Summarizing the life of a man who accomplished so much and positively affected so many is an impossible task. Fortunately, he documented much of it himself — 726 blog posts remain as a testament to his passion for history, automobiles, and the enduring legacy of Sir Winston S. Churchill. His work extended beyond this site with dozens of books, written or edited, and hundreds of published magazine and journal articles. Fittingly, his final blog post was titled Life and Living — an apt reflection of a man who lived with purpose and determination.

Alas, I am unqualified to provide even the smallest biography. His contributions about classic English and American cars are too numerous, and his dedication to Churchill’s legacy defies summary. I can only gesture towards his 2005 speech at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, in which he discusses Churchill’s The Dream. That speech exemplifies his best traits: passion for his work, encyclopedic knowledge, and a sense of humor that usually landed. But beyond his work, he was a father, a husband, and a friend.

I will always remember my father in his true habitat: in an office, hunched over a keyboard, typing with profuse concentration and surrounded by the hundreds of books, magazines, and other memorabilia that inspired and helped define him. His office wasn’t messy, just crammed full of meticulously organized knowledge with every reference at his fingertips.

How I wish to see him at home and happy once again, whether feet up and cigar in hand on the deck of his house in Eleuthera, or feeling proud and exhausted after returning from another bike ride, or grinning triumphantly after a decisive roll in Settlers of Catan. I’ll forever retain my fond memories of the room-sized model train set we built in the barn, or the tall plumes of snow firing from his tractor as he cleared the driveway in New Hampshire winters, or biking with him through the hills of California’s wine country. I’ll sorely miss sharing a dram of Scotch, a hearty snack, and recalling a scene from one of our favorite movies.

I have been, and always shall be, your friend. Live long and prosper, Dad.

— Ian Langworth

Richard M. Langworth is survived by his wife, Barbara; his son, Ian (Emily); and his grandchildren, Michael and Aiden.

Edit: Kind words were also expressed at The Churchill Project by Hillsdale College and on the Antique Automobile Club of America forums.

• First published as “Great Contemporaries, Pamela Harriman,” Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To subscribe to weekly articles from Hillsdale/Churchill, click here, scroll to bottom, and enter your email in the box “Stay in touch with us.” We never spam you and your identity remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Pamela: she got there on her own

In 1941 at the U.S. Congress, Winston Churchill disarmed whatever remaining critics he still had by declaring:  “Had my father been American and my mother English, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.” Pamela Harriman (1920-1997) was all-English, yet rose to high American office on her own. She served as U.S. ambassador to Paris from 1993 until her death. Small-minded people, and there are plenty, belittle her lack of education, her glittery friendships with the great. All that is easy to mock, but beside the point.

Her colleague Richard Holbrooke rated her quite differently: “She spoke the language, she knew the country, she knew its leadership. She was one of the best.” President Jacques Chirac compared her to the two most notable American ambassadors, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. He awarded her a Commander of the Legion d’Honneur‘s Order of Arts and Letters, France’s highest cultural award. Pretty good for a girl from the sticks who left home early, determined to succeed.

Pamela Beryl Digby was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, daughter of the 11th Baron Digby. Her mother Constance was the daughter of 2nd Baron Aberdare. Her childhood home was her first Churchill connection. Minterne Magna in 1642 was the residence of John Churchill, father of the first Sir Winston.

A skilled horsewoman, Pamela competed at show-jumping including Olympia, where every fence was above her pony’s shoulders. In 1937 she was at a boarding school in Munich when she met Adolf Hitler—a dubious achievement her future father-in-law missed. Introduced by his admirer Unity Mitford, Pam never fell for whatever spell the Führer cast over Mitford.

“You are not still a Catholic?”

Pamela Digby’s first marriage, at age nineteen in 1939, was to Randolph Churchill, a decision taken on the fly. Randolph was off to war and, thinking he might be killed, anxious to produce an heir. Reportedly he had proposed to eight other women before Pamela.

Friends and family, she recalled, warned her that the mercurial Randolph was not a good long-term risk: Conservative Chief Whip David Margesson, “took me for a long walk in the country and tried to dissuade me.” She replied: “If he is not killed and we do not get on together, I shall obtain a divorce.” In 1946, she was as good as her word.

Thomas Maier, author of The Churchills and the Kennedys, says the only Churchill concerned about the match was Winston. “Your family, the Digby family, were Catholic, but I imagine you are not still a Catholic?” he asked her. WSC had no religious prejudice, but as a politician always had to contemplate potential criticism.

Pamela assured him the Digbys had long been Church of England, and faithful Conservatives. “Yes, you had your heads chopped off in the Gunpowder Plot,” Churchill smiled. “That is right,” she answered—Sir Everard Digby.” (Mr. Maier notes that Sir Everard, a Catholic convert, was actually hung, drawn and quartered.)

“How great a man…”

Winston Churchill welcomed Pamela into the family. Becoming Prime Minister, he invited her to Downing Street. Pregnant with her son Winston, she recalled sleeping in a bunk bed in the bomb shelter, “one Churchill above me, another inside.” Pamela loved and admired the PM, and later did amusing imitations of him in her own deep voice.

Once during dinner amidst the Blitz, Churchill gazed around the table. “If the Germans come,” he told them, “you can always take one with you.” Pamela, all of twenty, was shocked at this. “But Papa,” she protested, “what would I fight with?”

WSC peered at her with a benignant smile: “You, my dear, may use a carving knife.” Her son Winston said she recited that vignette often, captivated by her father-in-law’s indomitable spirit. He added: “It was through her that it first dawned on me how great a man my grandfather was.”

Randolph to Averell

As friends had warned her, marriage with Randolph was not destined to be smooth. Neither were celibate in each other’s absence, and her affair with Roosevelt’s envoy, Averell Harriman, was an open secret. Winston nor Clementine never spoke of it.

Contrary to what you may hear from other sources, she fell for Averell the moment she laid eyes on him, one Blitz night at the Dorchester. There was no plot by Winston to use her. Inevitably, when he learned of it, Randolph Churchill exploded. Years later it still strained relations between father and son. But Randolph was hardly guiltless of indiscretions.

After her divorce, with little in her pocket except determination, Pamela and her young son Winston moved to Paris. She enjoyed a lavish life and romances. In 1960 she married Broadway producer Leland Hayward (renowned for South Pacific and The Sound of Music.) The marriage lasted until Hayward’s death in 1971. Six months later she married Harriman, then almost 80, caring for him devotedly. The old flame had never died, her son told this writer. “She often called Averell ‘the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.’”

“Never give in”

Through Harriman and with Churchillian determination, Pamela became immersed in American politics. In 1980 and 1984, the Democrats were in disarray following twin sweeps by Ronald Reagan. Pamela quoted Sir Winston: “In war you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.” How often he’d been counted out in politics and recovered?

At her home on N Street in Washington she hosted glamorous parties and fundraisers. “She had an ability to attract people around her, and a willingness to try to be a catalyst for the party,” said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “Almost anybody who was asked was going to come to one of the gatherings at her spectacular house.” Her son Winston told me that politics aside, she was “one of the most conservative people I know. She would have brought the same zest had she married Ronald Reagan.”

As those two comments suggest, Pamela Harriman was admired from both sides of the aisle. She supported Clinton in 1992, and was rewarded with the Paris Ambassadorship. Yet at her confirmation hearings she was praised to the skies by the most conservative member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helms.

“Darling, this is Pamela…”

She represented it seems the politics of a bygone age, a more Churchillian age. Like her first father-in-law, she saw it as a noble profession, where mutual respect was de rigueur. Years ago I published a piece on Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. As one might expect, it stressed the Fulton theme of peace through strength. Pamela Harriman wrote a rebuttal emphasizing Churchill’s Fulton title, “the Sinews of Peace.”

Paul Robinson, formerly Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Canada, read it, disagreed, and confessed that he remained among her greatest admirers. Earlier he had named Harriman and Weinberger co-vice-presidents during his chairmanship of the English-Speaking Union. “They were both superb,” he said. “And very good together—despite everything!”

Shortly before President Clinton arrived in office he proclaimed an admiration for Winston Churchill. I remember sending him, through Pamela Harriman, a blue sweatshirt emblazoned with the Churchill five-cent U.S. commemorative stamp. Delighted, she delivered it herself, and so we made her a pink version.

She telephoned to express her thanks, with the husky opening line that must have thrilled a thousand Washington insiders: “Darling, this is Pamela.” It would have been, and always was, superfluous to ask, “Pamela who?”

“Elegance itself”

Pamela lived life her way—a noble spirit devoted to friends, family and both her countries. Not many people could have journeyed so successfully and far with a formal education that ended at age sixteen.

How did she manage it? She was grace personified, at home equally in Churchill’s air raid shelter or the Élysée Palace. During her term as ambassador, Paris and Washington collided over alleged U.S. espionage, the “Europeanization” of NATO, leadership of the United Nations, peace initiatives in the Middle East, power rivalries in Africa. She handled it all with consummate skill, retaining the respect of her hosts despite those tests.

President Chirac lamented her loss: “To say that she was an exceptional representative of the United States in France does not do justice to her achievement. She lent to our longstanding alliance the radiant strength of her personality. She was elegance itself…a peerless diplomat.”

That old Francophile, her father-in-law, would have smiled.

First published as “The Teague I Knew” in The Packard Cormorant, 2023.  A longer version was published in The Automobile (UK), January 2024. The quote below is from “Horatius at the Bridge” in Lays of Ancient Rome, by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

“And how can man die better than facing fearful odds…”

Franklin, Michigan, April 1971— “Don’t touch it!”

On the garage floor next to a huge Pope-Toledo, a tiny electric compressor was going chuffa-chuffa-chuffa, inflating a tire on this enormous touring car. Richard Arthur Teague, Vice President for Design of American Motors, was on his knees watching it.

“Isn’t it neat?” Dick enthused. “Found it at a hardware store. Look at it go!”

