Richard Langworth will speak on Winston Churchill, 144 Years On: The Perspective of History
/November 30, 2018
Richard M. Langworth, CBE, will speak to the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa at Earnscliffe, the Residence of the British High Commissioner to Canada. On the anniversary of Churchillʼs birth, his subject will be, appropriately, “Winston Churchill, 144 Years On: The Perspective of Historyˮ.
Richard Langworth is one of the worldʼs foremost experts on Sir Winston; in 1968 he founded the Churchill Study Unit and its quarterly journal, Finest Hour. In the 1980s he resurrected it from inactivity, edited it for 35 years, and developed a worldwide organization devoted to Churchill scholarship. Five years ago he joined Hillsdale College (in Hillsdale, Michigan) as Senior Fellow for the Churchill Project, an endowed, permanent center of Churchill Studies in North America. In 1998, Richard Langworth was appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, “for services to Anglo-American relations and the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.ˮ
In 2019, Hillsdale will complete the final volume of Churchillʼs official biography, 31 volumes in all, which began under Sir Winstonʼs son, Randolph Churchill, 56 years ago. Hillsdale also houses the Martin Gilbert Papers, and sponsors Churchill seminars, publications, tours and online courses. And despite its Michigan location, Hillsdale maintains a Canadian link via its recognition by our CRA.
“Along the way,ˮ Richard published the first American edition of Churchillʼs 1931 volume India (in 1990), as well as the extremely scarce and otherwise inaccessible 1924 essay Shall We Commit Suicide (in 1994); he also produced the important Connoisseurʼs Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (1998), the unique resource to Churchillʼs words Churchill by Himself (2008), which the late Sir Martin Gilbert described as “unputdownableˮ, The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill (2009), The Patriotʼs Churchill (2010), All Will Be Well: Good Advice from Winston Churchill (2011), Churchill in His Own Words (2012), the factually indispensable Churchill Companion (2012), Churchill and the Avoidable War (2015) and Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality (2016). His next book will be an expanded edition of Churchill by Himself, with hundreds of new quotations and a comprehensive index.
Richard and Barbara Langworth have hosted eleven Churchill Tours in England, Scotland, France and Australia (1983-2008) and were Churchill specialist booksellers (1984-2004). In March he will lecture at Hillsdale on “Churchill and the Moviesˮ and next June he will be a speaker on the Hillsdale College cruise around Britain, celebrating the completion of the longest and greatest biography of any historical figure, during the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
In addition to his extraordinary Churchill work, Richard was an editor at Automobile Quarterly (1970-75) and Car Collector (1976), and he has written or co-authored more than fifty books and 2000 articles on automotive history, including Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit, Triumph Cars, The Studebaker Century, The Encyclopedia of American Cars, GM: 100 Years, and Packard: A History of the Motorcar and the Company.
Richard is a graduate of Wagner College and a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard. He and Barbara reside in Moultonborough, New Hampshire and Eleuthera, Bahamas.
