Summarizing the life of a man who accomplished so much and positively affected so many is an impossible task. Fortunately, he documented much of it himself — 726 blog posts remain as a testament to his passion for history, automobiles, and the enduring legacy of Sir Winston S. Churchill. His work extended beyond this site with dozens of books, written or edited, and hundreds of published magazine and journal articles. Fittingly, his final blog post was titled Life and Living — an apt reflection of a man who lived with purpose and determination.

Alas, I am unqualified to provide even the smallest biography. His contributions about classic English and American cars are too numerous, and his dedication to Churchill’s legacy defies summary. I can only gesture towards his 2005 speech at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, in which he discusses Churchill’s The Dream. That speech exemplifies his best traits: passion for his work, encyclopedic knowledge, and a sense of humor that usually landed. But beyond his work, he was a father, a husband, and a friend.

I will always remember my father in his true habitat: in an office, hunched over a keyboard, typing with profuse concentration and surrounded by the hundreds of books, magazines, and other memorabilia that inspired and helped define him. His office wasn’t messy, just crammed full of meticulously organized knowledge with every reference at his fingertips.

How I wish to see him at home and happy once again, whether feet up and cigar in hand on the deck of his house in Eleuthera, or feeling proud and exhausted after returning from another bike ride, or grinning triumphantly after a decisive roll in Settlers of Catan. I’ll forever retain my fond memories of the room-sized model train set we built in the barn, or the tall plumes of snow firing from his tractor as he cleared the driveway in New Hampshire winters, or biking with him through the hills of California’s wine country. I’ll sorely miss sharing a dram of Scotch, a hearty snack, and recalling a scene from one of our favorite movies.

I have been, and always shall be, your friend. Live long and prosper, Dad.

— Ian Langworth

Richard M. Langworth is survived by his wife, Barbara; his son, Ian (Emily); and his grandchildren, Michael and Aiden.

Edit: Kind words were also expressed at The Churchill Project by Hillsdale College and on the Antique Automobile Club of America forums.

I was honored to be invited to join Lord Roberts, author of Walking with Destiny at Secrets of Statecraft. It was fun to chat with the author of the foremost one-volume life of Churchill, about where Sir Winston stands on his 150th birthday. We mutually concluded that he stands as tall as ever.

Mistakes real and imagined

Andrew Roberts: “It’s sort of classic, isn’t it, that the more you look into Churchill’s actual actions, the less the detractors really have to say? They’ve a few lines that they can come out with, especially obviously, on social media. But when you actually dig into the truth, there’s less and less behind it. Would you say that’s fair, historically?”

Richard Langworth: “Yes, I think so. Of course there are many cases where he made mistakes, serious ones. They never seem to come up. Instead we always get these long trails of red herrings.”

AR: “Let’s go into some of them.”

And we did: all criticisms are here: the real, the  imagined, the preposterous. We covered the gamut, from women’s suffrage to the Bengal Famine.

Churchill today

AR: “Now tell me why you think that 150 years after his birth, we should still be interested in Churchill, what he has to teach us today.”

RL: “That’s a tall order, Andrew.”

AR: “Sorry, old boy, that’s why you’re on.”

RL: “First, I like what you said at the end of the Netflix documentary. Who else could still make people laugh sixty years after his death? I mean, we will say that about Groucho Marx. But a politician? Can you think of another one?

“Beyond that, we need to remember him because he spoke everlasting truths about the relations between peoples, about governance, about the value of liberty. Those are as relevant as ever today.

“I was alive and sentient in 1959, which was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. And I don’t remember anything like as much attention paid to him as we do to Churchill today. Of course, we live in a different era, an age of 24/7 saturation media. But he does seem to be permanently on everyone’s mind.

“As to what appeals about him: Sir John Gielgud said ‘Churchill was as ordinary as any of us and as extraordinary as any of us can hope to be.’

“But of all answers to that question, I always come back to Sir Martin Gilbert‘s. He was asked to explain Churchill in just one sentence. Sir Martin didn’t hesitate:  ‘He was a great humanitarian who was himself distressed that the accidents of history gave him his greatest power at a time when everything had to be focused on defending the country from destruction rather than achieving his goals of a fairer society.’”

Related articles

“No Cutlet Uncooked: Andrew Roberts’s Superb Churchill Biography,” 2018.

“Reviewing Netflix’s Churchill at War: The Things We Do For England,” 2024.

“Churchill at 150: ‘A Certain Splendid Memory,’” 2024.

“Get Ready for Churchill’s Anti-Sesquicentennial,” 2024.

“Churchill’s Racist Epithets are Remarkably Rare,” 2020.

A luncheon meeting of Northern California Churchillians will be held at Lara’s Fine Dining, 1900 Esplanade Drive, Richmond, California, starting at 11am. This wonderful location is far from the untidiness of SF and right on the water. It is next to the Rosie the Riveter Museum and the former Kaiser World War II manufacturing site, which attendees may wish to visit after our event.

Richard Langworth, Churchill historian and Senior Fellow of the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, will speak and answer questions on “Churchill and Palestine, 1917-1948.” The nearby Kaiser factory is a happy coincidence: Richard’s first book, Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit, began with Henry Kaiser building Liberty and Victory ships during the Second World War. (See “Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History.”)

How to register

We will hold a social hour at 11 am followed by lunch at noon and the discussion at 1pm. If you wish to attend, please mail a check for $60 per person (made out to CBTB or “Churchillians by the Bay”) attending to Gregory B. Smith, 154 W. Spain St, Villa T, Sonoma, CA 95476. Be sure to include your menu choice of chicken, salmon, or ravioli from this menu. We hope to see you there for this important event. —Gregory B. Smith, Chairman, Churchillians by the Bay, telephone: (707) 974-9324, churchilliansbythebay@gmail.com.

Churchill and Palestine

Richard will review Churchill’s involvement with Palestine and Israel from the 1917 Balfour Declaration and 1921 Cairo Conference through the “Two-State Solutions” of 1937, 1938 and 1947, and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Churchill’s views and comments will be discussed.

Churchill and Palestine had a long association, spanning two world wars and thirty years. It began when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared Britain’s support for a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. Almost simultaneously, T.E. Lawrence was promising the Arabs sovereignty over Middle Eastern lands ruled for nearly half a millennium by the Turks. In return, Jews and Arabs fought with the Allies in the First World War. A reluctant Britain accepted responsibility for the Mandate of Palestine after the war. East Palestine, 6/7ths of the Mandate, became Arab-ruled Jordan. West Palestine, a tiny sliver the size of Massachusetts, became the source of conflict that has now lasted over a century.

“You deal with it”

Churchill and Palestine were thrown together because Turkey was on the wrong side in the First World War. By its end, the former Ottoman Empire was a shambles. Revolutions and conspiracies were suspected among Arabs, Bolsheviks, Jews and recidivist Turks. The only significant military force left was a British army of about one million. No other power was present in force.

“At this truly horrendous moment,” wrote the historian David Fromkin, “Prime Minister Lloyd George in effect turned to his Colonial Secretary Churchill and said, ‘You deal with it.’”

Churchill expanded his Middle East department with some of the most capable people, including T.E. Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell. They convened in Cairo with Arab and Jewish delegates to redraw the borders of the expired Turkish empire.

Remember that for Britain at least, despite what you may have heard, oil was not the objective. Churchill had secured the Royal Navy’s oil by founding the Anglo-Persian Oil Company before the war. It later became known as BP. It was suspected that Iraq had oil; but Britain had no need for it, and France did not begin thinking about oil until later.

Chapter 1…

The 1921 Cairo Conference created the same Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that are there today. The French received League of Nations “mandates” over the last two. The British were handed Iraq and Palestine—east and west. In Iraq and East Palestine (Jordan), the conference placed Arab kings—Hashemites, who were not indigenous. This marked Chapter 1 in the story of Churchill and Palestine.

A frequent question is: Why did Churchill put foreign kings in charge of Iraq and Jordan? David Fromkin replied:

Because, in the world in which Churchill grew up, that’s what you did. When it was decided, just before the First World War, to create an independent state of Albania, an intrinsic part of the thing was to find it a king. In the Middle East in 1921, the same thinking applied.

Remember, the Ottoman Empire had no nationality. It was a Turkish-speaking Muslim empire. It was very difficult to establish ethnicity and loyalty since it was only based on religion. Thus, any Muslim government was pretty much acceptable to people of the area.

The scene was now set for generations of strife….

More on Churchill and Palestine

“When Did Churchill Become a Zionist?” 2022.

“Q&A: Churchill at the Stroke of a Pen, Jordan and the Indian Army,” 2021.

“Churchill and Lawrence; A Conjunction of Two Bright Stars,” 2020.

“Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East, 100 Years On,” 2020.

From Gregory B. Smith, Chairman
Churchillians by the Bay. Telephone: 707 (974) 9324. Email: churchilliansbythebay@gmail.com

Our speaker will be Richard Langworth, Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project, Writer and Historian who will speak on the “State of Churchill Scholarship Today.”

Please note that to attend you need to do three things:

1. 1. Send me a check made out to Churchillians by the Bay for $50. Email or phone for address
2. 2. Tell me your menu choice. The luncheon choices are Asian Chicken Salad or the Tuna Niçoise Salad.
3. 3. Email me a copy of your vaccination certificate or your CA Health Card

Merry Christmas and here follows the original announcement:

Please reserve your seat by sending me a check for $50 by January 4^th, made out to Churchillians by the Bay and please note which entrée you wish.

California law and the Presidio Golf Club rules require proof of vaccination which I must submit no later than 24 hours prior to the event. Photocopies of your vaccination card or even better, the official California vaccination record which you can obtain from myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov. Needless to say, unvaccinated individuals are not invited.

The club is located at 8 Presidio Terrace in San Francisco at the south edge of the Presidio. For a map and directions go to http://tinyurl.com/qhldvtt. Parking is free, but you must go into the club and get a parking pass for your dashboard. We will have our usual social hour from 11am to noon, with lunch followed by the speaker.

The King’s Ships: “We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs.”

Irish Sea to Portland: Churchill Connections, 8-12 June 2019

The 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain was a unique opportunity to recall the Churchill saga by passing or visiting key places. These shaped and affected Churchill’s thought and engaged his pen. Concluded from part 2….

Herein we highlight Portland, from which Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, sent the Grand Fleet to its war station in July 1914.

Douglas, Isle of Man (June 7th)

Enemy aliens interred on the Isle of Man in 1940-45. Churchill recognized delicate questions of civil liberties. He had mixed feelings on the question, and tended to advocate leniency and early release. After the war, Winston Churchill was named a Freeman of Douglas.

Liverpool (June 8th) – Holyhead (June 9th) – Dublin (June 10th)

Banished from London society, after a dispute with “a great personage,” Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill moved to Dublin in 1876. There they remained until 1880. Randolph served as secretary to his father, the 7th Duke of Marlborough, conveniently made Viceroy.  Young Winston’s first memories were of Ireland, and Irish affairs were to occupy his time for decades during his political career.

