Category: FAQs

Churchill's London
Little known but important: the old London Magazine near the Serpentine, Hyde Park. An 1805 Palladian-style villa, it once housed naval cordite for the defense of London. In 1911, war threatened over the Agadir Crisis. Observing the Magazine was unguarded, Churchill sent a marine detachment. His decisive action helped convince Prime Minister Asquith to appoint him First Lord of the Admiralty, where he prepared the Royal Navy for war. For years abandoned, it reopened in 2013 as an art gallery then a restaurant. (Zaha Hadid Architects)
Visitor’s Guide to the REAL “Churchill’s London”

Visitor’s Guide to the REAL “Churchill’s London”

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"Cast your eye from the entrance on the War Rooms slightly to the right. You’ll see a doorway well above ground. To the right of that doorway you will see a set of six windows ending in a curved window at Storey’s Gate. Those are the actual rooms in which Winston Churchill slept and worked during the Second World War."

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Jefferson
Dinner for Western Hemisphere Nobel Prize Winners at the East Room, the White House, 29 April 1962. Gathered for a reading by actor Frederic March of excerpts from the works of late Nobel laureates are (L-R): Lady Bird Johnson, Pearl Buck, President Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Frost and Agnes Charlier Jarring, wife of Swedish Ambassador Gunnar Jarring. (Photo by Robert Knudsen, JFK Library, public domain)
“Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone”…. JFK, Winston Churchill

“Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone”…. JFK, Winston Churchill

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Churchill's Jefferson: "He came from the Virginian frontier, the home of dour individualism and faith in common humanity, the nucleus of resistance to the centralising hierarchy of British rule. He was in touch with fashionable Left-Wing circles of political philosophy in England and Europe, and, like the French school of economists who went by the name of Physiocrats, he believed in a yeoman-farmer society. He feared an industrial proletariat as much as he disliked the principle of aristocracy. Industrial and capitalist development appalled him."

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facsimile
Don’t Fall for Them! Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

Don’t Fall for Them! Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

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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.

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newspapers
Meet the Press: Reporters at the Second Quebec Conference, September 1944, question WSC, FDR and Canadian PM Mackenzie King. Forgive flaws in photo negative. (National Archives, Public Domain)
Winston Churchill’s Favorite Newspapers

Winston Churchill’s Favorite Newspapers

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“Is [the Prime Minister] aware that...the Iver Heath Conservative Party Association held a fete to raise money for party purposes to which it invited American Service baseball teams to participate for a ‘Winston Churchill’ trophy?” WSC: “I read in the Daily Worker some account of this. I had not, I agree, fully realised the political implications that might attach to the matter, and in so far as I have erred I express my regret. [If the situation were reversed] I hope we should all show an equal spirit of tolerance and good humour.”

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Thatcher
President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher with a Frank Salisbury painting of someone they both revered, during the President’s visit to 10 Downing Street, 9 June 1982. (White House photographic collection, public domain)
Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher: Two Meetings

Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher: Two Meetings

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Margaret Thatcher's biographer and Churchill’s bodyguard each knew of one Churchill-Thatcher meeting but not the other. The story of their two encounters demonstrates Lady Thatcher’s lifelong respect, and Churchill’s words on the regulatory state could have been her own words, 30 years later. When it came to liberty, neither were for turning.

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Tax
Young Winston haranguing the electors, Manchester, 1908. (Wikimedia Commons)
“A Nation Cannot Tax Itself into Prosperity”: Churchill’s Quote?

“A Nation Cannot Tax Itself into Prosperity”: Churchill’s Quote?

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Question: "Did Churchill say this? 'For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.' I can't find it in your 'Churchill by Himself.'" Answer: Indeed he did—and he liked that “bucket” gag so much that he used it at least five times. Someone with courage should pick it up again today.

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JFK
President John F. Kennedy signs a proclamation declaring Sir Winston an honorary US citizen, Oval Office, 9 April 1963. L-R: possibly Kay Halle, who had much to do with it; unidentified; Rep. Frances P. Bolton (R.-Oh.); Sen. Olin D. Johnston (D.-S.C.); Sylvia Ormsby-Gore: British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore; Rep. Michael A. Feighan (D.-Oh.); Sen. J. William Fulbright (D.-Ark.); Rep. Carl Vinson (D.-Ga.); Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (R.-Mass.). (JFK Library, public domain)
Churchill Meets JFK, 1958: “He thought you were a waiter, Jack”

Churchill Meets JFK, 1958: “He thought you were a waiter, Jack”

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Churchill rarely nursed a grudge. Though Joe Kennedy had upset him with defeatism when the war began, he quickly forgot. He sent condolences and flowers to the funeral of Kathleen Kennedy in 1948 and admired JFK from what he read about the young man and mutual acquaintances. He was anxious to meet Jack in 1959.

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Peace
Heston Aerodrome, 30 September 1938. Mr. Chamberlain returned from Munich with his bit of paper: “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.” (Ministry of Information, public domain)
Winston Churchill on Peace with Hitler

Winston Churchill on Peace with Hitler

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"You’re only saying that to be provocative. You know very well we couldn’t have made peace on the heels of a terrible defeat. The country wouldn’t have stood for it. And what makes you think that we could have trusted Hitler’s word—particularly as he could have had Russian resources behind him? At best we would have been a German client state, and there’s not much in that." —WSC

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Hess
Nazis who participated in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, photographaed at Landsberg Prison, 1924: L-R: Adolf Hitler, Emil Maurice, Hermann Kriebel, Rudolf Hess, Friedrich Weber. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, public domain)
Did Hitler Authorize the Flight of Rudolf Hess?

Did Hitler Authorize the Flight of Rudolf Hess?

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Peter Padfield, in "Hess, Hitler & Churchill: The Real Turning Point of the Second World War," claimed that Rudolf Hess’s May 1941 flight to Britain (generally thought to be a solo act) was authorized by Hitler. Allegedly Hess had with him a proposal for an armistice with Britain and German withdrawal from Western Europe in exchange for a free hand to attack Russia.

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champagne
Dinner marking WSC’s 69th birthday, with Roosevelt and Stalin, Teheran, 30 November 1943. (Crown Copyright expired, public domain)
“Churchill Drank 42,000 Bottles of Champagne”?

“Churchill Drank 42,000 Bottles of Champagne”?

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WSC: "Prof! Pray calculate the total quantity of champagne, wine and spirits I have consumed thus far in my life and tell us how much of this room it would fill." Professor Lindemann (pretending a slide rule calculation): "I'm sorry, Winston, it would only reach our ankles." WSC: "How much to do—how little time remains."

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RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks


Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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