Category: In the News

Apartheid
South Africa in 1885 showing the array of contending jurisdictions. The four provinces of Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were united in 1910. German Southwest Africa was seized in 1915 and administered by South Africa as a nominal fifth province until 1990, when it became Namibia. The British Protectorates, Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland, achieved independence in 1966-68 as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (now Eswatini). Griqualand East and West were annexed by Cape Colony in 1878-80. Stella Land was annexed by the Transvaal (South African Republic) in 1884. Zululand was a British protectorate from 1887 to 1897, when it was absorbed by Natal. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Art of the Possible (2): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid, Mandela

The Art of the Possible (2): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid, Mandela

Comments 0 Comments

 Excerpt­ed from “Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid,” part 2 of an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, June 2020. For the com­plete text with end­notes, please click here. 

This arti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Nel­son Man­dela (1918-2013), below with François Pien­aar after the Spring­boks won the 1995 Rug­by World Cup. (See videos at end of arti­cle.) Not only did he sup­port and inte­grate the nation­al sport; he com­bined Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfri­ka and Die Stem van Suid-Afri­ka as a joint nation­al anthem. His Churchillian mag­na­nim­i­ty was a mod­el for his time.…

Read More Read More

memory
Not exactly a Nazi knee on the neck, but you get the analogy. “Your debt account, Churchill.” (Lustige Blätter, Berlin, 18 August 1944). The account book reads (with remarkable memory lapses): “England started the air war in the year 1940 against defenseless civilians! (Sylt, Freiburg.) It killed women and children, destroyed hospitals, residential quarters and churches, destroyed the cultural assets of Europe…Cologne, Hamburg…” etc. Chamberlain bombed the German airbase on Sylt on 19-20 March 1940 in reprisal for a German raid on Scapa Flow. Freiburg was mistakenly bombed by the Luftwaffe at the start of Hitler’s invasion on 10 May 1940, then by the Allies in 1944.
Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Defcon 1, The Battle for Churchill’s Memory: The Cause Endures

Comments 2 Comments

Here­with final install­ments by var­i­ous writ­ers in our two-month defense of Win­ston Churchill’s mem­o­ry. These and the links below cov­er his most pop­u­lar cur­rent sins—even cas­tra­tion and nuk­ing the Mar­alin­ga. So, unless we get a new one, that’s a wrap! RML

Memory: “The stars still shone in the sky”

Lost in the pell-mell rush to den­i­grate his mem­o­ry was the 8oth anniver­sary of Churchill becom­ing Prime Min­ster, 10 May 1940. I thought of his words as I read the igno­rant, ill-informed, false attacks on his char­ac­ter. They occurred amid protest over a trag­ic event that had noth­ing to do with him.…

Read More Read More

South Africa
South Africa, 1899. Gandhi (circled) with stretcher-bearers of the Indian Ambulance Corps, which he organized to support the British during the Boer War. Standing: H. Kitchen, L. Panday, R. Panday, J. Royeppen, R.K. Khan, L. Gabriel, M.K. Kotharee, E. Peters, D. Vinden, V. Madanjit. Middle Row: W. Jonathan, V. Lawrence, M.H. Nazar, Dr. L.P. Booth, M.K. Gandhi, P.K. Naidoo, M. Royeppen. Front Row: S. Shadrach, “Professor” Dhundee, S.D. Moddley, A. David, A.A. Gandhi. (South African photo, public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

Comments 1 Comment

Excerpts from “Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid” an arti­cle for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, June 2020. For the com­plete text with end­notes, please click here. This arti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Nel­son Man­dela (1918-2013), whose Churchillian mag­na­nim­i­ty was a mod­el for his time—and even more for ours.

Part 1: 1902-1909

In “Apartheid: Made in Britain,” Richard Dow­den argued that Britain not South Africa cost black South Africans their rights. His account is fac­tu­al as far as it goes, but there is more to say about Churchill’s effort to achieve jus­tice in South Africa.…

Read More Read More

defense
The Churchill Statue by Ivor Roberts-Jones, Parliament Square, London. (Wikimedia Creative Commons, public domain)
Defcon 1: The Urgent Defense of Churchill’s Name and Legacy

Defcon 1: The Urgent Defense of Churchill’s Name and Legacy

Comments 0 Comments

Case for  the defense: “If we allow our mon­u­ments and stat­ues and place-names to be torn down because of our present-day views, and claims of peo­ple being offend­ed by our built envi­ron­ment that has been around for decades and some­times cen­turies, it speaks to a pathet­ic lack of con­fi­dence in our­selves as a nation. We are on the way to a soci­ety of com­pet­ing vic­tim­hoods, atom­ized and balka­nized into small­er and small­er com­mu­ni­ties, which iron­i­cal­ly enough is some­thing racists want too.” —Andrew Roberts

Defense of the good

The Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project has joined many oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in defense of the good.…

Read More Read More

Ivison
Churchill (followed by his brother Jack) visiting bomb-damaged areas of the East End of London, 8 September 1940. (War Office photo, Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Mr. Ivison: May we proclaim Trump no Churchill without slurring the latter?

Mr. Ivison: May we proclaim Trump no Churchill without slurring the latter?

Comments 1 Comment
Mr. Ivison is right. And wrong.

John Ivi­son in Canada’s Nation­al Post makes the point: “Don­ald Trump is no Win­ston Churchill, and the com­par­i­son is ludi­crous.” He refers to a June 3rd state­ment by the President’s press sec­re­tary, Kayleigh McE­nany. (She com­pared Trump’s appear­ance at St. John’s Epis­co­pal Church across from the White House to Churchill vis­it­ing the blitzed East End in 1940.)

