I have several favorite bookstores.
One of those is Chartwell Booksellers in New York, which I have never visited but have done business with by mail. Chartwell is a bookshop specializing in Winston Churchill books and related items.
They turned 40 on April 11th of this year, and have been celebrating by doing a series of readings. The first one was John Lithgow reading from William Manchester’s The Last Lion.
I thought some folks might get a kick out of the most recent reading: Bryan Cranston reads from Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins.
They are less than halfway through the series (the Cranston video is #19 out of a planned 40), so it might be worth subscribing to their YouTube channel so you can see what comes next.
Here’s something else I thought was interesting. I was tipped off to it by the second edition of Holstory, R.E.D. Nichols and John Witty’s book about the history of holsters in the 20th Century. I’ve written about that book previously (in both editions) so I won’t repeat myself here.
This is legendary holster designer Chic Gaylord’s appearance on “What’s My Line?” on May 1, 1960.
I’ve set the video to start with Mr. Gaylord’s appearance, but it won’t hurt you to watch the whole thing. The guest before him was Gloria Bale, a very cute trapeze artist. (If she was 17 at the time, she’d be 80 today, so there’s a chance she’s still alive. Miss Bale, if you’re out there somewhere, I hope you had a wonderful life.) And the mystery guest is Laurence Harvey.
This is a nice flashback to a time when guns were less demonized then they are today (well, NYC possibly excepted). I really like Dorothy Kilgallen’s “Ooooo, I’d like one of those.” My only complaint is that they don’t show Mr. Gaylord with any of his products, but I’m sure there were practical and legal reasons why they couldn’t do that.