“Yeah, Dick,” I said, “and it’ll be about finished in a week or so.”

I finally tore him away, but I’d no sooner begun asking how he planned to style AMC out of its latest predicament than he lunged into a cardboard box and began hauling out Packard literature.

He held up a bound volume of the ultra-rare Packard Magazine: “Did you ever see one of these before?” He’d rescued the trove from destruction at the East Grand Boulevard factory during Packard’s last days in Detroit.

When tumbrels rolled

“Good Lord, it was awful,” Dick remembered. “There were only a few of us left, they were emptying the factory.

Every hour the tumbrels would roll—you know, like the French Revolution—hauling that aristocratic heritage to the dump. I finally hired a truck, loaded as much of it as I could, and drove it out of there.”

Dick was a Packard stylist from 1951 to the consolidation at South Bend in 1956. His last production effort was the 1957 “Packardbaker,” where he cleverly gave a Studebaker body a family resemblance to the “real” 1956 Packards. Ironically it was Studebaker, which had dragged Packard down, that survived longer.

Most car designers in those days—I don’t know what they do now, click computer keys?—passionately loved the automobile. Most of them could recite automotive history and recall the great names of the industry, from hardboiled executives to racing drivers.

But Dick Teague was unique. He was widely read, brought up to appreciate everything on wheels, devoted to history and restoration. The fabulous 1904 Packard Model L at the Henry Ford Museum, originator of the radiator shape he applied to the last prototypes, was Dick’s car.

His collection ran from his Pope-Toledo to a 1961 Ferrari Berlinetta and the AMX III showcar. He placed his library at the disposal of Automobile Quarterly for our book, Packard; A History of the Motorcar and the Company.

“More rivals than a big city tomcat”

His background wasn’t always cars. A prodigy at five, Dick had played Dixie Duval, the young girl in a low-grade spin-off of Hal Roach’s “Little Rascals.”

A year later he’d lost his right eye in a car accident, and with it his depth perception. (He used to appall us by removing and juggling his glass eye or taping it with a pencil.)

His disability never affected his talent. He grew up sketching cars and airplanes. During the Second World War, ineligible for the draft, he served as a tech artist for Northrop Aviation.

Afterwards Dick joined the industrial design firm E.H. Daniels, who had a contract with a fledgling car company, Kaiser-Frazer.

It seemed a plum of a job, since K-F had barrels of cash and a clean-slate design program, unburdened by prewar “baggage” like the other manufacturers.

The problem was that they hired lots of competing stylists, such as Dutch Darrin and Brooks Stevens, even a company that made car seats. “We had more rivals than a big city tomcat,” Dick remembered.

Then in 1948, General Motors came to L.A. looking for artists, interviewed fifteen of them, and chose Dick Teague. He headed for Detroit, where he contributed to the aircraft-inspired 1949 Oldsmobile.

There he met and married Marian, the love of his life, and reeled off the odd freelance project. Many first heard of Dick for the “modern Mercer” he conceived for Road & Track in 1951. It was the best cover R&T had yet published—Dick’s revival of greatest sports car of its era, the T-head Raceabout.

Packard highs and lows

The Packard Cormorant records all he did for Packard, so it isn’t necessary to repeat that here. But no car lover can fail to appreciate the originality of Dick’s mind.

It was he who first reasoned: why does a backlight have to slant back? Why not let it slant forward, eliminating glare, affording rain protection, even sliding down for ventilation? That idea (less the sliding feature) appeared on Dick’s 1953 Balboa showcar, and was later swiped (with the sliding feature) by Lincoln and Mercury.

Many of us know his most famous story, from what he called his “last days in the bunker,” when the “tumbrels rolled” for “Black Bess.”

That was the 1957 Packard prototype (complete with the slant-back rear window). Dick said it was “made with a cold soldering iron and a ball peen hammer…a very spartan mule.”

One day, Engineering Vice President Herb Misch said, “Find it,” and Dick brought it up to a little showroom.

“I can’t do it myself,” Misch said, “so I’m going to make you the executioner. Cut the thing up…it’s all over.” Let Dick himself finish the tale:

“My God, Red, what have you done?”

So I called Rex Lux, an old welder in the studio, who had been around since the cornerstone. There were two or three other cars in the studio, including another black one, a Clipper. I said, “Okay, it’s official, cut the black one up.”

Red had been there since he was a kid and was hanging on by his thumbnails. I came back around 4 p.m. and he was just finishing. The pieces were lying all around like a bomb had gone off.

It was probably the dirtiest trick I ever played but I said: “My God, Red, what have you done? Not this one, man—the one over in the corner!”

The poor guy had to have had a strong heart, because if he didn’t, he would have died right there. His face drained, and when I told him I was just kidding he chased me around the room. You’ve got to have a sense of humor in this business.

With Packard gone, Dick went to Chrysler: “the worst year of my life.” He refused to talk about it—“too painful to remember.” He worked awhile for his old Packard boss Bill Schmidt, then an independent consultant.

In 1960 American Motors design chief Edmund Anderson asked him to come aboard as a stylist, and Dick joyfully signed on with another company headed for the bunker. But this time he put up an extended fight.

“Ruddy ordnance vehicle”

Dick’s first task was to restyle the 1961-63 Rambler American: “You remember, that dumpy thing with the concave body side molding? An English designer had been hired around the same time. ‘My God, Dick,’ he said to me, ‘it looks like a ruddy ordnance vehicle.’ It did, too!”

Dick’s 1964 replacementl was a quantum leap forward—the first Rambler American that could honestly be called good looking.

When Ed Anderson retired, Dick was named to replace him. He started with projects already on the books, like the 1965-67 Marlin, a hasty attempt to ape the Big Three “glassbacks.” But once he could produce ground-up designs, Dick created sleek, flowing shapes, the diametric opposite of conventional Detroit cars.

From a styling standpoint, the 1968 Javelin, his answer to the Mustang and Camaro, bested both of them. Then, cutting a foot off the Javelin wheelbase, he created the AMX, more of a sports car than anything in Detroit other than the Corvette.

When I joined Automobile Quarterly in 1970, Dick was at his apogee. Every time AMC was counted out, he would reach into his bag of talent and produce Salvation.

In 1970 it was the Hornet, a clean-limbed compact, and the Gremlin subcompact, which Dick made by cutting off the Hornet’s back end. It was a desperate tactic, but it worked. The Gremlin sold like nickel hot dogs because with V8 power it wasn’t your typical buzz-box.

“Elephant foreskins”

The 1975 Matador coupe was his purest work. Elegant and smoothly integrated, it looked like 100 mph standing still. I visited him that year driving a new Granada from Ford’s press fleet.

“Good grief,” Dick said, gesturing toward its severe body creases. “Look at all that tortured sheet metal.” Then, pointing to the Matador in his driveway: “Why don’t you get a real car?”

I promised him I’d borrow a Matador as soon as I was back in the graces of our friend John Conde, AMC’s public relations manager.

A few days before, I’d met John at AMC headquarters, where Dick’s newest creation, the Pacer, was on a turntable, observed by a host of component salesmen and other supplicants. I said it was cute.

“What? Just look at that ugly toad,” John fumed, as heads turned. “One door wider than the other…all that glass…doors full of air. I told Teague a hundred times, that little troll won’t do!”

I repeated this to Dick, knowing he’d laugh—he took neither himself nor anyone else too seriously. Actually, he’d been betrayed by the production engineers. Had GM with its resources handled Pacer engineering, “the first wide small car” would have been a greater success.

Nearing retirement in 1985, Teague was getting bored. The government was in the design business big-time now, and controlled everything.

“What are you doing today?” I asked him once. “Government crash tests,” he quipped. “That’s what we’re reduced to. Every day we swing the pendulum at our bumpers, extended out from the body with elephant foreskins.” I cracked up, and he said: “Well, what would you call them?”

“J. Pierpont Teague” 

In retirement Dick was celebrated and in demand everywhere. We expected him to be around a long time, to regale us with his memories.

But then from his family, word began to filter that Dick was ill, and that cancer was one bunker from which he wouldn’t emerge, though as usual he’d fight like hell before he gave up.

It made no difference to his enthusiasms. Two weeks before he died, he phoned me to say his last design—a “1992 Packard”—would be on its way for use in The Packard Cormorant. By then his family said Dick was “functional” only twenty minutes a day.

Yet a week after he died his friend Ken Eberts, the great automotive artist, sent it along: “Dick wanted you to have this. He asked me to help finish it, but it is entirely his concept. I think it is his last design.”

Unlike many in his profession, Dick was never proprietorial about his work, quick to credit his colleagues, always ready to lighten up. When worshipful Packard folk would praise his famous 1955-56 “cathedral” taillights, Dick would say:

“Yeah, I was a big hero—J. Pierpont Teague. They raised my salary five dollars, which in those days was a great thing.” (Actually, it was rather more than that, but such was the Teague humor.)

And that’s what I remember most about my dear friend, who died far too young, for he still had so much to give. Everybody who knew Dick loved him. That’s a very large crowd. I’m proud to be a member of it.

More on Packard and its cars

“One Brief Shining Moment: Packard and Its 1929-30 Speedster,” 2023.

“Queen Mary: We Love Our 1950 Packard Eight Club Sedan,” 2022.

“Why Packard Failed,” Part 1 and Part 2, 2022.

“Brooks Stevens: The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous,” 2022.

“The Packard Magazine: Ne Plus Ultra of Automotive House Organs,” Part 1 and Part 2, 2021.

“The Packard Adventures of Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” 2017.

My essay, “Vanishing National Anthems,” was published by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original article with images and all the lyrics (including those now abandoned) of five National Anthems (Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, USA), click here. To subscribe to weekly articles from Churchill-Hillsdale, click here, scroll to bottom, and fill in your email in the box entitled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email is never divulged and remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

“Frustrate their knavish tricks”

Remembering Arrington

You don’t really know a road until you’ve cycled it. On a bike, everything is magnified: the surface, contour and camber; the hills and valleys; the ruts and potholes; even the shoulder. Arrington always said: “Pay attention to the shoulder—there’s always a chance you might be in it.”

