Literary Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill on Jargon: “Let Us Have an End to This Grimace”

26 September 2024 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill said, “Short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.” How would that peerless practitioner of English, would react to the kind of language around us today? We can imagine what he would think about substituting fashionable jargon like “challenges” for “handicaps” or “issues” for “difficulties.” What would he make of that stand-by cliché “reaching out”? Oh dear....

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Those Infamous Facsimile Churchill Holograph Letters

10 September 2024 Comments 0 Comments

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.

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Speaker Jitters: Churchill Had Them, Necessitating Strategy

5 August 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Unlike modern newscasters and some politicians, Churchill saw no reason to patronize foreigners by overemphasizing their pronunciation. In fact, he worked very hard to anglicize words that particularly annoyed him. Britons, he said, should stand forthrightly behind Anglicized nomenclature: "If we do not make a stand we shall in a few weeks be asked to call Leghorn Livorno, and the BBC will be pronouncing Paris 'Paree.' Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names. I date this minute from St. George’s Day." Churchill as speaker was devoid of faddish jargon. (Imagine what he would make of vernacular like “reaching out” (for “contacting”) or “issues” (“for problems”).

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Literary Queries: Churchill Signatures and Inscriptions

30 July 2024 Comments 0 Comments

Is the signature genuine? Yes, it seems so. From your photo it looks suitably aged and seems to have been there a long time. Inscribed books or photographs with the signatures pasted in or added to the matte are sometimes encountered. They are not, of course, as valuable as books the author personally inscribed, particularly if he named the recipient (such as the example above).

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Marlborough Drift: The Dallying Duke

20 May 2024 Comments 0 Comments

John Churchill (not yet a Duke) "was hidden in the cupboard of Barbara Palmer (not yet a Duchess). After having prowled about the chamber the King, much upset, asked for sweets and liqueurs. His mistress declared that the key of the cupboard was lost. The King replied that he would break down the door.On this she opened the door, and fell on her knees on one side while Churchill, discovered, knelt on the other...."

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Churchill Quotes: “Law Above the King” and “All Will Be Well”

29 February 2024 Comments 0 Comments

"A law which is above the King" occurs in Churchill's "The Birth of Britain" (London: Cassell, 1956). He was explaining Magna Carta, the Great Charter of Freedoms, one of the towering benchmarks of Western Civilization. “All will be well” was a very frequent expression. In South Africa in 1899-1900, the young Winston had picked up the Afrikaans phrase "Alles sal regkom" or “All will come right.” He used both phrases interchangeably because they expressed his sentiment.

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Manchester and Reid: “The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm”

20 December 2023 Comments 2 Comments

In a flourish suitable to a great work, Paul Reid ends his story on January 30th, 1965 with the best words Lord Moran ever wrote: "The village stations on the way to Bladon were crowded with his countrymen, and at Bladon in a country churchyard, in the stillness of a winter evening, in the presence of his family and a few friends, Winston Churchill was committed to English earth, which in his finest hour he had held inviolate." Bill Manchester would like that.

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Holiday Gifts: “Marlborough: His Life and Times”

30 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

"Marlborough" was originally published in four volumes in England (Harrap) and Canada (Ryerson and Harrap) and six in America (Scribner). Fine first editions are pricey. The current paperback edition is by the University of Chicago Press. Copies is not, but for gift giving, you may want something nicer. There are many alternatives.

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Churchill’s Shakespeare: Quoting “Romeo and Juliet”

15 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Darrell Holley offers one citation from "Romeo and Juliet." In his biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston writes: “Would he, under the many riddles the future had reserved for such as he, snapped the tie of sentiment that bound him to his party, resolved at last to ‘shake the yoke of inauspicious stars’….?” As so often in that better-read age, Churchill didn’t bother to cite the source, assuming most of his readers would know the source.

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Winston Churchill and Thucydides

10 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

"Open no more negotiations with Sparta. Show them plainly that you are not crushed by your present afflictions. They who face calamity without wincing, and who offer the most energetic resistance, these, be they States or individuals, are the truest heroes." —Lord Beaverbrook's advice to Churchill, quoting Thucydides, 1942.

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