Churchill’s Vicar on Earth

>> Andrew Roberts: Richard Langworth is the director of the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, Michigan, and is one of the top experts in the world on Winston Churchill. He's the author of Churchill in His Own Words, which is the bible for quotations from the great man. Richard, this is the 150th anniversary of Winston Churchill.

He was born in 1874. What's the sense that you have of how well this anniversary has gone in terms of his reputation?

>> Richard Langworth: Pretty well, better than I expected. On my website in March, I put up a kind of a get ready cartoon. It shows it's from Punch, and it shows the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

And an Italian guide is telling a tourist, no, I don't think it was Mr. Churchill. It's been like that for quite a while.

>> Richard Langworth: But you know, Andrew, there hasn't been as much from the usual carpers and critics. I call them the club because they pop up so often.

You know, they remind us that he wasn't a saint. Well, duh.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Richard Langworth: Then come the false trails and exaggerations. But we haven't had to use our, what you call, our rapid response team nearly so much as I expected.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, we did have Cooper, though, didn't we?

Daryl Cooper on the-

>> Richard Langworth: Yes, but back into the underbrush, we haven't heard much from Tucker and usually Tucker, who I admire, he supports his people and comes back and, you know, defends them. But I haven't heard any follow up to that unfortunate interview.

>> Andrew Roberts: So do you think that the 33 million people who downloaded it, does that number reflect Tucker Carlson's popularity or the popularity of what Cooper was saying about Winston Churchill?

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, I think-

>> Andrew Roberts: it's a huge number, isn't it? You know?

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, I mean, it reflects the popularity of the Internet and that's something that we have to deal with that Winston Churchill didn't. Someone said, where is Churchill now? We must have him as Prime Minister again.

I said, I don't think he'd last a minute in the 247 saturation Internet that we. We deal with today.

>> Andrew Roberts: He'd be quite good on Twitter though, wouldn't he? Many of his best lines can be summed up in 240 characters or fewer, can't they?

>> Richard Langworth: They can indeed.

Yeah, but we don't have to worry. I mean, I always like to quote a good friend of yours and mine, the late Paul Addison, who said just before he died, he said, don't worry about attacks on Churchill. He's alive and kicking and haunts the imagination like, like no other 20th century politician.

He will always be caricatured. But freedom of speech was one of the things he fought for. And in his time he gave as good as he got. And the worst comments about him are a backhanded tribute because they work on the assumption that most people admire him. And Paul said, my own view is that he was even greater as a human being than he was as a politician.

A role in which he did make mistakes, as we all do. Pretty good quote.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, very good quote. And, and as he said to his wife Clementine, I would have made nothing if I'd not made mistakes. So I'm interested in your, your view of how the mistakes that he did make, made him into a better politician, a better person.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, he learned constantly, didn't he? I mean, the most outstanding example is making himself Minister Defense in 1940, giving him plenary authority over the whole scene, which he was a lesson he learned from the Doug knows experience in 1915.

>> Andrew Roberts: And yet didn't overrule the chiefs of staff, because he'd learned that message in 1915 as well, hadn't he?

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, never did. Dudley Pound is first Sea Lord for first couple of years. Always said that he would always finally take the professional heads of the service judgment over whatever particular qualms he had about for certain operations.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's go into a few of the attacks on him.

I mean, some of these are our mistakes he made, but others aren't. Let's start with the one that we see so often when the revisionists attack Churchill about gassing Iraqi tribesmen. This is in the early 1920s when he is first minister for war and then Colonial Secretary. What is the mistake that the detractors tend to make about this?

>> Richard Langworth: Well, it's one that we've dwelt on often. I think both you and I and many others was that he was hoping to. He never did like the. The whole Iraqi situation that Britain was faced with. In 1921. He wrote to Lloyd George, we are paying 8 millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano, out of which we in no circumstances get anything worth having.

And he thought to fulfill their obligations with air power. And one of the uses of air power was to drop what he called lacrimatory gases, which in essence are tear gas. But he made the mistake, the semantic mistake of calling them poison gas. And, of course, he get criticized for that later on by people who failed to realize what he was referring to.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, it's not mustard gas. It's not phosgene gas or any of the lethal gases of the First World War, is it the ones that were sent over the no Man's Land in the Great War? Yeah, and so that's just essentially where the detractors don't bother to go to the original sources.

