Adlai Stevenson Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Alistair Cooke: An Introduction and an Appreciation

6 May 2020 Comments 2 Comments

My previous note was about Alistair Cooke on Churchill in 1930s. I now reprise my introduction to his speech, and a personal epilogue. Sir Alistair’s speech, at the Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, 27 August 1988, is 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. “This is the time of year when I turn down everything,” he wrote.…

Cockran: A Great Contemporary

22 November 2016 Comments 1 Comment

Q: How important was Congressman Bourke Cockran’s influence on the young Churchill?

A: Very. The late Curt Zoller was the first to write in depth about Bourke Cockran. This man played a vital but little understood role in forming young Churchill’s political philosophy. In 1895, Zoller wrote, when young Churchill traveled to New York on his way to Cuba,

…he was greeted by William Bourke Cockran, a New York lawyer, U.S. congressman, friend of his mother’s and of his American relatives. Winston’s Aunt Clara was married to Moreton Frewen. (The peripatetic “Mortal Ruin” would later badly edit Churchill’s first book, Story of the Malakand Field Force.)…