May 16, 2013

AMPERSAND: FINEST HOUR 140, AUTUMN 2009

BY RICHARD M. LANGWORTH, EDITOR

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Bill Buckley said: “Expressions of gratitude can be most awfully trying to the ear of an audience, generally captive. But the act of gratitude nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone.” Finest Hour has been, not the work of one but of many over the years, who contributed time, talent and skill as writers, artists or thinkers to the product it became. On its fortieth anniversary it is appropriate to mention all who come to mind, knowing I will forget to mention others.

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry reflected in Wind, Sand, and Stars: “Life may scatter us and keep us apart; it may prevent us from thinking very often of one another, but we know that our comrades are somewhere ‘out there’—where, one can hardly say.” Well, here they are, out there…

A gone shipmate, Conrad wrote, is gone forever, and many are gone forever from Finest Hour, or this world. “But at times the spring-flood of memory sets with force up the dark River of the Nine Bends. Then on the waters of the forlorn stream drifts a ship—manned by a crew of Shades. They pass and make a sign, in a shadowy hail. Haven’t we, together and upon the immortal sea, wrung out a meaning from our sinful lives?….You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a westerly gale.”

Joseph Abrahamson, Natalie Adams, Paul Addison, Merry Alberigi, Andrew Alexander, Paul Alkon, A.R. Allen, Marianne Almquist, Larry Arnn, Sal Asaro, Maurice Ashley, Philip Aspden, Naim Attalah, Reg Auckland, Maurice Baird-Smith, Celwyn Ball, John Banta, Randy Barber, Luigi Barzini, Colin Baxter, Bill Beatty, Christopher Bell, Tony Benn, Tim Benson, Geoffrey Best, Henry Beverley, Eric Bingham, Byron Birdsall, Lord Blake, Mark Blitz, Naomi Bliven, Conrad Black, David Boler, Dan Borinsky, Kelley Bouchard, Jim Brady, David Braun, Jean Broome, Robert Brown, Carol Breckenridge, Ronald Brennan, W. Glen Browne, Derek Brownleader, Carolyn & Paul Brubaker, Peter Buchanan, William F. Buckley, Stephen Bungay, Harry F. Byrd Jr., Ray Callahan, Paul Cantor, Antoine Capet, Lord Carrington, Virginia Carter, Ward Chamberlin Jr., John Charmley, Minnie Churchill, Peregrine Churchill, Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill, John Chuter, John Colville, Eliot Cohen, Ron Cohen, Neil Coates, Alistair Cooke, David Coombs, Martin Cooper, Ray Connolly, Lady Diana Cooper, Paul Courtenay, Jim Courter, Robert Courts, Maurice Cowling, Harry Crooks, John Crookshank, Bob Dales, Jack Darrah, Bill Deedes, Jeffrey De Haan, James Douglas, David Druckman, William Duncan, Dick Durbin, Mary Dwyer, John Edison, Kirk Emmert, Fred Farrow, Don Feder, Carol Ferguson, Robert Fincher, Geoffrey Fletcher, Donald Forbes, Betsy Foster, Matt Fox, Mike Franken, David Freeman, David Fromkin, John Frost, Marcus Frost, Jeanette Gabriel, Chris Gainor, John Kenneth Galbraith, Gary Garrison, Laurence Geller, Sir Martin Gilbert, Fred Glueckstein, Ronald Golding, Barry Gough, Tarah Grant, Joshua Greenberg, Bill Gunn, Douglas Hall, Grace Hamblin, Fred Hambrook, Chris Hanger, Fred Hardman, Robert Hardy, Lord Harleck, Christopher