Don't bother. They leap at the idea that poison gas is actually one thing, whereas, in fact, when you do go to the original sources, like you and I have done, it turns out to be something completely different.

>> Richard Langworth: Yes. And another example of that is his use of the word race.

Nowadays, race means only one thing, but when Churchill said race, he was talking about a group of people who are many different races. In fact, it's a totally different meaning. So you have to go back to his original intent and what the words he used then we're thought to represent.

>> Andrew Roberts: And we get that, don't we, a lot with the Leo Amory diaries. Somebody he knew very well, who served with him, but who was a political enemy for him. Sorry, of his for a long time. And it's many of the racial epithets, or what we today would consider to be offensive racial epithets, come from this one source, don't they?

>> Richard Langworth: Yes. Isn't it odd that Amory would be the virtually the only source of all these terrible things the church was supposed to have said, and no one else, including many of his critics, ever quote the same words? I went into this in a piece using our research tool at Hillsdale's Churchill Project, which is a digital file of 80 million words by and about Churchill, 20 million of his own, and 60 million by memoirists and biographers.

And I purposely, searched for every dreadful. Full racial slur that I could think of and as you know, came up very, very light.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, well, he didn't use the N word, for example, did he? Whereas an awful lot of people around him in those days did.

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, including Amory, whose diaries are full of that word.

So it does make you wonder about the source, doesn't it?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, no, absolutely. Especially as Amory was being opposed politically by Churchill over important things such as, of course, Indian independence. Which brings us on to the next obvious one about. About Churchill's opposition to Indian independence. What do you think?

I mean, that is used, not least recently by the National Trust in Britain as an absolute sort of open and shut case of. Of Churchill's errors and based on race, essentially. What's your sense of that long struggle that he had, along with a lot right of the Conservative party in the 1930s against the independence of India?

>> Richard Langworth: Well, he believed in the representation of people by a legitimate, responsible government. And he didn't see that as a possibility in the 1930s for India, primarily because of what he saw as the Brahman domination of the country politically. He felt that, you know, India wasn't a country, it was.

It was perhaps 30 countries and that there wasn't an equality representation the way there was in the other dominions of the Crown, such as Canada. And that was his big objection. Although he did say, after the India act had passed, sent, as you know, sent messages to Gandhi, make the most of it and do the best you can, and.

And admitted to a friend of Gandhi's who he had for lunch at Chartwell. Strange how he had so many people for lunch and people say he didn't like, for racist reasons, said to Gandhi, you make the. Make the most of it and I'll. If you can succeed, I'll see that you get a lot more.

So it wasn't an open and shut attitude, although it was certainly very far from the government's position on the India act of 1935.

>> Andrew Roberts: And another aspect of it, of course, was that he didn't believe that an Indian, Abrahmin, led and dominated, sort of Hindu, should we say dominated India would be fair to its Muslim minority, its untouchable minority and the princes of India.

And was he so wrong? You look at India today and the way in which the untouchables have been treated, the way in which the Muslims are being treated, and certainly what happened to the princes, you know, those were not wholly incorrect predictions, were they?

>> Richard Langworth: No, and as you wrote in the piece on Palestine, we take great concern over the Palestinians who were displaced in 1948, that 16 million Muslims and Hindus were displaced by the too rapid, in my opinion, scuttling, as Churchill called it, from India before the boundary question was settled.

I mean, he came to realize, and he was blamed for being too partial to the Muslims, that the country could not stay a unified entity. And some people thought, he tilted toward Jinnah and the Muslim League. But in fact, I think he was concerned about the minorities and the way they're going to be treated by a unitary Indian government.

I think he was right.

>> Andrew Roberts: Which brings us on obviously to the Bengal Famine. I would say I'd be very interested in your view, but I would say that today the. It's the biggest of all of the issues. It used to be Joe Roman bombing, but now I think it's the Bengal famine that people most bring up when they want to desecrate Churchill's name.

