Arthur Balfour Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Paul Courtenay 1934-2020: No Better Definition of a Pro

29 October 2020 Comments 3 Comments

It’s a shopworn phrase, but Paul Courtenay was a walking encyclopedia on Winston Churchill. We worked together on conferences, seminars, books and articles for thirty years. He was a major contributor to Finest Hour, the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, to books and biographies. Paul was indispensable. And he is irreplaceable.

As editor over those years I was constantly grateful that he was there. I had only to press his Heraldry button, his Smuts button, his Military button, his Foreign Affairs button, his Book Review button, for exactly what I needed. I never discovered how many such buttons he had.…

“The Art of the Possible” (1): Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid

24 June 2020 Comments 1 Comment

Excerpts from “Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid” an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, June 2020. For the complete text with endnotes, please click here. This article is dedicated to the memory of Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), whose Churchillian magnanimity was a model for his time—and even more for ours.

Part 1: 1902-1909

In “Apartheid: Made in Britain,” Richard Dowden argued that Britain not South Africa cost black South Africans their rights. His account is factual as far as it goes, but there is more to say about Churchill’s effort to achieve justice in South Africa.…

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.…