Charles Darwin Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Straitjacketing Churchill (and the Truth)

19 July 2012 Comments 0 Comments

LONDON, JULY 19TH— In what were described as “guerrilla raids,” BBC Channel 4 “straitjacketed” the statues of four widely admired Britons: Churchill and Florence Nightingale in London, Charles Darwin in Shrewsbury and Samuel Johnson in Lichfield.

Each figure was “restrained” in a bespoke strait-jacket which had the mental illness they are reputed to have had stamped across it. Churchill’s was labeled DEPRESSION.

The straitjacketing was carried out to promote Channel 4’s season of prime-time programming challenging mental health stigma and discrimination, “4 Goes Mad,” which started on Monday 23 July. The stunt was also captured as part of a short film aired on Channel 4’s “Random Acts.”…

Churchill’s Religion: “Optimistic Agnostic”

28 May 2012 Comments 1 Comment

Although he had some very religious friends, like Lord Hugh Cecil, Winston Churchill was not a religious man. Introduced to religious diversity early, he was brought up “High Church,” but had a nanny “who enjoyed a very Low Church form of piety.” When in rebellious mood he would tell Nanny Everest “the worst thing that he could think of…that he would go out and ‘worship idols.’”

After his self-education as a young officer in India, when he read all the popular challenges to orthodox religion, like Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and William Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man, Churchill evolved into what we might term an “optimistic agnostic.” He…