July 2018 - Richard M. Langworth

Recorders of Churchill’s Canon: Colin R. Coote DSO

31 July 2018 Comments 2 Comments

A reader asks: “Who published the first compilation of Winston Churchill’s wit and wisdom, and when?” It was Colin Coote, in 1947—a dear man devoted to the heroic memory. My quotations book Churchill by Himself is dedicated in part to him.

Colin Reith Coote

Sir Colin (1893-1979) was a British journalist and Liberal politician. For fourteen years he was editor of the Daily Telegraph. There he came to know and admire Churchill. Shortly after World War II, he thought to compile a book of Churchillisms, annotated to validate each entry. He wrote for permission, and received a kind and revelatory reply, which provided Churchill’s view of his literary assigns:

28 Hyde Park Gate, 21 July 1946

My dear Colin,

Thank you for your letter of July 15.…

Hillsdale’s Churchill Documents: Harold Wilson, 1951

30 July 2018 Comments 0 Comments

“Two days earlier I had been a Minister of the Crown, red box and all. Now I was reduced to the position of a messenger between my wife and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other.” —Harold Wilson

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The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is rapidly completing final volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. (The name is somewhat of a misnomer; no one has ever censored any material.) Suitably, all thirty-one volumes will be complete by June 2019: the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. It will be fifty-six years since Randolph Churchill and his “Young Gentlemen” including Martin Gilbert began their work.…

Winston Churchill and Polo, Part 1, by Barbara Langworth

11 July 2018 Comments 0 Comments

“Winston Churchill and Polo” was first published in 1991. It is now updated and amended, thanks to the rich store of material available in The Churchill Documents published by Hillsdale College Press. This article is abridged without footnotes from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the complete text and footnotes, click here.

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Churchill loved polo, which he called “The Emperor of Games.” A contemporary writer’s description of his polo tactics is remindful of much else in the statesmen’s approach to life and politics:

He rides in the game like heavy cavalry getting into position for the assault.…