June 2018 - Richard M. Langworth

The escaped desperado: Durban, Natal, 1908.

“A Sun that Never Sets”: Churchill’s Autobiography, “My Early Life”

28 June 2018

Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission. (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1930; New York: Scribners, 1930.) Numerous reprints and editions since, including e-books. Excerpted from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the full article, click here.

Connoisseur’s Guide

My Early Life appeared a year before the last volume of The World Crisis. The subtitle, “A Roving Commission,” is from the first chapter of Churchill’s Ian Hamilton’s March. It seems he took it from an earlier novel by G.A. Henty, one of his favorite authors. The titles changed places in the first American edition.

A wonderful treat is in store in this most approachable of Churchill’s books. …

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Desert Island Books: Charles Krauthammer’s “Things that Matter”

25 June 2018

Charles Krauthammer’s Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics (388 pages, Crown Forum, 2013). In remembering Dr. Krauthammer, I said this book was one of a score I’d take with me if confined to a desert island. Here’s why.

The reader will ask: why am I plugging to a Churchill audience a set of essays by a political columnist? Answer: because many are not political, yet reflect Churchillian thought. Moreover, Dr. Krauthammer’s essay about Churchill is one of the best summaries of the man I’ve ever read. By anybody. Anywhere.

Significantly, in a book of over nearly ninety columns and essays, the Churchill article ranks second—in Part I (entitled “Personal”)—after a piece on the author’s beloved brother, Marcel, who also died young after an heroic struggle.…

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“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster”: Charles Krauthammer 1950-2018

22 June 2018

“CK,” Churchillian

The best editor I ever had wrote: “There is nothing to be said when a friend dies, even among people whose trade is words.” Much nevertheless is being said about Charles Krauthammer. That is fitting, and it is what we have the Internet for. (Some of the most touching tributes are linked below. Fox News produced a very fine tribute, “Krauthammer in His Own Words” click here.)

My editor meant, rather, that for some, words are inadequate against “a big, empty hole where there was once someone you loved. And all the talk in the world won’t change that.…

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Roosevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

19 June 2018

A colleague asks whether Winston and Clementine Churchill’s private name for President Roosevelt was “Don Quixote.” Also, who compared Roosevelt and Churchill to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? This offers an interesting trawl through the sources.

So far as I can learn, the Quixote – Panza analogy for Roosevelt and Churchill (also FDR and his devoted adviser Harry Hopkins) occurred only during the 1943 Casablanca Conference (SYMBOL). Roosevelt proposed those code names, and I rather think Churchill had different image of them than FDR. (Oxford English Dictionary: “Quixote: Enthusiastic visionary, pursuer of lofty but impracticable ideals.”)…

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The Music Winston Churchill Loved (with audio links)

8 June 2018

Don Cusic, Winston Churchill’s Love of Music: Churchill Didn’t Have a Tin Ear (Nashville: Brackish Publishing, 2018), 122 pages, $21. Audio links can easily be provided online. Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the full review, click here.

Music by Cusic

Cusic’s text traces Churchill’s life and career, tracking every reference the author found to music and song. We range from the marches, ditties and Gilbert & Sullivan Churchill loved to the powerfully inspirational. Which lyrics are presented is purely arbitrary, but once chosen, we get every word. Churchill’s youthful encounters with the ’cello and piano are duly noted.…

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Motor On: Churchill Thwarted (Or: For Once, the Authorities Prevailed)

5 June 2018

The distinguished historian Paul Addison sends along a minor but amusing tale of a Churchill motor car (probably his new Napier). Churchill didn’t get his way, because he himself wasn’t behind the wheel. Had he been driving, he would likely have proceeded to get round the obstruction by driving on the pavement (sidewalk). This perilous endeavor was witnessed firsthand later on by WSC’s bodyguard, Detective-Inspector Walter Thompson.

Turned Back: The Home Secretary and his Motor

Daily Herald, 10 April 1911— Mr. Winston Churchill had a curious experience on Saturday while motoring to Banstead.…

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