June 2024 - Richard M. Langworth

Willie and Monte: Game Called. A New York Kid Remembers

25 June 2024 Comments 0 Comments

I greeted Monte Irvin at the bar: "Hullo, Number Twenty!"Monte said, "You remember!?" "I yelled hello at you from the outfield stands in the Polo Grounds forty years ago. You hit one out. I rooted for you even more than 24." (That was Willie). He laughed and said, "Yeah, but he lasted longer." "Maybe so," I said, "but the word was, you got more dates." Odd how some memories come flooding back. I loved those guys.

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Poland or Russia: Did Churchill Pick the Right Enemy?

20 June 2024 Comments 0 Comments

With Russia invaded and America still neutral, Churchill was desperate for allies. Decisions had to be made with what was known at the time. It was logical to conclude then that Germany not Russia was the greater expansionist threat. No one could see far ahead, yet no one worked harder than he for Poland’s independence after the war. No one more admired the valiant Poles who fought with the Allies from 1940 to D-Day and beyond.

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Remembering Eddie Murray, Churchill’s Bodyguard 1950-65

15 June 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"Murray's devotion to Churchill was genuine, and I have no doubt that if danger had threatened he would have stood before him. He certainly made the great man’s life easier and the Boss, I think, had a real affection for him. It was Churchill’s inevitable reaction to stand up for any member of his entourage who was under attack. As Lady Churchill once said (looking at me rather pointedly): 'Winston is always ready to be accompanied by those with considerable imperfections.'" —Anthony Montague Browne

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Q&A: “Black Dog” — Churchill and Depression

10 June 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"A lot has been made of depression in his character by psychiatrists who were never in the same room with him. He himself talks of his Black Dog, and he did have times of great depression. Some of the things he went through would depress anybody.... Of course, if you have a Black Dog, it lurks somewhere in your nature. But I never saw him disarmed by depression. I'm not talking about the depression of his much later years, because surely that is a sad feature of old age which afflicts a great many people who have led a very active life." —Lady Soames

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The White House, 9 April 1963. President John F. Kennedy declares Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. On steps, front row (L-R): Undersecretary of State, George Ball, British Ambassador Sir David Ormsby-Gore, President Kennedy, Randolph Churchill. Back rows (L-R): Deputy Chief of Protocol William J. Tonesk (mostly behind Ball), Sylvia Ormsby-Gore, Randolph’s son Winston, President’s naval aide Tazewell Shepard. Secret Service agent Art Godfrey is at far right. (Photograph by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton. presented to Richard Langworth, 1988, public domain)

D-Day+80: National Celebrations, Eighty Years On

5 June 2024 Comments 2 Comments

And so on 6 June 1944 we launched the great crusade, as Eisenhower put it (today perhaps politically incorrectly). Western civilization was saved. Yet it was not, William F. Buckley Jr. argued, “the significance of that victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that causes the name of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster....It is the roar that we hear, when we pronounce his name….The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy."

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