He used to joke that they should rename the Eleuthera Queen’s Highway for him because he knew every inch of it better than anybody. He loved cycling so much that some nights during the full moon, he would bunk at a friend’s place in Bannerman Town and leave at 3 am, pedaling along in the moonlight, headed for Spanish Wells, 100 miles to the north. Once he asked me to join him, but I weaseled out, and promised to have the coffee ready when he came by.

Cycling evangelist

Self-trained, he had unorthodox techniques. On a steep hill, the standard tactic is to shift up two cogs and stand up, adding your body weight to the downstroke, using your arms to wiggle the bike from side to side to help the upstroke. We never saw Arrington stand up. Instead he would hunker down in the saddle and simply power his way over the hill. And he always left us in the dust. I was hoping to observe this technique in the White Mountains when he and Hazel visited us in New Hampshire.

Arrington was a cycling evangelist. He constantly tried to convince his friends to take up a bike, grumbling when they made excuses. His ambition was to ride every major Bahamian island—Abaco was in the cards for 2011, Cat Island for 2012.

Thanks to him, we were able to cycle Long Island (the Bahamas version). He made all the arrangements—twice. This was just one of his many kindnesses, and the shared laughs, food, fun and friendship that made our winters on Eleuthera so special.

He had more than one dimension. A skilled craftsman, who learned his trade at the former U.S. Navy Base, he built pretty rental cottages on his waterfront property, where visitors were sometimes invited to dinner at his home.

Clicking into high

Four of his renters were with us at his 64th birthday party on March 26th, 2011. There was one thing he wouldn’t eat: the staple seafood of The Bahamas. Arrington had fished since he was a boy, annoying his dad by eating the bait—a habit which gave him a lifetime distaste for conch.

Arrington liked music from island ballads to the classical guitar recitals. He had a devoted, loving family, whose laughter was contagious. He was a first-class cook, and did all the cooking for his bedridden first wife, caring for her every day until she died. The Hon. Alvin Smith, Speaker of the Bahamas House of Assembly, once remarked to me: “Now there’s a man who knows how to raise a family.”

The thought of him gone at so early an early age is impossible to bear. So let us not think of him as gone—just away for the present. Let us be glad he died painlessly, doing something he loved. Arrington’s last “Ride for Hope” was also my last, for several reasons. The main one is that I could never ride another without thinking of the big hole this man left in all our lives. I’d rather think of him as I often saw him, way out in front, clicking into high, hunkered down for the next hill. Godspeed, my gifted, true and many-sided friend.

Messages from his friends

This update would have lost the comments received at the time, so I reprise them herewith:

Proofing galleys for Winston S. Churchill: Document Volume 20, May-December 1944, the Hillsdale College Churchill Project came across many gems. Not least of these was an account by Fitzroy of Churchill’s first meeting with Tito—and a minor adventure in Bay of Naples in August 1944.

Maclean on Tito

I found him to be a tough, alert man of about fifty, at the head of a far more formidable resistance movement than anyone outside Yugoslavia could possibly have imagined…. He made no bones about being a Communist, but… he showed a surprising independence of mind, and above all an intense national pride which did not at all fit in with my idea of a Russian agent. All this I reported to Mr. Churchill [in late 1943]…. I thought it right to remind him that the Partisans were Communist-led.

“Do you intend to make your home in Yugoslavia after the war?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Neither do I,” he said. “That being so, don’t you think we had better leave it to the Yugoslavs to work out their own form of government? What concerns us most now is who is doing the most damage to the Germans.” Thinking our conversation over afterwards, I felt convinced, and still feel convinced, that this was the right decision.

[Tito indeed proved to be a Communist, but one with ardent independence, who balked at following the Soviet line. As a schoolboy I remember maps of the Soviet empire, its nations colored red, except for Yugoslavia, which was always colored pink.]

The PM and Tito

They met in Naples on 12 August at what had been Queen Victoria‘s summer villa. Tito was wearing a splendid new uniform which Fitzroy was sure had been made for the occasion. Although suffering from the heat, Tito “looked every inch a Marshal, which he had just made himself.” With Tito were two gigantic bodyguards, Boško and Prlja, who, with submachine guns at the ready, kept a constant watch over him.

It was at lunchtime when Churchill, with all his cowboy instincts, almost caused an international incident. It might have ended with the death of the Prime Minister by semi-friendly fire. Sir Fitzroy recalled:

At one o’clock precisely, we broke for lunch. The villa was large enough to provide freshening-up facilities for each delegation. Accordingly, the Prime Minister and I disappeared down one long corridor. Tito and the two bodyguards, their submachine guns still at the ready, went off down another, running at right angles to each other.

Five minutes later, having washed our hands, we made our way back, converging from different directions on the same corner. It was thus that the Prime Minister found himself looking down the barrels of two submachine guns.

Boško’s and Prlja’s near-miss

This, I realized too late, was the sort of situation that appealed to him immensely. He at once entered into what he imagined to be the spirit of the thing. Whipping his large gold cigar case out of his pocket like a pistol and suddenly lunging forward, he presented it in one abrupt movement at Tito’s stomach.

What he didn’t know, but I did, was that Boško and Prlja, after three years as guerrillas, were men of lightning reflexes who took no chances at all. If they thought their Marshal’s life was in danger they would gladly have wiped out all three of the Big Three in a single burst.

In the space of a split second I saw their trigger fingers twitch. I only had time to hope that I for one would not survive what came next.

Then Tito began to laugh. Winston, seeing that his little joke had been a success, laughed too. Boško and Prlja, observing that the danger had passed, lowered their guns. Following on into Queen Victoria’s fusty dining room, I took out a large khaki handkerchief and wiped the cold sweat off my brow.

“Careering around the Bay of Naples”

During Churchill’s stay in Naples, an urgent decision was needed from the PM, who was nowhere to be found. Someone mentioned that he had said he was going swimming in the Bay of Naples. The Allied commander instructed Fitzroy Maclean to find him:

The Royal Navy kindly provided a motor torpedo boat, and the United States Army a stenographer—a young lady of considerable personal attractions, in a form-fitting tropical uniform…..

The first thing we saw as we emerged from the harbour into the wider waters of the Bay was a great fleet of ships of every size and shape, steaming majestically towards the open sea. It was the first phase, as I suddenly realized, of the Allied invasion of the south of France….

As we watched, one of the troop ships slightly slackened speed, as if to avoid something. Simultaneously there was a burst of excited cheering from the troops on board, and a small, bright blue object shot across their bow. I recognized it as an admiral’s barge. And there, standing by the coxswain, wearing a boiler suit and a broad-brimmed Panama hat, smoking a cigar and giving the “V” sign, was the object of my search.

Royal Navy greetings

He swerved out and round and disappeared behind the next ship in the convoy. Clearly there was nothing for me but to give chase…. We set out boldly on our erratic course down the line. As we passed them, the troops on the transports gave us an extra cheer for luck—followed by a salvo of whistles as they spotted my female companion….

Eventually, we overtook and headed off the blue barge. There followed an intricate boarding operation in rather a rough sea. I landed precipitously in my kilt at the Prime Minister’s feet. The blonde stenographer, anxious to miss nothing, hung over the rail of the MTB.

Mr. Churchill seemed keenly interested. “Do you usually,” he asked, “spend your afternoons careering around the Bay of Naples in one of His Majesty’s ships with this charming young lady?” In vain I explained the object of the exercise. He wouldn’t listen. I was not to hear the last of that episode for a long time.

Sir Fitzroy on WSC

I should not like to give the impression that all Fitzroy had to say was jocular. His memoranda to Churchill crucially influenced British policy in the Balkans and his evaluations of Tito and other players in Yugoslavia was uniformly accurate. Nevertheless, these wonderful snippets are worth recalling, if only as a testimony to what he always considered the premier experience of his life.

He spoke to us twice on the Churchill tours my wife and I conducted. The venue was his Creggans Inn in Strachur, on Scotland’s Kintyre Peninsula. He spoke movingly and I think profoundly on the Great Man he’d known so well:

Today, looking back over a long life, I can honestly say that almost the only things in which I take any conscious pride or esteem in one way or another is my association with Winston Churchill. After the war I was lucky enough to be a member of his Government and also, with my wife, to be asked every now and then to Chequers or Chartwell to join him and his family in their noisy, affectionate, hilarious, often uproarious family life. That, as a friend said to me the other day, was something that left you both wiser and also warmer at heart.

After our meeting in Naples I asked Tito, a most perceptive man, what had struck him most about Winston. Tito replied instantly and I thought it was very clever of him: “His humanity. He is so human.”

By this central humanity, and his statesmanship and courage, Churchill did something that not many politicians seem to do nowadays. He caught people’s imagination and won their affection.

When I heard of his death I was on the hill here with my head shepherd. Not a man much given to sentiment, he was greatly moved. “I feel,” he said, “as if I’d lost one of my own family.”

That is how, I think, many of us felt and still feel today.

Fair and balanced

In his best-known book, Robert Vidal Rhodes James said he aimed to prove that Winston Churchill was human. He was immediately asked: wasn’t that a superfluous mission? Sir Robert replied that Churchill had been almost completely deified—so it was high time someone brought him down to earth. Churchill: A Study in Failure (1970) was a comprehensive catalogue of the great man’s outrages, miscalculations and errors which left WSC, through the late 1930s, admired for his drive and brilliance and distrusted for his supposed lack of judgement. A Study in Failure was not a pioneering work, since critical books about Churchill had been appearing since the 1920s. But it was the best of them: carefully researched, deftly argued, elegantly written, a model.

