New York Times Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Mosul and Churchill’s Wisdom: Put a Lid on It!

24 October 2016 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill’s wisdom speaks to us across the years. Take the controversy of whether we blab too much in advance about military operations, like Mosul.

In the October 19th presidential debate, Mr. Trump said the U.S. and Iraqis forfeited “the element of surprise” in publicizing the coming offensive against Mosul. This, he insisted, allowed Islamic State ringleaders to remove themselves from the danger zone: “Douglas MacArthur, George Patton [must be] spinning in their graves when they see the stupidity of our country.” Earlier in the week he had asked: “Why don’t we just go in quietly, right?…

Churchill’s Favorite Newspapers

10 August 2012 Comments 7 Comments

Which newspapers did Churchill prefer? I am particularly interested in 1919, when he was Secretary of State for War and Air. Was he a Times or Telegraph reader? —J.W., via email

Remarkably, Churchill read all the newspapers he could lay his hands on—from The Times to the Daily Worker, the British version of which was later renamed the Morning Star.

He would do this in bed of a morning after breakfasting off a tray. He liked to discard each sheet of a newspaper to the left and right. In the 1940s this infuriated his valet, Frank Sawyers, who made a show of disapproval as he picked up the sheets.…

Churchill as Racist: A Hard Sell

27 February 2012 Comments 2 Comments

Racist still? In “To See Humans’ Progress, Zoom Out” (The New York Times, 26 February 2012), Professor Steven Pinker asserts that for all their faults, educated people today are getting better:

Ideals that today’s educated people take for granted — equal rights, free speech, and the primacy of human life over tradition, tribal loyalty and intuitions about purity — are radical breaks with the sensibilities of the past. These too are gifts of a widening application of reason.

Fair enough, but to contrast what educated people were like in the bad old days, Prof.…