Waterford (June 11th) – Portland (June 12th)

Many cruisers will visit Waterford for its famous crystal, but I hoped to see where John Redmond was sworn in. Redmond represented Waterford for the Irish Parliamentary Party for nearly thirty years, and his son after him.

In the debate over Irish Home Rule, Redmond, like Churchill, favored moderation, conciliation and Irish autonomy. Many years later in the Commons, Churchill said: “I always bear in my memory with regard, John Redmond…of the old Irish Parliamentary Party…pleading the cause of Ireland, with great eloquence and Parliamentary renown… [He expressed] absolute support and unity with this country until everybody said everywhere, ‘The brightest spot in the world is Ireland.’”

Off to the southwest of Ireland is the Old Head of Kinsale, where RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. Again, Churchill was among the scapegoats, and my onboard lecture addressed the myth. Further on is Plymouth, scene of some of Churchill’s greatest speeches in peace and war. Finally we stopped at Portland, where dramatic events occurred as World War I broke out. Churchill vividly recalled the scene in The World Crisis (1923)….

Remembering Portland, 1914: “The King’s ships were at sea”

On the 17th and 18th of July was held the grand review of the Navy. It constituted incomparably the greatest assemblage of naval power ever witnessed in the history of the world…. The whole Fleet put to sea for exercises of various kinds. It took more than six hours for this armada, every ship decked with flags and crowded with bluejackets and marines, to pass…

As early as Tuesday July 28, I felt that the Fleet [at Portland] should go to its War Station. It must go there at once, and secretly; it must be steaming to the north while every German authority, naval or military, had the greatest possible interest in avoiding a collision with us. If it went thus early it need not go by the Irish Channel and northabout. It could go through the Straits of Dover and through the North Sea, and therefore the island would not be uncovered even for a single day. Moreover, it would arrive sooner and with less expenditure of fuel….

We decided that the Fleet should leave Portland at such an hour on the morning of the 29th as to pass the Straits of Dover during the hours of darkness, that it should traverse these waters at high speed and without lights, and with the utmost precaution proceed to Scapa Flow. I feared to bring this matter before the Cabinet, the Fleet, lest it should mistakenly be considered a provocative action likely to damage the chances of peace. It would be unusual to bring movements of the British Fleet in Home Waters from one British port to another before the Cabinet. I only therefore informed the Prime Minister, who at once gave his approval….

The Ships to their War Station

We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. -We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs.

We were now in a position, whatever happened, to control events…. If war should come no one would know where to look for the British Fleet. Somewhere in that enormous waste of waters to the north of our islands, cruising now this way, now that, shrouded in storms and mists, dwelt this mighty organization. Yet from the Admiralty building we could speak to them at any moment if need arose. The king’s ships were at sea.” —WSC, The World Crisis, vol. I, 1923

Northern Britain: Churchill Connections, June 4th to 7th

The 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain offered a unique opportunity to recall the Churchill saga by passing or visiting key places, starting with English Channel and North Sea venues from Southampton to Yorkshire to Edinburgh and the north of Scotland. Such places shaped and affected Churchill’s thought and engaged his pen. Continued from Part 1….

Herein we highlight Scapa Flow and Loch Ewe, where Churchill—First Lord again, twenty-five years later—visited the Grand Fleet in 1939.

Scotland and the Hebrides (June 4th)

From Edinburgh we sail past Dundee, Churchill’s constituency for most of his years as a Liberal MP (1908-22). Next, Invergordon, a naval base, and his preferred site for the July 1945 “Big Three” meeting with Stalin and Truman. (The chosen site was Potsdam, outside Berlin.) In the far north we pass between the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Scapa Flow, Orkney, was one the World War II fleet anchorages in Scotland. Churchill visited both Scapa and Loch Ewe in mid-September, 1939.

U-47 sinks HMS Royal Oak

A month after Churchill’s visit, Lt. Günther Prien, commanding the German U-47, crept into Scapa and sank HMS Royal Oak.  Prien also managed to escape—through a narrow channel cluttered with block ships. It was a brilliant piece of seamanship. The channels were quickly filled with stone blocks, known as the “Churchill Barriers.” Today they serve as motor causeways.

Hosting a Churchill tour in the 1990s, we were accompanied by the late Lord Jellicoe, son of the World War I naval commander. “George” to one and all, he made possible a unique experience. The Orkney pilot boat took us out to the wreck site. On color sonar, we could see the sunken battleship’s outline on the bottom. Like USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Royal Oak is a designated war grave. Every year, Royal Navy divers mount a new White Ensign on her stern.

Glasgow-Greenock (June 5th)

On his 1939 visit, Churchill sailed on HMS Nelson from Scapa Flow to Loch Ewe in the Hebrides. There he inspected the rest of the battle fleet before motoring to Inverness and a train back to London. Our sea route takes us through the Hebrides, passing the Isle of Jura. Churchill never visited this beautiful, barren isle, home to only a few hundred people and much larger numbers of red deer. (And a fine scotch distillery!) Unknown to him, George Orwell would rent a cottage on the northern tip of Jura, where he wrote 1984. His chilling novel of a future totalitarian world claimed Churchill’s close attention. He read it at least twice.

Greenock, near Glasgow, was the main port for Churchill’s wartime transatlantic voyages, 1941-44. The Scottish historian Gordon Barclay has exploded another myth about sending tanks against strikers. Read his piece on the so-called “Battle of George Square.” We look forward to lunching with Dr. Barclay in Edinburgh.

Belfast (June 6th)

Churchill and Ireland intertwined for forty years. In Belfast in 1886, his father, defying Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule bill took the part of unionist Ulster. “Ulster will fight,” Lord Randolph Churchill exclaimed, “and Ulster will be right,” In this same unionist stronghold in 1911, his son Winston defended the Third Home Rule Bill, promising Ulster freedom of choice. Mobs stormed and rocked his car, pelted him with missiles—without scoring a hit!

The numerous myths surrounding Churchill and Ireland are part of one of my onboard lectures. One of these involves Belfast, but not Home Rule. Visitors to the city may take the Titanic Trail, to the birthplace of the ill-fated liner, which Churchill’s negligence is supposed to have sunk. We shall take care of that one at sea. No icebergs are in sight.

Remembering Scotland, 1939:

I felt it my duty to visit Scapa at the earliest moment…. I stayed with the Commander-in-Chief in his flagship, Nelson, and discussed not only Scapa but the whole naval problem with him and his principal officers…. The rest of the Fleet was hiding in Loch Ewe and the Admiral took me there on the Nelson…. It was like the others a lovely day…. On every side rose the purple hills of Scotland in all their splendour.

My thoughts went back a quarter of a century to that other September when I had last visited Sir John Jellicoe and his captains in this very bay, and had found them with their long lines of battleships and cruisers drawn out at anchor, a prey to the same uncertainties as now afflicted us…. An entirely different generation filled the uniforms and the posts….

“No one had been over the same terrible course twice…”

It seemed that I was all that survived in the same position I had held so long ago. But no; the dangers had survived too. Danger from beneath the waves, more serious with more powerful U-boats; danger from the air, not merely of being spotted in your hiding-place, but of heavy and perhaps destructive attack!

I motored from Loch Ewe to Inverness, where our train awaited us. We had a picnic lunch on the way by a stream, sparkling in hot sunshine. I felt oddly oppressed with my memories. “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

* * *

No one had ever been over the same terrible course twice with such an interval between. No one had felt its dangers and responsibilities from the summit as I had, or, to descend to a small point, understood how First Lords of the Admiralty are treated when great ships are sunk and things go wrong.

If we were in fact going over the same cycle a second time, should I have once again to endure the pangs of dismissal? Fisher, Wilson, Battenberg, Jellicoe, Beatty, Pakenham, Sturdee, all gone!

I feel like one

Who treads alone,

Some banquet-hall deserted

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed.

And what of the supreme, measureless ordeal in which we were again irrevocably plunged? Poland in its agony; France but a pale reflection of her former warlike ardour; the Russian Colossus no longer an ally, not even neutral, possibly to become a foe. Italy no friend. Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact and gloriously united, but ill-prepared, unready. We still had command of the sea. We were woefully outmatched in numbers in this new mortal weapon of the air. Somehow the light faded out of the landscape.”  —WSC, 1948

 

Continued in Part 3…

Britain’s East Coast: Churchill Connections, June 1st to 3rd

The 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain offered a unique opportunity to recall the Churchill saga by passing or visiting key places, starting with English Channel and North Sea venues from Southampton to Yorkshire to Edinburgh. These venues shaped and affected Churchill’s thought and engaged his pen.

From the Isle of Wight, where Churchill’s parents met in 1874, we are reminded of his adventures during the two greatest wars in history. Many places associate with his command of the Royal Navy, twenty-five-years apart, in both World Wars.

In this series of posts we highlight the Yorkshire coast, shelled by Germany in December 1914. Then Scapa Flow and Loch Ewe, where Churchill—First Lord again, twenty-five years later—visited the Grand Fleet in 1939. Finally Portland, from which Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, sent the entire British fleet to its war station in July 1914. The three locations illustrate and inform on Churchill’s words and actions in defense of liberty.

Southampton (June 1st)

Winston Churchill’s parents met at the Cowes Regatta, Isle of Wight, in  1873. Island venues grand and small include Queen Victoria’s beloved Osborne House; and the Everest house in Ventnor, where young Winston witnessed the sinking of the Eurydice in 1880. Visitors to the south of England will find several days worth of Churchill exploration on the Isle, and may recall a notable event off Portland in July 1914 (see part 3 in this series).

English Channel and North Sea (June 2nd)

This year marks, with suitable ceremony, the 75th Anniversary of Operation Overlord, the invasion of France, on D-Day, 6 June 1944. On the Hillsdale cruise, one of my lecture topics is the myth that Churchill opposed D-Day. According to one film, his resistance lasted virtually until the ships sailed. This is the sort of nonsense up with which we shall not put.

Farther along we pass the Cinque Ports, Hastings, Rye (New Romney), Hythe, Dover and Sandwich. Churchill held the ancient and honorary title Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, from 1941 to his death. (His successor was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.) Among other things, the Lord Warden was entitled to and responsible for all whales washed up along this section of coast. The prospect quite alarmed Churchill, who thought he might be required to remove the carcasses!

Kent and Norfolk

Folkestone, Kent marked the farthest extent of World War II cross-channel shelling (1943). At nearby Dover Castle Admiral Bertram Ramsay fixed his headquarters for Operation Dynamo, the Dunkirk Evacuation (1940). Broadstairs, Kent, was for a time Field Marshal Montgomery’s headquarters. It was also where little Marigold, the Churchills’ fourth child, died of septicemia at the age of 2 1/2 in 1921.

The Churchills holidayed at Pear Tree Cottage, Overstrand, Norfolk as war clouds gathered in July 1914. Winston was hastily recalled to London, and soon after sent for his family. Fears rose of a German attack on the Norfolk or Yorkshire coasts. Sure enough, German cruisers shelled Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool, spurring Churchill to action (December 1914). To  his disappointment, a decisive encounter did not materialize (see below). In January 1915 came another inconclusive naval confrontation, the Battle of the Dogger Bank.