I think from a pure­ly his­tor­i­cal point of view we can all agree with him. In 1940, Churchill wrote, “There was a white glow, over-pow­er­ing, sub­lime, which ran through our Island from end to end.”…

Read More Read More

Mount
Barbara Langworth and our 1953 Studebaker at the Mount Washington, 2015.
Churchill Memories of the Mount Washington and Bretton Woods

Churchill Memories of the Mount Washington and Bretton Woods

Comments 1 Comment

Read­ers react­ed kind­ly to my essay on Alis­tair Cooke. I ven­ture to add some pri­vate Churchillian moments at the Mount Wash­ing­ton Hotel at Bret­ton Woods. I sent these to still-liv­ing par­tic­i­pants, who urged I pub­lish them—with strate­gic edits to pro­tect the innocent.

“I’ve been using microphones before you were born”

Com­man­der Lar­ry Kryske USN was our toast­mas­ter for the 1988 Mount Wash­ing­ton Churchill din­ners. I remem­ber par­tic­u­lar­ly his naval dec­la­ra­tion after din­ner: “The smok­ing lamp is light­ed.” (How odd that sounds now! In my expe­ri­ence, group smok­ing stopped almost dead around 1990.) Lar­ry sends this amus­ing mem­o­ry of that night, 27 August:

Dur­ing his address, Sir Alis­tair appeared to be hav­ing trou­ble with the mic.…

Read More Read More

May
WSC in the Cabinet Room, 10 Downing Street, 1940. Photo by Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) for the Ministry of Information. (Crown copyright expired, Wikimedia Commons)
80 Years On: Winston Churchill Prime Minister, 10 May 1940

80 Years On: Winston Churchill Prime Minister, 10 May 1940

Comments 0 Comments
The 10th of May…

In the splin­ter­ing crash of this vast bat­tle the qui­et con­ver­sa­tions we had had in Down­ing Street fad­ed or fell back in one’s mind. How­ev­er, I remem­ber being told that Mr. Cham­ber­lain had gone, or was going, to see the King, and this was nat­u­ral­ly to be expect­ed. Present­ly a mes­sage arrived sum­mon­ing me to the Palace at six o’clock. It only takes two min­utes to dri­ve there from the Admi­ral­ty along the Mall. Although I sup­pose the evening news­pa­pers must have been full of the ter­rif­ic news from the Con­ti­nent, noth­ing had been men­tioned about the Cab­i­net cri­sis.…

Read More Read More

Liberties
Oblivious to it all: Lake Winnipesaukee, the “Swallow Boathouse,” Moulonborough, New Hampshire. (Photo by the author)
Liberties: Where will it end? A very good question.

Liberties: Where will it end? A very good question.

Comments 0 Comments
Liberties watch, 8 April 2020

…we must regard the next week or so as a very impor­tant peri­od in our his­to­ry. It ranks with the days when the Span­ish Arma­da was approach­ing the Chan­nel and Drake was fin­ish­ing his game of bowls; or when Nel­son stood between us and Napoleon‘s Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the his­to­ry books, but what is hap­pen­ing now is on a far greater scale and of far more con­se­quence to the life and future of the world and its civil­i­sa­tion than these brave old days of the past.…

Read More Read More

life
A message from Queen Victoria, made into a placard and placed on the cabinet table, Central War Rooms, London, by Winston Churchill in 1940. (Author’s photo)
Life Amid Chaos: “The Hope Still Lives…The Dream Shall Never Die”

Life Amid Chaos: “The Hope Still Lives…The Dream Shall Never Die”

Comments 1 Comment

My broth­er Andrew Roberts inspired this post, when he asked for Churchill quo­ta­tions about child­birth. Yes, even now, friends have brought a new life into the world. Three months ago, my son and daugh­ter-in-law did likewise.

Life Goes On

On 30 May 1909, Clemen­tine Churchill was preg­nant with their first child, Diana. Win­ston, ask­ing her to prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing, wrote these beau­ti­ful words: “We are in the grip of cir­cum­stances, and out of pain joy will spring, and from pass­ing weak­ness new strength will arise.”

Four and one-half decades lat­er, his daugh­ter Mary was a fort­night over­due for the birth of Char­lotte, her fourth child.…

Read More Read More

nicknames
“Make Britain Great Again”? Attacking the opposition on behalf of the Tory candidate Anthony Fell (seated), Hammersmith, London, 23 February 1949. Labour won the safe seat, but by under five points, ominous in a usually reliable constituency. Sir Anthony eventually sat for Yarmouth, 1958-83. (Crown copyright expired, public domain)
Churchill’s Potent Political Nicknames: Adm. Row-Back to Wuthering Height

Churchill’s Potent Political Nicknames: Adm. Row-Back to Wuthering Height

Comments 7 Comments

Spo­rad­i­cal­ly, pun­dits com­pare Don­ald Trump with Win­ston Churchill. There’s even a book com­ing out on the sub­ject. I dep­re­cate all this by instinct and will avoid that book like the Coro­n­avirus. Sur­face sim­i­lar­i­ties may exist: both said or say main­ly what they thought or think, unfil­tered by polls (and some­times good advice). But Churchill’s lan­guage and thought were on a high­er plane. Still, when a friend said that Churchill nev­er stooped to deri­sive nick­names like Trump, I had to disagree.

Whether invent­ed by the Pres­i­dent or his scriptwrit­ers, some of Trump’s nick­names were very effec­tive.…

Read More Read More

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
Links on this page may earn commissions.