Churchill’s role in the defense of Antwerp, in October 1914, has been called one of his “characteristically piratical” adventures. An eminent historian described it as “a shocking folly by a minister who abused his powers and betrayed his responsibilities. It is astonishing that [his] cabinet colleagues so readily forgave him for a lapse of judgment that would have destroyed most men’s careers.”1
As the Germans closed in around Antwerp, Max Hastings writes, Churchill “assembled a hotchpotch of Royal Marines and surplus naval personnel… his own private army.” Then he “abandoned his post at the Admiralty.”…
"Don't worry about attacks on Churchill. He is alive and kicking and haunts the British imagination like no other. He will always be caricatured, as he was in his lifetime. But freedom of speech and expression was one of the things he fought for, and in his time he gave as good as he got. The more provocative comments about him are a backhanded tribute, as they work on the assumption that most people admire him." —Paul Addison
"No other wartime leader in history has given us a work of two million words written only a few years after the events and filled with messages among world potentates which had so recently been heated and secret. The Memoirs are not just a unique revelation of the exercise of power from atop an empire in duress but also one of the fascinating products of the human spirit, both as an expression of a personality and as a somewhat anomalous epic tale filled with the depravities, miseries and glories of man." —Manfred Weidhorn
"Randolph, Hope and Glory": Writing his father's biography was his chance at redemption, “to create a lasting record of his love and devotion to the man he had loved more than any other person he had ever known. In the process of telling the story of his father’s life, he belatedly gave meaning to his own.”
In the splintering crash of this vast battle the quiet conversations we had had in Downing Street faded or fell back in one’s mind. However, I remember being told that Mr. Chamberlain had gone, or was going, to see the King, and this was naturally to be expected. Presently a message arrived summoning me to the Palace at six o’clock. It only takes two minutes to drive there from the Admiralty along the Mall. Although I suppose the evening newspapers must have been full of the terrific news from the Continent, nothing had been mentioned about the Cabinet crisis.…
“Current Contentions” was delivered at Hillsdale College’s Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar on “Churchill and the Movies,” 27 March 2019. For the video, please click here.
Edited transcript: The original speech included certain subjects covered earlier and elsewhere. These are summarized below, and provided with links to the original texts. The video, which is unabridged, includes questions and answers with the audience.
Churchill’s World of 1932
Eighty-seven years ago, Churchill was here in Michigan, in Detroit, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, on a U.S. lecture tour. East, west, north, and south he rode the rails, “living all day on my back in a railway compartment and addressing in the evening large audiences.”…
Among the more pernicious distortions of Churchill’s record is that he was a lifetime opponent of rights for women, including their right to vote. Remarks to the Churchill Society of Tennessee, Nashville, 14 October 2017. Continued from part 2….
In 1999 Time magazine explained that Churchill could not be “Person of the Century” because he “bulldoggedly opposed women’s rights.” In 2012 London’s Daily Telegraph wrote: “Churchill believed that women shouldn’t vote, telling the House of Commons that they are ‘well represented by their fathers, brothers and husbands.’”
NASHVILLE, OCTOBER 14TH— The Churchill Society of Tennessee kindly invited me to talk about Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Our hosts, John and Karen Mather and Dick and Linda Knight, could not have been more thoughtful, kinder and more generous to Barbara and me. If I performed anything for them or Mr. Churchill, that’s only a poor contribution in an attempt at requital.
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As a bonus, I was honored by a portrait by Shane Neal, a brilliant Nashville artist and a gent, as their way of saying thanks. In discussing Churchill’s art, Shane was joined by fellow artist Joseph Daily, who painted some forty portraits of the Churchill family and their friends in England. …
Churchill was not infallible, and it diminishes him to treat him as superhuman. On some topics in my book, accomplished scholars have catalogued Churchill’s failings. I take note of them, along with certain less-well-known exculpatory facts. None detract from his greatness. Churchill published 20 million words and left an archive of a million documents: easy pickings for anyone determined to expose his alleged faults by selective editing. Yet that same archive offers the complete context. You have only to do your homework. I have done it. There is no missing context.
Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said
“No one alive knows more about Winston Churchill than Richard Langworth, his vicar on earth. This superb book lays bare the lies told by some, but also reveals new truths about the Greatest Englishman.” —Andrew Roberts, Lehrman Institute Distinguished Scholar, NY Historical Society
About this book:
This ground-breaking work refutes longstanding attacks on Churchill’s actions and character. Among them: that he used troops against strikers, opposed votes for women, was an enemy of Irish independence, cost lives at the Dardanelles, promoted the use of poison gas, hated Gandhi and the Jews, admired Hitler, praised Mussolini, knew about Pearl Harbor beforehand, allowed Coventry to be bombed to protect secret intelligence, refused to bomb Auschwitz, and wanted to nuke the Russians after World War II.…