Edinburgh (June 3rd)

Approaching Edinburgh along the coast of East Lothian, we pass Dirleton. Here was the Scottish home of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, who offered young Winston the Admiralty in 1911. Edinburgh is home to the retired Royal Yacht HMY Britannia, the Scottish National War Museum, and numerous other Churchillian venues.

Leaving Edinburgh is the Firth of Forth fleet anchorage. Here Admiral David Beatty on his flagship watched the proud German High Seas Fleet sail in to anchor and surrender at the end of World War I. Here too, in 1919, the German crews opened their ships’ seacocks and simultaneously scuttled their fleet in a brave act of defiance.

Remembering Yorkshire, December 1914: The Perils of Silence

On 16 December 1914, elements of the German High Seas Fleet bombarded three Yorkshire coastal towns. The result was 592 casualties, mostly civilians, of whom 137 died.

British Intelligence had known that German ships had sailed from their home ports two days earlier. But the Royal Navy had to patrol 500 miles of coastline, whereas the enemy could strike where it wished. The Germans opted for Yorkshire. Upon hearing of the German action, Churchill despatched a British squadron, led by Admiral Beatty in HMS Lion. As the British arrived, the German ships retired at flank speed for home, avoiding a decisive engagement. In The World Crisis, Churchill regretted how little the public knew. The Admiralty could only issue a vague communiqué….

This morning a German cruiser force made a demonstration upon the Yorkshire coast, in the course of which they shelled Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough. A number of their fastest ships were employed for this purpose, and they remained about an hour on the coast. They were engaged by the patrol vessels on the spot…. Sighted by British vessels, the Germans retired at full speed, and, favoured by the mist, succeeded in making good their escape. The losses on both sides are small, but full reports have not yet been received….

Public Opprobrium

Outrage in Yorkshire fell hard against Churchill, who vowed to force the Germans back out if he had to dig them out “like rats in a hole.” This proved an ill-judged remark. For the entire course of the war, the High Seas Fleet never massed for a climactic battle, near Yorkshire or anywhere else. His enemies often flung Churchill’s words back at him in derision. Later, Churchill expressed his frustration in The World Crisis:

Naturally there was much indignation at the failure of the Navy to prevent, or at least to avenge, such an attack upon our shores. What was the Admiralty doing? Were they all asleep?… We had to bear in silence the censures of our countrymen….

One comfort we had…. The sources of information upon which we relied were trustworthy. Next time we might at least have average visibility. But would there be a next time? … On the other hand, the exultation of Germany at the hated English towns being actually made to feel for the first time the real lash of war might encourage a second attempt. Even the indignation of our own newspapers had a value for this purpose. One could only hope for the best. Meanwhile British naval plans and secrets remained wrapped in impenetrable silence.

Continued in part 2…

Delving in

While I received no extra pay for writing the Kaiser-Frazer book, I did have the use of an expense account for travel. That was where Bill Tilden came through again. He helped me track down and interview many of people responsible for the cars Kaiser-Frazer built. Others were located through the deep tentacles of Automobile Quarterly, its contacts in the industry. We also searched for archives large and small.

Our greatest archival find was at Kaiser Industries in Oakland, California: the Kaiser-Frazer photo files, placed on loan for AQ’s use. They documented virtually every design drawing, clay model and prototype the company built.

Bill and I pored over them for several days, bleary-eyed as the secrets of the company came to life. Fortunately we were able to reproduce many in the book.

There were so many, it was hard to choose. Toward the end of the second day I picked a photo up, saying, “Ever see one like that before?” And Bill said, “I think we’ve seen a dozen like that, but let’s use it. It has a good looking tailpipe.” Later the archive disappeared. I don’t know if it ever resurfaced. I hope it’s in good hands.

“You know,” I said to Bill after Oakland, “this is going to be one helluva book. We’ve found this massive archive, and all these people to interview. All concentrated within ten years. I have a chance to go into far more detail than if I were writing a history of, say, General Motors.” So it proved.

Kaiser-Frazer people

As historians (as we optimistically called ourselves) we were just in time. Many of the principals, including Henry J. Kaiser, were dead. His son Edgar didn’t want to go on record, though fortunately other Kaiser people did. Many were aging or infirm, but happy to reminisce. The book made good its claim to be “An Intimate Behind the Scenes Study of the Postwar American Car Industry,” because we were able to locate and talk to so many key people.

One night in south Georgia we found Henry C. McCaslin, chief engineer of the stillborn front-wheel-drive Kaiser. Mac drank too much early in life and wasn’t long for this world. He told us what he knew, testifying to Henry Kaiser’s zest for clean-slate thinking. “I loved that old guy,” he said.

Mac was sad that the front-wheel-drive car Kaiser wanted to build didn’t work out. “We built two prototypes,” he said. (I have since heard the figure six, but Mac was there at the time; none has ever surfaced.) “But Henry and Joe Frazer needed production more than innovation. So they spent their money gearing up Willow Run.”

Willow Run was Henry Ford’s immense ex-bomber factory outside of Detroit. It was a mile long—at the time the longest car plant under one roof. Hickman Price signed the lease in 1945. Later, Kaiser-Frazer bought it from the War Assets Administration. Just two years later, K-F was the leading independent car producer—out-producing Studebaker, Nash, Packard, Hudson and Willys.

K-F’s inspired engineers

We were lucky to find Ralph Isbrandt, chief engineer on the groundbreaking ’51 Kaiser project. The poor guy was dying of cancer, but he spent many hours with me and was a leading source of engineering background.

Ralph was hired in 1948 by Kaiser’s engineering vice-president Dean Hammond, who told him to ignore the organization chart and deal with him direct. “Hammond was not one of the Kaisers’ California ‘orange juicers’ we Detroit hands joked about,” Ralph remembered. “He had a good staff…

“John Widman was chief body engineer—his father had founded the Widman Body Company, later bought by Briggs. He had the idea for the ultra-thin A-pillars, created by turning them on their sides. The experimental engineers were West coast guys, George Harbert and Ben Edmonston. Frazer recruits were George Henry, later motor engineer for American Motors; and Les Klauser from Chrysler, who ran K-F’s engine factory.” It was a true team effort, Detroit and California guys, Isbrandt told me. “If only the two sides had maintained that relationship, things might have been different.”

Roadability in the Fifties

From early 1948, the engineers turned entirely to an all-new ‘51 Kaiser. Isbrandt continued:

We wanted a low center of gravity and a unit body. We took a Nash apart, but decided that Nash had just put a conventional frame on a standard body. John Widman said we could get close to unitized construction in stiffness and rigidity.

That’s why we used a great many body mounts, each carefully located. The result was an extremely rigid car, yet a conventional body and frame, easier to work on, less susceptible to rust. Our production prototype weighed only 3200 pounds. Nobody in the industry was within 400 pounds of us.

Ralph bundled Tom McCahill, the colorful Mechanix Illustrated road tester, into a pre-production prototype. They drove out on the Willow Run airport runway—in between planes taking off! That was their “test track” in those days.

Ralph wound the car up to 60 and threw the wheel hard over. It skidded but remained flat and controllable. “I scared the hell out of him,” Ralph laughed. “He nearly jumped out! But I knew what this car could do.” If only they’d made a V-8, to go with that fine handling.

Uncle Tom had a way with words. He wasn’t big on Kaiser’s compact, the Henry J: “It looks like a Cadillac that started smoking too young.”

But he loved the ’51 Kaiser. “It has more creative thinking since Gen. Grant got his last shave.” Of the ’53 Manhattan he wrote, “It rides like a wheelchair upholstered in cream puffs.”

So if and when you see one of those Kaisers on the road, think about Ralph and George and John and Dean and Les and Ben, who together engineered one of the best handling full-size American cars of its day.

K-F’s fabulous styling

Of course the thing that attracts us to these cars is not so much under the skin but their styling, so far ahead of its time. That began, as so many things did, with Dutch Darrin. Without Dutch, they wouldn’t have been the same. But without the team, the cars might never have been as good as they were. The ’51 and its successors were testimony to talent and teamwork. (For the complete design story, see “Kaiser Capers, Part 3.”)

Dutch was a visionary, a romantic, very much his own man, not inclined to tolerate the ideas of others. He was utterly unable hide his light under a bushel. Joe Frazer had hired him to design the first generation cars of 1947-50.

When he heard a redesign was afoot Dutch rushed to Willow Run. There, at a famous review, Henry Kaiser personally chose Dutch’s full-size airbrush rendering, the “Constellation,” over competing designs by his own stylists and Brooks Stevens Associates.

Brooks Stevens, the other outsider, had a distinguished history in industrial design successes, from Miller beer bottles to the civilian Jeeps. Although his basic shape was not chosen, he contributed many detail ideas, including the idea of a “wrap-around bumper” and a combination bumper-grille. (I called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Milwaukee famous.“)

Duncan McRae, who was Dutch’s assistant then, told me of the famous design review:

The other designers lined up in front of our drawing, hoping Mr. Kaiser wouldn’t see it. Dutch was infuriated. “Watch this,” he said. Then he loosened his belt, got up, called for both Henry and Edgar Kaiser, and as he walked towards them his pants fell to the floor.

After the laughter subsided, he held their complete attention. And of course he did a beautiful selling job. Minutes later, Mr. Kaiser said, “Well, this is it!” Seems incredible by today’s standards, but that’s how cars were shaped in the Fifties.

Devils in the details

Once a design has been accepted, it has to be made into a viable production car. That always involves compromises, and Dutch was no diplomat. So in assigning credit for the ’51 Kaiser, we have to acknowledge all those who followed Dutch and saw it into production.

Alex Tremulis, who had designed the Tucker, headed K-F Advanced Styling, It was he who styled a hardtop prototype which he called the Sun Goddess, “after an Egyptian gal I used to know.” Alex told me about the company’s great in-house designers:

Herb Weissinger, who developed the production shape, was one of the most talented in the profession: a maestro in the execution of a line on a surface. His chrome appliqués were done with the perfection of a Cellini. He never received the plaudits of his profession, but he was one of the greatest.

Arnott “Buzz” Grisinger was the greatest sculptural design modeler I ever met. He did little on paper, usually a quick sketch of a beautiful car floating in space without wheels. This was all he needed to attack a full-size clay model. A master of simplicity, his models were examples of sheer elegance. Engineering draftsmen told me they never had to surface-develop any irregularities. They just took templates off the clay and used the lines verbatim.

Bob Robillard, “Robillardo,” was indispensable when it came to refining and working out endless details for production. Like Buzz he was happiest working alone. I remember Bob sitting in the front seat of a Kaiser sedan for weeks on end, personally modeling the ’54 instrument panel. A real purist, he said that in order properly to design it, one had to live behind it. He was worth ten of his peers.

Team effort

Duncan McRae and Herb Weissinger were mainly responsible for finalizing the ’51 Kaiser. Poor Dutch was eternally frustrated, and eventually left, and the company ungratefully took his name off the cars in 1952.

“I remember coming into the studio one morning after Dutch had walked out,” said Bob Robillard. And there was his beautiful clay model, with a sculpting tool buried to the hilt in the hood. You could have entitled the scene ‘Frustration.’”

