November 2019 - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill’s Memorable Allusions to Shakespeare’s Richard II

29 November 2019 Comments 0 Comments

“Allusions to Richard II” is extracted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text, click here.

Richard II and “This Sceptr’d Isle.”

We are asked: “Churchill quoted Shakespeare’s famous lines, ‘This scepter’d isle,’ in one of his speeches. They are the words of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, from Richard II, Act 2, sc. 1. Could you direct me to the speech?”

Churchill knew his Shakespeare and had a near-photographic memory. Darrell Holley’s Churchill’s Literary Allusions tells us he alludes to Shakespeare more than any other English author. King…

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Don Vorderman 1930-2018: The Best Editor I Ever Had

19 November 2019 Comments 3 Comments

Editors exist to make writers better, and Don was the best editor one could have. He fired me once (I deserved it), but reconsidered when he liked my next piece, on Triumph. In it I’d written that the Luftwaffe "did its number" on Coventry. He blue-lined that and substituted "wrought terrible destruction"—sensitive and precise.

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Researching the Atlantic Conference, Argentia, Newfoundland, August 1941

14 November 2019 Comments 0 Comments

A Question about Argentia

I am researching events and individuals at the first “summit” between U.S. and British leaders. This was the “Atlantic Conference” at Argentia, Newfoundland on 9-12 August 1941. Most histories focus on the summit meeting, consequently excluding critical meetings between other high ranking individuals. Argentia was certainly also a military meeting. Strategy, tactics and materiel were likewise discussed. Can you help me develop a list of the individuals who involved? Sir John Dill, Admiral Ernest J. King, Lord Beaverbrook and Sir Alexander Cadogan were not there to simply to attend dinners.…

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“The Wilderness Years” with Robert Hardy: Original Review

7 November 2019 Comments 0 Comments

“Churchill: The Wilderness Years”

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has just republished “Scaling Everest,” Robert Hardy’s recollections of playing the Wilderness Years Churchill. They are from 1987, his speech to one of our Churchill Tours, at the Reform Club, London. We are grateful to his executors, Justine Hardy and Neil Nisbet-Robertson for permission to reprint. For Part 1, click here.

I thought the occasion appropriate to republish my original review of the “Wilderness Years” from 1981, some years before we met. I thought at the time I had “laid an egg”—in Churchill’s phraseology, not RH’s.…

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Nats Win! Washington Baseball for New Generations. It’s 1924 Again

1 November 2019 Comments 5 Comments

The greatest thing about the 2019 Nats is that baseball is again spanning the generations in Washington.

Think about it. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago benefit from six generations of uninterrupted baseball. Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit—the list goes on. Atlanta, Los Angeles and Houston have had half a century or more to build a following: fathers and sons, parents and kids. Alas, Washington was without baseball thirty-four years. In 1971, the expansion Senators left for Texas; in 2005, the Montreal Expos became the Nationals. A beautiful ballpark revived a decrepit area of the city, which now resembles Wrigleyville in Chicago.…

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