Category: Research Topics

Auschwitz
“Work sets you free.” The main gate of Auschwitz, the first sight Jews caught of their place of doom. (Creative Commons Dnalor 01 via Wikimedia)
Bombing Auschwitz: “Get everything out of the air force you can.” -WSC

Bombing Auschwitz: “Get everything out of the air force you can.” -WSC

“Bomb­ing Auschwitz” is Chap­ter 31 in my book, Win­ston Churchill, Myth and Real­i­ty: What he Actu­al­ly Did and Said. Avail­able in Kin­dle or paper­back from Ama­zon.

The Auschwitz myth

“War is main­ly a cat­a­logue of blun­ders,” Churchill wrote. [1] A war leader is “the slave of unfore­see­able and uncon­trol­lable events. Anti­quat­ed War Offices, weak, incom­pe­tent or arro­gant Com­man­ders, untrust­wor­thy allies, hos­tile neu­trals, malig­nant For­tune, ugly sur­pris­es, awful miscalculations—all take their seat at the Coun­cil Board….” [2]

Churchill’s most fla­grant inac­tion, accord­ing to many crit­ics, was fail­ing to bomb Auschwitz, the noto­ri­ous Nazi death camp, or the rail lines lead­ing to it.…

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words
A collection of Churchill’s books in various editions easily fills a wall. (Author photo)
Update: How Many Words did Winston Churchill Produce?

Update: How Many Words did Winston Churchill Produce?

How many words, how many speeches?

“How many speech­es did Churchill make, and in how many words? Also, how many words did he write in his books and arti­cles? [Updat­ed from 2014.]

Word counts

Through the won­ders of com­put­er sci­ence (Ian Lang­worth and the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project), we know that the present cor­pus of works by and about Win­ston S. Churchill exceeds 80 mil­lion words (380 megabytes). This includes 20 mil­lion (120 megabytes) by Churchill him­self (count­ing his let­ters, mem­os and papers in the 23 vol­umes of Churchill Doc­u­ments. Here are his the top word counts among his books:

The Churchill Doc­u­ments: 10,000,000*

Win­ston S.…

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secondhand
Churchill debating for the negative on the resolution “That in the opinion of this House the present Government is unworthy of the confidence of the country,” Oxford Union, 1 March 1907. Secretary Hallett is seated at far left, President Talbot on the raised dais, Viscount Wolmer in the chair to his left. (This fine framed print from the Illustrated London News is offered by Media Storehouse. See http://bit.ly/2S1JlNE)
Secondhand but Valid: “If you can speak in this country…”

Secondhand but Valid: “If you can speak in this country…”

The Eng­lish-Speak­ing Union posed a ques­tion which illus­trates the prob­lem of sec­ond­hand quotes. That is, some­thing Churchill said which is not in his pub­lished canon. The quote is: “If you can speak in this coun­try [Britain], you can do any­thing.” It was a con­cise cel­e­bra­tion of the British right to free speech. The ESU has it on their web­site. But is it verifiable?

In 1966, the ESU Philadel­phia Branch host­ed an exhib­it of my Churchill bio­graph­i­cal stamp col­lec­tion at the Philadel­phia Nation­al Bank. It was the first pub­lic appear­ance of what­ev­er lim­it­ed Churchill knowl­edge I then had, my “awak­en­ing” as a Churchillian.…

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Fleming
Professor Alexander Fleming, who first discovered the mold Penicillin Notatum, in his laboratory at St Mary’s, Paddington, London, 1943. (Imperial War Museum – public domain)
Urban Myths: “Alexander Fleming Twice Saved Churchill’s Life”

Urban Myths: “Alexander Fleming Twice Saved Churchill’s Life”

Fleming as rescuer…

The Flem­ing myth is updat­ed from an arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1998.

Is it true that Lord Ran­dolph Churchill financed the edu­ca­tion of Alexan­der Flem­ing, the dis­cov­er­er of peni­cillin, as a result of Flem­ing (or his father) res­cu­ing Churchill from drown­ing in a swamp when young Win­ston was a youth—and a Flem­ing dis­cov­ery, peni­cillin, saved Churchill’s life years lat­er in 1943? A friend of mine has sent me this email regard­ing it and I want­ed to ver­i­fy . —L.M.

This ques­tion comes up reg­u­lar­ly, but both parts of the sto­ry are untrue. Nei­ther Alexan­der Flem­ing nor his father were with Churchill at the times sug­gest­ed.…

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Palestine
At the Cairo Conference, 1921. Front, L-R: M. Stevenson, Gen. Walter Congreve (Commander Egyptian Expeditionary Force), Sir Herbert Samuel (Palestine High Commissioner), Winston Churchill (Colonial Secretary), Sir Percy Cox (Iraq High Commissioner). 2nd row, L-R: Gertrude Bell (advisor who favored Arab kings in Iraq and Jordan), Sir Sassoon Eskell (Iraq Finance Minister), Gen. Atkinson, Jafar Pasha al-Askari (Iraq Defense Minister), T.E. Lawrence (Middle East Dept.) Public domain, Beaugosses at the English Wikipedia.
Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East, 100 Years On

Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East, 100 Years On

Middle East, Made and Unmade

“A Cen­tu­ry Ago, the Mod­ern Mid­dle East Was Born,” announced The New York Times in Decem­ber. A col­league asks: “Are you not struck by how dif­fi­cult (impos­si­ble?) it is to encap­su­late his­to­ry in an op-ed? Is that real­ly how and when the mod­ern Mid­dle East was born?”

