Book, media, audio and video reviews by Richard M. Langworth
Peter Clark, Churchill’s Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight. London: Haus Publishing, 2020, 240 pp., no illustrations, $29.95, Amazon $27.48, Kindle $22.49. Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To read the original, click here.
N.B. March 2021: The original post contains author Clark’s response, which is about the most cordial reply to a grumpy review I’ve ever read. He kindly takes heed of my criticisms and says he will attend to them in the paperback in due course. RML
Churchill’s Britain abridgedI did want to like this book.…
May 2021 marks thirty years since we lost dear Lee Remick. She was the accomplished actress who brought Winston Churchill’s mother vividly to the screen.
One of the finest-ever Churchill films, Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, is available on CD. It was originally a television documentary, “The Life and Loves of Jennie Churchill,” broadcast on ITV in Britain and PBS in the USA in 1974. Co-starring with Remick were Ronald Pickup as Lord Randolph Churchill and Warren Clarke as young Winston.
Lee and GregIn 1991, two months before she died, we held an award dinner for Ms.…
Excerpted from Richard Cohen and Richard Langworth: “Witold Pilecki: A Deserving Addition to “The Righteous Among the Nations,” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Mr. Cohen is a real estate lawyer based in London and head of the Essex Branch of the Jewish Historical Society of England. For the full text and illustrations please click here.
War aim or by-product?Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz. (The story of Witold Pilecki.) New York: HarperCollins, 2019, $28.99, Amazon $20.49, Kindle $13.99.
By 1 August 1946 the world knew the full truth of the Holocaust.…
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 SurvivedJennie 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.…
Winston Churchill and Emery Reves: Correspondence, 1937-1964, edited by Sir Martin Gilbert. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997, 415 pages, Amazon $8.95. This updated review was first published by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.
Emery Reves, from the ground upAdmirers of Sir Martin Gilbert were pleased and touched to see his chronicle appear, now over twenty years ago. But few expected it would amount to much more than a useful research tool. We were wrong, and quickly realized why Sir Martin and Wendy Reves were so keen to get it published.…
Marcus Peters (Adé Dee Haastrup) is a neatly dressed West Indian riding the London Underground on 28 May 1940. Whom should he meet but Prime Minister Churchill (Gary Oldman)! The scene (fiction) forms a dramatic moment in Darkest Hour, Joe Wright’s great film on Churchill in 1940.
Churchill, per the movie, has entered the Underground for the second time in his life. (The first was in the 1920s, when he couldn’t find his way out and had to be rescued.) He goes there as the Germans are rolling up Europe.…
Churchill and Attlee: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace, by Leo McKinstry. New York: London, Atlantic Books, 736 pages, £25, Amazon $25.66. Excerpted from a book review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original text, click here.
The McKinstry EpicLeo McKinstry’s book 738 pages—twice the size of the previous Attlee-Churchill book and is riveting from cover to cover. Scrupulously fair, McKinstry tells the story, backed by a voluminous bibliography, extensive research and private correspondence. Thus he captures Churchill’s generosity of spirit, and Attlee’s greatness of soul.
“Sometimes turbulent, often fruitful, theirs was a relationship unprecedented in the annals of British politics,” McKinstry concludes.…
