Category: FAQs

Lenin as Typhoid Culture. Or: To Russia With Love

Lenin as Typhoid Culture. Or: To Russia With Love

The German plan, Churchill wrote, “worked with amazing accuracy. No sooner did Lenin arrive than he began beckoning a finger here and a finger there to obscure persons in sheltered retreats in New York, in Glasgow, in Bern, and other countries, and he gathered together the leading spirits of a formidable sect, the most formidable sect in the world, of which he was the high priest and chief. With these spirits around him he set to work with demoniacal ability to tear to pieces every institution on which the Russian State and nation depended. Russia was laid low. Russia had to be laid low. She was laid low to the dust.”

Read More Read More

It’s Baaaack! The Epstein Churchill Bust Kerfuffle, Round 4

It’s Baaaack! The Epstein Churchill Bust Kerfuffle, Round 4

Since 1965 has been an Epstein Churchill bust at the White House, uninterrupted now for six decades. Current media confusion surrounds the SECOND Epstein, which makes regular visits on loan from the British Embassy, where it is in the Embassy’s art collection. Epstein #1 is part of the permanent White House collection. Epstein #2 is an “optional extra” at the White House, depending on the whim of the occupant. Every President is entitled to the totems of his choice.

Read More Read More

Unanswered Questions: Churchill and Rudolf Diesel

Unanswered Questions: Churchill and Rudolf Diesel

It is known that Rudolf Diesel boarded the “Dresden” that fatal October in 1913 intending to meet with the British about licensing his invention. By then Churchill and Fisher were well along on the conversion from coal to oil for capital ships, and WSC had secured an oil supply through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. How far Diesel developments had affected designs for submarines or Churchill’s “landship” (the tank) bears further investigation. 

Read More Read More

Questions on Books: The Second World War

Questions on Books: The Second World War

Not all translations spanned the complete six volumes. The Turkish Edition contained only the first two volumes. Wendy Reves, wife of Churchill’s literary agent, Emery Reves, told me that the publishers refused to pay for the rest! The first Russian edition (1956-58) contained only the first three volumes, though Ronald Cohen also lists a later, complete Russian edition published in 1997-98. There were also eight translations of Churchill’s one-volume abridged edition, first published in 1959.

Read More Read More

Best Churchill Books for Young Readers

Best Churchill Books for Young Readers

Fiona Reynoldson’s “Leading Lives: Churchill,” is targeted at the young (ages 8-15). Now a quarter century old, it is still the best “juvenile” ever published, anywhere, by anybody. The “Leading Lives” series mixes Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Arafat with Roosevelt, Kennedy and Gandhi. I know nothing about the others, but Reynoldson’s Churchill is a masterpiece. So much wisdom and fair understanding is attractively wedged into sixty-four pages.

Read More Read More

The Second Atlantic Charter? A Seventieth Anniversary

The Second Atlantic Charter? A Seventieth Anniversary

“We will continue our support of the United Nations and of existing international organizations that have been established in the spirit of the Charter for common protection and security. We urge the establishment and maintenance of such associations of appropriate nations as will best, in their respective regions, preserve the peace and the independence of the peoples living there. When desired by the peoples of the affected countries, we are ready to render appropriate and feasible assistance to such associations.” Eisenhower & Churchill, 1954    

Read More Read More

Russians and Greeks: “Falling Below the Level of Events”

Russians and Greeks: “Falling Below the Level of Events”

Churchill to Grey: "I beseech you at this crisis not to make a mistake in falling below the level of events. Half-hearted measures will ruin all, and a million men will die through the prolongation of the war. You must be bold and violent. You have a right to be. Our fleet is forcing the Dardanelles. No armies can reach Constantinople but those which we invite, yet we seek nothing here but the victory of the common cause." Grey and the Foreign Office "felt as we did. They did all in their power. It registers a terrible moment in the long struggle to save Russia from her foes and from herself.”

Read More Read More

Interview: Some Thoughts on Churchill’s London Statue

Interview: Some Thoughts on Churchill’s London Statue

The statue dilemma: All those statues on Parliament Square—not just Churchill's—are of people with human faults. During the craze to tear down statues a few years ago, French President Macron boldly announced that no French statues would go. They are part of France's heritage, he said, for good or ill. That was very courageous of him. Statues tell a nation's story. If you object to one, erect one to balance it. There is no virtue in hiding from history.

Read More Read More

Those Infamous Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

Those Infamous Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

People are still falling for those reproduction Churchill thank-you letters produced by the thousands using a spirit duplicator. "The ultimate thrift shop haul," headlined the Daily Mail in July 2023. "Budget shopper is left STUNNED after buying a 'priceless' handwritten letter signed by Winston Churchill for just $1—after finding it buried in a New York store." Actually, $1 is about what it's worth—plus perhaps $50 for a nicely matted and framed example. Update 2024: Six originals do exist.

Read More Read More

Churchill’s V-Sign (both ways) and the Peace Symbol

Churchill’s V-Sign (both ways) and the Peace Symbol

It is virtually certain that Churchill was unconscious of the meaning of the palm-in V-sign. Former secretary Elizabeth Layton Nel told me he was "astonished" when (with some embarrassment) she told him what it meant. This moment is humorously reenacted in the great film "Darkest Hour, "with Gary Oldman as WSC and Lily James as Elizabeth. 

Read More Read More

RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks

Links on this page may earn commissions.