Year: 2020

Redburn
“It was such a happy day.” Owermoigne, Dorset, 28 September 1995. L-R: Jaime Snell Mendoza, Ashley Redburn, Elizabeth Snell, Gert Zoller, Richard Langworth, Margaret Redburn, Garry Clark, Curt Zoller. (Photo by James Snell)
Absent Friends: Ashley Redburn 1914-1996: “England Hath Need of Thee”

Absent Friends: Ashley Redburn 1914-1996: “England Hath Need of Thee”

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This trib­ute to an extra­or­di­nary Churchillian was writ­ten twen­ty-three years ago in 1997. Please par­don ref­er­ences to con­tem­po­rary events no longer in the news, though it would seem that some oth­er Red­burn thoughts are star­tling­ly relevant.

Ashley Redburn, Anglo-American

Cyn­ics some­times sug­gest that West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion needs a war every few gen­er­a­tions to main­tain its sense of val­ues and faith in itself. Ash­ley Red­burn was a man who believed it. “Eng­land,” he declared grim­ly, “needs to be con­quered in war and occu­pied by a venge­ful ene­my before its spir­it can be revived. Ger­many and France between them have ruined Europe for two cen­turies.…

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Blade
Opinion page of “The Blade,” Toledo, Ohio, 30 August.
Get Your History Right: Reply to Reader Hasan in “The Blade” (Toledo)

Get Your History Right: Reply to Reader Hasan in “The Blade” (Toledo)

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NPR advances the Zeitgeist; The Blade responds

On a radio talk show dis­trib­uted by Nation­al Pub­lic Radio, one Aliyah Hasi­nah said World War II had been start­ed by a Eugen­ics-besot­ted Win­ston Churchill. On August 8th, the Edi­to­r­i­al Board of The Blade replied: “NPR gave air­time to an activist who has a clear ax to grind against Churchill, yet it couldn’t find a schol­ar or biog­ra­ph­er to give us a depic­tion of the whole man? …. Churchill was not a per­fect human being. He was often wrong and some of his fail­ures were spec­tac­u­lar, But for the most part, he epit­o­mizes elo­quence, courage and love of coun­try.…

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Humes
“The Inside Story of the Gettysburg Address”: Humes at the Nixon Library, 2011. Scroll to minute 5 at: https://bit.ly/3b117tt.
James Humes 1934-2020: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence

James Humes 1934-2020: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence

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James Calhoun Humes … has died at 85. From his celes­tial perch, he is prob­a­bly won­der­ing about this lit­tle trib­ute. He was con­vinced, I heard, that he had giv­en “mor­tal affront” by his imper­son­ations of Sir Win­ston Churchill. Or, in my case, by pub­lish­ing a book of Churchill quotes, many of which he man­gled, some of which he made up. I guess in lat­er life, he thought we’d writ­ten him off. Not quite. = Humes was born in Penn­syl­va­nia to Samuel Hamil­ton Humes and Eleanor Kathryn Gra­ham. He was descend­ed from ear­ly set­tlers of Vir­ginia and Ten­nessee.…

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petition
Winston Churchill High School. May it long continue to produce civic minded young people as befits a distinguished name.
Petition Response to Churchill High School: Please Keep Your Name

Petition Response to Churchill High School: Please Keep Your Name

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This is a reply to a July peti­tion to rename Win­ston Churchill High School, Bethes­da, Mary­land. Found­ed in 1964 as Potomac High School, its name was changed the fol­low­ing year to mark Sir Winston’s pass­ing. It is a dis­tin­guished school whose alum­ni include two sons of the late Jack Kemp, both of whom pur­sued their famous father’s sport. Jef­frey Allan Kemp (’77) was an NFL quar­ter­back; his broth­er Jim­my Kemp (’89) played in the CFL and is pres­i­dent of the Jack Kemp Foun­da­tion. State Sen­a­tor Cheryl Kagan (’79) serves in the Mary­land leg­is­la­ture.…

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Action
Action aplenty in the Charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, 1898. In old age Churchill reflected: “It was very stimulating, but I did think ‘Suppose there is a spoil-sport in the hole with a machine gun?'” Painting by Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. (1856–1927), Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Churchill Quotes: “Action vs. Inaction….Religion of Blood and War”

Churchill Quotes: “Action vs. Inaction….Religion of Blood and War”

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N.B. We do not see Churchill in Woodville’s dra­mat­ic paint­ing above. He had drawn his pis­tol not his sword, in def­er­ence to his weak right shoul­der. For the skill and dex­ter­i­ty it took to sheath his sword and aim his pis­tol, see my review of Brough Scott’s Churchill at the Gal­lop (with Ben Bradshaw’s paint­ing of Churchill in the charge.)

Action and inaction

Q: Could you ver­i­fy the cor­rect word­ing for the Win­ston Churchill state­ment:  “I nev­er wor­ry about action, but only inac­tion.” There are var­i­ous iter­a­tions among the sources. —S.D.

From Churchill by Him­self, page 190 (note he placed quotemarks around “wor­ry”): “I nev­er ‘wor­ry’ about action, but only about inaction.”…

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fascists
Churchill harangues a dozing House of Commons on the Fascists of the present, 28 November 1934. Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin on the front bench. (Cartoon by Victor “Vicky” Weisz)
“Fascists of the future will call themselves Anti-Fascists” Churchill’s words?

