Elizabeth II Archives | Richard M. Langworth

“The Crown”: A Not So Crowning Achievement

14 December 2016 Comments 0 Comments

The Crown, 2016. Produced for Netflix by Left Bank Pictures, created and written by Peter Morgan. Ten episodes released 4 November 2016. A second season is commissioned. = N.B. Since writing this, more false trails emerged. Consulting 1952 documents at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project and Churchill Archives Centre, we found no evidence for the film’s implication that the Duke of Windsor bargained with Churchill to persuade the Royal couple to move from Clarence House to the Palace, in exchange for restoration of his allowance. Nor is there anything to suggest Churchill postponed the Coronation 18 months for his own political purposes. ____________________________________

No sooner had I admired the fair, mostly balanced and accurate PBS docudrama Churchill’s Secret (on the Prime Minister’s June 1953 stroke) than I was grumbling through Netflix’s The Crown, which is, sadly, as often misleading as Churchill’s Secret was honest.…

Marshall: “Noblest Roman of Them All”

14 May 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Johns Hopkins University Press releases this month the seventh and final volume of The Papers of George Catlett Marshall: “The Man of the Age,” October 1, 1949 – October 16, 1959. It was masterfully edited by Mark Stoler and Daniel Holt under the auspices of the Marshall Center. It joins its predecessors presenting the papers of one of the greatest generals and statesmen of his age (1880-1959). I quickly assigned it for review by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, for its many references to Churchill in George Marshall’s final phase. This and the previous volume are indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the complicated international scene immediately after World War II.…

Romney’s Churchill Gaffe: A Small But Not a Large Clang

4 October 2011 Comments 0 Comments

Writing for Business Insider on September 29th, Grace Wyler correctly reports a Churchill misquote by presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Defending himself from charges that he is a “flip-flopper,” Wyler writes, Romney confused “the Brit every Republican loves with the Brit every Republican loves to hate.” Here according to NBC is what Governor Romney said:

In the private sector, if you don’t change your view when the facts change, well you’ll get fired for being stubborn and stupid. Winston Churchill said, “When facts change, I change too, madam.”

Wyler accurately notes that this was said by John Maynard Keynes, “the British economist whose theories about government intervention in the economy [are] reviled by conservatives everywhere.” (Keynes’s actual words were: “When the facts change, I change my mind.…