March 1, 2025

Founder of International Churchill Society Dies at 83

Richard Langworth founded the International Churchill Society (ICS) in 1968 because he did not want to buy phony stamps. Born in Rye, New York on 7 July 1941, Richard Michael Langworth grew up on Staten Island and was educated at Wagner College. He served in the United States Coast Guard from 1964 to 1967. In 1966 Richard married Barbara Francis. The couple, who had known each other since they were children, first lived in Westville, New Jersey, near the Coast Guard base. After completing his service, Richard went to work for the Pennsylvania State Health Department, and it was while living in Camp Hill that he founded what would become ICS.

Richard’s many hobbies included stamp collecting. Following the death of Sir Winston Churchill in January 1965, a rash of commemorative stamps was produced in his memory. The major issuers were quasi-autonomous Arab sheikdoms, which printed countless different designs, called “black blots” by philatelists, that were always intended to bilk collectors rather than to frank envelopes.

The American Topical Association (ATA), the presiding US authority on thematic stamps, appeared indifferent to this obvious charlatanism. After contacting other members of the ATA who had expressed an interest in Churchill, Richard organized the Winston S. Churchill Study Unit (WSCSU) for the purpose of identifying and distinguishing between legitimately issued stamps and black blots.

Richard started Finest Hour as a bi-monthly newsletter for the WSCSU. The first issue was dated “May-June 1968” and consisted of eight mimeographed pages. Most of the early issues focused on stamp collecting, but from the start they also included more general information about Churchill. Crucially, Richard immediately reached out to establish a link with the Churchill family. Sir Winston’s son Randolph became the first honorary member, followed by his mother Clementine and son Winston.

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After two years as founding editor of Finest Hour, Richard handed over the reins to another in order to concentrate on his professional life as a writer of automotive history. For a time, he and Barbara lived in Hopewell, New Jersey, from where Richard commuted to Manhattan to work for Automobile Quarterly. Before long, though, Richard set out as an independent author. Three dozen books followed in the next thirty years. The Langworths settled in Contoocook, New Hampshire, where their son Ian Langworth was born in 1982.

Meanwhile, the WSCSU had been transformed into the International Churchill Society, but ICS went dormant in 1975 for lack of an editor. All work on the journal had been voluntary. Having established himself professionally, Richard resumed the job as editor for ICS, and Finest Hour was reborn in 1981 as a quarterly that has been published continuously ever since.

In 1984 Richard and Barbara, who served ICS as publisher, helped to organize the first International Churchill Conference. The meeting took place in Toronto, Canada. Richard and Barbara also organized a series of group tours to visit locations in Great Britain and France associated with Churchill’s life. As a sideline, Richard operated a dealership in used and rare books by and about Churchill. This resulted in his leading a campaign to bring many of Churchill’s titles back into print. In 1990, he published the first American edition of India, Churchill’s 1931 collection of speeches that had become extremely scarce. He also published the first stand-alone edition of The Dream, Churchill’s short story about an imaginary encounter with the ghost of his father. Along the way, he tracked down the remaining sheets of the unbound and unsold volumes in the centenary edition of Churchill’s writings and arranged for them to be bound and sold to libraries, scholars, and collectors.

In the 1990s Richard helped to reorganize ICS from an all-voluntary organization into a paid professional one. With the advent of the internet, this initiated the process of transforming ICS from something of a fan club into the respected organization that it is today, putting together the annual international conference, arranging academic symposia and seminars for students and teachers, publishing original books and articles of scholarly research that make significant contributions to Churchill studies, and hosting speakers of global stature. For years he served as President of the organization. In recognition of these accomplishments, he was created a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1998 by Queen Elizabeth II.

After thirty-four years at the helm of Finest Hour, Richard finally stepped down as editor in 2014, but it was not his style to retire. Soon he was serving as Senior Fellow of the Churchill Project of Hillsdale College in Michigan. For years, Richard had spearheaded efforts to complete the official biography of Churchill by publishing the remaining companion volumes of documents. Ultimately this resulted in Hillsdale agreeing to do so, as well as bringing back into print all thirty-one volumes of the massive work.

From automotive writing, Richard naturally transitioned to writing books about Churchill including A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (1988) and the standard resource guide to Churchill’s famous words, itemizing what he did and did not say. Similarly, his 2017 book Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality looked at what Churchill did and did not do. Richard became the go-to source for exploding urban myths about Churchill.

Following a stroke, Richard died at the age of eighty-three in San Francisco on 20 February 2025. He is survived by Barbara, their son Ian, daughter-in-law Emily, and grandchildren Michael and Aiden.

Channeling Churchill, who got the idea from reading Voltaire, Richard liked to say that the golden rule of working as an editor is to remember that “a bore is someone who tells you everything.” More, much more, can be written about this most eminent of Churchillians, but one way to pay him the respect he deserves is by demonstrating that we learned from what he taught us and end this tribute with appropriately Churchillian words from Thoughts and Adventures:

Let us treasure our joys but not bewail our sorrows. The glory of light cannot exist without its shadows. Life is a whole, and good and ill must be accepted together. The journey has been enjoyable and well worth making—once.

Richard M. Langworth CBE was born 7 July 1941 and died 20 February 2025.