2023 - Page 2 of 8 - Richard M. Langworth

Winston Churchill and Thucydides

10 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

"Open no more negotiations with Sparta. Show them plainly that you are not crushed by your present afflictions. They who face calamity without wincing, and who offer the most energetic resistance, these, be they States or individuals, are the truest heroes." —Lord Beaverbrook's advice to Churchill, quoting Thucydides, 1942.

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“The World’s Great Stories” Retold by Winston Churchill

5 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Why would Churchill wish to retell such classics as "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Don Quixote," or "A Tale of Two Cities"? Because he was paid well to do so. Never independently wealthy, he worked hard to maintain his luxurious lifestyle—and the heavy entertainment and travel overhead of an active political career. “I earned my livelihood by dictating articles which had a wide circulation not only in Great Britain and the United States,” he wrote, “but also, before Hitler's shadow fell upon them, in the most famous newspapers of 16 European countries. I lived in fact from mouth to hand.”

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Churchill and Lincoln: Scholars Consider the Cooper Union Speech

31 October 2023 Comments 0 Comments

In June 1860, Lincoln wrote that “when I came of age I did not know much.... The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.” Churchill in March 1949 would echo these remarks: “I frankly confess that I feel somewhat overawed in addressing this vast scientific and learned audience.… I have no technical and no university education, and have just had to pick up a few things as I went along.” Their observations undervalued the immense effort both had put into self-improvement.

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Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (3): Humber…

25 October 2023 Comments 2 Comments

Churchill’s staff remembered the sense of urgency so characteristic of the man. In the old Humber, “Murray, the detective, would sit at [the chauffeur’s] side, quietly murmuring, ‘slow down here’ or ‘pull in to the left a little more,’” wrote Roy Howells, a male nurse. “At the back Sir Winston would be…tapping on the glass partition and calling out, ‘Go on!’ Whenever he felt Bullock was slow in overtaking he would lean forward and bellow, ‘Now!’ It does Bullock great credit that he never really took the chances his passenger would have liked….”

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Churchill. the Kilkenny Cats, and the U.S. Congress

20 October 2023 Comments 1 Comment

"Indeed, the more we force ourselves to picture the hideous course of a modern naval engagement, the more one is inclined to believe that it will resemble the contest between Mamilius and Herminius at the Battle of Lake Regillus, or the still more homely conflict of the Kilkenny cats." —Churchill, 1912

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“Jarring Gong”: Benjamin Netanyahu on Winston Churchill

15 October 2023 Comments 2 Comments

"The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress—starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy—the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.... We have the spectacle of the powers and weapons of man far outstripping the march of his intelligence; we have the march of his intelligence proceeding far more rapidly than the development of his nobility." —Winston S. Churchill, 1931

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Hillsdale Dialogues Explore Churchill’s “The World Crisis”

10 October 2023 Comments 0 Comments

"It was the custom in the palmy days of Queen Victoria for statesmen to expatiate upon the glories of the British Empire, and to rejoice in that protecting Providence which had preserved us through so many dangers and brought us at length into a secure and prosperous age. Little did they know that the worst perils had still to be encountered and that the greatest triumphs were yet to be won…."

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Winston Churchill’s Phrase “We are all in it together”

5 October 2023 Comments 1 Comment

Togetherness—united purpose and action among free peoples—was Churchill's theme all his life. A more common riff, used at least fifteen times, as "Let us go forward together." He applied that one in venues grand and minor, from the House of Commons to a conversation with his poodle Rufus.

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Churchill’s Novels: Escape Valves or Reality Checks?

30 September 2023 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill was motivated by Wells’s views of military science: “The irresistible Juggernaut, driving through towns and villages as through a field of standing corn—a type which Armageddon itself could not achieve….” That was an accurate description of France in 1940. Churchill himself called it “a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks.” He then admonished Britons: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour."

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Australia: National Anthems, Miscellaneous Ramblings

25 September 2023 Comments 0 Comments

In her memoirs, Mary Soames wrote of the great service of thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral five days after V-E Day, 1945: "Such was the mood that we were allowed to sing the second verse of the National Anthem (usually a real no-no), bidding God arise to scatter the King's enemies ('Confound their politics / Frustrate their knavish tricks')." Well, at a Churchill Conference in 2000, we entertained her by singing all five verses of God Save the Queen, including that one. She was sure we were going way over the top.

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