Author: Richard M. Langworth

Great War
“With the grenadiers”: Churchill (seated, center) and fellow officers of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, Ploegsteert, Belgium, 1916. At WSC’s right is his longtime colleague in war and peace, Archibald Sinclair. (Creative Commons, Samleighton87)
Centenary of the Great War: Let the Spin Begin

Centenary of the Great War: Let the Spin Begin

Tristram Hunt on the Great War

I didn’t expect to find myself agree­ing with Labour’s Shad­ow Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Tris­tram Hunt. But take a look at his Great War arti­cle “Bash­ing His­to­ry,” and see what you think.

We’re going to be read­ing a lot of sil­ly non­sense about the Great War in the next year or two, and Hunt’s pre­emp­tive strike is a salu­tary warning.

His piece recalls a poet­ic answer to Eric Bogle’s famous poem “Willie McBride,” writ­ten by Stephen Suf­fet in 1997:

Ask the peo­ple of Bel­gium or Alsace-Lorraine,

If my life was wast­ed, if I died in vain.…

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Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

Bill Tilden 1935-2013: Tribute to a Friend

Time is running out and I haven’t told you the half of it: of cruising the Packard Proving Grounds at 140 in Bill’s E-type (ka-pow! went one of his Atlas Bucrons; we stopped to find a fist-sized hole in the tread), or in his retrofitted stick-overdrive Packard Caribbean; touring the bars and dives of the Florida panhandle, in search of some old automotive duffer; entertaining Austin Clark at the Dearborn Inn; Bill driving Brooks Stevens’ Excaliburs at Indy; meandering Hershey looking for Nash dealer signs….

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health care
WSC in 1940 (photo by Walter Stoneman, U.S. Library of Conbgress)
Churchill and Health Care (2): An Ongoing Discussion

Churchill and Health Care (2): An Ongoing Discussion

"A question Churchill had to face in his time was: if you are for the social safety net, includ­ing health care, how do you pre­vent that from build­ing a soci­ety of "drones" (his word), ulti­mately dom­i­nated by a bureau­cratic elite? Churchill answered that ques­tion in many ways: the social safety net is sim­ple jus­tice, he said; with­out it the 'peo­ple will set their faces like flint against the money power'  A con­sti­tu­tion should pro­tect the peo­ple against this ten­dency."

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The Browning of Detroit

The Browning of Detroit

Detroit, 2013— A cor­re­spon­dent sends “25 Facts about the Fall of Detroit That Will Leave You Shak­ing Your Head,” by Michael Sny­der of the Eco­nom­ic Col­lapse Blog:

Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teem­ing metrop­o­lis of 1.8 mil­lion peo­ple and it had the high­est per capi­ta income in the Unit­ed States.  Now it is a rot­ting, decay­ing hell­hole of about 700,000 peo­ple that the rest of the world makes jokes about.

When in July 2013 Detroit announced that it would  file for Chap­ter 9 bank­rupt­cy, the move was stopped at least tem­porar­i­ly by an Ing­ham Coun­ty judge:

She ruled that Detroit’s bank­rupt­cy fil­ing vio­lates the Michi­gan Con­sti­tu­tion because it would result in reduced pen­sion pay­ments for retired work­ers [and that] bank­rupt­cy fil­ing was “also not hon­or­ing the pres­i­dent, who took [Detroit’s auto com­pa­nies] out of bankruptcy”….How…

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Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (3)

Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (3)

Con­clud­ed from Part 2…

Staniel Cay is an active stopover for sail­ing yachts with an affa­ble yacht club for lunch. We spent an hour mean­der­ing its wind­ing lanes and admir­ing the col­or­ful cot­tages. On the way back we stopped at Com­pass Cay to “swim with the sharks”—big, friend­ly nurse sharks which behave like aquat­ic dogs, nos­ing up to a water-lev­el dock to be fed bits of conch and allow­ing their sand­pa­per backs to be scratched.

These nurs­es are quite dif­fer­ent from your image from “Jaws” (and as vet­er­an Bahami­an divers know, we have noth­ing that threat­en­ing in local waters any­way).…

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Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (2)

Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (2)

Con­tin­ued from Part 1…

Once reached, the gem­stone islets of Exu­ma invite you to mean­der at a delib­er­ate pace in placid, gin-clear waters. There were sail­boats and cruis­ing lots galore along the islets, and you can see why. Sail­ing from one to anoth­er, drop­ping anchor by whim or fan­cy, is an expe­ri­ence that will wash the world away.

Every islet is dif­fer­ent and has its own attrac­tions. At Ward­er­ick Wells Cay is the Exu­ma Cays Nation­al Land and Sea Park—a good first stop after cross­ing over from Eleuthera. A marine fish­ery and native plant pre­serve, it occu­pies 176 acres.…

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Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (1)

Exuma: Jewels in the Sea (1)

EXUMA, BAHAMAS, FEBRUARY 5TH— Get­ting from our home island of Eleuthera to oth­er Bahami­an Fam­i­ly islands is com­pli­cat­ed, usu­al­ly requir­ing air trav­el via Nas­sau. But the near­est of the Exu­ma Cays is only about 40 miles from Cape Eleuthera, or 65 miles from Governor’s Har­bour, and you can do that in under two hours in a fast boat. So off we went from Cupid’s Cay aboard Capt. Paul Petty’s immac­u­late Mar­lin 35 skiff, Mar­ti­nis & Bikinis.

The date was our anniver­sary, so it couldn’t have been bet­ter timed. Paul and his affa­ble mate Dwayne had six pas­sen­gers, includ­ing three res­i­dents of Rain­bow Bay and three Cana­di­an ladies, one of whom orga­nized the expe­di­tion.…

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drift
“I didn’t say that. I wish I had.” —WSC in old age. Above: Drifting into Trinidad, March 1961. Churchill, 87, visits the Governor’s residence, Port of Spain, during a cruise aboard the Onassis yacht Christina. Lower right: Dr. Eric Williams, who in August 1962 became the first prime minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago. (Wikimedia Commons)
Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: How Quotations are Invented

Churchillian (or Yogi Berra) Drift: How Quotations are Invented

Drift it is….

Churchillian Drift is just the tick­et. I have been look­ing for a term to describe the numer­ous pot­ted, inac­cu­rate Churchill quotes. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its trousers on.” That is big right now on Twit­ter. “Suc­cess is not final, fail­ure is not fatal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.” Every­body uses that one repeatedly.

“If you’e going through hell, keep going.” No one knows who said that, but it wasn’t Churchill. Then there is: “If I were your hus­band, I’d drink it.”…

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Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 3/3

Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 3/3

Part 3: Pleas­ing No One …con­tin­ued from Part 2

Churchill was cor­rect when he said his writ­ings about Hitler sat­is­fied nei­ther Hitler’s defend­ers nor Hitler’s crit­ics. One of the for­mer was Lord Lon­don­der­ry, a pro-Hitler peer who com­plained that Churchill’s Evening Stan­dard piece would pre­vent a decent under­stand­ing with Ger­many. On 23 Octo­ber 1937, Churchill replied to Lord Lon­don­der­ry (Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, 581):

You can­not expect Eng­lish peo­ple to be attract­ed by the bru­tal intol­er­ances of Nazidom, though these may fade with time. On the oth­er hand, we all wish to live on friend­ly terms with Ger­many.…

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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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