You see this with the people who are putting down the statues. It tends to be the Bengal Famine. Talk us through the Bengal famine and explain why Churchill was not responsible for genocidal mass murderer there.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, in 1943, a terrific typhoon hit that area of India and wiped out the rice crop which created the shortages.

Initially, up until that point, the British Raj had dealt with famines efficiently. I think it wasn't since 1897 that they had the previous series one. Unfortunately, by the time the typhoon hit, Britain was at war, a global war with the Axis powers. And Japan had filled the Bay of Bengal with submarines and had begun to attack the.

The Indian territories. So he was faced with finding resources to cope with that shortage while, while fighting, on the other hand, a global war. And I think his intransigence at points at which he was criticized by people like Leo Amory was because he was so frustrated by the need to, to fight that war.

His famous quote about I hate Indians was in reference to this Delhi separatist. Not the entire Indian population, but the people who behind the Quit India movement led by Gandhi and Bose in 1942, when he was trying to concentrate on. On winning the war. So it was a huge distraction for him.

And nevertheless, it's on record and widely, I think widely understood now by numerous historians that the cabinet did all they could to get grain to India to relieve the shortage. He scoured the world for it. Asked Franklin Roosevelt, who felt that the US could not help. Canada volunteered, and then he's criticized for turning down Canadian grain, but of course he turned it down because it was so far from India.

And got instead how many million tons of Australian grain? Because-

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, several tens of millions of tons, I think, but certainly several million tons from Australia and New Zealand.

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah. The cabinet minutes of all those discussions, there was never any question that they were doing everything they possibly could to relieve the shortage, which was not caused originally by.

By the British, but by the weather and then subsequent hoarding by local merchants of the grain supplies, because the price of everything, including rice, of course, was going up so, so much. The late Zaria Mahsani has written very eloquently on our website and other places about the realities of that situation.

>> Andrew Roberts: It's sort of classic, isn't it, that the more you look into Churchill's actual actions, the less the distractors really have to say? They've got a few lines that they can come out with, especially obviously, on social media, but when you actually. Dig into the truth. There's, there's less and less behind it.

Would you say that's fair, historically?

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, I, I think so. I mean there are many cases where he made mistakes, serious ones. They never seem to come up. We always get these, we go down these long trails of red herrings and- Let's go into some of them.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's talk about the Black and Tans, the attempt essentially to fight fire with fire in the Indian Independence. Sorry, the Irish Independence movement of, of the early 1920s that led to a, you know, good part of Cork being burnt down. On one occasion. It allowed anti-Churchill revisionists to haul Churchill over the coals for his attempt to essentially fight the IRA in Southern Ireland.

Even though the majority of people in Southern Ireland ultimately did want to have independence, as we later discovered. Would, Would you put that down as one of Churchill's errors?

>> Richard Langworth: Definitely, he didn't invent the Black and Tans, although he's accused of it. They were in existence before he got involved.

And I think you would probably agree that he stayed a backer of them well after it was realized that they were going to excess in Ireland.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, they were essentially almost a terrorist force. They were an auxiliary military force and lots of them ex-soldiers from the trenches and they went wildly too far.

And as you say, he, he continued to back them for too long. So there's a good example of, of a, a genuine mistake. And yet-

>> Richard Langworth: There are many others too, the gold standard, the abdication, how many-

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's, let's, let's go through them. Say them, don't rush.

We've gotta go through them. The gold standard, he went on to the gold standard, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925 at the wrong time and at the wrong price. Is that, is that the way you see that?

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, Milton Friedman said the gold standard was a good idea.

That he didn't make any wage or price adjustments or other economic variables that, that ended up by pricing British exports off the markets. Churchill himself admitted this later. He said everyone said I was the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that there ever was. Now I'm inclined to agree with them.

There are all sorts of monetarist arguments about why the gold standard was a good idea, but taken the way they did in isolation is. I think Keynes wrote a very good pamphlet about it. It was a disastrous economic policy. And it led of course to the general strike where he is also criticized for opposing the the striking unions, the tuc.

>> Andrew Roberts: But in the general strike, he saw it as a sort of existential crisis of the nation. The idea that the trade unions could hold the country completely to ransom by stopping all of their workers all at the same time. It only lasted 11 days or so, and he was in the forefront of trying to make peace afterwards and make a.

