William A. Rusher Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

8 October 2020 Comments 1 Comment

“There’s a lot of ruin in any nation…”

The Greeks are still not laughing about their mid-1940s civil war, so levity may be inappropriate. Nor was at the time was Winston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “responsible for building up the nest of cockatrices for EAM [communist partisans] in Greece.” (His vocabulary was broad: A cockatrice is a mythical, two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a cock’s head.)

Nevertheless, the peace deal Churchill brokered between warring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilarious moments that, 75 years later, we may be permitted to indulge in lighter aspects.…

Churchill, Canada and the Perspective of History (Part 3)

9 December 2018 Comments 0 Comments

Perspective of History: Address to the Churchill Society of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Sir Winston’s 144th birthday, 30 November 2018 (Part 3). We were kindly hosted at Earnscliffe by the British High Commissioner, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque.

Perspective, 144 Years On

Concluded from Part 2…. “The great movements that underlie history—the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures—are powerful, almost determinant,” wrote Charles Krauthammer.

Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different. In recent times, only Churchill carries that absolutely required criterion: indispensability… Take away Churchill in 1940 [and] Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe.…

Churchill, Canada and the Perspective of History (Part 1)

3 December 2018 Comments 1 Comment

Address to the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Churchill’s 144th birthday, 30 November 2018 (Part 1). We were kindly hosted at Earnscliffe by the British High Commissioner, Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque.

Churchill and Canada, 144 Years On

I thank Ron Cohen. And return his compliments. I thank him for his scholarship—especially his great Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, which is one of the eight or ten standard works on Winston Churchill. And for his prowess as bag man, helping me empty the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye, which he has just described to you.…