Richard M. Langworth

Churchill’s is largely a military account, with sentiments that that surprise some. “We march with Lee and Jackson, with Stuart, with Longstreet, and with Early through autumn woodlands…. Virginia, the proud Founder State…trampled upon, disinherited, impoverished, riven asunder….” Yet Churchill is not pro-Confederacy. His instincts were always with liberty.

One the brightest stars in the Churchill firmament was lost on June 2nd. Our colleague Dave Turrell speaks for us all: “One of the nicest, kindest men I ever met.” Writes Paul Rafferty, whose great book on Churchill’s Riviera paintings was translated by Antoine: “He was a joy to work with. He was precise, knowledgeable, questioned everything, and got it ‘right.’ My French edition has few to zero errors to my knowledge, and this is down to Antoine.”

Why does Churchill still matter today? Because he dragged history “a little closer to our own times… a guide in present difficulties.”

“Reilly considered Churchill the only useful British politician in the anti-Bolshevik cause. Shortly before his death he told a friend: ‘Only one man is really important, and that is the irrepressible Marlborough [WSC]. I have always remained on good terms with him….His ear would always be open to something sound.’”

"Poy was not unlike a modern Aesop, who drew the simple truth with devastating clearness. Looking at any of his pictures you laugh because of their very rightness. It is only afterwards that you realise the brilliance of the drawing, and are staggered by the genius that created it.”

Josh Ireland begins with potted inaccuracies, but the quickly picks up with a deft, thoughtful account of a short, bittersweet saga.

However much Churchill promoted a positive Anglo-American relationship, he did not create it. For Buruma to blame him for British nationalism is absurd.

The Parker opus: “No matter how much the details of Churchill and his career become known, he still remains, quite simply, a great man.”

How Jack Johnson proved as good a lawyer as he was a boxer; and how Winston Churchill proved a better politician than Lord Stanhope. The reality behind another unfounded Churchill calumny.

On Monarchy: “It is natural for Parliaments to talk and for the Crown to shine…. We are never likely to run short of Ministers who can talk.”

A forensic examination and point-by-point of a Cambridge University panel on Churchill, race, the British Empire and the Second World War.

"All Mr. Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road to destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality. This is to say, that to be saved from himself. Mr. Churchill must be carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal." —Harold Begbie, 1921