We don’t want to under-credit any of these people, because they were a team. And look at what they gave us. The ’51-’55 cars were lower, with more glass, than any Detroit cars on the road—the work of Dutch, Brooks, Herb and Dunc. Grisinger styled the famous 1954 facelift, Bob Robillard did the instrument panels. Carleton Spencer gave us the Kaiser Dragons, and a host of fabrics and colors never seen in cars before. The entire industry benefitted from their work.

In life, nature and nurture do not suffice…

…Success requires they be joined, and their convergence is due to a third ingredient called luck. That is, being in the right place at the right time. Kaiser-Frazer was supremely lucky to have arrived when it did, and to recruit such supremely talented people. One of the most charming things about them, from Joe Frazer down to the lowest engineer on the totem pole, is that they never stopped saying so.

Kaiser-Frazer’s achievement, then, was not just the compulsive application of massive talent, but of a series of events at a unique time. “Luck” means the innumerable things that happen which initially have little to do with talent or striving. In other words, we are fascinated by the K-F phenomenon in part because it is filled with incidents that, were they part of a novel, would cause disbelievers to dismiss them as poetic license.

A story like a novel

Imagine, then, a novel about a fictional company called Kaiser-Frazer. Its story of course must be ten years long—what used to be called a Victorian triple-decker. Indeed, the first melodramatic detail that strikes the reader is just how long it lasted.

It faced truly formidable odds: the combined might of a major industry during the greatest period of economic expansion in American history. Except that it was not a novel. It was the Last Onslaught on Detroit.

Joe Ligo of AutoMoments, who produces highly professional YouTube videos on vintage cars, has published an excellent video on the 1954 Kaiser Special he’s admired since high school. No sooner did I start watching than I heard Joe say his liking for the ’54 Kaiser was bolstered by my book: “My ninth grade self thought it was beautiful…. In person, I still think the design is drop-dead gorgeous.”

Well, I too was in the ninth grade when a ’54 Kaiser (on the street, in 1957!) swept me off my feet. It lit a fire that I only put out twenty years later with my first, and perhaps my best, car book.

Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit (1975, reprinted 1980) was based on dozens of inter­views with company engi­neers, styl­ists and exec­u­tives, and packed with rare pho­tos from pro­to­types to per­son­al­i­ties. In 1975 it won both the Antique Auto­mo­bile Club of Amer­ica McK­ean Tro­phy and the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive His­to­ri­ans Cug­not Award. It won, I think, because of the plethora of primary sources. They all were still alive! They had vivid memories, strong opinions, and scores of inside stories.

It was my pleasure to speak on the writing of that book at the Kaiser-Frazer Owners Club 2015 National Meet in Gettysburg. Here is the transcript, inspired by Joe and AutoMoments. By the way, Joe also offers a thoughtful video commentary on the 1954 Kaiser brochure.

Kaiser-Frazer, Part 1: “The Venture”

Gettysburg, 30 July 2015— I am grateful for your invitation, but to tell you the truth I have stumbled over what I might say to you. It’s forty years since Last Onslaught on Detroit was published. The body of historical knowledge about what Edgar F. Kaiser always called “The Venture” has increased considerably. Here in 2015, I am inclined to think that I may well have the least claim of anyone to address the subject with any authority at all. Were it not for the feeling of being among friends, I might turn tail and run. The obvious thing to talk about is the book, how it came to be written, and what we learned that didn’t get into print.

Last Onslaught [Up Until Then] on Detroit was never planned, never outlined in advance. Indeed were it not for two people who are here tonight, and a third who cannot be, it never would have dawned on me that there was a story beyond just another Michigan car company. And the scores of people who wrote that story would not have been heard from.

Artie and the Dragon

Artie Sedmont owned the 1953 Kaiser Dragon that caught my eye in a scruffy filling station near Freehold, New Jersey. I was commuting between Philadelphia, where I was stationed with the Coast Guard, and Staten Island, where my future wife lived. I knew that K-F had built interesting cars. Actually I’d already written an essay about them for my high school English class. Imagine the shock of my teacher, Mr. Quinn, when he received an inscribed copy of Last Onslaught nearly two decades later!

Artie sold me the Dragon. It was odd car, as I learned after joining the Kaiser-Frazer club in 1966. It ran rough and had rust, but the interior was fabulous—Kaiser’s green “bambu vinyl” with green bouclé vinyl inserts. There was a green and white option, but nobody I asked had ever seen all-green before. (Another example has since surfaced.)

Even more oddly, its serial number was for a low-line Kaiser Deluxe: K531-007372. It also bore a small firewall plaque that meant nothing to me at the time, labeled “SPEC-FO” with a four-digit number preceded by a “K.”

We thought we could fix it up, but it threw a rod on the New Jersey Turnpike. Couldn’t afford a rebuilt engine, but for only $250, a friend offered a nice ‘54 Kaiser Manhattan. I repainted it and installed the Dragon’s special interior. I offered the Dragon’s remains free to anyone who would take it away, and a fellow did.  Five years later I learned I had committed sacrilege.

Junking a one-off

In Detroit I was interviewing Carleton Spencer, the great fabric and color specialist who created most of the fine Kaiser-Frazer interiors and paints, from the first Frazer Manhattan to the last ’55s. I described the oddball Dragon to Carl. “I know that car!” he said:

We had finished the Dragon run when a late order came in. A customer wanted one like the car in the brochure—ivory with a green top. But he wanted all-green vinyl seats—a combination we didn’t offer. Well, of course we fixed him up. In 1953 we’d build anything you wanted. We pulled a Deluxe out of the body bank and built it to order. The SPEC-FO plaque stood for ‘Special Factory Order.’ You junked a one-of-a-kind automobile!

A Dragon flyer was the first thing I received when as a boy I wrote to K-F in Willow Run, Michigan, asking for sales brochures. Years later Carl Spencer signed it, as you see, but there’s always more to a story. Look down at the bottom and you’ll see the printed signature “Paul Rand.” It’s on a number of Kaiser-Frazer brochures.

Paul Rand, born Peretz Rosenbaum (1914-1996), was a prominent graphic designer. He created logos we see every day: UPS, IBM, ABC, Westinghouse. His work is world famous. He taught design at Yale, and in 1974 was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. As usual, when shopping for talent, Henry Kaiser’s and Joe Frazer’s tastes were very simple: they were quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.

Bill Tilden

The second key person in the book’s story was Bill Tilden, whom we sadly lost in 2013.  One spring evening I was the duty officer at the Coast Guard base when the phone rang: “Sir, there’s a civilian here asking for you. He’s driving the weirdest car I’ve ever seen.”

It was Bill, of course. We clicked from the start. Within a week he hied me off to north Philadelphia, to help strip the attractive, mock lizard skin upholstery out of a rusty old Kaiser. Another bad mistake! We’d junked an ultra-rare 1951 Emerald Dragon. If they built a dozen of those, it was a lot. That made three Kaisers I’d either foolishly scrapped or modified out of recognition. Those three were the last!

After the Coast Guard I drove my ’54 Manhattan with its Dragon seats to Pennsylvania and went to work for the State Health Department in Harrisburg. I eventually sold it to a man from Illinois named Al Mobeck. I don’t know if it survived. Maybe someone knows? It was painted solid Palm Beach Ivory. Its green interior was spectacular.

Bill Miller

I thought then that I was done with Kaiser-Frazer, but suddenly, blocks away from my apartment, I saw this beautiful maroon ‘53 Henry J parked in somebody’s driveway. Meet the third player in the drama: Bill Miller, who became co-founder of Carlisle Events and the famous Carlisle swap meets and auctions.

Bill was a salesman at a local Chevy dealer, so he had a coat and tie. He would show up at my office at the Health Department, introduced as Dr. Miller. I would say we had an urgent appointment. Together we’d toddle off, change clothes, and spend the day junkyarding. We found all sorts of stuff, including a rare ’49 Kaiser Virginian with a canvas roof on top of a hill near Reading. It didn’t run and had no brakes. The junky, Mr. Kettner, in between four-letter words, coasted it down using reverse gear as a braking device. We towed it home, and Bill “tried” to restore it. I do hope he flipped it!

Bill helped get me into my next Kaiser, a 1953 Deluxe painted Cerulean blue. This is a color like the bottom of a swimming pool. It had a sweet manual shift and drove like a song.

When I needed parts he floored me by saying, “You can get anything you need at a Kaiser dealer I know.” What? This was 1968, remember—14 years after the last Kaisers left Toledo.

A Surviving dealer with a brand new Kaiser

Bill introduced me to Frank R. Bobb of Mt. Holly Springs, Pennsylvania. Bobb’s Garage was a ramshackle brick manse which hadn’t been cleaned in a decade, guarded by a hound anchored near Frank’s cuspidor with a chain that could have held the Queen Mary. We walked in and Bill said: “Mr. Bobb, I brought a friend to see your brand new Kaiser.”

With a well-aimed pitooy past the ear of the dozing mutt, Frank led us “out back.” There we beheld a pearl grey ‘53 Manhattan with 3500 miles on the odometer. It was so new the upholstery still squeaked when you sat in it.

That car is still around and maybe some of you have seen it. The paint job was custom. It was presented to Frank for selling the most Kaiser-Frazer cars in his sales area—which in rural Pennsylvania couldn’t have been easy.

More astonishing was Frank’s parts department. He had stuff you wouldn’t believe. How about a 1951 Frazer grille medallion, brand new in the box? Or a chrome and black plastic ’52 Virginian hood ornament? Or block “K” emblems for the ’53 hood or deck? When it came to price, there was no haggling. Frank would look it up in his official price list and charge you full 1953 dealer retail. I think those Frazer medallions cost us all of $3.73 each.

Historical discovery

Mr. Bobb had something else: a complete set of dealer correspondence, sales, service and confidential bulletins, from the time he bought the franchise shortly after the war to the end—which he gave or sold me. Suddenly I was thumbing through hundreds of documents that, sequentially, gave a complete picture, from a dealer’s standpoint, of the rise and fall of Kaiser-Frazer and its successor, Kaiser-Willys.

This stirred my historical instincts. By then I was editor of the Kaiser-Frazer club quarterly, which had arrived on my doorstep unsolicited, from dear Tom Wilson in Michigan, the previous editor, who just got tired of it. The club told me to go ahead and produce something, so I did. It was embarrassingly amateurish, but everybody was very kind.

Fired up, I wrote to our chief honorary member, Joseph W. Frazer, and asked for an interview. What the heck, right? He floored me when he said sure—come out and see him at “High Tide,” his French-style chateau on the coast in Newport, Rhode Island. Unique among Detroit auto executives, he had commuted weekly to and from Newport. Years later, I named our house in the Bahamas “High Tide” in Joe’s memory.

Off we went, Bill Tilden and me, to record for the club magazine the first words Frazer had said publicly about Kaiser-Frazer since he left the board of directors in 1953. We published the transcript in the summer 1969 issue, as I remember. I don’t have it. All my print archives were destroyed in a fire that burned my antique barns in 2003.