A proper sort of reasonable settlement, wasn't he? So with regard to the general strike, do you think that the attacks that are still made on Churchill, especially from the left, are justified?

>> Richard Langworth: No, I think it illustrated his lifetime magnanimity. Spare the conquered and war down the proud, was the Roman saying.

And he favored a policy of conciliation toward the Boers after the South African War, the Germans after the Great War, the unions after the general strike. Over and over again we find these instances where he, very much against the general attitude of his colleagues, favored a conciliatory solution to the.

The arguments.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, he didn't wanna hang the Kaiser, did he, in 1919, when an awful lot of MPs did. And a lot of people who were thinking that that was sensible politics actually, to execute him.

>> Richard Langworth: Squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked.

>> Andrew Roberts: That was another one.

Exactly. He opposed that too.

>> Richard Langworth: Is that why, George?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, tell us about the suffragettes, the whole story of female suffrage. Because it strikes me that this is a story where Churchill learns a lesson, doesn't he? I mean, he opposes it, especially when it was put forward aggressively and violently with some terrorist incidents and so on.

But once women have got the vote, and he does vote for it in the end, he then recognizes actually there are an awful lot of women, newly enfranchised women who vote Tory. So what's going on there? What's the story really of church and the. And female suffrage?

>> Richard Langworth: That's where you and I have an argument.

I think he. He was from female suffrage long before you do, but yeah, he was in favor of it in the 1890s, wasn't he, in local elections? Well, yeah, he wrote privately in 1897 to the women are completely fairly represented by their brothers and fathers, which is the quote that you always hear.

But that was in 1897 when he was what, 23? I don't think we can find a case where he voted against the suffrage bill, do you?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, but when he was Home Secretary, he held it up and blocked it in the In the Asquith Cabinet, didn't he?

It wasn't the question of voting against in the House of Commons cuz it didn't actually get to the House of Commons for some time.

>> Richard Langworth: Okay, but I think he, his attitude changed quite early in the 1900s, except of course when he was attacked by umbrella wielding suffragettes who slashed at him at the railroad stations, tried to push him onto the tracks in Bristol, didn't she?

Well, apparently. But the great influence there of course was Clementine who was the, the great liberal influence over, over Winston Churchill. She wrote a wonderful anonymous letter to the Times, kind of a Swiftian letter. You recall that one where she said- Yeah. But never mind the vote, perhaps women should be done away with altogether, quote, unquote.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, that was a proper Swiftian satire there at its best.

>> Richard Langworth: In 1897 when Churchill had these attitudes that women were well represented by the men in their lives, even Lady Randolph Churchill was not in favor of female suffrage. The attitude then was that politics is kind of a scruffy barroom type thing that men indulge in.

We have to allow them their little pleasures. But if Really not anything for us ladies. But as government became more and more influential and more involved in people's lives, then of course, women changed their view, and felt that they ought to be represented. That's how the suffragette movement grew.

>> Andrew Roberts: And Churchill, once women did have the vote, was adept at courting that vote. I mean, by the 1951 and 1955 election, in fact, 1955, women vote more for the Conservatives than for the Labour Party. I mean, he was obviously out of office by then. But he also insisted on Churchill College, Cambridge being correct, having women as well as men, which was pretty punchy stuff for the 1950s.

You know, there weren't that many women at Cambridge, were there?

>> Richard Langworth: No, Jock Coble said the question among that, he said, are you sure you're in favor of women being, is that your view or your wife's? And he said, it is her view and mine also.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Richard Langworth: And his daughter Mary said he became a very ardent supporter of the women's vote when he realized how many women would vote for him.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's talk about one of the things that the latest Netflix series has brought up, which argues that Churchill was opportunistic in changing political parties not once but twice.

What's your first of all, of course, in 1904, in order to essentially protest about the protectionism of the Conservative Party. And then once that had changed, he left the Liberal Party in 1924 and became a Tory. And he's been accused very much of being opportunistic on. On both sides, doing this solely in order to get into office.

What. What's your thoughts on that?