The politician-writer

Like Churchill, Sir Robert was that rare combination, a politician-writer. Unlike many today, he didn’t make politics his sole career. He clerked in the House of Commons, returned to All Souls College as a research fellow, taught history at Stanford and the University of Sussex, and worked for the United Nations in New York. In 1976 he stood as a Conservative in a by-election for Cambridge, a marginal seat. He held it despite strong challenges until he retired in 1992. 

Aside from A Study in Failure, Robert left a huge corpus for laborers in the Churchill vineyard. His first book, Lord Randolph Churchill (1959), was the first biography of Sir Winston’s father since WSC’s and Lord Rosebery’s early in the century. In 1964 he published a biography of Lord Rosebery himself.

Biographies followed on Prince Albert (1983) and Anthony Eden (1986). Like most of us, he was sometimes uneven. Bob Boothby (1991) bordered on hagiography. Boothby, Churchill’s Parliamentary Private Secretary in the 1920s, who later fell out over ethical lapses, hardly puts a foot wrong in that book, which etiolates Churchill. Perhaps this was because Robert and Boothby both liked to stir the political pot. But most of the time, like Churchill, Rhodes James was a skilled politician-writer.

His greatest contribution was Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963 (1974). It took up eight thick volumes, with two well-organized and comprehensive indexes. He shocked me once by confiding that he had been paid only £5000 for the whole job—55 pence per page. Out of that he had to pay his student researchers. It’s a safe bet that he derived little from the later abridged editions, such as Churchill Speaks. But he was proud of the effort, and smiled when told it’s among the most sought-after of the multi-volume Churchill works.

Rhodes James as I knew him

I met him in Washington in 1994, where he spoke at a symposium, later quantified in Churchill as Peacemaker (1997). He sniffed that his hotel room lacked the bottle of whisky he’d enjoyed at his last symposium in Texas. He was affronted by America’s no-smoking diktat, then almost universal: “In a few year’s time everything in your country will be illegal, except sex between consenting adults of the correct persuasion. I like smoking. Oh dear.” One evening the ebullient James Humes, after too good a dinner, introduced Lady Rhodes James as “an English rose.” Robert murmured, not quite sotto voce, “Who is that dreadful man?” 

At our symposium he griped that speakers had to stand up, then took on Professor Manfred Weidhorn, who said Churchill objected to Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland. Walking briskly to the podium after Manny’s presentation, Robert announced: “Churchill said nothing about the Rhineland, nothing at all. He was hoping to get into the Cabinet and so he kept his mouth shut.” Then bang, he sat down again. No questions, thanks very much.

Nevertheless we found Robert a grand personality, full of stories about Churchill and Parliament. Paul Addison remembered “what fun he was to be with. Such a warm and generous character—he sparkled with gossip and was full of enthusiasms.”

The Washington Post said Robert “could be a congenial companion to those he counted as his intellectual near-equals.” But he “never lost the superior manner commonly displayed by clerks of the House of Commons.” On balance Sir Robert remained pro-Churchill, and hoped to write a post-1939 volume entitled A Study in Success. 

Tory Wet

I was sure that Robert and I weren’t destined to become chums. He was a “Tory wet” (think RINO Republican, conservative Democrat). He believed in Little Britain within the European Union, and regarded Margaret Thatcher as a rather nasty aberration. I was a right winger who had voted for Goldwater and Reagan and Steve Forbes, and would have voted Thatcher if I could, who believed that the EU was a globalist con-job for the benefit of the Franco-Germans. The best Great Britain could do was to revive Commonwealth Free Trade and join the North American Free Trade Association. (Oh dear, indeed.)

We disagreed about the Churchill Official Biography. Randolph Churchill had sacked Robert from his research team of “young gentlemen,” and Robert never forgave him (or his dislike of Eden). He always maintained that the O.B. was the same “case for the defence” Sir Winston had already made in his own books. Robert always said exactly what he believed—in the most forceful terms available to a gentleman. In an age of prevaricating phonies of Left and Right, such a character is rare. Winston Churchill would have loved him.

Flogged then forgiven

We tangled over the Rhineland issue, because Churchill did and said things about it which ought to be considered. Sweeping generalizations, I argued, have no place either in a biography or a seminar. Robert ended the discussion with a preemptory note. “I am one of Churchill’s strongest admirers, but I cannot accept claims that have no merit or justification. I see no point whatever in continuing this correspondence.”

And that, I thought, was that. Yet a year later he wrote to offer me a very good piece: “Myth-Shattering: An Actor Did NOT Give Churchill’s Speeches.” Instantly we renewed our correspondence, in which I was rewarded with a treasury of keen observations.

Robert’s shrewd thoughts on Churchill and politics, delivered ad hoc with an entre nous intimacy, were a privilege to read. (I share some below, all food for thought.) He even agreed to consider whatever I would write about Churchill and the Rhineland. I came to realize that here was a wise and opinionated Diogenes, to shed a kindly light over my own insignificant Churchill studies.

Alas the Rhineland piece was set aside, because like most of his friends and admirers I expected Robert would be with us a good while yet. Now if I write it, he will never read it, and then hammer me in cordial debate.** He died too young, of cancer on 20 May 1999, his second Churchill volume unpublished. I mourned the loss of a first class intellect and, as Churchill said on occasion, “a good House of Commons man.”

**See “Churchill and the Rhineland: ‘They Had Only to Act to Win.'”

Robert Rhodes James on Churchillians

From correspondence with the author, 1995-98.

Anthony Eden 

“I do not think that WSC developed ‘a cold hatred’ for Eden; certainly their correspondence would belie this. But the abandonment of the Suez Canal base in 1956 angered Churchill, as did Eden’s manifest impatience with WSC’s procrastination about retiring.”

George VI

“The relationship between Churchill and the King during the war is important. It has been consistently underestimated, and even on occasion ignored. It began stickily but developed into the closest collaboration between monarch and prime minister in modern British history. The Queen Mother was very affectionately amusing about WSC, as was the King when Churchill’s letters became especially flowery. On one occasion WSC enthusiastically responded to a plea for help in preparing a broadcast by the King. He sent His Majesty a speech he had composed specially. Of course, it contained words and phrases the King could not get his tongue round. While splendidly Churchillian, was so out of character for the King that it was politely rejected. Sadly, his draft seems to have disappeared.”

Harold Nicolson

“His position was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information between May 1940 and June 1941. This was a junior ministerial post in the Churchill Coalition Government. Alfred Duff Cooper was a disaster as Minister, and Harold’s career suffered thereby. But as his son Nigel has frankly admitted, ‘he was not a fit person to run a department in wartime.’ Indeed, much as I loved Harold, he was marvellously unfitted to administer or run anything. When WSC, who needed a Labour minister to balance the Coalition team, had to sack Harold, whom he greatly liked and respected, he made him a governor of the BBC. This was his true métier.”

Alfred Duff Cooper

“I too thought that John Charmley’s biography of Duff Cooper was much better than his Churchill book, though I thought he was unduly censorious about Duff’s drinking and womanizing. If his wife was tolerant of both, then I think we can be. I prefer red-blooded people to time-servers and sycophants. And Duff had real guts, in war and peace. And he wrote so wonderfully, gracefully and simply—particularly on a hot summer afternoon after a long lunch with beautiful women and plenty of champagne, good wine, and brandy. But this is now terribly unfashionable and non-PC!”

Lord Randolph Churchill

“I never believed the canard that he died of syphilis. When I was researching my Lord Randolph Churchill in the 1950s I discussed it with an eminent elderly specialist in the disease. He told me that, having looked at the symptoms, syphilis was the least likely cause of his decline and death. He was certainly treated for it, by a physician who was on public record as declaring that all nervous diseases were syphilitic. This, of course, we now know is nonsense. John Mather’s conclusion that the treatment only accelerated Lord Randolph’s mental collapse and death seems to me to be fully justified.

I am rather surprised that some of the Churchills told you they believed the story, although Randolph, ill-advised as usual, did. But the Churchills do like to tease. Clarissa Avon [WSC’s niece who married Eden] once told me that ‘of course’ her father Jack was illegitimate, knowing full well that this was nonsense, but rather chic. Jack’s son John was physically almost an exact replica of his Uncle Winston, and with an even more formidable capacity for alcohol. He lived to a much greater age than the modern Puritans deem possible, and was also a very good artist.”

The following, just resurfaced, were not in my original post but shed more light on the great character he was….

Churchill symposia

“I am glad your last Symposium went much better, and the style that I had advised was adopted. The great Austin Conference on WSC* was made memorable and enjoyable by the provision of the smoking room in the LBJ Library, and, by a stroke of added genius by Roger Louis, a bottle of bourbon for each participant. No wonder it was a triumph. And WSC would have greatly approved.” *Published as Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War, Lord Blake and William Roger Louis, editors (1993).

WSC’s grandsons?

“We had a fine dinner meeting of The Other Other Club in Madison. I cut down my contribution drastically, as the old boys were longing to get at their oysters and Pol Roger…. I did the same at the Anniversary meeting in Zurich, where I spoke from the same podium as WSC had in 1946. Alas the Swiss Foreign Minister gave an interminable and hardly relevant speech, Mine went well, and there were many requests afterwards for the full text. The Swiss Press got rather confused and described Nicholas Soames and me as WSC’s ‘two grandsons.’ This puzzled the multitude, as the physical resemblance is absolutely nil. Nicholas, of course, thought it hilarious.”

The weed

“If we have another Winston Churchill symposium it really must recognise that a non-smoking Churchill Conference is a contradiction in terms, almost as idiotic as a non-smoking Churchill Cabinet! Auberon Waugh has formed a club in London in which smoking is compulsory. This may be taking the counter-revolution rather too far, but he is making a point against the PC fanatics.”