Joe Frazer and Hickman Price

Mr. Frazer’s nephew, Hickman Price, was present for the interview. Joe was widowed now, living in a small wing of this beautiful house. Hickman was redecorating the rest. Bill and I gathered that he was the old man’s watchful protector. We drank Tennessee bourbon and branch water, and they both loosened up.

Mr. Frazer was very careful not to criticize anybody, but it was clear that he’d been heartbroken over the failure of the company. The two things he was most proud of said a lot about him. The first was that at peak, they had 20,000 people working. The second was that 100,000 cars bore his name. He also said something about the auto industry I will never forget: “There’s so much money going out the window every day in this business, that if you’re not careful you’ll lose your shirt.” That, of course, is exactly what happened to Kaiser-Frazer.

As we left, Hickman Price made me an offer: “If you ever decide to write a book, come back and see me. I will tell you a thing or two about that benighted company nobody else will.” He proved to be as good as his word.

“You’re going to pay me to write about cars?!”

Possessed now of just enough knowledge to be cocky, I wrote an article about Kaiser-Frazer and sent it unsolicited to Automobile Quarterly in New York City. Not only did they buy it; they asked if I’d like to come to work as associate editor. I said I’d grown up in New York and had vowed never to return, I was a country boy. “But wait—did you say you’re going to pay me to write about cars?” The decision was inevitable.

What luck! Automobile Quarterly then, 1970-75, was in its golden age. Its editors were twin geniuses, Don Vorderman and Beverly Rae Kimes. They taught me things I would always remember and use to my benefit. Don reminded me about brevity: “A bore is somebody who tells everything.” Beverly’s advice was more personal, and important: “Never fail at anything.”

Automobile Quarterly had great art directors and a range of writers, artists and photographers. From Ken Purdy to Karl Ludvigsen, Peter Helck to Walter Gotschke they were the best in the game. They actually paid me to hang around and learn from these people.

I was hired to edit a series of books, the first of which was The American Car Since 1775. The last was the multi-author Packard: A History of the Motorcar and the Company. Along the way I asked shyly if I might write a book about Kaiser–Frazer.

“It won’t sell,” the boss said. “But go ahead. Take as long as you like.” We were all astonished when it sold 20,000 copies in two printings.

Part 2: The Making of an Award Winning Book…

Perspective of History: Address to the Churchill Society of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Sir Winston’s 144th birthday, 30 November 2018 (Part 3). We were kindly hosted at Earnscliffe by the British High Commissioner, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque.

Perspective, 144 Years On

Concluded from Part 2…. “The great movements that underlie history—the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures—are powerful, almost determinant,” wrote Charles Krauthammer.

Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different. In recent times, only Churchill carries that absolutely required criterion: indispensability… Take away Churchill in 1940 [and] Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.

Churchill was, of course, not sufficient in bringing victory over Nazi barbarism, but he was uniquely necessary He then immediately rose to warn prophetically against its sister barbarism, Soviet communism. Churchill is now disparaged for not sharing our multicultural modern sensibilities. His disrespect for the suffrage movement, his disdain for Gandhi, his resistance to decolonization are undeniable.

But that kind of perspective is akin to dethroning Lincoln as the greatest of 19th century Americans because he shared many of his era’s appalling prejudices. In essence, the rap on Churchill is that he was a 19th century man parachuted into the 20th. But is that not precisely to the point? It took a 19th century man—traditional in habit, rational in thought, conservative in temper—to save the 20th century from itself.

* * *

The originality of the past century lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary person, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, Mackenzie King, de Gaulle, Truman, John Paul II, Reagan, Thatcher. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning.

And we have his words, digital and in print: 20 million of them, once The Churchill Documents are complete, spanning an age from the cavalry charge at Omdurman to astronauts on the moon. Remember, when Neil Armstrong stepped off his lunar lander, Churchill’s books were still being published posthumously. As they are still.

“The roar when we pronounce his name…”

William F. Buckley Jr. spoke about those words to us in Boston—is it possible?—almost a quarter century ago. “It was not,” he said,

the significance of 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. It is simply mistaken that battles are necessarily more important than the words that summon us to arms…. The Battle of Agincourt was long forgotten as a geopolitical event, but the words of Henry V, with Shakespeare to recall them, are imperishable in the mind, even as which side won the Battle of Gettysburg will dim from the memory of men and women who will never forget the words spoken about that battle by Abraham Lincoln. The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and mind; the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy.

Churchill’s words were indispensable to that hour, Britain’s finest, whatever the glories or disappointments that came after. And so today the perspective of history on Winston Churchill is unchanged from half a century ago.

“He sweetened English life”

Why is that? Several explanations. One answer is by the chemist and novelist C.P. Snow:

A bad thing is the ability to sense what everyone else is thinking and think like them,” Snow said. “This Churchill never had, and would have despised himself for having. A good thing is the ability to think of many matters at once, their interdependence, their relative importance and their consequences…. Not many have such insight. He did. That was why he could keep us going when we were alone. Where it mattered most, there he was right.

And Snow reminds of today when he says: “People wanted something to admire that seemed to be slipping out of the grit of everyday. Whatever could be said against him, he had virtues, graces, style. Courage, magnanimity, loyalty, wit, gallantry—these are not often held up for admiration. He really had them. I believe that it was deep intuition which made people feel that his existence had sweetened English life.”

“Nothing Surpasses 1940”

Churchill did build his own myth. And he said himself: “Nothing surpasses 1940.” Nineteen forty dominates his reputation: ask any politician who admires him, and they all speak of his finest hour. Regardless of a career that lasted half a century. Despite holding almost every high office, writing fifty books and two-thousand speeches; despite the most imperishable words in English since Shakespeare—there stands 1940.

It is a tremendously powerful image. We see him in the shattered streets of blacked out London—or sitting on a rooftops, defying the Luftwaffe—sometimes seated on a chimney, smoking out those in offices below. He included Canada when he said those were the greatest days our peoples have lived. And there he remains, in a romantic chamber of the heart, where it is always 1940.

“Civilization”

But there is more perspective to Churchill than that, as we constantly preach to those who know only 1940. It is his statesmanship, his devotion to liberty. That’s the perspective of Hillsdale College, Andrew Roberts, and so many others, and should drive societies like this one. 1940 is part of it—but really just a derivation. Here’s Dr. Larry Arnn on Churchill’s thought and statesmanship. See what you think of it.

What he wanted to preserve was, actually, civilization. If you think about that word it means Rembrandt and Plato and Shakespeare. But before that and first, it is cognate with the word for citizen. It means the rule of civilians. In 1938 when Hitler ruled, that’s what Churchill said it meant, in a beautiful commencement address. You should all go read it. It’s on our website. It’s about this long, and it’s one of the prettiest things he ever said.

And he said, what does it mean, civilization? It means that consent of the governed, the rule of law, is central every thing that we mean by civilization. And force—the strongest in the land—does not rule. It means we rule. Ordinary folk.

And there is good reason to think their common sense is still intact. And you can study the career of Winston Churchill—a monarchist, and an imperialist—and find many places where he said, over and over, that in the end, only the people are going to get it right. Because they have a right to. Because they are equal souls, and may not be governed except with their consent. That’s what I think is at stake. In 2018, as in 1940. That’s what the rule of law means. I think that’s what we could be losing.

Be For That…

I think Churchill’s admirers today should be for that. And they should adopt whatever are the best means in front of them to get that. I think that should be the main focus of Churchill studies, as he passes from the hero of 1940 to the ranks of the great thinkers on statesmanship.

I’ll end with the aforementioned Bill Rusher, speaking to us in Banff. He quoted Coventry Patmore, a 19th century poet who, like Churchill, and General Wolfe of Quebec fame, lived in Westerham. Sir Winston said: “The Romans have often forestalled many of my best ideas by thinking of them first.” Similarly, I concede my best ideas to others smarter than me, to Larry Arnn, Bill Rusher, and Coventry Patmore.

“As long as humanity admires courage, eloquence and tenacity,” Bill Rusher said, “Churchill will be remembered and honored—and these are virtues which will come into fashion again, ladies and gentlemen. That is why he would enjoy a little quatrain by Patmore. I always like to end my talks with it, because it is upbeat, optimistic and true.

For want of me the world’s course will not fail.

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot.

The Truth is great and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail, or not.

Churchill and the Perspective of History 144 Years On

Continued from Part 1…. Do you want the good news or the bad news on Churchill today? The bad news is the high level of ignorance, as measured by that electronic Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner, the Internet.

Churchill’s name elicits 100 million Google hits, a colleague says, “Some are questions, many of which simply require the answer ‘No’—such as: ‘Was Churchill anti-Semitic?’ ‘Did Churchill hate Indians?’ ‘Was he bipolar?’ ‘Was he born in a ladies’ loo?’ ‘Did he have an affair with Lady Castlerosse?’ ‘Did Alexander Fleming save him from drowning?’” Of course, this was going on long before the worldwide web. Churchill wrote in 1938:

It is astonishing to me, looking back…how many different kinds of people—Suffragettes, Sinn Feiners, Communists, Egyptians, and the usual percentage of ordinary lunatics—have from time to time shown a very great want of appreciation of my public work. To be guarded and shadowed day and night…is only rendered tolerable…by the extraordinary tact, courtesy and skill of those entrusted with the duty of watching over public persons, who, at particular times, are thought to be worthy of powder and shot.

* * *

He’s still worthy today—although the powder and shot of history is digital not literal. Let’s face it: the web is where people GO. So much of it warps reality. A recent survey revealed that most British schoolchildren think Churchill was a mythical figure and that Sherlock Holmes was a real person in history.

Professor John Charmley said: “After holding our heads in our hands and deciding that the world has indeed gone to the dogs, we might care to reflect that there may be an irony in this. Churchill did set out to make himself a mythical figure; so it may be only just….that he seems to have become one.”

Surviving the Internet

But here’s the good news. Churchill has defied this mother load of ignorance. His social media critics don’t go unanswered anymore. Sometimes the answers are from people we’ve never heard of, who take the trouble to learn the truth. Last month a former U.S. astronaut, who said something nice about him, cravenly apologized when dunned by Tweets claiming Churchill was a racist who starved the Bengalis in 1943. He was greeted with a cacophony of digital guffaws, referring to a dozen different websites that disprove such nonsense. As a writer I have to be glad for all this calumny. After all, it furnished me with enough material for a book, Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality, which Ron and I will be happy to sell you tonight. Alas it’s already out of date, because new charges are constantly invented.

My website recently listed all the false claims of 2018 along with links to the best rebuttals. The defenders range from Toronto’s Terry Reardon, a Mackenzie King historian, on who was really to blame for the disastrous 1942 Dieppe raid—to Zareer Masani, an Indian scholar, on what really caused the Bengal Famine. One of us posted a quotation you won’t find among the attacks: “The old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go….We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada.” (Churchill said that in the War Council in 1943.)

I think we should be encouraged and heartened by such defenses. We didn’t have nearly as many allies five or ten years ago. We owe thanks to diligent efforts of Churchillians like yourselves. Which brings me to the many societies like this one.