>> Richard Langworth: That was the first thing I coughed over in the Netflix documentary because it treated it at both of his. Both changes of party as an opportunistic move to acquire political power. And actually it didn't work that way at all in either case.

In 1904, he shifted to liberals. Was it two years before they actually obtained power? So he sat in opposition for two years there. So that was hardly a move to enhance his political power. In fact, it. It put him at a permanent disadvantage with his old party, which they never quite forgot, at least some of them.

In 1924, he ran for Parliament as a constitutionalist and independent and still was. So when Baldwin offered him the Exchequer, and I think he became a Conservative after he was appointed two Chancellor instead, right? That's correct. That's correct. So had he been a real opportunist, he'd have become a Conservative, wouldn't he?

He would have campaigned as a conservative in favor of Baldwin in that election. Yeah, otherwise, I'm speaking obviously as the historical consultant for the Netflix series. So I'm making a rod for my own back back here, Richard. But, great job of keeping it on track as much as you did.

Thank you. I appreciate that. That's very good of you. I appreciate that very much. The bombing of Auschwitz, this is something that comes up, or at least should we say the lack of bombing of Auschwitz, of course, is a. An old canard that comes up again and again, the argument, is that Winston Churchill failed to bomb it.

And for all his philo Semitism and his talk of supporting the Jews, actually this was an area where he fell down. What's your sense about that? Well, he lacked plenary authority to bomb it himself and found out, sadly, very late in the game of what was going on in these camps, particularly Auschwitz Birkenau.

And when he did find out, of course there's the famous memo to Eden when the Jewish Agency asked that, I think they first asked not the camp itself. But that the railroad lines to the camp be bombed, which was a fairly tall order in 1944 Pretty easy to do nowadays with modern weapons.

But to precisely bomb a railroad line that the Germans could immediately re. Recreate was kind of a dubious procedure. The Air Force didn't think much of it.

>> Andrew Roberts: Also, the RAF, they were doing, sorry to, but in the RAF, of course, were doing nighttime raids, completely impossible to hit.

In the United States Air Force, Army Air Force, as it was called, were doing the daytime raids, but even they weren't able to take out railways, and also they didn't want to undertake that operation. McLoy, General McCloy stopped it, essentially.

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, the job would have fell to the American Air Force because it would have been a date.

It had to be a daytime operation. But of course, we both know his famous memo to Eden, normally. And Martin Gilbert points out that this is the only case he's ever seen where Churchill made a direct order rather than saying, well, let's bring this up at the next cabinet meeting and discuss with the Chiefs of staff.

Instead he writes on the Jewish Agency's report. Is there any reason to discuss this further? Get anything out of the Air Force you can and invoke me if necessary. Now, that's pretty adamant, isn't it?

>> Andrew Roberts: It's as adamant as anything I've seen him write on any piece of paper.

I mean, it's a true action this day kind of statement to make, and yet it never happened. And you can understand, therefore, the resentment of some Jews to the fact that even though, he was the man in charge of the British war effort, it never happened.

>> Richard Langworth: Yeah, but even the Jewish Agency had controversy as to what, what should be done from the air, if anything.

Bombing the camp itself would have wiped out the inhabitants of the camp. Bombing the rail lines might have been a temporary expedient. In fact, of course, as we now know that the shipments of Jews to Auschwitz had stopped when this request came through, so it wouldn't have any effect.

But we, of course, we didn't know that at the time. It's all hindsight, but bombing the railroad lines, even if they were still in use, would have been only temporary, giving a very slight respite until the rails were rebuilt. And there was a lot of doubt even among the Jewish advocates as to how effective it would be.

In any case, the US Army Air Corps was not charged with the job. Eventually, they all decided the most effective way of ending what was going on at Auschwitz was to win the war, and keep marching on Germany.

>> Andrew Roberts: This extraordinary collection that you have, this database of 80 million words of, of Churchill, as you say, 20 million by him, 60 million about him.

It's an extraordinary resource, isn't it? And it's one that you've, of course, especially the, in particular the. The 20 million that you've mined for your book, Churchill Master of Language, which comes out in the January of 19 of 2025. Tell us about setting that up. Was this your idea?