Good ques­tions. The Times’s idea is that after World War I, avari­cious impe­ri­al­ists moved in to enslave Turkey’s for­mer slaves. This famil­iar theme will dom­i­nate through the cen­te­nary of the Cairo Con­fer­ence in March 2021. It’s been around at least since 2001, when Osama bin Laden referred to 9/11 as pay­back for what he then called “eighty years of injustice.”…

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White Russians
Admiral Kolchak and Anna Timiryova (his lover, seated to his right), with head of the British mission General Alfred Knox and English officers observing military exercises on the Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War, 1919. (Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Churchill and the White Russians: The Russian Civil War, 1919

Churchill and the White Russians: The Russian Civil War, 1919

Extract­ed from “Churchill: A Mil­lion Allied Sol­diers to Fight for the White Rus­sians?” for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, Novem­ber 2019. For the orig­i­nal text click here.

A read­er refers us to The Polar Bear Expe­di­tion: The Heroes of America’s For­got­ten Inva­sion of Rus­sia 1918-1919 (2019). It repeats a mis­un­der­stand­ing about Churchill’s role in aid­ing the White Rus­sians against the Bol­she­viks. By the spring of 1919 in Rus­sia, we read:

…the cat was out of the bag: whether its allies—English, French, White Russians—liked it nor not, the U.S. was pulling out. On March 4, the British War Cab­i­net decid­ed to fol­low suit, ignor­ing the argu­ments of the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Bol­she­vik Win­ston Churchill, who as sec­re­tary of war had pro­posed increas­ing the Allied com­mit­ment in Rus­sia to one mil­lion men.…

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Argentia
Continuity of purpose since 1941: A NATO fleet entering the harbor of Stavanger, Norway, 1975. (Isaac Newton, Creative Commons)
Researching the Atlantic Conference, Argentia, Newfoundland, August 1941

Researching the Atlantic Conference, Argentia, Newfoundland, August 1941

 A Question about Argentia

I am research­ing events and indi­vid­u­als at the first “sum­mit” between U.S. and British lead­ers. This was the “Atlantic Con­fer­ence” at Argen­tia, New­found­land on 9-12 August 1941. Most his­to­ries focus on the sum­mit meet­ing, con­se­quent­ly exclud­ing crit­i­cal meet­ings between oth­er high rank­ing indi­vid­u­als. Argen­tia was cer­tain­ly also a mil­i­tary meet­ing. Strat­e­gy, tac­tics and materiel were like­wise dis­cussed. Can you help me devel­op a list of the indi­vid­u­als who involved? Sir John Dill, Admi­ral Ernest J. King, Lord Beaver­brook and Sir Alexan­der Cado­gan were not there to sim­ply to attend din­ners.…

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Randolph Churchill
The White House, 9 April 1963. President John F. Kennedy declares Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. On steps, front row (L-R): Undersecretary of State, George Ball, British Ambassador Sir David Ormsby-Gore, President Kennedy, Randolph Churchill. Back rows (L-R): Deputy Chief of Protocol William J. Tonesk (mostly behind Ball), Sylvia Ormsby-Gore, Randolph’s son Winston, President’s naval aide Tazewell Shepard. Secret Service agent Art Godfrey is at far right. (Photograph by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton. presented to Richard Langworth, 1988, public domain)
Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (3)

Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (3)

“Ran­dolph Churchill: Present at the Cre­ation,” is from a lec­ture aboard the Regent Sev­en Seas Explor­er on the 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019. Con­clud­ed from Part 2.

“The Great Work” —Randolph S.C.

After the war, Churchill willed his archive to Ran­dolph. In 1959, impressed by his son’s  biog­ra­phy of Lord Der­by, he invit­ed Ran­dolph to be his biog­ra­ph­er. Ran­dolph devot­ed him­self to the job, know­ing by then that he had wrecked his body, that the process of dis­in­te­gra­tion was advanced. Could he fin­ish in time? Ran­dolph wondered.

He housed the archives in a fire­proof strong room at Stour, his home in Suf­folk.…

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Randolph Churchill
Stour House, East Bergholt, visited on the 2006 Churchill Tour of England. We were the guests of the present owners, who have maintained its stately beauty. Randolph’s strong room, which once housed the Churchill Archives, is behind the blacked-out windows at left. (Photo by Barbara Langworth)
Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (2)

Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (2)

“Ran­dolph Churchill: Present at the Cre­ation,” is tak­en from a lec­ture aboard the Regent Sev­en Seas Explor­er on the 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019. Con­tin­ued from Part 1.

Randolph Churchill Postwar

Out of the Army and Par­lia­ment in 1945, and divorced from Pamela in 1946, Ran­dolph Churchill led a “ram­pag­ing exis­tence,” his sis­ter Mary wrote. “He always had lances to break, and hares to start.” He was loy­al and affec­tion­ate, but he “would pick an argu­ment with a chair.”

In 1948 he mar­ried June Osborne and fathered his sec­ond child, Ara­bel­la.…

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Randolph Churchill
RSC, ca. 1933 (by kind permission of Mary Soames)
Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (1)

Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography (1)

“Ran­dolph Churchill: Present at the Cre­ation,” is tak­en from a lec­ture aboard the Regent Sev­en Seas Explor­er on the 2019 Hills­dale Col­lege Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019.

Most every­body has an inkling of who Win­ston Churchill was. But how many know of his son Ran­dolph? How many British school­child­ren do you think have heard of him? Do they know that Arthur Conan Doyle cre­at­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who some think was a real per­son? They should, Sir Arthur was a great writer. Like Ran­dolph Churchill, who found­ed the longest biog­ra­phy ever writ­ten. In the words of Dean Ache­son, he was “present at the creation.”…

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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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