National societies…

…like the one I founded fifty years ago, are increasingly creaky—like me. People just don’t join clubs the way they used to. The exchange of information and opinion they offer is freely accessible with a gadget you hold in your hand. Yet local societies, like this one, are going strong. What past political figure can you think of, besides perhaps Lincoln, who engenders such enthusiasm? The more advanced Churchill societies, like this one and Vancouver’s, welcome speakers on current events—not necessarily about Churchill, but keeping Churchill firmly in mind. It’s a remarkable credit to a man who realized the value of encouraging informal discussion by all shades of political opinion when he founded his own club for that purpose 107 years ago. In Wisconsin they named theirs after it. They call it the Other Other Club.

In print media…

…his reputation stands. Critics arose soon after the war. In 1957 Lord Alanbrooke published his frustrated, late night harangues with Churchill—and then apologized to him for leaking those private diaries. Brooke’s fuming is often used to show Churchill’s feet of clay—and Lord knows he had them.

But lately we’ve seen another side of Brooke—as when the PM arrives in France after D-Day. “I knew that he longed to get into the most exposed position possible,” Brooke wrote. “I honestly believe that he would really have liked to be killed on the front at this moment of success. He [often said that] the way to die is to pass out fighting when your blood is up and you feel nothing.” I think that little aside, by a frequently cited critic, captures a key aspect of Churchill.

Books about him keep piling up. At Hillsdale we’ve reviewed 100 since 2014, twenty per year. Yes, a few dwell in muddy byways, half-baked history. Some are pretty grim. To paraphrase Sir Winston, in war you can only be killed once—but by writers, many times. And yet, 144 years on, his reputation survives.

Ten Great Books in the Space of a Year

Think of all the really good books we’ve had just this year. Lewis Lehrman’s Churchill and Lincoln, a scholarly comparison of two dominant statesmen. Antoine Capet’s exhaustive encyclopedia, Dictionnaire Churchill. David Lough’s My Darling Winston, the insightful letters between WSC and his mother. Brough Scott on his life with horses, Churchill at the Gallop. Jill Rose’s Nursing Churchill on his health in wartime. Larry Kryske’s Churchill without Blood Sweat and Tears applied his leadership principles to modern living. Leslie Hossack’s Charting Churchill is a beautiful photo documentary of Churchill’s London. Piers Brendon’s Churchill’s Bestiary is a scholarly account of his relations with and allusions to animals. Hillsdale College’s The Churchill Documents offer massive new primary source material from D-Day through 1945. All these books are reviewed, with ordering links, on Hillsdale’s Churchill website.

The crowning achievement is Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny. Full disclosure: I was one of Andrew’s readers and kibitzers. Together with the tenacious Paul Courtenay, we exchanged a thousand emails. We ran down facts and factoids, from the Royal Library to gossip columns, arguing out every conclusion. With Hillsdale’s help, we checked even the unpublished parts of Sir Martin Gilbert’s “wodges”: documents, clippings and diaries covering almost every day of Churchill’s life. We didn’t agree about everything, but the average isn’t too bad.

* * *

This was the first biography I’d proofread since William Manchester’s The Last Lion, so I am perhaps qualified to compare. No one will ever reach the lyrical heights of “Horatius at the Gate,” as Manchester did. Andrew is however far more insightful, accurate, up to date, and critical where he needs to be. Walking with Destiny is I think the best single volume life of Churchill you can read.

Right now Andrew is on book tours. He’ll be here in Ottawa on May 27th. “Where are you now?” I just asked him. “New York en route to Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison,” he said—“just like Churchill in 1901. And guess what—I don’t even have to pay the crooked major.” He was referring to Major Pond, Churchill’s 1901 lecture agent, whom WSC called “a vulgar yankee impresario.”

Here’s what matters: these books have again brought Churchill to the forefront of history. Andrew writes: “There’s an explosion of love for him among ordinary people that would make you very happy. It’s like 1940 in terms of his popularity, whenever you get away from the smug elites. Big audiences. We sell out constantly. They ask good questions. No questions about firebombing Dresden, Iraqi gassings or the Bengal Famine. Sometimes one can feel down over the Twitter eruptions and statue smearings. But out in the real world, he’s as much loved as ever. Our life’s work has borne fruit.”

Scholarly Institutions…

…are a third part of his stature. The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has become the Center for Churchill Studies Ron and I used to dream about. It began in 2006, when Hillsdale President Larry Arnn declared he would finish the Official Biography. Oddly, this reminded me of what Churchill said when Japan declared war on the United States, the British Empire and the Dutch East Indies. “They have certainly embarked upon a very considerable undertaking.”

Considerable? It seemed impossible. The great history had stalled after the 1941 document volume. Undaunted, Dr. Arnn reprinted all twenty-four previous volumes, most of them out of print. Since then, helped by the Churchill Fellows, our dedicated student researchers, Hillsdale has published five more, taking the documents through 1945—seven volumes in all on World War II. In June, the 31st and final volume completes the job Randolph Churchill began fifty-six years ago. We celebrate with a cruise around Britain and a London banquet. But this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end….

The Churchill Project’s endowment finances an array of activity: seminars, online courses, conferences, tours and publications. We are building the largest Churchill archive in North America, housed in a new purpose-built Archives building. It includes the Martin Gilbert Papers—all of them, on 20th century and Jewish history as well as Churchill. My own library and papers are in trust for it. We are 2/3rds of the way to a $9 million endowment. Hillsdale maintains a Canadian link through its recognition by your CRA. So your support too is tax-deductible.

* * *

My first surprise when I joined Hillsdale in 2014 was to find so many young people with a keen interest in the great man. They have varied opinions and questing minds. My second surprise was the events. There is no registration charge. They’re free, whether online, on campus, at the Kirby Center in Washington, or elsewhere. We even provide lunches and dinners. You just have to get there. The secret is owning most of the necessary real estate and pre-financing expenses.

With the Official Bio behind us, the Churchill Project will turn to events, online education, and new publications. The work is something great and lasting, to “keep the memory green and the record accurate,” as Lady Soames charged us to do. And all of it is financed and set in stone to continue long after we are gone. This is the only way, in the long run, to assure that Churchill’s statesmanship will be recognized and studied forever.

Concluded in Part 3…

Churchill and Canada, 144 Years On

I thank Ron Cohen. And return his compliments. I thank him for his scholarship—especially his great Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, which is one of the eight or ten standard works on Winston Churchill. And for his prowess as bag man, helping me empty the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye, which he has just described to you.

In 1954, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent arrived in London, exhausted from a world tour. A frequent traveler, Sir Winston offered him advice: “Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie down. Never miss an opportunity to visit a washroom.” It falls on me to stand. But since I promised Ron not to take more than 3 1/2 hours, I’m sure I can make it.

Sir Winston lies at Bladon in English earth, “which in his finest hour he held inviolate.” He would enjoy the controversy he stirs today, on media he never dreamed of. He would revel in the assaults of his detractors, the ripostes of his defenders. The vision “of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me,” he said. Yes, and the not so middle-aged, too.

I have five quick points to make. One of them is Churchill’s overriding message—I differ in this from some of my colleagues. Another is, Churchill’s encounters with Canada. They are many, and they are important. I’ll then describe what Canada meant to him. And I’ll say what the world thinks of him right now. Finally we’ll look at where he stands in the perspective of history: what is it about him that is most worth bringing to the attention of thoughtful people.

What is Churchill’s overriding message?

At this hour on New Year’s Eve 1941, the day after he spoke here, describing Britain as a chicken with an unwringable neck, Churchill was on a train hurtling past Niagara Falls. He was heading back to Washington, to finish telling the Americans what the war was like. You probably know what he said when a colleague urged him to approach the U.S. with caution and deference. “Oh! That is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her. Now that she is in the harem, we talk to her quite differently!”

The war had gone global, and Mr. Churchill was on top of his game. As the sweep second hand of “The Turnip,” his gold Breguet pocket watch, counted down the final moments of 1941, he called staff and reporters to the dining car. There, raising his glass, he made this toast: “Here’s to 1942. Here’s to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward toward victory. May we all come through safe and with honour.” That was a tough year. But came through we did.

I think this was his overriding message then. I think it is still his message today. No, there is no Third Reich, no Imperial Japan. But there are stateless enemies who seek our ruin. There is economic uncertainty. There are strains between old friends. What a time for Churchill’s strength and optimism. And there he is to encourage us: never despair, we will all come through safe and with honor.

* * *

How often he knew exactly what to say! It’s true he insisted that the people had the “lion heart,” that he had merely provided the roar; that he had always earned his living by his pen and his tongue. What did they expect? They came through that time in part because they were led by a professional writer. And today, 144 years since his birth, his words, statesmanship, optimism and courage still beckon to us. We are right to worry over current events. And to remember Churchill’s unswerving faith that all will come right.

I like what a Churchill speaker, the publisher William Rusher, said to us at a conference in Banff: “I know we have a tendency to be discouraged about how things are going,” Bill said, “although in our time, you know, they haven’t gone all that badly. The Marxist idea lies in ruins. Free market economics, which I wouldn’t have given you a plugged nickel for at the end of World War II, is now so popular that even China calls its policy ‘Market Socialism,’ whatever that is. These are big victories. There is still much that is worrisome. But Churchill, if he were here, would encourage us: Never despair. Never give in.” Good advice. And just look–despite all the kerfuffle, we even have new North American trade deal!

Encounters with Canada

Our theme is the perspective of history, and since we are where we are, let’s start with the perspective of Canada—for much has emerged about Churchill and what he called “the linchpin of the English-speaking world.”

David Dilks’s 2005 book The Great Dominion is a signal legacy. Churchill loved Canada, David wrote. “He never returned to India after 1899, or to South Africa after the Boer War. He never visited Australia, New Zealand, British Southeast Asia, the British Pacific. Half-American though he was, he never considered the Great Dominion an appendix to the United States, nor regarded Canadians as decaffeinated Americans.”

In early 1901 he was lecturing in Manitoba, which astonished him. “At the back of the town,” he wrote his mother, “there is a wheat field 980 miles long and 230 broad…a visit here is most exhilarating.” It was there that he heard Queen Victoria had died. He was struck by the shared sense of loss: “The news reached us at Winnipeg,” he wrote, “and this city far away among the snows, 1400 miles from any town of importance, began to hang its head and hoist half-masted flags.”

* * *

On his next visit in 1929 he contemplated moving here. “Darling, I am greatly attracted to this country,” he wrote his wife. “Immense developments are going forward….I have made up my mind that if Neville Chamberlain is made leader of the Conservative Party or anyone else of that kind, I clear out of politics and see if I cannot make you and the kittens a little more comfortable before I die. Only one goal still attracts me, and if that were barred I should quit the dreary field for pastures new….But the time for decision is not yet.”

Who knows what would have happened? Would he have become a Vancouver timber mogul, an Edmonton oil baron, or got into Parliament? Probably the latter. After all, as he once told the U.S. Congress, if things had been different he might have got there on his own. It’s probably just as well, I think we all agree, that he didn’t emigrate—Neville or no Neville.

What did Canada mean to Churchill?