How did you go about it?

>> Richard Langworth: No, it occurred in the 90s, mid-90s, when a German student in Hamburg approached me and said, I'm. I've got hold of some optical scanning equipment. And this was 1990, so it's fairly primitive by today's standards. And he said, I can scan everything in our library, which was extensive, that Churchill wrote and also an awful lot of batting.

And I said, go ahead. And in due course, I guess it was a year later. Remember zip disks, these big heavy plastic things that would.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, I remember them, yeah.

>> Richard Langworth: Predecessor to the floppy disk or an evolution thereof arrived and each title had its own file.

For instance, the Second World War Teres memoir the Second World War had 35 files, each with a Word document. And it then became a problem because when you want to search for something, where do you look? You have to know where to look. And not only do you want.

You're dealing with 20 million of Churchill's words, 50 books. Where do you look for where he said X. And the problem became searching such a vast trove of individual documents. So my son Ian, who is a computer, a software engineer, said, I can fix this. We'll put it all on one private website with a single search engine.

And that's how we put the thing together. And then gradually, over the years, Hillsdale College, who. Who now operate it, have kept the. Kept adding things to, including your book, of course, and all the Churchill documents through. Through the final document volume of volume 23, covering through 1965.

>> Andrew Roberts: So let's talk about that.

>> Richard Langworth: Keeps growing and it's a. It's a great resource, but it's not without flaws because it's full of optical scanning errors that occurred the kind of equipment we were using in the 90s.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's talk about that. The Churchill documents, the project that Larry Arnn, who is president of Hillsdale and of course was a close collaborator with Sir Martin Gilbert on the actual document series itself.

It's a publication essentially of all of the most important documents in Churchill's life, both by him and lots of other documents about him, isn't it. It extends 20, as you say, 23 volumes. It's a magnificent achievement in publishing, essentially. Tell us about that.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, Larry Arnn has been chasing that dragon for 50 years.

Close to 50 years. He told me the other Day. It started in 1978.

>> Andrew Roberts: Wow.

>> Richard Langworth: When he. He was Martin Gilbert's research associate earlier in the 70s and actually worked on the. They were called the companion volumes then documents up through 1939. And by the 1980s, the thing had sort of tapered off.

When was the last document volume published before Companion Volume 5, Part 3 was published in 1978, 79. And the publishers, Heinemann, became less interested in doing any more. Oddly enough, at the outbreak of World War II, they stopped. And then in the early 90s, I was held fairly useful in getting an old friend of Sir Winston's, Wendy Reves, wife of his agent, Emery Reves, to sponsor the research that went into what were called the Churchill War papers that extended it through 1941.

And then it stopped again. But Larry, for all this time, persisted and finally said to Martin, I'm going to do a contract with you to finish this job, and if anything prevents you from finishing, we will. And starting in 2006, Hillsdale College republished all of the previous narrative volumes, all eight.

All the previous document volumes, which at that time had reached 16, and then undertook to do volumes 17 through 23. What is that, seven. Seven more volumes between Larry and Martin, working from Martin's collections from the various archives. So that's how the thing came together. And the last one was published in 2019.

>> Andrew Roberts: How many words in total?

>> Richard Langworth: 5 million.

>> Andrew Roberts: Fantastic. That really is pretty, pretty extraordinary. And of course it's going to be the resource that's going to be used by Churchill scholars for the rest of the time. And I think people are gonna be interested in Winston Churchill for the rest of the time.

But you tell me why you think that 150 years after his birth, you think that we should still be interested in Churchill, what he has to teach us today.

>> Richard Langworth: Boy, that's a tall order, Andrew.

>> Andrew Roberts: Sorry, old boy, that's why you're on.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, I like what you said at the end of the Netflix documentary.

Who else could still make people laugh 60 years after his death? I mean, we will say that a Groucho Marx, but a politician? Can you think of another one? I mean, I was alive and sentient in 1959, which was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

And I don't remember anything like as much attention paid to him as we do to Sir Winston Churchill today. Of course, we live in a different era, an age of 24/7 sturation news. But he does seem to be permanently on everyone's mind. John Gielgud said Churchill was as ordinary as any of us and as extraordinary as any of us can hope to be.

