Month: March 2015

“The Vintage Triumph” and Triumphs in My Life

“The Vintage Triumph” and Triumphs in My Life

All Tri­umphs All the Time: Issue 150 of The Vin­tage Tri­umph mag­a­zine, 2015 

Har­ry Barnes was to have been our first edi­tor, but quick­ly decid­ed he couldn’t do it. I was elect­ed, pro­duc­ing issues 1-18 from 1974 to 1977. Look­ing at those pro­duc­tions, I’m struck that while Tri­umphs haven’t changed much else has in half a lifetime.

Annu­al dues were $10—equal to $48 today, but didn’t buy as much. Imag­ine a world with­out com­put­ers! You print­ed off sheets of clean, “cam­era-ready” type. We couldn’t afford type­set­ting; those who didn’t have elec­tric type­writ­ers put a brand new rib­bon in their Rem­ing­tons and banged hard on the keys.…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (5)

Churchill’s Common Touch (5)

con­clud­ed from part 4…

Part 5: Loyalty 

Churchill had “a rep­u­ta­tion for brusque­ness strength­ened by his han­dling of the com­mon folk,” his post­war body­guard Ronald Gold­ing continued.

He had the habit of sum­ming peo­ple up after two sen­tences of con­ver­sa­tion. They were clas­si­fied, it seemed to me, as either “inter­est­ing” or “unin­ter­est­ing.” With the for­mer, con­ver­sa­tion ensued; with the lat­ter, Churchill would ignore them. On such occa­sions Mrs. Churchill fre­quent­ly came to the res­cue, engag­ing the luck­less in con­ver­sa­tion. If they were tongue-tied she would do most of the talk­ing until it was time for them to leave.…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

con­tin­ued from part 3…

Part 4: “Being Shout­ed At”

“I think being shout­ed at was one of the worst things to get over,” said Grace Ham­blin, sec­re­tary to Win­ston and then Clemen­tine Churchill from 1932, typ­i­cal of the com­mon Ken­tish folk who loved them. “I’d come from a very qui­et fam­i­ly and I’d nev­er been shout­ed at in my life. But I had to learn it, in time.”

In the midst of dic­ta­tion one day, Grace told me, Churchill com­mand­ed: “Fetch me Klop!” Klop? she thought—what could it mean?

Final­ly, proud­ly, she strug­gled in with Onno Klopp‘s 14 giant vol­umes, Der Fall des Haus­es Stu­art. “Jesus…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (3)

Churchill’s Common Touch (3)

con­tin­ued from part 2…

Part 3: Ser­vants and Staff

Win­ston Churchill was a Vic­to­ri­an, with most of the atti­tudes of his class and time toward the com­mon folk. “Ser­vants exist to save one trou­ble,” he told his wife in 1928, “and sh[oul]d nev­er be allowed to dis­turb one’s inner peace.”

Once before World War II he arrived in a vio­lent rain­storm at his friend Max­ine Elliott’s Chateau d’Horizon in the South of France. “My dear Max­ine,” he said as she ush­ered him in, “do you realise I have come all the way from Lon­don with­out my man?”…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (2)

Churchill’s Common Touch (2)

Con­tin­ued from Part I…

Part 2: Alice Bateman

Two oth­er West­er­ham com­mon folk who ben­e­fit­ted from Churchill’s char­ac­ter­is­tic kind­li­ness were Tom and Alice Bate­man, farm­ers who scratched out a liv­ing near Chartwell. Per­cy Reid, a stringer for a Lon­don news­pa­per, who kept an eye on Chartwell doings after World War II, wrote charm­ing­ly of a cat­tle sale in his book, Churchill: Towns­man of West­er­ham (Folke­stone: Regency, 1969):

Capt. and Mrs. [Mary Churchill] Soames—who then lived at Chartwell Farm—were at the sale most of the time and [their chil­dren] Nicholas and Emma were also tak­ing a child’s inter­est in what was going on.…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (1)

Churchill’s Common Touch (1)

Part 1: Mr & Mrs Don­key Jack

A recent book by a dis­tin­guished his­to­ri­an sug­gests that Win­ston Churchill dis­dained com­mon peo­ple. It cites anoth­er Prime Min­is­ter, H.H. Asquith, dur­ing World War I, pro­vid­ing a tow to a bro­ken-down motorist and giv­ing two chil­dren a lift in his car. The writer adds: “It is hard to imag­ine Win­ston Churchill behav­ing in such a fashion.”

It is not hard at all. In fact, Churchill did fre­quent kind things for ordi­nary peo­ple he encoun­tered, pri­vate­ly and with­out fan­fare. We know about them only through his pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence, thanks to the offi­cial biog­ra­phy, Mar­tin Gilbert, or the tes­ti­mo­ny of observers.…

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