Alexander Fleming Archives - Richard M. Langworth

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

11 January 2020 Comments 2 Comments

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.…

Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality

13 January 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Per the previous post, I append for reader comment the contents of my next book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What Churchill Stood For.

I have written on most of these matters in the past; the book recasts it afresh. I also acknowledge and cross-reference the work of experts who know far more than I, particularly in the fields of genealogy and medicine. I would be glad to hear your thoughts; please use the “contact” page.

The historian David Stafford wrote: “Myth only develops and takes hold when the time is right, and the climate has long been ripe for the emergence of myths about a wartime hero who stood firm against a totalitarian foe and smote an evil empire.”…

The Dallying Duke of Marlborough

30 September 2015 Comments 0 Comments

This historical corner of the Web is exercised over the misquotes and tall tales about Winston Churchill that clutter the Internet—by everybody from Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III to assorted authors and politicians (see “Churchillian Drift”).

They range from RG III’s recent “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak” (nobody knows who said that, but Churchill didn’t) to the fiction that Alexander Fleming twice saved Churchill’s life.

But here’s an amusing example of Churchill himself destroying a Churchill myth—about his ancestor John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. Reference is to the early pages of Marlborough: His Life and Times, vol.…