He visited Canada again on his 1932 lecture tour, four times during the war, twice in the Fifties—nine times in all. Fifty-four years after his first visit he arrived for his last. “I love coming,” he told reporters. “Canada is the master link in Anglo-American unity, apart from all her other glories.” And he added, in French—“I think of Canada as being almost my own country.”

He respected Canada’s contributions to liberty. “We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies,” he told Canadians in 1941, “because we are made of sugar candy.” They didn’t have to be told. Today we see in Canada tolerance, equality, the golden rule. Eighty years ago there was a somewhat limited tolerance for certain persons, and it led to playing a huge part in the wars that made us what we are today.

When World War I ended 100 years ago last month, Canada had suffered 263,000 casualties, eight times the number per capita of the USA. When World War II began, Canada had 10,000 soldiers and ten Bren guns. By the end of the war there were a million men in uniform, and 25,000 enlisted women. 107,000 were killed or wounded, again more per capita than the United States.

* * *

At dinner here at Laurier House after his 1941 speech to Parliament, Prime Minister Mackenzie King said, “Canada plans to make an immediate gift to you of one billion dollars.” Churchill, accustomed to speaking in English terms of “a thousand million,” wasn’t sure he’d heard right. He asked King to repeat himself. “A billion dollars,” Mr. King said. Then he added two billion in cash and interest-free loans. That is $57 billion in today’s money—twice the size of your current defense budget. Churchill was floored.

From the start of the war, Canadian food supplies and convoys kept Britain from starving. Toward the end, Canadian miners supplied ingredients for “Tube Alloys,” the atomic bomb. Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee scarcely knew about it. “Mackenzie King knew everything about it, through Minister of Munitions C.D. Howe, who held a seat on the project’s board.

Nor was World War II the end of Canada’s contributions. Canadians fought and died in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. A Canadian general directed the NATO effort in Libya. No peacekeeping force in the past fifty years was without Canadians.

David Dilks brought all this out masterfully in his book. “That is what Canada has done,” he said—“in NATO, the UN, the Commonwealth and in peace-keeping operations. My audience contains many distinguished Canadians. I hope they will allow me to say what is felt by countless people in Britain and America, but too seldom expressed: Thank you a thousand times.”

Continued in Part 2…

A cruise to remember

The Hillsdale College Cruise in June 2019 is a spectacular journey around Britain. Looking at the calendar, you will  find that it coincides with the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. Around that same time, Hillsdale College Press publishes the final document volume of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. This marks completion of the Great Work, fifty-six years since the project began. The longest biography in history, it offers a trove of new material for readers, students and scholars.

Hillsdale cruises have a fine reputation. They are exclusive, high quality educational tours of exciting venues, combined with stimulating on-board lectures on a variety of subjects. Barbara and I are honored to be aboard, along with Hillsdale President Dr. Larry Arnn, Byron York of the Washington Examiner, and Conrad Black, author, biographer and columnist; and to be part of the pre- and post-tour events.

Some points of note: The cruise price includes round-trip business airfare for two, so if you can get to London on points or on your own, there are substantial savings. The cruise includes all meals, drinks, gratuities and shore excursions—no annoying surprise bills at the end. Launched in 2015, the Regent Seven Seas Explorer takes only 750 passengers and has a crew of 552, a ratio suggesting the level of service offered. Again, please contact Global Tracks for details, prices and cabin availability: (877) 242-6397.

Places in time

While this is not strictly a Churchill cruise, I am sure my task will be to advance understanding of the great man. Many places we will pass or visit played their part in what Lady Soames called “The Saga.” I would be interested to hear from anyone on venues they might particularly like to hear more about. Here are some:

South and East

Cowes, Isle of Wight: Randolph and Jennie met at Cowes Regatta, 1874

Portsmouth: HMS Victory and National Museum of the Royal Navy

Spithead, Isle of Wight: Churchill orders fleet not to disperse after Naval Review, August 1914

Cinque Ports, Hastings, Rye, Hythe, Dover, Sandwich: Churchill was Lord Warden, 1941-65

Folkestone: farthest point of shelling by German cross-Channel batteries, September 1943

Dover Castle: Admiral Ramsay’s HQ for Dunkirk evacuation, Operation Dynamo, May 1940

Normandy: Invasion of Europe, 6 June 1944.

Broadstairs, Kent: Marigold Churchill’s death, 1921; Monty’s HQ in WW2

Overstrand, near Cromer, Norfolk: Churchills holidayed here as WW1 broke out, 1914

Scarborough, Whitby, Hartepool: German shellling spurs Churchill to retaliate, 1914 

North-Northwest (Scotland)

Dirleton, East Lothian: Asquith offers Churchill the Admiralty, 1911

Edinburgh: HMY Britannia, Scottish National Museum

Firth of Forth Fleet Anchorage: High Seas Fleet surrendered, 1918; scuttled, 1919

Dundee: Churchill’s constituency 1908-22, with numerous speech venues

St. Andrews: Churchill’s brief career as a golfer, 1912-15

Scapa Flow, Orkney, Fleet Anchorage: Royal Oak sunk, 1939; Churchill Barriers erected

Loch Ewe, Fleet Anchorage: “Strangely oppressed by my memories,” 1939

Inverary Castle: Combined Operations and Allied Commando Training Centre, 1940-44

West

Stranraer: Port of departure/arrival to Washington to plan Invasion of North Africa, June 1942

Belfast: WSC, defying clamor, speaks out for Home Rule, 1911

Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland: Lusitania torpedoed, Churchill blamed, 1915

Reminiscence: Scotland, 1939

It is moving to recall Churchill’s words “in sterner days.” Our cruise passes northern Scotland. There I always think of Scapa Flow, which captivated me long ago. On one of our Churchill Tours, we were shown around Scapa by Lord Jellicoe, the Admiral’s son. On a pilot vessel we observed the sunken HMS Royal Oak, still oozing oil like the USS Arizona, on the bottom. Every year in a ceremony, Royal Navy divers place a White Ensign on her stern.

In 1949, Churchill recalled his visit there ten years before. He was First Lord of the Admiralty, almost exactly twenty-five years since he first held the post….

I felt it my duty to visit Scapa at the earliest moment….I stayed with the Commander-in-Chief in his flagship, Nelson, and discussed not only Scapa but the whole naval problem with him and his principal officers…. the Admiral took me [to Loch Ewe] on the Nelson…. It was like the others a lovely day…. On every side rose the purple hills of Scotland in all their splendour. My thoughts went back a quarter of a century to that other September when I had last visited Sir John Jellicoe and his captains in this very bay, and had found them with their long lines of battleships and cruisers drawn out at anchor, a prey to the same uncertainties as now afflicted us….

An entirely different generation filled the uniforms and the posts…. It seemed that I was all that survived in the same position I had held so long ago. But no; the dangers had survived too. Danger from beneath the waves, more serious with more powerful U-boats; danger from the air, not merely of being spotted in your hiding-place, but of heavy and perhaps destructive attack!

I motored from Loch Ewe to Inverness, where our train awaited us. We had a picnic lunch on the way by a stream, sparkling in hot sunshine. I felt oddly oppressed with my memories. “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

* * *

No one had ever been over the same terrible course twice with such an interval between. No one had felt its dangers and responsibilities from the summit as I had, or, to descend to a small point, understood how First Lords of the Admiralty are treated when great ships are sunk and things go wrong.

If we were in fact going over the same cycle a second time, should I have once again to endure the pangs of dismissal? Fisher, Wilson, Battenberg, Jellicoe, Beatty, Pakenham, Sturdee, all gone!

I feel like one

Who treads alone,

Some banquet-hall deserted

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed.

And what of the supreme, measureless ordeal in which we were again irrevocably plunged? Poland in its agony. France but a pale reflection of her former warlike ardour. The Russian Colossus no longer an ally, not even neutral, possibly to become a foe. Italy no friend. Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact and gloriously united, but ill-prepared, unready. We still had command of the sea. We were woefully outmatched in numbers in this new mortal weapon of the air. Somehow the light faded out of the landscape.” —WSC, Their Finest Hour, 339

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He installed projection equipment for movies at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946.

“Churchill and the Movies” is the final event by Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. It explores two movies regarded as Churchill’s favorites and two biographical movies in historical context. My lecture addresses Henry V with Laurence Olivier. We will discuss Churchill’s understanding of Shakespeare, and application of the lessons of The Bard’s plays.

The venue for this event is the Searle Center, which seats 800. It includes a new spacious entrance and lobby and a completely renovated kitchen. The facility also boasts an escalator, the first one in Hillsdale County.For current information click here.

In 2019, Hillsdale completes the final volume of Churchill’s official biography.  The largest biography in history, it began under Randolph Churchill, fifty-six years ago. Hillsdale also houses the Sir Martin Gilbert Papers, and sponsors Churchill seminars, publications, tours and online courses. Though located in Michigan, Hillsdale is certified as a charity by Revenue Canada as well as the IRS.

In 2014 I joined joined Hillsdale College as Senior Fellow for the Churchill Project, an endowed, permanent center for Churchill Studies. The culmination of my Churchill work over the years, it is an honor to be associated with this preeminent institution. I have now been with its students on many occasions. Inspiring work. I have never met such uniformly learned, thoughtful young people, able to converse on, and seriously to debate, a myriad of topics. They give us the feeling that Churchill was right: Never despair. There is hope yet.

The Freshman Pledge

We, the students of Hillsdale College, commit ourselves to diligent study and patient reflection. Having come to learn, we are proud to do so with integrity and will conduct ourselves with exemplary honor. As sacrifices past and present make possible our education, we too become stewards of this College for the generations yet to come. We pledge ourselves to the pursuit of truth, the love of the good, and the cultivation of beauty, for the sake of our minds and hearts and for an ennobled society. By so doing, we embrace the high calling of liberal education.

* * *

See also “Churchill Bio-Pics”

Ottawa, Nov 30—

Richard M. Langworth CBE, spoke to the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. The venue was Earnscliffe, the Residence of the British High Commissioner. The subject was “Winston Churchill, 144 Years On: The Perspective of History.ˮ

Langworth is a leading writers on Sir Winston. In 1968 he founded the Churchill Study Unit and its journal, Finest Hour. In 1982 he resurrected the journal from inactivity and edited it for thirty-five years. Five years ago he joined Hillsdale College (in Hillsdale, Michigan) as Senior Fellow for the Churchill Project, an endowed, permanent center of Churchill Studies in North America. In 1998, Richard was appointed by Her Majesty the Queen as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His citation was “for services to Anglo-American relations and the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.ˮ

In 2019, Hillsdale completes the thirty-first and final volume of Churchillʼs official biography. The project began under Sir Winstonʼs son, Randolph Churchill, fifty-seven years ago. Hillsdale also houses the Martin Gilbert Papers and sponsors Churchill seminars, publications, tours and online courses. And despite its Michigan location, Hillsdale maintains a Canadian link via its recognition by our CRA.

