his challenges and experiences—still call to us across the years. There will always be scoffers, who portray him as an anachronism. “In doing so, it is they who are the losers,” Martin Gilbert concluded, “for he was a man of quality: a good guide for our troubled present, and for the generations now reaching adulthood.”

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Churchill Funeral vs March in Paris?

14 January 2015 Comments 1 Comment

An article in the Christian Post equates President Obama’s absence from the March in Paris with President Johnson skipping the 1965 Churchill Funeral. The Johnson story has gone around a lot lately, but it is neither accurate nor a fair comparison.

President Johnson, suffering from a bad case of flu, sent Chief Justice Earl Warren and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the Churchill Funeral. In his official statement Johnson said: “When there was darkness in the world…a generous Providence gave us Winston Churchill….He is history’s child, and what he said and what he did will never die.”…

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“The Prophet Churchill”: Paris 2015

12 January 2015 Comments 0 Comments

"Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.… If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told." —Churchill, 1933

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