January 2022 - Richard M. Langworth

“Churchill Defiant,” by Barbara Leaming: Still the Best on Churchill Postwar

30 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

Barbara Leaming: “Others Heard Taps, Churchill Heard Reveille”

Churchill Defiant: Fighting On 1945-1955, by Barbara Leaming. London: Harper Press, 394 pages.

“Great captains must take their chance with the rest. Caesar was assassinated by his dearest friend. Hannibal was cut off by poison. Frederick the Great lingered out years of loneliness in body and soul. Napoleon rotted at St. Helena. Compared with these, Marlborough had a good and fair end to his life.” —Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, 1936, Book Two.

A decade on, still a book to read

Readers sometimes ask for the best books to read on Churchill’s career after the Second World War.…

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January 245h — Port Royal Street after the Kingston earthquake of January 1907. (Posted by Mike, Creative Commons)

What Winston Churchill was Doing on January 24th

25 January 2022 Comments 1 Comment

It seems something was always going on in Churchill's life on January 24th. It is best known as day his father died (1895), the day he predicted he would die too (1953)--and when he did (1965). A synopsis of each January 24th in his life would be interesting—as it would be for September 11th, that day of infamy.

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Wikipedia: Churchill’s World War Accounts, History or Memoirs?

22 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

It is important to get this right, because Churchill's accounts of the two world wars are often incorrectly described as histories. He was adamant that this was a job for later historians.

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“Greatest Law Giver”: The Truth behind Churchill’s Mussolini Bouquets

15 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

It has been observed that politicians often say nice things about foreign leaders when they owe them lots of money. As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1927, Churchill negotiated Italy’s payment of her war debt to Britain, which Mussolini was still honoring in 1933. But this is too flippant, and there is more to the question.

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Driving Miss Nancy: Churchill, Wolseley and Lady Astor

10 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill opted to drive himself...a bad sign, Thompson said: “It either means that he is cross and subconsciously wants to smash up something, or that he is dangerously elated and things will get smashed up anyhow through careless exuberance.”

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Churchillian Maxims: “Take the Enemy into Consideration”

5 January 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"The German General Staff called this long-prepared operation by the code name Alberich, after the malicious dwarf of the Nibelungen legend. They left their opponents in the crater fields of the Somme,"

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