The friend of many Churchillians, Col. Nigel Knocker died 21 February at his home in Seend, Wiltshire, with his beloved wife Angela at his side. In 1997 The Churchill Centre UK was in need of a chairman, and a kind Providence sent us Nigel. He served the UK branch through 2008, skillfully and with humour. We loved him dearly, and are poorer for his passing. “A man never dies as long as he is remembered.”

From the Seend village magazine

Born in 1930, Nigel was the son of an air commodore and former officer in the Indian Army. Educated at Oakham School, he entered National Service in January 1949. He served with 14/20 Kings Hussars before being commissioned into the Life Guards. In 1951 he transferred to the infantry, joining the Royal Sussex Regiment on the Suez Canal in 1951. His early career included a tour as an ADC before returning to the Regiment as Adjutant in Korea, Germany and Gibraltar. Subsequent tours included Australia, Northern Ireland and the Staff College, Camberley.

Nigel was most proud of his long association with Oman. He took command of the Desert Regiment of the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF) at the height of the Dhofar War in May 1971. He received the Sultan’s Distinguished Service Medal for his skill in command on Operation Simba. Nigel was appointed an Officer in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1974.

Promoted to Colonel, he returned to Oman as Defence Attaché from 1977 to 1980, and later served with the SAF Chief of Defence Staff from 1982 to 1985. He chaired the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces Association from 1997 and the Anglo-Omani Society. His profound contribution to UK-Oman relations was recognized with the Order of Oman in 2018.

Nigel’s first marriage to Cartiona Mcleod in 1958 was blessed with two children, Jonathan and Fiona. Catriona died in 1979 and in 1981 he married Angela Willoughby. After retirement, Nigel and Angela moved to Seend in 1986. There he became the Emergency Planning Officer of Wiltshire County Council.

Mentioned in our despatches

Mentioning young Churchill in despatches, his commander wrote: “He made himself useful at a critical moment.” Nigel arrived at one of those periodic crises of the Old Guard. The UK Branch had unexpectedly lost its chairman, and was at a loss over whom to send for. Celia Sandys had the answer: a retired Army colonel. We expected a severe taskmaster, perhaps even an officious mandarin. We found instead a warm-hearted collaborator and devotee of the Churchill saga. Unlike some, his support never wavered—a “foul weather friend,” as Churchill said.

Nigel paid his first call on us in New Hampshire in 1998, joining us for a sailing cruise on Lake Sunapee. Given the helm of a strange boat in a stiff breeze, he pranged the pier. He never ceased apologizing, even years later, for a minor bump that would have been worse if I’d had the tiller! A few years later we visited Angela and Nigel in their beautiful Wiltshire village. We walked leafy lanes and green meadows with his Springer spaniels and conjured Churchill events to come.

Nigel’s greatest triumph was the 12th Churchill Tour, “Normandy to Berlin,” in 2004. With the same attention to detail that endeared him to the Omani Armed Forces, Nigel laid out the operation. He and 40 partners including Lady Soames waded the beaches of Normandy and followed the route of the Allied armies to Potsdam. There they visited the site of the Potsdam Conference, welcomed at the “pink house” where Churchill stayed. Grand memories.

“One mark of a great man,” Churchill said…

“is the power of making lasting impressions upon people he meets.” Nigel Knocker had that power—accompanied by a wit and dry humour that endeared him to us all. I remember our debating what to do with a certain board member who had become a burden. “You have to admit, Nigel, she’s in London, connected by a line in your organisation chart.” “Perhaps,” quipped the Colonel, “we could just make that a dotted line….”

Those who didn’t work closely with him and saw only the successful results may have missed the qualities of sound opinion and judgement he brought to our deliberations. But qualities which lay behind we closely understood. Churchill’s words on his best friend, F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, will always remind me of Nigel Knocker. He’d blanche to hear this applied to him, but he has it coming:

His close friends, and certainly I, acclaimed him for what he was…a gay, brilliant, loyal, lovable being…. We met and talked on innumerable occasions; never did I separate from him without having learnt something, and enjoyed myself besides. F.E was always great fun; but more than that he had a massive common sense and a sagacious comprehension which made his counsel invaluable…. He had all the canine virtues in a remarkable degree—courage, fidelity, vigilance, love of the chase…. Man of the world, man of affairs, adept at the written or spoken word, book-lover—there were few topics in which he was not interested, and whatever attracted him, he could expound and embellish.

The hearts of his friends

And Nigel too deserves Churchill’s final accolade: “Some men when they die after busy, toilsome, successful lives leave a great stock of scrip and securities, of acres or factories or the goodwill of large undertakings.” He “banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends, and they will cherish his memory till their time is come.”

Mary Soames died at 91 eight years ago. This piece from 2014 is republished on her 100th birthday—notwithstanding that we can hear her words: “Really, you’re going way over the top. It’s silly to make a fuss.” Never mind, we are going to make a fuss.

Barbara and I knew her since 1983, when she attended our first Churchill Tour, at the Churchill Hotel in London. She soon became Patron of the old Churchill Centre, replacing Lord Mountbatten, who was killed in 1979. From that time forward, she was our constant correspondent, companion at conferences and tours, sometime house guest, friendly advisor, decisive mentor and personal friend. There is no one outside our own family whom we loved more. Her loss removed one of the things that made life worth living.

I am pleased when any Churchill writer refuses to guess what Mary’s father would do nowadays. That is what we call the Soames Commandment. “We don’t know, do we?” she would often say. Whenever someone declared what Sir Winston would about this or that modern issue, she would interrupt: ”How do you know?”

Peter Hitchens rightly wrote, after the death of The Queen: “Please forgive me if I do not join in by recounting my feelings. I grew up in a world where feelings were something you generally kept to yourself’.” I tried to follow his advice in my tribute to Her Majesty. But Mary Soames was a personal friend. You can read in depth about her life and career in her books and on Wikipedia. So please forgive the feelings. I have, however, deleted personal correspondence from the original article.

Critic and mentor

That Churchill Tour was the first of many which she would attend. She had a reputation as a determined guardian of the flame, and I wondered if she would view a community of Churchillians as frivolous. No. Lady Soames (“call me Mary”) was easily approachable, and praised our work. She was soon a familiar voice on the telephone, as interested in our small doings as any doting aunt.

On 25 September 1985, she and Lord Soames attended the second tour’s dinner for Sir Anthony Montague Browne. Introducing him, Mary said it was a priceless opportunity to declare what the whole family owed to her father’s last private secretary: “Until my father drew his last breath, Anthony was practically never absent from his side.”

It hardly seems possible for anyone so engaged, but for thirty years she was always there for me as editor of Finest Hour. She radiated understanding, advice and wisdom, often as a proofreader, spending time to “get it right”—and to deliver the occasional deserved rebuke. She was so…essential. It was quite impossible for me to imagine carrying on without her. And I didn’t.

Her rebukes diminished when I learned to avoid presuming to know things about her father that I couldn’t possibly possess. Woe betide anyone who made that mistake! In a conference at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, an entertainer impersonating Thomas Jefferson made the mistake of suggesting that WSC was too fond of alcohol. Mary rose. “My dear Mr. Jefferson,” she said, “you have no way of knowing that, and since I as his daughter never saw him the worse for drink, I think you should avoid idle speculation.”

Hopkinton to Hyde Park

In August 1992 she was a guest at our home in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, where she met our son and my parents. My aging father had begun withdrawing into himself, and we feared he might have nothing to say. But like the elderly Sir Winston, reviving with the stimulus of friends, he responded to Mary. The years fell away, and he astonished us with scintillating conversation and vivid memories. After she left, he lapsed back into silence.

We bundled her into the car and drove to Hyde Park to open an exhibit of her father’s paintings. As we reached the Roosevelt Library she said, “Well driven—the President was a much scarier driver.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought: “It is 49 years to the day, August 15th, 1943, that I was last here with Papa. To come back to Hyde Park and to find an exhibition of his pictures really puts a crown on it.”

Three years later she was with us at a Boston Churchill conference chaired by Barbara Langworth. Back then we had consequential speakers who knew their Churchill: William F. Buckley, William Manchester, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Lady Soames.

Afterward we drove her to New Hampshire for an extended holiday. That took us to Dartmouth, and the papers of Winston Churchill, the American novelist. There she read her father’s 1899 letter: “Mr. Winston Churchill presents his compliments to Mr. Winston Churchill, and begs to draw his attention to a matter which concerns them both….”

That visit reminds me of…cigars! To celebrate Boston, Barbara bought me a box of very special Partagas cigars. Mary and I smoked the box in five days, competing with each other, as she used to with her father, to grow the longer ash. She always won.

New England, Virginia and back

There were amusing local encounters. At a neighborhood bistro known for country cooking but no frills, Mary ordered a hamburger. Our waitress was Rosie, a stolid local who stood no nonsense. Mary was not ready for the long list of American options: “Fries?… Yes, please. Relish?… Yes, thank you. Mustard?… Sure. Ketchup, onions, pickles?… Yes. Finally Rosie  stood back, hands on hips. “Do you want this on a plate, or do you want it on the floor?” Mary roared. I quipped, “Some day, Rosie, I’ll tell you who you said that to.” “Oh dear,” she said, “was I bad?” No, not really.

Mary was in Williamsburg for the 1998 Churchill conference. She and Celia Sandys were without escorts, so we played unofficial hosts, and drove them to see Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. Her thanks “in her own paw” duly arrived from London: Thank you so much for not only the Jamestown expedition but also for cherishing both Celia and me in so many ways, wh[ich] greatly added to our ease and enjoyment.”

Six months later she was at our Maine bungalow for a rest following the much-celebrated launch of USS Winston S. Churchill at Bath Iron Works. We held a memorable dinner for her at a local inn, along with Secretary and Mrs. Weinberger and Winston and Luce Churchill.

