FAQs Archives - Page 8 of 14 - Richard M. Langworth

A V1 flying bomb coming down on London, 1944. (Creative Commons, www.strijdbewijs.nl)

Churchill on the V1: Praise for Ingenuity, Horror over Effects

11 November 2020 Comments 0 Comments

Excerpted from a Q&A post on the V1 for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the unabridged article, please click here.

Robert Lusser and the V1 “Flying Bomb”

A journalist writes about the life of her grandfather, Robert Lusser, chief designer of the V1 flying bomb. She searched for what Churchill said about the V1 in his memoirs of the Second World War. “He mentions the weapon’s destruction in 1944 but nothing of what he thought of the V1 militarily. My grandfather’s papers suggest that Churchill praised the weapon after the war.…

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Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

8 October 2020 Comments 1 Comment

“There’s a lot of ruin in any nation…”

The Greeks are still not laughing about their mid-1940s civil war, so levity may be inappropriate. Nor was at the time was Winston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “responsible for building up the nest of cockatrices for EAM [communist partisans] in Greece.” (His vocabulary was broad: A cockatrice is a mythical, two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a cock’s head.)

Nevertheless, the peace deal Churchill brokered between warring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilarious moments that, 75 years later, we may be permitted to indulge in lighter aspects.…

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Downing Street Annexe and Churchill Secretary Ellizabeth Layton Nel

15 September 2020 Comments 0 Comments

Q: In 'Darkest Hour,' on Churchill in 1940. I am puzzled by two characters. There is a young man who is seen near Churchill at Chartwell and the underground War Rooms. The Darkest Hour cast names him 'John Evans.' The name of another man in the cast, 'Tom Leonard,' suggests nothing. He is the driver of Churchill’s car when the PM abruptly bolts and heads for the Underground. Who are they?"

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Fake Churchill Calumny: Subsidiary Emissions from the Odd Crater

31 July 2020 Comments 1 Comment

Crater eruptions: “Isn’t it enough to have this parent volcano continually erupting in our midst? And now we are to have these subsidiary craters spouting forth the same unhealthy fumes!” —Churchill’s reply to the son of a harsh critic, freshly elected to Parliament, who immediately began attacking him.

From one crater to another

No sooner does the campaign for Churchill’s memory quell emissions from one crater than another one erupts. The campaign to delegitimize Churchill as Hero continues, but the main volcanos have already erupted. Now we have the odd subsidiary crater spouting the same old stuff.…

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Did Winston Churchill Invent the Term “Wizard War”?

4 June 2020 Comments 0 Comments

Q: Churchill’s creation?

I’d like to know if you can shed light on Churchill’s use of the word “wizard” for radar scientists and engineers (as in Their Finest Hour, Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Wizard War”)? He first used the term in publication in that book in 1949; is there any indication of his use of the word, to describe what the RAF called “boffins”, during the early days of the war itself?

“Wizard” is of course a grand old Middle English word, and Churchill would have preferred that to the newfangled “boffin.” …

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“American Jennie” and Other Books on Lady Randolph Churchill

29 May 2020 Comments 4 Comments

A reader requests recommendations for good books about Sir Winston’s mother, Lady Randolph Churchill (1854-1921). The most rounded and thoroughly sourced is Anne Sebba’s American Jennie (2007). Barbara Langworth published a thorough review and analysis of Jennie’s many accomplishments, below. Scroll to the end for a Bibliography and commentary on other books about Lady Randolph. RML

Barbara F. Langworth: The Right Parent Survived

Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother, by Anne Sebba (London, Murray, 2007). American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill), (New York: Norton, 2007).

It may seem a new story to many readers, since the previous biographies of Lady Randolph Churchill date back up to eight decades.…

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Churchill on the Egyptians: “Set the Jews on them.” Or so it is alleged.

25 May 2020 Comments 4 Comments

Egyptians and all that A.M. in India follows Churchill issues and strives to understand the truth. He questions what Winston Churchill said about the Egyptians….

Good afternoon, I’ve emailed you before. If it’s not too much trouble could you please verify whether Sir Winston actually said this? “If we have any more of [Egyptian] cheek we will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter from which they should never have emerged.”

* * * We may accept this as likely. It is hearsay and the source was not pro-Churchill.…

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Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

6 May 2020 Comments 2 Comments

My previous note was about Alistair Cooke on Churchill in the 1930s. I here reprise my introduction to his 1988 speech, and a personal epilogue. Sir Alistair’s remarks, at the Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, 27 August 1988, are available by email. RML

Sir Alistair Cooke KBE

When, in what we must regard as a stroke of brilliance, we thought to invite Sir Alistair Cooke to talk about Winston Churchill, we wrote him with trepidation. We were told he had a reputation for being very hard to get.

To our delight, he defied the odds.…

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Alistair Cooke: Why didn’t They Listen to Churchill?

2 May 2020 Comments 2 Comments

Alistair Cooke addressed this question over thirty years ago. I’ve quoted his words repeatedly over the years. A recent comment (reprised below), encouraged this revision from 2011. Mr. Cooke’s full speech is available by email. RML

Back in the 1930s, who all denounced and criticized Churchill for his beliefs in the radical Nazi Germany? Who specifically mocked him? Obviously Churchill was right about Hitler and his plans but who in the political, intellectual, or entertainment arenas vilified him? —A.H.

The answer to your question, I think, is “just about everybody,” from the Royal Family to ordinary citizens, most of the media, his own party, the Labour and Liberal parties, and certainly most intellectuals and entertainment personalities.…

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Ample time was always set aside for distinguished Americans at Chartwell. On 19 September 1931, L-R: Mr. Punch, Mary Churchill’s naughty pug; The Hon. Tom Mitford (Clementine’s cousin, friend of Diana and Randolph and only brother of the Mitford sisters, killed in Burma in 1945); WSC; Freddie Birkenhead (Second Earl of Birkenhead, who had succeeded his father the previous year and became a historian and biographer of his father); Clementine, Diana and Randolph Churchill; Charlie Chaplin. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Churchill’s Daily Routine (Or: You Can’t Get Good Help Anymore…)

23 April 2020 Comments 1 Comment

Q: When help was cheap

Moving right along, the 1911 Census was recently released in England. No address was “ex-directory” in those days. Winston Churchill is listed at 33 Eccleston Square, London (seventeen rooms) with wife Clementine, daughter Diana and eight servants. The help comprised a cook, nurse, lady’s maid, housemaid, parlor maid, under-parlor maid, kitchen maid and hall boy). Can this be so? —A.J., NSW, Australia

A: Absolutely.

By the 1920s and 1930s, when the Churchills were ensconced at Chartwell, the help had grown to fifteen or more, counting gardeners, handymen, secretaries and household staff.…

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