Richard M. Langworth, Author at Richard M. Langworth

Churchillisms: Puddings Without a Theme

20 July 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"[We are] passing through a period of eclipse which may well be converted into a period of decline. There is anxiety abroad, and can we wonder at it! Why should the Government complain? Look at all they have said. Look at all they protest they stand for…. They have no theme [and] have deluded the masses of their supporters in the country into believing they are about to bring into being some vast, splendid, new world." —WSC

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“Jennie” with Lee Remick is Viewable on YouTube

15 July 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Viewable all seven episodes on YouTube, "Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill" (1974) remains one of finest Churchill films, honest to history with vivid portraits of the Edwardian Churchills. Its lasting fame was largely owed to Lee Remick, whose portrayal of Lady Randolph was simply unimpeachable. As Gregory Peck said at our tribute: "Playing opposite this clear-eyed Yankee girl with the appealing style and femininity that graces every one of her roles just simply brings out the best in a man."

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Churchill and the Red Scare: The Zinoviev Letter

10 July 2024 Comments 0 Comments

The conspiracy theorists have not got round to accusing Churchill of actually writing the Zinoviev Letter–at least as far we know! It is virtually certain that he was not involved in the forgery, though he initially accepted it as genuine. He did take political advantage of the Zinoviev uproar. Even if it were forged, he said, it was nothing new where Bolsheviks were concerned. He called Ramsay MacDonald a “futile Kerensky.”

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Cita Stelzer on the Anglo-American Special Relationship

5 July 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Cita Stelzer notes that Churchill’s outgoing character, his fraternal love of his mother’s land, soon disabused his hosts of base impressions. The Anglophile journalist Frederick Wile was not the first American to go out on a limb (albeit with a nickname WSC detested): “Dynamic, brilliant, resourceful and lion-hearted, ‘Winnie’s’ path, his admirers are persuaded, one day will lead him to the premiership” (110). It would—but not quite in the way Wile expected.

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Coming: New Churchill Phrase Index in My Next Quotebook

30 June 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Coming from Hillsdale College Press, the new edition will carry a brand new title in keeping with its far larger content. Earlier editions contained 3500 quotations; they now total over 5000. Many new ones derive from The Churchill Documents, 1942 to 1965, also published by Hillsdale. The preliminary proofs total 736 pages, but that's without the indexes. These are being compiled by the award-winning lecturer Do Mi Stauber.

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

25 June 2024 Comments 2 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 Twenty-four." (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 1 Comment

"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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