Mary wanted to buy reading glasses for one of her daughters, so we took her to…Walmart! Instant buzz arose as she entered, wearing her USS Winston S. Churchill cap with “Lady Soames” embroidered on the back. Everyone had seen her on the news. People smiled at her shyly. Occasionally someone walked right up and told her how they loved her father. Later our roofer knocked on our door, determined to cadge an autograph. To them all, she was kindness itself.

Last visit

The years fled. We sold our houses and built a new home in Moultonborough. She was invested a Lady of the Garter by HM The Queen in 2005. She was now 83, not traveling so much, but we asked her to our Quebec Churchill conference. “Do come,” we said, “We’ll drive you down to N.H. amid the autumn colours and get you to Boston for your flight home.”

She did. Everyone wanted to shake her hand; clusters of people followed in her wake. As usual she took a rather more philosophic view than some of our conference scholars. We were seated together when one professor suggested that Second Quebec in 1944 had produced nothing of significance. She leaned over and gave me a very earthy synonym for “rubbish.”

She was the first guest in our new house, up each morning in her dressing gown, sipping coffee, sampling Barbara’s stellar breakfasts, and helping us plan every day of the 2006 Churchill Tour of England. We were an easy drive from the Mount Washington Hotel, site of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, where we booked dinner. I asked if the hotel might arrange a private tour for Sir Winston Churchill’s daughter. “When?” came the answer.

“I’m sorry, dear….”

“Now listen,” I said on the drive up. “The hotel is convinced that your father stayed there in 1906. Of course it was the ‘other’ Winston Churchill, but don’t spoil their fun.” “Certainly not,” she said primly.

Immediately upon meeting the hotel manager she said: “I understand you think my Papa was here in 1906. I’m sorry, dear, that is just not possible.” I groaned. She grinned. The staff bought us a bottle of wine for dinner and promised to change their official history to the American Churchill. Mary thought it “an amazing hotel,” and allowed that if he had got there, her father would have been “easily satisfied with the best of everything.”

She returned home anxious to see her little dog “Prune” and her dear private secretary Nonie Chapman. Quickly came the usual long handwritten letter of thanks we didn’t deserve, because it was she whom we needed to thank, for giving us such delight for so long.

Our correspondence tapered off over the next few years. She had email now, but moreover, she was working flat-out on A Daughter’s Tale, no easy job for someone nearing 90. Sadly, she was not the dynamo she had been. We knew and tried not to trouble her with our small affairs. In one conversation she sounded almost apologetic that she had not admonished me for some slip we let through that misrepresented her father.

Ave Atque Vale

I can’t emphasize this more: it was Mary Soames who taught us the most important rules any Churchill scholar must follow: never to assume what her father would do today; and strive to “keep the memory green and the record accurate.” She also taught us magnanimity—that what really matters is friendship, that there is no point to die bearing a grudge. She was our guiding light—the person we sought to please with words in print on behalf of her great father.

Like many others she touched in her life, we were honored for so long to have known such a companion. Her love of congenial surroundings and company, of fine cigars and good food and Pol Roger, gave one a feeling of empathy almost tangible, and we always wished the hour of parting would never come. It came, as it must. It was a stroke of fortune to have had our lives so enriched.

I should like to end this centenary tribute with the words of my friend Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, for 40 years a “toiler in the vineyard,” in Martin Gilbert’s phrase: “She knew how to be the daughter of a great man,” Dr. Arnn wrote. “She did this by being a good person.” To that I would only add that in doing so, she achieved greatness herself.

♔ ♔ ♔

Edinburgh, August 2014— “Oh, we’ll keep The Queen.”

A chat in a pub off the Royal Mile, with a Scottish friend eager to vote “aye” in the upcoming Independence Referendum. I had asked him what, if Scotland became independent, they’d do about their Head of State.

“How do you know The Queen will want to keep you?” I replied.

“Ach, she will. We’re part of her family.”

In an odd way that assertion by a crusty Scot symbolized Her Late Majesty’s unique appeal to all peoples. For she demonstrated, better than anyone else, the enduring value of constitutional monarchy. That is to say, a system of government where the head of a nation is a symbol, not a politician. Today with the wreckage of politicians at every hand, we might wish to think of it as more than an anachronism.

♔ ♔ ♔

Churchill made this case at The Queen’s Coronation in 1953…

In our island, by trial and error and by perseverance across the centuries, we have found out a very good plan. Here it is: The Queen can do no wrong. Bad advisers can be changed as often as the people like to use their rights for that purpose. A great battle is won: crowds cheer The Queen. What goes wrong is carted away with the politicians responsible. What goes right is laid on the altar of our united Commonwealth and Empire.”

And amid so many words on September 8th, came a poignant paean to monarchy by Mark Steyn…

Not a lot survives from 1952. Harry Truman was in the White House, Joe Stalin was in the Kremlin, Chairman Mao had just taken over in China. The British Empire was still a phrase taken seriously: it was not yet a joke, a punchline, and then a hate crime. Truman, Stalin, Mao are all long gone, but, until today, The Queen endured….

Is the monarchy anything to do with the unrivaled record of the Britannic inheritance? Working for the Free French in London during the war, Simone Weil found herself pondering why, among the European powers, only Britain had maintained “a centuries-old tradition of liberty.” She was struck by the paradox of the Westminster system—that ultimate power is vested in one who cannot wield it in any practical sense. Except that, by the mere fact of her existence, she diminishes the politicians.

♔ ♔ ♔

So many had the same reaction to the news from Balmoral. It seemed surreal, inconceivable. Just two days earlier, she was inviting her 15th prime minister to form a government. As her father, in 1940, had invited Churchill, quipping: “I suppose you don’t know why I have sent for you.”

“Death places his icy democratic hand on kings, heroes and paupers,” Lady Diana Cooper wrote. And death has come to someone we simply cannot imagine our world without.

Characteristically, Winston Churchill noticed her qualities ahead of most. From Balmoral 94 years ago he wrote of Princess Elizabeth, aged two and never expected to reign: “The last is a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant.”

Two decades later, her accession now certain, Churchill saw her marriage as a timely tonic for gloomy, troubled postwar Britain: “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” he declared. “And millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel.”

♔ ♔ ♔

“The great thing is to last and get your work done, and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after.” Her Majesty was the living embodiment of Hemingway’s maxim. She saw and heard and understood everything. She spoke only of what she knew. And she lasted. My, did she last.

Despite the ceremony and glitter, the Sovereign’s job is mostly dull, hard, slogging work. Not many nonagenarians are capable—mentally or physically—of meeting that crushing workload. Her Majesty learned and understood. She could engage knowledgeably with a Kenyan potentate about East African economics. She could chat about youthful dreams with children in distant  reaches of the Commonwealth she loved. The day before she died she sent condolences to the people of Saskatchewan over a tragic mass murder. To the last, she got her work done.

♔ ♔ ♔

To mark her loss, the Hillsdale College Churchill Project republished “The Queen and Mr. Churchill,” a 2016 tribute by Professor David Dilks. It is quite beautiful. You should read it.

For it fell to Winston Churchill, her first prime minister—to define “this fair and youthful figure…heir to all our traditions and glories [and] to our united strength and loyalty.” Gazing at her photo “in a white dress and with long white gloves, displaying that enchanting smile which lights up her face as if a blind had suddenly been raised,” the Prime Minister mused: “Lovely, inspiring. All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited to the part.”

Admiration grew to attachment, attachment to adoration. During their weekly meetings her private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, reported “gales of laughter” coming from the audience room: “Winston generally came out wiping his eyes.”

♔ ♔ ♔

In 1955, it was time finally for him to go. Her Majesty and Prince Philip attended an unprecedented private dinner at Number 10. In her own hand The Queen wrote to thank the man to whom “I owe so much, and for whose wise guidance during the early years of my reign I shall always be so profoundly grateful.” Sir Winston’s reply was touching and heartfelt:

Our Island no longer holds the same authority or power that it did in the days of Queen Victoria. A vast world towers up around it and after all our victories we could not claim the rank we hold were it not for the respect for our character and good sense and the general admiration not untinged by envy for our institutions and way of life. All this has already grown stronger and more solidly founded during the opening years of the present Reign, and I regard it as the most direct mark of God’s favour we have ever received in my long life that the whole structure of our new-formed Commonwealth has been linked and illuminated by a sparkling presence at its summit.

“And if you will allow the remark in parenthesis, ladies and gentlemen,” Professor Dilks added:  “Do you not sometimes long for someone at the summit of our public life who can think and write at that level?”

♔ ♔ ♔

Those of us “of a certain age” lived through those times. Twenty-nine prime ministers and presidents; Cold War and recurrent hot wars; Churchill’s attempts for world understanding. An association, unique among expired empires, morphed into a Commonwealth of 56 countries and 2.4 billion people.

Americans remember how, after 9/11, at the Changing of the Guard, The Queen caused the Coldstream Guards to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”  Britons remember how she got them through 1992, that “annus horribilis,” The Irish remember her 2011 visit to the Republic, so vital to rift-healing. And only recently, during the Covid lockdowns, we all remember her assuring us: “We’ll meet again.”

And there in the mind’s eye we will always picture her, waving a white-gloved hand, whilst some born of later generations may wonder perhaps what all the fuss is about. We who loved her for qualities now in scarce supply, know exactly what it is about. She lives on, in memory and majesty.

Further reading

“She was the Best of Us,” by Andrew Roberts

“The Queen and Mr. Churchill,” by David Dilks

“Why Our Head of State is the TRUE Defender of Freedom,” by Peter Hitchens

Dear Antoine

The last of our 800 emails since 2012 arrived May 13th, a stab in the heart: “I am very poorly, I have developed a severe form of cancer of the blood. I spent most of the last four weeks in hospital—out today after an operation to remove liquid from around my lungs. I am extremely weak and cannot make any plans for the future.”

