Churchill Centre Archives - Richard M. Langworth

He Never Doubted Clouds Would Break: John H. Mather 1943-2020

8 December 2020 Comments 0 Comments

“Why are you buying expensive pills over the counter?” asked Dr. John Mather. We were in an elevator during a 2001 Churchill Conference. “Don’t you have an honorable discharge from the Coast Guard?” He was then a Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service and Assistant Inspector General at the Veteran’s Administration. I’d never thought my four years with the USCG worthy of anything special, but I did have my DD-214. Mather said I was entitled: “We issue cheap pills.”

In the lift with us was Luce Churchill, married to Sir Winston’s grandson.…

Churchill: Not Much to Say Today?

28 June 2015 Comments 2 Comments

If a man is coming across the sea to kill you, you do everything in your power to make sure he dies before finishing his journey. That may be difficult, it may be painful, but at least it is simple. We are now entering a world of imponderables, and at every stage occasions for self-questioning arise. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

—Winston S. Churchill, 18 February 1945

It was recently asserted that Churchill doesn’t have much to say to us today, and that the only people who use Churchill as a guide nowadays are “over-testosteroned American neocons.”…

Churchill on Garibaldi

27 February 2014 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill had profound respect for the Italian 19th century democratic revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, and once hoped to write his biography. But it is unlikely that his famous lines, "blood, toil, tears and sweat" were adapted by something Garibaldi said—they date back quite a bit farther.