Unpunctuality: Churchill’s Vice
I have been told that when Churchill arrived late for a meeting with the Queen, expressing his regret by saying, “My sincere apologies madam, I started too late.” But I haven’t found any reference to this. Can you help? —A.P.-H., England
This famous late show was not with the Queen but with the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII (1901-10). Robert Lewis Taylor, in Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness (New York Doubleday, 1952, 16) writes:
As a very young subaltern, he once kept the Prince of Wales and a dinner party of twelve waiting for nearly an hour.…