A bright star in the Churchill firmament vanished on June 2nd. Our colleague Dave Turrell speaks for us all: “One of the nicest, kindest men I ever met.” Paul Rafferty’s fine book on Churchill’s Riviera paintings was translated by Antoine: “He was a joy to work with,” Paul wrote. “He was precise, knowledgeable, questioned everything, and got it ‘right.’ My French edition has few to zero errors to my knowledge, and this is down to Antoine.”

To those Martin Gilbert called “toilers in the Churchill vineyard,” Antoine Capet was known through 2014 as Professor of British Studies at the University of Rouen. He ran numberless lectures, seminars and proceedings. He wrote erudite book reviews, and published in Cercles, Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone.

For the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, Antoine Capet produced a score of articles, abstracts and book reviews, exhaustively researched and pinpoint-accurate. Refusing honoraria, he requested copies of The Churchill Documents as they were published. He soon had them all, but waved away further rewards. To Antoine, ferreting out the truth was reward enough. When I asked if he’d seen the exquisite Monaco a la voile latine edition of Savrola, he acquired a copy, and then another, and another. He was soon an expert on this beautiful limited edition, and wrote an informed article about its variations.

Joie de vivre

If you want to know about wine, ask a Frenchman. Antoine knew wine as well as he knew Churchill, and advised me with his usual precision about what to buy and avoid. “Skip those fancy châteaux on the 1855 Bordeaux classification,” he urged. “Cru Bourgeois boasts exquisite but little known châteaux that are equally good and a fifth the price.” When I felt adventuresome, he sent me to the Haut-Pyrénées: “Now, from the Madiran area, you might like to look Château d’Aydie. But beware: the Odé d’Aydie is their ‘second wine.’ One must insist on Château d’Aydie. I only discovered it recently, seduced by the value for money.” I promise, you can take his advice to the bank.

Antoine’s English was as flawless as his French. I admired his unimpeachable command of two languages, a skill denied me. Only a few weeks ago, we joked about a U.S. newspaper giving the French spelling of “Putin” as “Putain.” This is a derogatory term in French. Antoine quipped: “I can only contribute by indicating that in French, Putin becomes ‘Poutine’ (like Lénine and Staline). So no confusion is possible!” He laughed when I told him Quebec has renamed “poutine,” its national dish. To avoid connotations with Mr. Putin, it is now called “pommes frites and gravy.”

On a more serious level Antoine brought his quality of cheery pedantry to every subject under the sun, and we will vastly miss his skillful advice, always delivered in the politest terms without the slightest hint of rebuke. Combined with his comprehensive knowledge of the Churchill saga, those are rare qualities. We miss him already, for he has left an unfillable hole among the friends who loved him.

President Arnn and her friends at Hillsdale College mourn the loss of Catherine Churchill, gone far too young at 53. From the end of 2020 she fought through months of intense treatments for cancer. She remained uncomplaining and upbeat, as she always was through life. Our thoughts and prayers are with Randolph and their family. Our own grief, though not as great as his, is deeply felt.

Born in Nassau, Bahamas, Catherine was 17 one enchanted evening when she and Randolph were the first to arrive at a London dance. “It was just weeks after Catherine’s 17th birthday. I was a 20-year-old scamp naval officer training to be a navigator and gunnery officer,” Randolph recalled. “We danced and chatted the whole night and it was a day I hoped would never end. I was instantly captivated by her natural charm, beauty and style.”  They married when she was 23, with a reception at Chartwell. Finding a home at nearby Crockham Hill, they raised four children. There Catherine cultivated her “miraculous garden” filled with flowers and wildlife, where she loved to sketch.

The art historian

Catherine’s particular interest was Sir Winston’s paintings. She had studied art history at the British Institute in Florence, worked in the Victorian paintings department of Sotheby’s and the Director’s Office of the National Arts Collection, now the Art Fund. She brought these credentials to the research and cataloguing of Sir Winston’s artworks, and was invaluable aid to Paul Rafferty in his recent masterful book, Winston Churchill Painting on the Riviera. Paul writes:

Catherine and Marina Brounger, Randolph’s sister, ran Churchill Heritage (the licensing agency for Churchill’s art). They sent all the images I needed. Catherine was a skilled diplomat when controversy arose about the authenticity of a painting. She always helped us arrive at the right conclusion. She and Randolph were as one in helping me get to what I needed, including the advice of  knowledgeable scholars like David Coombs. Catherine also wrote letters of support from the family and Churchill Heritage when I needed to gain access to a private villa or chateau.

With each new discovery I would go first to Catherine. Almost like children, we excitedly pondered every new puzzle piece, and how it fit the whole. It is very sad that I can no longer share these mysteries. Ultimately, Catherine was a hub, gatekeeper, a partner for me to confide in. Without Catherine and Randolph’s support throughout, I really don’t think I could have managed to complete the book as I did. If I ever get a statue of Sir Winston placed in one of the places he loved to paint, I will dedicate it to Catherine.

Memories

Everyone who knew her has a special memory. Barbara’s and mine is from our first meeting shortly after her marriage, when she, Randolph and Robert Hardy were dinner guests at one of our Churchill Tours. The venue was the Olde Bell at Hurley, Berkshire, which Catherine joked was “one of a score of the oldest inns in England.” She radiated warmth and enthusiasm, and amazed us with her knowledge of Sir Winston’s career as a painter.

Her family, of course, knew her on a more personal and practical level, as her daughter Zöe said: “We have lost our spider-killer, spell checker, head chef, role model, confidant, peacemaker, the glue that keeps this family together and much, much more. Mum, you have taught us all everything we know. Serena, Alice, Johnnie and I couldn’t feel luckier to have had you as our mum and we will love and miss you forever.”

Randolph Churchill concluded his eulogy:

Catherine was and always will be my rock. She was my safe harbour and best friend. She was the constant sunshine in my life, the zest and happiness of each day. I always called her “Bears,” and she gave me the constant warmth and hugs of a loving bear. She gave me the most wonderful happy family. For me, Catherine will live on in [our children] Serena, Zöe, Alice, and John. They all share her happy and engaging disposition, love of life, and care of others. Catherine was the one and only love of my life. I will always look to the stars and see her on a distant tropical island, with a hibiscus in her hair, a bird of paradise in her hand, and a smile on her face. She will always be in my heart.

Rest in peace, dear Catherine.

My Dad always said the worst thing about getting old is the loss of friends. Now I know what he meant. Don, Dave and Randy, each in his own way, had a lot to do with my own story. Their friends are left only with memories. Here are mine. (The quotation is from pioneer auto writer Ken Purdy, father of us all.)

Dave Brownell 1941 – 15 November 2021

Few of us had been able to talk to Dave for years. Felled by a stroke 15 years ago, he was confined to a nursing home. Understandably, his wife Marian asked his friends not to try to communicate.

David W. Brownell was crucial—indeed decisive—in the course of my life. In 1970, Automobile Quarterly was looking for an associate editor for a new line of auto history books. I was brooding in a dead-end job in Pennsylvania when I sent them, out of the blue, an article about Kaiser-Frazer. To my astonishment, they not only accepted it; they asked me to interview for a job. I took it, moved back to New York, and the rest is history.

Only later did Dave tell me that the position had only remained open because he’d turned it down. He knew more than I about one of the principals—I have met only two knaves in my life. Nonetheless, it was a priceless opportunity. You couldn’t buy that education in a university. It forged my career—thanks to Dave. (See “AQ: The Memories.”)

(D)WB and DSJ

For thirty years we collaborated, published articles, and had fun. We’d communicate in the style of Denis Jenkinson’s auto racing reports to Bill Boddy for MotorSport, which Jenks always began with “My dear WB” and ended with, “Yours, DSJ.”

So to Dave I’d write, “My dear (D)WB” and he would reply, “My dear DSJ” (“Distinguished Sunbeam Jockey”). Our memories were of Hershey and New York, Le Chanteclair and Austie Clark and the Mount Equinox Hillclimb and his Bentley. Golden years.

Leaving Old Cars in 1977, Dave spent a year editing Cars & Parts, then joined world-famous Hemmings Motor News in Bennington, Vermont. Besides editing Hemmings he ran Special-Interest Autos, a bi-monthly featuring collectable cars of all eras. Dave also created and produced 14 annual editions of the Vintage Auto Almanac, a guide to the old car industry.

A friend of us all was Tom Warth, longtime publisher of Classic Motorbooks, founder of  the magnificent charity Books For Africa. Tom was one of the few able to see Dave recently. His last visit was a sad occasion, Tom said. Poor Dave could not recall if he had had breakfast or not. Both his first and second wives passed away in 2016, leaving Dave with his nursing staff and, one hopes, his memories. RIP, my old friend.

Randy Mason 12 July 1941 – 19 March 2022

Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, England, an upstairs solicitor’s office, June 1977…. I was making an offer for a Cotswold bungalow, Well Cottage, in a magical village called Bourton-on-the-Water. Accompanying me was Randy Mason, Curator of Transportation at the Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village. Co-founders of the Vintage Triumph Register, we were bound for the first Standard-Triumph International Rallye.

The solicitor was in a reflective mood. “You know,” he said, “I once sold a Cotswold cottage to America.” (He didn’t say “to an American,” but “to America.”)

In the 1930s, a client had asked him to discourage a pesky estate agent trying to buy his property, then worth about £500: “I named an extravagant price, thinking it would drive the buyer away. The reply came by return post: ‘Sold.’ At the closing, the agent revealed he was representing Henry Ford, who had fallen for this particular old building. It was dismantled stone by stone and shipped to America. I often wonder where it went.”

“You’re not going to believe this,” I told the solicitor. “But Mr. Mason here knows exactly where it went.” Randy laughed: “I pass it every day on my way to work!” The reassembled cottage stands today in splendor at Greenfield Village.

Despite Randy’s urgings we didn’t buy Well Cottage, then priced at £12,000. Beautifully appointed, the 16th century house is now a popular rental property, worth about £1 million. That was one of many droll adventures with Randy who, like Dave Brownell, had a lot to do with my writing career.

