John Charmley Archives | Richard M. Langworth

Grand Alliance: A Way Out of the Second World War?

28 February 2021 Comments 0 Comments

Question:

“Professor John Charmley says in a podcast that Neville Chamberlain believed a prewar grand alliance against Hitler was not feasible. He was referring to alliance between the UK and France and the United States and USSR. Do you agree?”

Answer:

As Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) tells the District Attorney (Lane Smith) in “My Cousin Vinny” (1992), “that’s a B.S. question.”

(To voir dire Miss Vito on “general automotive knowledge” the D.A. had demanded the ignition timing of “a 1955 Chevrolet 327 V-8.” (Readers less mechanically inclined than Miss Vito may enjoy her devastating two-minute rebuttal to this “trick question.”)…

Churchill Red Herrings: On a Federal Europe and “Keep England White”

21 September 2019 Comments 3 Comments

Churchill on Europe

“It is only when plans for uniting Europe take a federal form that we ourselves cannot take part, because we cannot subordinate ourselves or the control of British policy to federal authorities.” This quote is a red herring —not Churchill.

Hoist on my own petard! Alan Ingram, a kind reader, has helped me correct several attributions (four of them mine) of this quote to Churchill. The remark, excluding Britain from a federal Europe, belongs to his then-foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. I plead…

Guilty with an explanation:

My error and others’ occurred by misreading successive quotes in John Charmley’s Churchill’s Grand Alliance (1995).…

Churchill, Canada and the Perspective of History (Part 2)

6 December 2018 Comments 2 Comments

History and memory: Address to the Churchill Society of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Sir Winston’s 144th birthday, 30 November 2018 (Part 2). We were kindly hosted at Earnscliffe by the British High Commissioner, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque.

Churchill and the Perspective of History 144 Years On

Continued from Part 1…. Do you want the good news or the bad news on Churchill today? The bad news is the high level of ignorance, as measured by that electronic Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner, the Internet.

Churchill’s name elicits 100 million Google hits, a colleague says, “Some are questions, many of which simply require the answer ‘No’—such as: ‘Was Churchill anti-Semitic?…