“Among his many qualities over fifty years of political prominence was CHURCHILL’S CONSISTENCY. He might not agree with every position, biographer Martin Gilbert wrote: ‘But there would be nothing to cause me to think: How shocking, how appalling.’” —RML
Egyptians
Churchill on the Egyptians: “Set the Jews on them.” Or so it is alleged.

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

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.…

Read More Read More

Mount
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
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

Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

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.…

Read More Read More

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

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

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.…

Read More Read More

Studebaker
Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

Comments 9 Comments

Why did Stude­bak­er go out of busi­ness? I have your book Stude­bak­er 1946-1966, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as Stude­bak­er: The Post­war Years. I worked for the old com­pa­ny at the end in Hamil­ton, Ontario. Your book brought back mem­o­ries of many old Stude­bak­er hands. Styl­ists Bob Doehler and Bob Andrews were good friends about my age.

I am look­ing for­ward to the last chap­ter dis­cussing how Stude­bak­er went wrong, espe­cial­ly since I also have the­o­ries. It would fun to com­pare notes. I often quote from your book: “For many years, Ray­mond Loewy Asso­ciates would be the only thing stand­ing between Stude­bak­er and dull mediocrity.”…

Read More Read More

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

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

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.…

Read More Read More

Alex Tremulis
The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 3: Streamlining and Speed

The Greatness of Alex Tremulis, Part 3: Streamlining and Speed

Comments 1 Comment

Con­clud­ed from Part 2. My Tremulis piece was pub­lished in full in The Auto­mo­bile, March 2020. 

Alex Tremulis in the 1950s

When Kaiser left Wil­low Run, Alex Tremulis decid­ed it was time to work for a com­pa­ny with a future. In Dear­born, Ford Chief of Design George Walk­er hired him with an unchanged job descrip­tion: chief of advanced styling. There he joined Bob Thomas, who wrote warm­ly of him in 2008. “Alex thought he was back in the Army Air Corps, turn­ing out scores of 3/8th scale mod­els of futur­is­tic things like fly­ing cars and nuclear-pow­ered vehi­cles.…

Read More Read More

Churchill’s Inspirations Bedizen the Pages of History

Churchill’s Inspirations Bedizen the Pages of History

Comments 3 Comments

Excerpt­ed from “Which His­tor­i­cal and Con­tem­po­rary Fig­ures were Churchill’s Inspi­ra­tions?” Writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project, Feb­ru­ary 2020. For Hillsdale’s com­plete text and illus­tra­tions, please click here.

We are often asked which his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary per­son­ages most influ­enced Win­ston Churchill’s thought and states­man­ship. One is right to start with Lord Ran­dolph Churchill, Napoleon, Clemenceau and Marl­bor­ough. The clas­sics open anoth­er avenue. Read­ers can find pithy remarks by Churchill on many of the fol­low­ing fig­ures in Churchill by Him­self.

Lord Randolph Churchill

His father was the first of young Winston’s polit­i­cal inspi­ra­tions, and the sub­ject of his first biog­ra­phy.…

Read More Read More

Liberties
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

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.