Sir Martin Gilbert 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.…

Churchill on the Century

18 October 2016 Comments 0 Comments

Who here is in their Forties? Are you as pessimistic as he was?

Winston Churchill was 48 when he penned some “Reflections on the Century,” which may arrest you with their prescience—and their eerie relevance.

His words below are in his original “speech form.” This is the way they were set out on the notes he carried with him, however well he memorized his lines. They appear in this style in my collection of quotations, Churchill by Himself, but differ from the way you may have encountered them in other books:

What a disappointment [this] century has been.……

The Real Churchill’s London (1)

21 June 2016 Comments 0 Comments

London: The Evening Standard intriguingly offers an article on Churchill’s “favourite spots in the capital.” In “The London Life of Winston Churchill” (16 June 2016), readers are invited: “Browse the gallery above to find Churchill’s favourite London spots.”

The accompanying gallery, alas, offers only a bottle of Pol Roger champagne, the National Liberal Club, a box of Romeo y Julieta cigars, a restaurant with a Churchill bar, Paxton & Whitfield’s cheese shop, Austin Reed’s menswear, and Brown’s Hotel. (“I don’t stay in hotels, I stay in Brown’s,” they claim he said. The remark is not located in his published books, articles, speeches and documents.)…