And I always like Martin Gilbert's one sentence answer. They said, explain Churchill in one sentence. And Sir Martin said he was a great humanitarian who was himself distressed that the accidents of history gave him his greatest power at a time when everything had to be focused on defending the country from destruction rather than achieving his goals of a fairer society.

And that's a very feeling and deep reflection, I think, on who Churchill really was.

>> Andrew Roberts: I think you're so right. I'm going to ask you my two standard questions now. What's your favorite, sorry. Which history book or biography are you reading at the moment?

>> Richard Langworth: Well, I've just finished two, actually.

I wanted to tell you about.

>> Andrew Roberts: Everyone always comes up with two. Nobody I ever ask just tells me one. So go on, you're allowed to both of them. Of course you are. Tell me what they are.

>> Richard Langworth: I'll give you one, and if you want the second one, you can ask.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, I want the second one already. Go and give us the first one, though.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, Churchill quoted Emerson, who said, never read a book that's not a year old. And I can give on that since I've just finished Lady Diana Cooper's war memoir, Trumpets from The Steep, published 64 years ago.

>> Andrew Roberts: Great book, yeah. And it's about how everybody coped in World War II.

>> Richard Langworth: You know, think of it. The daughter of the Duke of Rutland, well, officially his daughter, milking cows and making cheese in Bognor Regis. But the heart of her story is her adventures in North Africa and then liberated Paris with Duff Cooper, who was Churchill's envoy to the French.

And she has so many keen, witty observations of Churchill in de Gaulle, she calls them Duckling and Wormwood. There's a review of it on our Churchill website with some of her quotes. Would you like to hear one?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, of course. Of course.

>> Richard Langworth: This is from August 1944.

Churchill stops in Algiers en route to Naples, where he was going to meet Tito. Another amusing story. Paris is about to be liberated and Churchill is full of bonhomie, fronted at being left out of the invasion planning. De Gaulle refuses to see him. He's in Algiers at the time.

And Lady Diana writes, Duckling's telegram announcing his arrival added a message to Wormwood that he would be happy to shake his hand. Duff went to deliver this invitation. No, good. Worm would rather not. It is a sore fatigue for Duff to get that giraffe to lie down with our Duckling.

So Duckling arrived and walked across a beautiful morning lit court in khaki with harlequin chest. Isn't that great? What? Writing heavy and weary, a little infirm and unsmiling. But in 10 minutes, the talk began to flow. And with the flow, and no doubt the champagne, the grins and fun, the youth and strength, Duck was natified off by his valet to have his bath.

Then it was iced white wine and off at noon. And I went giddy and couldn't focus and retired to my bed, miserable. Isn't that great?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, of course it is. The whole book's like that, though, isn't it? You could have open your book at any page and pointed it to a paragraph, and it would read just as well.

She really was a tremendously talented writer.

>> Richard Langworth: You missed Brendan Bracken's comment. He said of de Gaulle, remember, Winston, he thinks of himself as the reincarnation of St Joan. And WSC replied, yes, but my bishops won't burn him. Dear. On balance, they still respected and honored each other.

De Gaulle gave Churchill the order of liberation and attended his funeral and wrote to Clementine in the great drama he was the greatest.

>> Andrew Roberts: And your second book.

>> Richard Langworth: Second book is close to a year old. Anyway, it's equally wonderful. It's called the Stalin Affair by Giles Milton and it's about British wartime relations with Uncle Joe.

And it reads like a novel, as it says on one of the blurbs. Milton has plumbed the archives. Archibald Clark Kerr, Churchill's ambassador to the Soviets, and Averell Harriman, Roosevelt's sort of semi ambassador and many others. And he ferrets out things I simply had no inkling about the sheer panic that gripped Stalin after Hitler's invasion in June 1941, for instance.

We often think Britain had no leadership briefly after Churchill's famous stroke in 1953, where Russia had none for weeks after June 1941 with the oncoming Vermont. What was it, 5 million? It almost came a cropper. It's just a fascinating piece of work. So I would greatly recommend either of those books, even though they're 60 years apart.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, Charles is an extremely good historian and that is an excellent book.

