Marlborough Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Update: How Many Words did Winston Churchill Produce?

26 February 2020 Comments 4 Comments

How many words, how many speeches?

“How many speeches did Churchill make, and in how many words? Also, how many words did he write in his books and articles? [Updated from 2014.]

Word counts

Through the wonders of computer science (Ian Langworth and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project), we know that the present corpus of works by and about Winston S. Churchill exceeds 80 million words (380 megabytes). This includes 20 million (120 megabytes) by Churchill himself (counting his letters, memos and papers in the 23 volumes of Churchill Documents. Here are his the top word counts among his books:

The Churchill Documents: 10,000,000*

Winston S.…

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“The Wilderness Years” with Robert Hardy: Original Review

7 November 2019 Comments 0 Comments

“Churchill: The Wilderness Years”

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has just republished “Scaling Everest,” Robert Hardy’s recollections of playing the Wilderness Years Churchill. They are from 1987, his speech to one of our Churchill Tours, at the Reform Club, London. We are grateful to his executors, Justine Hardy and Neil Nisbet-Robertson for permission to reprint. For Part 1, click here.

I thought the occasion appropriate to republish my original review of the “Wilderness Years” from 1981, some years before we met. I thought at the time I had “laid an egg”—in Churchill’s phraseology, not RH’s.…

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Hillsdale Acquires Cohen Collection of Churchill’s Writings

5 March 2019 Comments 4 Comments

The Cohen Trove

Hillsdale College has announced acquisition of an important part of the Ronald Cohen collection of the writings of Sir Winston Churchill. It numbers almost 2000 individual items. They comprise six categories: forewords, prefaces, and introductions by Churchill; periodical articles; works and periodicals containing Churchill speeches; letters, memoranda, statements and letters to the editor. Some 15% of these writings have not seen print since their original, limited editions, and therefore comprise a “submerged canon,” because they open a fresh field of Churchill scholarship.

Hillsdale College also has a temporary, exclusive purchase option for the balance of the collection, books written by Winston Churchill.…

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Origins: “I’ll kiss him on all four cheeks”

24 January 2019 Comments 1 Comment

Q: Churchill’s Kiss: A Cheeky Affair

I found myself using an alleged Churchill witticism I have long known, but could not find in your book, Churchill’s Wit: The Definitive Collection (2009). As I have it, Churchill was preparing to meet Marshal Stalin, and a diplomatic advisor said, “He will probably expect to kiss you on both cheeks.” “Oh, that’s all right,” said Churchill, “as long as he doesn’t want to be kissed on all four.” Can you verify this one?

My own main area of scholarly research is Samuel Johnson, another subject often misattributed. Good quote collections more than just the quotation and its source.…

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Introduction to “The Dream”: Churchill’s Haunting Short Story

15 April 2018 Comments 1 Comment

The Dream is republished (from Never Despair 1945-1965, Volume 8 of the official biography) by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To read it in its entirety, click here.

The Dream…

… is the most mysterious and ethereal story Winston Churchill ever wrote. Yet the more we know about him, the better we may understand how he came to write it.

Replete with broad-sweep Churchillian narrative, The Dream contains many references to now-obscure people, places and things. The new online version published by Hillsdale provides links to all of them. You need only click on any unfamiliar name or term for links to online references.…

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Clement Attlee’s Noble Tribute to Winston Churchill

21 January 2018 Comments 1 Comment

My colleague Richard Cohen commends a eulogy to Churchill by the great Labour Party leader Clement Attlee. It occurred in the House of Lords on 25 January 1965, the day after Sir Winston died. It is notable for its fine words. Moreover, it shows how their relationship as colleagues eclipsed that of political opponents. At a time of greatly strained relations between the parties, on both sides of the pond, this is a thoughtful reminder that things could be different.

Attlee was the first prime minister of a socialist government with an outright majority (1945-51).…

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Nashville (5). The Myth that Churchill Admired Hitler

4 November 2017 Comments 0 Comments

Part 5 of Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality examines multiplying fables between the two World Wars. Churchill was an alcoholic, we are often assured. He flip-flopped over Bolshevism. All Jews were communists, he said. He despised Gandhi. A closet fascist, he supported Mussolini. But one tall tale perhaps eclipses all the others. It is the idea that Churchill admired Hitler. Remarks to the Churchill Society of Tennessee, Nashville, 14 October 2017. Continued from Part 4…

Judging Hitler

It is important to understand just how right Churchill was about Hitler. In May 1935 the Führer wrote a revealing letter to the British newspaper magnate Esmond Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, one of his promoters.…

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Churchill as Anti-Semite: Rubbish

17 June 2017 Comments 8 Comments

A lifelong supporter of Zionism and the Jews, Winston Churchill is sometimes labeled an anti-Semite. The proffered evidence, an alleged article of his, has made the obligatory rounds of the Internet.

A 1937 article draft in the Churchill Archives supposedly proves that Churchill’s off-expressed sympathy for the Jews was hypocrisy. Churchill was, if this article is to be believed, a closet anti-Semite.

Origins of a Slur

The allegations began with a 2007 article in Britain’s The Independent: “Uncovered: Churchill’s Warnings About the ‘Hebrew Bloodsuckers.’”

The 1937 draft, “How the Jews Can Combat Persecution,” had “apparently lain unnoticed in the Churchill Archives at Cambridge since the early months of the Second World War,” stated The Independent:

Churchill criticised the “aloofness” of Jewish people from wider society and urged them to make the effort to integrate themselves….Churchill…

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Chartwell and Churchill, 1955

1 March 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Chartwell, 1955— Here is one of the finest—as it is the most revealing—portraits of Churchill at Chartwell we can read, by the Oxford historian A.L. Rowse, who spent a memorable day at Churchill’s home.

It gives an insightful view of Churchill and Chartwell ten years after World War II, not without pathos and sadness, for even now he was beginning to reflect that he had “achieved a great deal, only to achieve nothing in the end”: a thought however inconceivable in his case, but worth pondering by us all. Read full article at Hillsdale College Churchill Project.…

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