Bulletin #73 – Jul 2014

David Freeman Named to Succeed Founding Editor

Barbara & Richard LangworthThe Churchill Centre has announced that Richard M. Langworth will retire as editor of its quarterly journal Finest Hour on October 31, 2014 after completion of the Autumn 2014 issue. Richard, who in 1968 founded what ultimately developed into The Churchill Centre, served as the original editor of Finest Hour through 1970. He resumed the role in 1982 and, upon retirement, will have produced 144 issues altogether including the forthcoming special issue dedicated to the late Lady Soames. The Centre is pleased to announce that the new editor, effective November 1st, will be David Freeman.

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K for Churchill’s Grandson and an MBE for his Bibliographer

Sir Nicholas SoamesNicholas Soames, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill and the eldest child of The Churchill Centre’s late Patron Lady Soames LG DBE, has been awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Additionally, Ron Cohen, bibliographer of the works of Churchill as well as President of the Sir Winston S. Churchill Society of Ottawa, Canada has been awarded an MBE. Read More >

Statue of the War Leader is Making the Rounds
Report by John G. Plumpton

Churchill Paces TorontoOn December 30, 1941, Winston Churchill gave one of his most famous wartime speeches “Some Chicken, Some Neck” to the Canadian Parliament. In his audience was a first-time Member of Parliament, Henry R. Jackman, from Toronto. Inspired by that speech and by Churchill’s further wartime achievements as acknowledged war leader of the British Empire and Commonwealth, Jackman determined to immortalize his hero in his hometown. After the war he became a very successful businessman and the driving force and principal donor of an Oscar Nemon statue of Churchill, which was erected in an honoured place in front of Toronto’s City Hall in 1977.
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Leading E-Book Publisher Brings Churchill Story to the Digital Age

RosettaBooks have now published in eBook format Churchill: A Life by Sir Martin Gilbert. Originally published in 1991, the single-volume biography was written by Sir Martin Gilbert after he completed work on the narrative volumes of the Official Biography. Finest Hour recently rated it as still one of the very best Churchill biographies available. The electronic format is perfect for today’s e-reader / iPad / smartphone generation. Parents and grandparents of students will find that the work makes an ideal gift. To order the book, please CLICK HERE. Read More >

Churchill Centre Member Traces the Full Genealogy

Gregory B. Smith has published a limited edition of his meticulously researched book The American Ancestry of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. As is well known, Churchill’s mother Jennie Jerome was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1854. The Jerome family line in America began with Timothy Jerome, who was born on the Isle of Wight about the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688. By 1713 he had emigrated to Connecticut. Smith traces the Jerome family line from Timothy to Jennie and then works back to trace the ancestry of each woman that married into this line back to the earliest known American immigrant. From this, Smith illustrates Churchill’s relationship to prominent Americans and his eligibility for membership in various hereditary societies. Read More >

One Hundred Years On: Churchill’s Account

“The 28th of June, 1914, was to the great majority of those whose lives it changed, a day like any other.” So wrote Winston Churchill in the News of the World on 30 May, 1937. “Yet, for years past, the current of European affairs had been flowing towards the abyss.” There followed a slightly revised version of Churchill’s account of the assasination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand that he originally published in The Eastern Front, the final volume of his First World War memoirs published in 1931: Read More >