Iron Curtain Speech Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Margaret Thatcher 1923-2013: A Churchillian Remembrance

21 September 2020 Comments 0 Comments

Margaret Thatcher: Excerpted from a tribute, 2013

Everyone is familiar with Margaret Thatcher’s career. Everyone depending on their politics will have their own vision. It is left to say here what she meant to the memory of Winston Churchill, the prime minister she revered above all. More than anyone who lived at 10 Downing Street, she had real appreciation for him. She read his books, quoted him frequently, even hosted a dinner for his family and surviving members of his wartime coalition.

In 1993 she was in Washington to coincide with a Churchill Conference hosting 500 people, including 140 students, a dozen luminaries, and ambassadors from Britain and the Commonwealth.…

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Churchill’s Prep for the “Iron Curtain” Speech 1946

31 January 2019 Comments 0 Comments

Q: Where did Churchill write the Iron Curtain address?

When we first moved to the United States we bought a home in New Canaan, Connecticut that had once been owned by Bernard Baruch and used has his get-away. We were told that, as he and Churchill were friends, Churchill had been invited by Baruch to stay there and it was there he wrote his Iron Curtain speech. We were never sure whether this was true or whether it was something a local real estate agent had dreamed up. There was another house down the road where George Washington was said to have slept on his way through!…

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Hillsdale’s Churchill Documents: Harold Wilson, 1951

30 July 2018 Comments 0 Comments

“Two days earlier I had been a Minister of the Crown, red box and all. Now I was reduced to the position of a messenger between my wife and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other.” —Harold Wilson

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The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is rapidly completing final volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. (The name is somewhat of a misnomer; no one has ever censored any material.) Suitably, all thirty-one volumes will be complete by June 2019: the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. It will be fifty-six years since Randolph Churchill and his “Young Gentlemen” including Martin Gilbert began their work.…

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Churchill, Truman and Poker on the Train to Fulton, March 1946

6 July 2018 Comments 3 Comments

How Harry fleeced Winston at poker, and the PM wished to be born again…

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is closing in on finishing Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. At thirty-one volumes, it is the longest on record and will have taken fifty-six years to complete. It is an honor to be part of the team now reviewing proofs for the penultimate document (companion) volume. This runs from August 1945, after Churchill was turned out of office, through September 1951, when he was about to regain it. The last volume (1951-65) will be published next year, with suitable celebrations.…

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Tributes to Churchill: What They Said Back Then

31 March 2018 Comments 2 Comments

A colleague asks if there were any official tributes by the government of India following Churchill’s death in January 1965. He was curious to know if Indian attitudes half a century ago were as virulent as they are in some quarters today.

There were indeed tributes from India. Heidi Eggerton of the Churchill Archives Centre provided this coverage in The Times of 25 January 1965, page 8, under the heading:

“Leader with Magic Personality”

DELHI, 24 JANUARY 1965— The Indian tricolour flying on all public buildings in preparation for Republic Day on Tuesday, was lowered to half-mast today….…

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