>> Richard Langworth: He has got into amazing archives, Harriman stuff that I thought was published, but apparently it hasn't, and it's very revealing. Thank you.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, yeah. And Archie Clark Carr comes out later, Lord in the chapel.

Comes out as a truly remarkable Foreign Office figure, doesn't he?

>> Richard Langworth: Is that pronounced Clark Kerr?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes. Yeah.

>> Richard Langworth: I'm sorry I said Kerr.

>> Andrew Roberts: And he is, is a very engaging figure, isn't he? Extremely funny and, and, and, and witty man.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, yeah, in one, in one case that Milton brings out, he denies that those Soviet banquets were not drinking bashes, which Churchill said.

He said I was properly brought up. They were never, we never got drunk. But Clark Kerr describes one which left Harriman asleep for 12 hours and he was collapsed on his head with his head in his fireplace at the embassy.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, and Churchill needed an Alka Seltzer the next morning.

So one that slightly implies that. It slightly implies that he wakes up, Archie wakes up and says to his butler, why am I on the floor?

>> Richard Langworth: The butler answered, because your excellency insisted.

>> Andrew Roberts: Richard, what about your counterfactual?

>> Richard Langworth: It's a no brainer for me for 40 years.

It's Churchill's alternative history, published by Scribner's magazine in 1930. If Lee had not won the battle of Gettysburg, for him, it was a rare venture into dystopia, which he didn't usually do. But he asks us to believe that Lee won and that nothing but good followed.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, they're very controversial today.

He wouldn't get away with that today.

>> Richard Langworth: Probably not, but Churchill requires you to think at this moment in the 20th century. This is 1930, right?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Richard Langworth: The rich in assurance and prosperity, so calm and buoyant. Let us meditate for a spell upon the debt we owe to those Confederate soldiers who by deathless feat of arms, broke the Union front of Gettysburg and laid open a fair future to the world.

And then, he explains, Lee takes little round top routes. Meade marches on Washington, Lincoln flees to New York, and the Confederates occupy the Capitol. And then, by a strange alchemy, Lee supplants Jefferson Davis as the South's great leader. Churchill doesn't really go into much detail about how this happened, but he acquired- Yeah, that would have required a coup d'etat in the middle of the American Civil War.

>> Andrew Roberts: But then, anyway, go on.

>> Richard Langworth: He's got godlike authority, and he signs the 1863 Treaty of Harper's Ferry. This proclaims that the south is independent and the slaves are free. Yes, Lee frees the slaves and he proclaims his Christian charity toward our brothers in the North. So, okay, got this.

The two republics coexist, armed to the teeth for 40 years. Then in 1905, they joined with the British Empire to form the English Speaking Association. Together, three of the world's great powers. 1914 comes, war threatens. They send what Churchill calls a suave message to the German Kaiser that if you march on Belgium, we will declare war.

The Kaiser backs off, and war is avoided. Russia, Germany, and Austria become constitutional monarchies. Right. There's no Bolshevik Revolution, no Hitler, no Mussolini. And the story ends in 1930 with Kaiser Wilhelm, the titular president of something called the European Union.

>> Andrew Roberts: I'm not so sure that is such a happy ending.

>> Richard Langworth: Well, I think Churchill wants us to think, finishes by saying, you must stop and think what might have happened. Italy, not long at Gettysburg. The south would have smoldered in resentment. Gangs of carpetbaggers might have taken advantage of the newly freed slaves who would have been repressed by the Southern states.

There might have been a great war in 1914 with horrifying consequences. And Wilhelm might be an exiled sovereign filled with unalterable reproach if Lee had not won the battle of Gettysburg.

>> Andrew Roberts: And you certainly, of course, wouldn't have had the Russian Revolution had it not been for the first World War. So, no. 100 million people killed by communism in the 20th century. Well, on that bombshell, Richard, I'm going to say thank you very much indeed for appearing on Secrets of Statecraft.

>> Richard Langworth: Thank you, Andrew. It's a great honor.

>> Andrew Roberts: On the next episode of Secrets of Statecraft, I'll be talking to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is an activist, author, and one of the most outspoken advocates for free speech in the world.