Harmon, Pamela Harriman, Mim Harrison, R.F. Harrod, Jessica Hart, Max Hastings, David Hatter, Rob Havers, John Hay, Stephen Hayward, Cameron Hazlehurst, Christopher Hebb, James Heinemann, Cynthia Heinz, Ron Helgemo, Timothy Henson, Joe Hern, Rafal Heydel-Mankoo, Peter Hitchens, René Højris, Craig Horn, Greg Hughes, Selma Hughes, John Hume, James Humes, Ted Hutchinson, Bill Ives, David Jablonsky, Will Jacobs, Harry Jaffa, Karan Jain, Alfred James, Earl Jellicoe, Lord Jenkins, Wallace Johnson, Derek Lukin Johnston, John Kamau, Judith Kambestad, Eric Kane, Yousuf Karsh, Denis Kelly, Jack Kemp, Jill Kendall, Alan Keyes, Eugenia Kiesling, Warren Kimball, Patrick Kinna, Till Kinzel, James Kirchik, Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Kops, Michael Korda, Dick Knight, Nigel Knocker, Stewart Knowles, Nicholas Koutzos, Charles Krauthammer, Larry Kryske, Steven Lambakis, James Lancaster, James F. Lane, Barbara Langworth, Ian Langworth, Philip & Susan Larson, Robin Lawson, Parker Lee, Dan Lenehan, George Lewis, Nigel Lewis, Karen Linebarger, Barrie Linklater, David Low, Hugh Lunghi, Jari Lybeck, Justin Lyons, Charles Lysaght, Andrew MacLaren, Fitzroy Maclean, Dan Mahoney, William Manchester, Dave Marcus, The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, John Marshman, Richard Mastio, John Mather, Chris Matthews, Frank Mayer, Christopher Meyer, James Milner, Joseph Mitchell, Charles Montgomery, Will Morrissey, Caitlin Murphy, Edmund Murray, John Maurer, Cyril Mazansky, John McCain, Peter McIver, D.W. McLennan, Michael McMenamin, Jon Meacham, Heather Mercer, Anthony Montague Browne, Thomas Montalbo, Michael Valdez Moses, Countess Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten, Rafe Muir, James Muller, Eddie Murray, Dan Myers, Elizabeth Nel, Oscar Nemon, Dalton Newfield, Hugh Newman, Jack Nixon, Jerome O’Connor, John Olsen, Elizabeth Olson, Clifford Orwin, Allen Packwood, Johnny Parker, Patrick Parker, Gregory Peck, Douglas Peine, Olubsuyi Pekun, David Perkins, Christel & Bob Petersen, Robert Pilpel, Don Pieper, Chuck Platt, Michael Platt, John Plumpton, Aaron Pont, E.F. Porter, Enoch Powell, Patrick Powers, Paul Rahe, Inder Dan Ratnu,David Ramsay, John Ramsden, Terry Reardon, H. Ashley Redburn, Phil Reed, Wendy Reves, David Reynolds, Robert Rhodes James, Hill Riddle, Steven Ris, Ron Cynewulf Robbins, Lloyd Robertson, Paul Robinson, Todd Ronnei, A.L. Rowse, Markku Ruotsila, Bill Rusher, Doug Russell, David Sampson, Celia Sandys, Edwina Sandys, Simon Schama, Arthur Schlesinger, Max Schoenfeld, Alex Scott, Hugh Segal, Raymond Seitz, Norman Shaifer, Suzanne Sigman, Jim Slattery, Emma Soames, Lady Soames, Philip Somerville, Stanley Smith, Elizabeth Snell, David Stafford, Christopher
Sterling, Martin Symington, George Temple, Yoav Tenembaum, Baroness Thatcher, Charlotte Thibault, Katharine Thompson, Jonah Triebwasser, Graham Turner, Dave Turrell, Jeffrey Wallin, Caspar Weinberger, Dominic Walters, Jeanette Webber, Mark Weber, Manfred Weidhorn, Peter Welsh, Noel Whitcomb, Devoy White, Robert Wilkes, George Will, Juan Williams, Matthew B. Wills, Theodore Wilson, Kenneth Wood, John Woods, Frederick Woods, Michael Wybrow, Aurelia Young, Evelyn Zirkand, Curt Zolle