Noel Coward Archives - Richard M. Langworth

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.…

Nolan’s Dunkirk: “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans”

5 August 2017 Comments 3 Comments

(Reviewed for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.) Dunkirk, produced by Christopher Nolan, sets out to portray the 1940 rescue of the Allied armies from the clutches of Hitler’s Wehrmacht in terms of courage, heroism, survival, and a few examples of cowardice. In that he succeeds admirably. In terms of context—in conveying an understanding of what Dunkirk was about—he fails utterly.

Drama Sans Meaning

Mr. Nolan says context wasn’t the aim. Dunkirk is about communal togetherness and universal goodness. But that could be shown on any beach in any war in the last hundred years from Gallipoli to Normandy to Inchon.…

Churchill on Italian Cruise Ships: Untrue

20 January 2012 Comments 8 Comments

It’s all over the Web. And entirely bogus.

After his retirement, goes the story, Churchill was cruising the Mediterranean on an Italian liner and an Italian journalist asked why a former British Prime Minister chose an Italian ship. “There are three things I like about being on an Italian cruise ship,” Churchill supposedly says. “First, their cuisine is unsurpassed. Second, their service is superb. And then, in time of emergency, there is none of this nonsense about women and children first.”

Amusing to some, anathema to others, including relatives of the Costa Concordia passengers and many embarrassed Italians, this is NOT by Winston Churchill.…