Month: July 2023

Churchill's London
Little known but important: the old London Magazine near the Serpentine, Hyde Park. An 1805 Palladian-style villa, it once housed naval cordite for the defense of London. In 1911, war threatened over the Agadir Crisis. Observing the Magazine was unguarded, Churchill sent a marine detachment. His decisive action helped convince Prime Minister Asquith to appoint him First Lord of the Admiralty, where he prepared the Royal Navy for war. For years abandoned, it reopened in 2013 as an art gallery then a restaurant. (Zaha Hadid Architects)
Visitor’s Guide to the REAL “Churchill’s London”

Visitor’s Guide to the REAL “Churchill’s London”

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"Cast your eye from the entrance on the War Rooms slightly to the right. You’ll see a doorway well above ground. To the right of that doorway you will see a set of six windows ending in a curved window at Storey’s Gate. Those are the actual rooms in which Winston Churchill slept and worked during the Second World War."

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Napalm
Napalm dropped by a B26 on an enemy-occupied Korean village envelops a military barracks, forced through open windows and doors by the blast. (U.S. Air Force, 1951, public domain)
Winston Churchill’s Revulsion over Napalm Bombing

Winston Churchill’s Revulsion over Napalm Bombing

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"My own feeling is that Napalm ought not to be used in the way it is being done by the American Forces. This is I am sure the overwhelming feeling of the House of Commons, but I do not take my opinion from them. I certainly could not agree to our taking any responsibility for it, otherwise than in the general duty of serving with and under the United Nations Commander. I do not see how Press articles and jabber of that kind compares with splashing about this burning fluid on the necks of humble people...."

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Tucker
1948 Tucker. (Photo by Rex Gray, Creative Commons)
The Tucker Story (No, It Wasn’t the Car to Beat Detroit)

The Tucker Story (No, It Wasn’t the Car to Beat Detroit)

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For all his brilliance, Preston Tucker "was out of his pond. He remained a stranger and perhaps even a threat to the SEC, and he didn’t know anyone in government. Preston was careless in some of his pencil-work, perhaps in a bit of his talk, too. Nevertheless. Tucker conceived an amazing automobile. Nevertheless, the government did overreact, despite all he did to earn it.

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Jefferson
Dinner for Western Hemisphere Nobel Prize Winners at the East Room, the White House, 29 April 1962. Gathered for a reading by actor Frederic March of excerpts from the works of late Nobel laureates are (L-R): Lady Bird Johnson, Pearl Buck, President Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Frost and Agnes Charlier Jarring, wife of Swedish Ambassador Gunnar Jarring. (Photo by Robert Knudsen, JFK Library, public domain)
“Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone”…. JFK, Winston Churchill

“Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone”…. JFK, Winston Churchill

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Churchill's Jefferson: "He came from the Virginian frontier, the home of dour individualism and faith in common humanity, the nucleus of resistance to the centralising hierarchy of British rule. He was in touch with fashionable Left-Wing circles of political philosophy in England and Europe, and, like the French school of economists who went by the name of Physiocrats, he believed in a yeoman-farmer society. He feared an industrial proletariat as much as he disliked the principle of aristocracy. Industrial and capitalist development appalled him."

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facsimile
Don’t Fall for Them! Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

Don’t Fall for Them! Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

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People are still falling for those reproduction Churchill thank-you letters produced by the thousands using a spirit duplicator. "The ultimate thrift shop haul," headlined the Daily Mail in July 2023. "Budget shopper is left STUNNED after buying a 'priceless' handwritten letter signed by Winston Churchill for just $1—after finding it buried in a New York store." Actually, $1 is about what it's worth—plus perhaps $50 for a nicely matted and framed example.

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Lili Marlene
Woodford remembers: The Churchill statue at Woodford Green, Essex, sculpted by David McFall, dedicated 1959. (Acabashi, Creative Commons)
Churchill Anecdotes: Epping, Woodford, “Lili Marlene,” Fitzroy Maclean

Churchill Anecdotes: Epping, Woodford, “Lili Marlene,” Fitzroy Maclean

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"On 4 July 1942 the 8th army held the line at El Alamein.... You’d see the glow from their cigarettes and pipes, and the little glow from the radio dial. After the news we'd switch over to the "Message from Home" program from Germany. And before long it would go Ompa Ompa—and there was Lili Marlene.... And the 8th Army swept on, capturing on its way 800 miles of desert, 75,000 prisoners, 5000 tanks, 1000 guns, and the famous enemy song of Lili Marlene." —Denis Johnston

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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

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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