“Fascists of the future will call themselves Anti-Fascists” Churchill’s words?

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“Fas­cists of the future” appears unabridged in the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, July 2020. For the com­plete text, please click here. Sub­scribe free to the Churchill Project and join our 60,000  read­ers. Reg­u­lar notices of new posts appear as they are pub­lished. Sim­ply click here,  scroll to bot­tom, and fill in your email in the box enti­tled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email is nev­er shared with anyone.

Question

“Is this quo­ta­tion is attrib­uted to Win­ston Churchill?: ‘The fas­cists of the future will call them­selves anti-fas­cists.’ There does not seem to be cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion on the inter­net link­ing those words to him, but I would appre­ci­ate your input.”…

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Epithets
“His private voice was no different than his public one,” Churchill’s daughter said. That applies as well to racist pejoratives. WSC at Downing Street, 5 June 1943. (Imperial War Museum, public domain)
Churchill’s Racist Epithets are Remarkably Rare (Hearsay doesn’t Count)

Churchill’s Racist Epithets are Remarkably Rare (Hearsay doesn’t Count)

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Extract­ed from “Hearsay Doesn’t Count: The Truth about Churchill’s ‘Racist Epi­thets,'” for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal arti­cle, please click here. Read­ers please note: a foot­not­ed ver­sion of this arti­cle was pub­lished in Grand Alliance, a Hills­dale jour­nal of Churchill Stud­ies, in 2022.

Epithets and expressions

In recent weeks Win­ston Churchill has become a tar­get of igno­rance. “Racist,” read the spray-paint­ed label of the mob on his Lon­don stat­ue. He should be knocked from perch, plinth and promi­nence. Some his­to­ri­ans claim he used all the racist epi­thets we abhor, from the n-word  to nation­al­i­ties: “As the great trib­al leader of 1940,” read one account, “his glo­ri­ous speech­es were pep­pered with ref­er­ences to the British race.”…

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crater
By Tab in the Calgary Sun, 2005. Bucking the tide, the Calgary Churchill Society has launched a drive for a new Churchill statue (https://bit.ly/30nIMmR) and the city’s Churchill Swimming Pool has reopened (https://bit.ly/2DmzK0j)
Fake Churchill Calumny: Subsidiary Emissions from the Odd Crater

Fake Churchill Calumny: Subsidiary Emissions from the Odd Crater

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Crater erup­tions: “Isn’t it enough to have this par­ent vol­cano con­tin­u­al­ly erupt­ing in our midst? And now we are to have these sub­sidiary craters spout­ing forth the same unhealthy fumes!” —Churchill’s reply to the son of a harsh crit­ic, fresh­ly elect­ed to Par­lia­ment, who imme­di­ate­ly began attack­ing him.

From one crater to another

No soon­er does the cam­paign for Churchill’s mem­o­ry quell emis­sions from one crater than anoth­er one erupts. The cam­paign to dele­git­imize Churchill as Hero con­tin­ues, but the main vol­canos have already erupt­ed. Now we have the odd sub­sidiary crater spout­ing the same old stuff.…

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Bahamas
Late afternoon from the deck. Leave this? Well, at times you have to shuffle off…
Escape from Paradise: One Couple’s Experience, Bahamas, March 2020

Escape from Paradise: One Couple’s Experience, Bahamas, March 2020

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Eleuthera, Bahamas, March 20th

Friends said, “If you expect to leave The Bahamas, do it now.” We thought it best. (I failed at retire­ment and need­ed my library in New Hamp­shire in my work for Hills­dale Col­lege in Michi­gan.) Accord­ing­ly, we changed our flights to Nas­sau and Boston from our usu­al April depar­ture to March 25th.

Jet Blue was in chaos. In my first online chat ses­sion they said the change would cost $472. It’s always a good idea to dis­con­nect and try anoth­er chat link. The sec­ond time it was “no charge”! We always use “Even More Space” (pre­mi­um econ­o­my, ear­ly board­ing), and those seats were wide open.…

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Burton
Richard Burton (Arthur) and Julie Andrews (Guenevere) in the original production of “Camelot,” ca. 1960. I saw this on Broadway. They were both fabulous. (Photo by Friedman-Abeles, New York, Wikimedia Commons)
The Burton-Churchill Eruption: Coming Soon in Your Neighborhood

The Burton-Churchill Eruption: Coming Soon in Your Neighborhood

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Excerpt­ed from “Back in the News: Richard Burton’s Fraught Rela­tion­ship with Win­ston Churchill,” for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, June 2020. For the com­plete text, please click here. 

The Burton – Churchill Kerfuffle

The air­waves and Twit­ter­verse are full of Churchill bile fol­low­ing recent sad events that have noth­ing to do with him. Sur­fac­ing again are attacks half a cen­tu­ry old by the famed actor Richard Bur­ton. Film crit­ic John Beau­fort first report­ed these in the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor in 1972:

Decem­ber 9th, 1972— Richard Bur­ton has just giv­en two of the odd­est and most con­tra­dic­to­ry per­for­mances of his career.…

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

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