Reading Marlborough, learning good English with simple words

Historian Andrew Roberts said of Churchill, “managed to combine the most magnificent use of English — usually short words, Anglo-Saxon words, Shakespearean.”

Here are examples of two short words in his Marlborough:

“Barcelona was captured.  Whosoever's conception it was, whether it arose from accident, caprice, or profound design, the glory belongs to Peterborough, who lost no time in claiming it.  Forthwith he sent Stanhope to England with dispatches couched in a grandiloquent vein. . . .”

couch [put in words to express]

vein [a special character, disposition; state of mind or mood]

JFK said on April 9, 1963 on the Proclamation Conferring Honorary U.S. Citizenship on Sir Winston Churchill, “In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone — and most men save Englishmen despaired of England's life — he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

JFK quoted “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle” without giving the proper credit to the war time broadcast journalist, Edward Murrow.