* * *

“Along the wayˮ Richard published the first American edition of Churchill’s 1931 volume India (1990) and the extremely scarce and otherwise inaccessible 1924 essay Shall We Commit Suicide? (1994). Later he produced ten more Churchill books. They include: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (1998). Churchill by Himself (2008). The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill (2009). The Patriot’s Churchill (2010). All Will Be Well: Good Advice from Winston Churchill (2011). Churchill in His Own Words (2012). Churchill and the Avoidable War (2015). Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality (2016). His current project is expanding Churchill by Himself by adding hundreds of new quotations. Many were inspired by his work with the Hillsdale volumes.

Richard and Barbara Langworth have hosted eleven Churchill Tours in England, Scotland, France and Australia (1983-2008) and were Churchill specialist booksellers (1984-2004). In March Langworth will lecture at Hillsdale on “Churchill and the Movies.ˮ Next June he is a speaker on the Hillsdale College cruise around Britain.

The Churchill Society of Tennessee held its autumn banquet program in Nashville on the evening of Saturday October 14th. Our guest speaker, Richard M. Langworth, CBE discussed “Winston Churchill: Current Contentions.” Some 200 members and friends attended.

Residing in Moultonborough, New Hampshire and Eleuthera, Bahamas, Langworth is a writer and publisher of works on Winston S. Churchill and automotive history. His newest book is Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (McFarland, August).

Churchill Works

Langworth is also author or editor of A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, Churchill in His Own Words, Churchill By Himself and nine other books about Churchill. In 1991 he published the first American edition of Winston Churchill’s rare 1931 collection of speeches, India.

Richard founded the Churchill Study Unit (1968), serving as president, and president of its successors the International Churchill Society and Churchill Centre (1988–99). In 2000-06 he was chairman of its board of trustees. He was editor of the Churchill journal Finest Hour from 1968 to 1970 and 1982 to 2014, and editorial consultant to the National Churchill Museum in 2011-15. Since 2014, he has been Senior Fellow for the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, which is completing Churchill’s official biography.

In 1998, he was created a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) by HM The Queen for services to Anglo-American understanding and history.

Automotive

The author of fifty books and 2000 articles about classic cars, Richard was editor of The Packard Cormorant from 1975 through 2001, and is a Trustee of the Packard Motorcar Foundation (Detroit). His works have won awards from the Antique Automobile Club of America, Society of Automotive Historians, Old Cars Weekly, The Packard Club and the Graphic Arts Association of New Hampshire. He is also editor of The Rainbow Times, publication of the Rainbow Bay Association on Eleuthera.

For current Tennessee events contact John H. Mather MD, President Churchill Society of Tennessee, 1015 West Main Street, Franklin, TN 37064. Tel: (240) 353-6782. Email: Johnmather@aol.com

Balmy temperatures and a record turnout of 700 marked our event featuring Nigel Farage  as keynote speaker at Hillsdale College‘s Churchill Conference and Dinner, held in conjunction with the “The Art of Winston Churchill: An Exhibition at Hillsdale College.” Like most Hillsdale educational events, there were no registration fees or meal charges, all of which are pre-funded. The paintings, organized by the National Churchill Museum, Fulton, were on display from January through March.)

Videos of all presentations are posted. Click here.

Nigel Farage built the UK Independence Party from a fringe group to the point where it dominated UK elections for the European Parliament and was a key force in Britain’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union.

To say Mr. Farage is controversial would be an understatement, and there is no denying his colorful personality, powerful advocacy and skill in debate. Sharing our admiration of Sir Winston Churchill makes Nigel of particular interest to us at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, which is soon completing the Churchill official biography.

Hillsdale has sponsored three previous Churchill events and is planning more at various venues, including the Allen P. Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Hillsdale will celebrate completing Winston S. Churchill—at 31 volumes the longest biography in history—on the 50th anniversary of the death of Randolph Churchill, its original author.

Seminar Schedule of Events

7:30 a.m.  Registration opens (Searle Center lobby)

7:30-9:00 a.m.  Continental breakfast

9:30 a.m.: “Churchill’s My Early Life” with Paul A. Rahe, Professor of History, Hillsdale College

10:30 a.m.: “Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality,” with Richard M. Langworth CBE, Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project

12:00 p.m.: Luncheon,  “Churchill’s Understanding of Europe,” with Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College (Searle Center dining room)

2:00 p.m.” “The Westminster Exhibition,” with Jonathan and Duncan Sandys, great-grandsons of Sir Winston Churchill

3:00 p.m.: Tour of the Westminster Exhibition

5:30 p.m.: Reception (Searle Center dining room)

6:45 p.m.: Dinner (Searle Center dining room)

8:00 p.m.: Remarks by President Larry P. Arnn; “The Significance of Brexit and Trump” with Nigel Farage, MEP

9:15 p.m.: Hospitality (Searle Center dining room)

Paintings Exhibition

Firth of Forth, ca. 1925, oil on canvas, 25 x 30 in.

Boats at Cannes Harbor, 1937, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in.

Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, 1951, oil on canvas 24 x 20 in.

Lake Near Breccles, 1930s, oil on canvas 21.5 x 29 in.

On the Var, ca. 1935, oil on canvas 20 x 25 in.

Distant View of Èze, 1930s, oil on canvas 20 x 30 in.

The Mill at St-Georges-Motel, ca. 1932, oil on board 24 x 32 in.

Coast Scene Near Marseilles, 1930s, oil on canvas 25 x 30 in.

Marrakech, Morocco, 1947, oil on canvas 22 x 27 in.

Avenue at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, with Diana Churchill, ca. 1922, oil on canvas 20 x 24 in.

Winston Churchill at His Easel Painting the Mill at Dreux, by Paul Maze, 1932, oil on canvas 18 x 12.5 in.

Artifacts

Provided by  the National Churchill Museum, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri:

Dispatch Box of The Hon. Winston S. Churchill M.P., Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1915

Top Hat with Signatures of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

Churchill Cigars, 1956

Vintage Triumph Register 2016 Convention, Friday 7 October 2016.

Guest speaker: Richard Langworth 

Location: Tanglewood Resort,Pottsboro, Texas.

Triumph Memories

Synopsis: Reflections on fifty years of messing about with Triumphs: “I’d never say this if I were not among friends, but Ferraris bore me. Just unaffordable excellence. My fun derives from funky vintage British cars.”

Speaker: Richard Langworth has been an automotive writer since 1969. After a freelance article in Automobile Quarterly, he joined AQ as associate and later senior editor. In 1975 he left to freelance. He has since written or co-authored more than fifty books and 2000 articles on automotive history. Richard and Barbara have owned ten Triumphs from a 1938 Dolomite to an assortment of Mayflowers, Renowns, TR3s, and TR4s. In 1975, he and some friends met in a Detroit bar and founded the Vintage Triumph Register. The time had come, they declared, for an club devoted to every car Triumph built. In 1979, Richard teamed with Graham Robson to write Triumph Cars: The Complete History, from Tri-Car to Acclaim. The book was in print thirty years it was republished in a fine new edition in 2018.

“I started with a TR3—a new 3A. Bought in 1962 for a king’s ransom. Most of the $2365 was a loan from my dad. It was red on red, a rare combination. I stupidly didn’t specify the $35 optional Michelin tires, and the stock Dunlop Gold Seals wore out in 7000 miles. It was hit in the rear and after that was stolen. (You know how easy it is to hot-wire a TR3?)”

The Churchill Society of British Columbia presents “An Evening with Churchill,” Tuesday 26 July 2016.

Location: Bar Three, The Vancouver Club, 915 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, B.C.

Time: Wine & cheese starts at 5:00 pm, Program from 5:50 – 7:00 pm.

Cost: $25 each for a member of the Society. $35 each for a non-member. $40 for a member accompanied by a spouse, partner or family member. (Includes one ticket per attendee for a glass of wine or beer, or two soft drinks. Additional drinks can be purchased from the bar.)         

Dress: Business attire.

Please inform Administrator April Accola of your attendance by email or register online at our website.

Guest speaker: Richard Langworth on his book, Churchill and the Avoidable War: Could World War II have been Prevented?

The Topic

World War II was the defining event of our age. It was the climactic clash between democracy and tyranny, liberty and slavery. It killed more people than any war in history. It led to revolutions, religious and sectarian strife, the demise of empires and a protracted Cold War. Its aftershocks abide in the Middle East and Asia. It influenced attitudes toward foreign involvement by the United States and in a Europe at once united and disunited. Yet Churchill maintained that it all could have been prevented. Our speaker examines Churchill’s argument: his prescriptions to prevent war. These are considered not in retrospect but at the time—his formulas, his actions, and the degree to which he pursued them.

Background

Richard Langworth is a Senior Fellow for the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, and founder  of the International Churchill Society and its quarterly journal, Finest Hour. He began covering Churchill in 1968 when he organized the Churchill Study Unit, which in 1971 became the International Churchill Society, devoted to studying the life of Winston Churchill. The Society became inactive in 1976. Mr Langworth re-founded it (1981) and served as president (1988-1999), editor of Finest Hour (1981-2014), and chairman of its board of trustees (2000-2004). In 1995 the International Churchill Society became the Churchill Centre. In 1998, Richard was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by HM The Queen “for services to Anglo-American understanding and the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.”

Langworth published the first American edition of Churchill’s India (1990). He also produced A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (1998), Churchill by Himself (2008), The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill (2009), The Patriot’s Churchill (2010), All Will Be Well: Good Advice from Winston Churchill (2011), Churchill in His Own Words (2012), and Churchill and the Avoidable War (2015). His next book is Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality—What Churchill Stood For: The Case for the Defense. Richard and his wife Barbara reside in Moultonborough, New Hampshire and Eleuthera, Bahamas.

We look forward to seeing you on July 26. —Ian E. Marshall, Secretary

Churchill was certainly a “Constructive Alternative” to established policies throughout his career, and 2015 contains many significant Churchill anniversaries: his first election to Parliament (115 years), the Dardanelles and Gallipoli disasters (100 years), his first premiership (75 years), his retirement as Prime Minister (60 years), his death and state funeral (50 years). To that end, Churchill was the subject of Hillsdale College’s first Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) event of the 2015-16 academic year.

I was pleased to be part of a program featuring two old friends: Timothy Robert Hardy, the most inimitable and genuine actor to ever play the role of Winston Churchill; and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston’s granddaughter-in-law, an expert on Churchill’s oil paintings. We were joined in presentations by two outstanding scholars, Andrew Roberts and John Maurer. CCA events are open to Hillsdale students, faculty and members of the College’s President’s Club.

Program

Sunday, October 4th

4:00 pm: “Churchill’s Early Life,” with Andrew Roberts, author, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.

8:00 pm: “Churchill and His Pastime of Painting,” with Minnie Churchill, Chairman, Churchill Heritage Ltd., and co-author of Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings.

Monday, October 5th

12:00 pm: “Churchill and the Written Word,” with Richard Langworth CBE, Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

4:00 pm: Showing of selections from “Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years,” starring Robert Hardy and Sian Phillips (1981).

8:00 pm: “Churchill in My Life,” with Robert Hardy CBE.

Tuesday, October 6th

4:00 pm: “Churchill as War Leader,” with John Maurer, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

8:00 pm: “Churchill in Peacetime,” with Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College.

Wednesday, October 7th

4:00 pm: Faculty Roundtable