David Dilks Archives - Richard M. Langworth

The Queen 70 Years On: “A Sparkling Presence at its Summit”

15 May 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"Our Island no longer holds the same authority or power that it did in the days of Queen Victoria. A vast world towers up around it and after all our victories we could not claim the rank we hold were it not for the respect for our character and good sense...and I regard it as the most direct mark of God's favour we have ever received in my long life that the whole structure of our new-formed Commonwealth has been linked and illuminated by a sparkling presence at its summit." —WSC, 1955

Churchill, Canada and the Perspective of History (Part 1)

3 December 2018 Comments 1 Comment

Address to the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Churchill’s 144th birthday, 30 November 2018 (Part 1). We were kindly hosted at Earnscliffe by the British High Commissioner, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque.

Churchill and Canada, 144 Years On

I thank Ron Cohen. And return his compliments. I thank him for his scholarship—especially his great Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, which is one of the eight or ten standard works on Winston Churchill. And for his prowess as bag man, helping me empty the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye, which he has just described to you.…

Lady Randolph & Winston Churchill on Blenheim

15 July 2017 Comments 3 Comments

I am asked what Churchill wrote and thought about his birthplace, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The first words I recall are those of his mother Jennie: “with pardonable pride.” They occur early in The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (1908). I always loved her description. One regrets the decline of people who can write like Jennie. She ranked with Lady Diana Cooper, and I think her son’s writing talent was inherited from her.…