Cars, outboards, Fiestaware and an Edsel

Randy grew up in Dearborn, near Ford World Headquarters, which helped stoke his passion for cars. He was running a Ziebart rustproofing business when he ran into his predecessor, Les Henry, who quickly recognized Randy’s depth of knowledge and qualities. About to retire in 1971, Les asked Randy to succeed him, and Randy served as Transport Curator for 20 years.

Together with a couple of pals, Randy and I organized the Vintage Triumph Register—in an Edsel. Yes! Doug’s Body Shop was a Detroit bistro, its tables artfully placed inside hollowed out Fifties cars. VTR has since grown to one of the most successful English car clubs in America. Let it not be said that the Edsel was a total failure.

Randy founded the Detroit Region of the Lambda Car Club International. He co-founded the Ypsilanti Orphan Car Show for brands no longer in production, and contributed color commentary as the vintage orphans paraded. For the Henry Ford Heritage Association, he helped acquire the historic Piquette Avenue plant that built the first Model T, saving it from destruction. His personal collections were broad and imaginative: Fiesta tableware, antique lighting, vintage outboard motors, cars and automobilia. On my last visit to “The Shack,” his Dearborn pad—more museum than living quarters—he proudly showed us his perfectly restored 1941 Buick.

We collaborated on dozens of Triumph events including the 1978 International Rallye at Bridgehampton race track. There, on the straightaway, a TR5’s poorly attached bonnet flew off at speed, narrowly missing “Buttercup,” Randy’s TR3A. “Only God knows how close we came to incarceration,” Randy quipped. In England we dined with Jaguar historian the late Andrew Whyte, whose mother wrote More Than a Legend, arguing that the Loch Ness Monster is real. Dutifully Andrew explained that plesiosaurs still lived in Scotland! “Andrew Whyte is a cool guy,” quoth Mason. It takes one to know one. It is so hard to believe Randy’s gone.

Don Peterson 1 April 1929 – 16 September 2021

Like Dave, Randy and Don were vital in my life. In 1975 I left Automobile Quarterly, without a lot of prospects. Randy Mason offered me editorship of The Vintage Triumph for a salary of $1 per member per year, a welcome break. Then came Don Peterson, editor of Car Collector, with the offer of a monthly column and feature articles.

Don’s love was big American cars (mostly Packards), especially driving them. He began small with a 1929 Model A Ford coupe, driving 8000 miles in a few months from his Maynard, Minnesota home as far afield as Key West. Don participated in eighty Classic Car Club of America tours—the most on record. At thirty-five, he won one of CCCA’s first two Citations for Distinguished Service. His son West continues:

Outside of CCCA, Dad enjoyed driving on Veteran Motor Car Club tours, five AACA Glidden Tours (having joined AACA in 1958), the 1979 London-to-Brighton Run in England, and the 1983 World F.I.V.A. Rallye. He also enjoyed driving his one- and two-cylinder cars in the yearly New London-to-New Brighton Antique Car Runs in Minnesota, finishing the 123-mile trek all but two times during a period of more than 30 years.

Perhaps his favorite accomplishment took place in 1995, when he drove his 1930 Packard 734 Speedster Eight on a one-month tour throughout the U.S. (most of the way without a support vehicle and with no fellow compatriots), putting rubber to pavement in 48 states and adding about 10,000 miles to the car’s odometer. The Speedster was restored shortly thereafter, but that surely didn’t stop the odometer from continuing to reel off the miles.

Packards to Pitcairn

I wonder how many miles Dave, Randy and Don logged in cars long past their trade-in dates? By himself, Don Peterson clocked three million, in over 100 old car tours in 140 countries, and owned 100 vintage vehicles.

Don was the only old friend who phoned me every year on my birthday, July 7th. We shared frustration at being unable to contact Dave Brownell, incommunicado at his Vermont nursing home. Don was also anxious to get our mutual friend Tom Warth on The Queen’s Honours List for his work with Books for Africa. I knew some people, and told Don I’d write, but warned him I was a long way down the totem pole.

Pushing 90, he called to say he and Eedie were headed for Pitcairn Island, fabled hideout of Fletcher Christian and mutineers of the Bounty. I collected Pitcairn stamps and enjoyed a long correspondence with the island postmaster. I’d always wanted to visit the place. Likewise Don—but he just did it. “We didn’t get to land,” he said with regret. “But we met the locals and wouldn’t have missed it.”

He thought often of others and was as loyal a friend as anyone you’ve ever met. To the last he loved the hand life had dealt him, and enjoyed it to the fullest. West Peterson speaks for many of us when he writes: “There are many things I already miss about Dad, but I think not being able to pick up the phone for that quick and easy answer is what I miss most.” I know what he means.

“Ride on in majesty”

Don always liked the story of Parry Thomas, the great Welsh racing driver, who also had motor oil in his veins, albeit in a different age. Thomas died at half Don’s age in 1927, pursuing the Land Speed Record in a racing car named “Babs,” powered by a 27-liter Packard Liberty engine. He crashed on Pendine Sands in Wales, then the main venue for LSR attempts. This was a place I did manage to visit, having arranged for the semi-restored “Babs” to run again on the 50th anniversary.

I began this essay with the words of Ken Purdy, so perhaps it’s appropriate to end likewise:

Parry Thomas was buried in the graveyard of Byfleet, near Brooklands, the great oval racetrack where he built his fame. His marker reads:  “Life is eternal and love is immortal, and death, which is only the horizon, is nothing save the limit of our sight.” A wreath of violets, anonymously sent, carried the legend, “Ride On, Ride On, in Majesty.”

Ride On, Don, Dave and Randy.

***

More Automotive Greats

Brooks Stevens: The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous, 2022

Automobile Quarterly: The Memories, 2021

Packard Tales and Memories of Bud Juneau, 2021

Graham Robson: “He was Always, Triumphantly, in Touch,” 2021

The Whimsy and Fun of Dick O’Kane, 2020

Don Vorderman: Best Editor I Ever Had, 2018

Beverly Rae Kimes: Correrai Ancor Piu Veloce, 2009

To browse more automotive articles, click here.

Awhile back Hemmings Motor News reposted my article on Brooks Stevens, with a gratuitous opinion: “Perhaps Langworth’s tendency toward purple prose in this profile of Brooks Stevens in Special Interest Autos #71, October 1982, is appropriate, given the picture he paints of the legendary designer.” Nice to be remembered, but, er, Hemmings paid only for first rights and is therefore in copyright violation.

An old editor at SIA wrote: “Nothing purple—it reads like an essay in The New Yorker.” (Ah, if only Hemmings paid New Yorker rates!)  Another colleague wrote: “Not purple, maybe faint mauve.” A third: “Ugh, I can’t read it. The prose is too purple for me. They really think the Excalibur J can run with a Jaguar XK120?” But Tony Stevens wrote: “As the current owner of the first Excalibur J, I can attest that it can run competitively with an XK120. Right, Tony! The XK120 was a great car—but the youngsters have swallowed too much purple prose about it.

Herewith I republish my purple-mauve piece on my late friend Brooks Stevens. Readers may judge for themselves.

“The judgment of the historian”

“You’ll have to resolve the conflict between Dutch Darrin and Kip Stevens,” I was told after being assigned my first automotive article assignment, on Kaiser-Frazer, in 1970. The origins of the landmark 1951 Kaiser were at the time still unclear. Both Darrin and Stevens claimed it. (See “Kaiser Capers.”) Neither was complimentary in describing the efforts of the other. “It might be best not to press the matter,” a friend warned. The publisher disagreed: “Hear both sides and make the judgment of the historian.”

I didn’t know I was a historian! But I wrote to Stevens at his studio near Milwaukee and said in effect, “Tell me everything you remember about the 1951 Kaiser.”

By return mail came a large white folder with gilt lettering, containing a thick pile of photographs and a long, detailed letter documenting Brooks “Kip” Stevens’ role as a design consultant to Kaiser-Frazer. Within a year we’d met, and our friendship withstood the “judgment of the historian,” which appeared in Last Onslaught on Detroit in 1975. (For used copies search on bookfinder.com.)

The judgment did not satisfy Kip, and in turn produced another white and gilt folder with further documentation. On this subject it would be accurate to say that we had differences but not misunderstandings. Cordiality never suffered, for Stevens was a master of cordiality.

Stevens as I knew him

He was a tall, good looking man who belied his age, whose appearance and demeanor reflected what Cole Porter called High Society. For Stevens there was only one way to fly to Paris: Concorde. And one way to get to England: first class on the QE2. His personal tastes reflected similar standards, producing an aura of refined elegance. He took pains about everything. Meeting him, people were impressed but never overawed, because he was so natural, so full of courtesy and fun.

It was not hard to gain Kip’s acquaintance, whether you were a mechanic in overalls or the President of General Motors. Along with an inborn civility and an interest in others went an all-encompassing love for cars, an encyclopedic knowledge, and a streak of nihilism.

Stevens once invited my friend Bill Tilden to Wisconsin to drive his Henry J-based sports car, the Excalibur J, at Elkhart Lake. Brooks himself drove there in his personal Excalibur. This produced a helicopter-assisted roadblock of the rambunctious designer. It seemed he had violated most Wisconsin road ordinances plus several they hadn’t thought of yet.

Picture Brooks, trailing a silk scarf, driving a very loud open sports car with what the British call “assurance.” Picture next an army of gendarmerie, including aircraft. Failing to catch him in their cruisers, they block the road ahead. Now picture the nearest constable (seven feet tall as they all are). Jerking his thumb at the Excalibur’s sartorially splendid driver, he shouts: YOU—OUT! Kip paid his fine. It was substantial.

A truly lovely man

He had vast generosity, which did not always function in his favor. One press night at the New York Automobile Show, Kip arrived at René and Maurice Dreyfus’ famous automotive watering hole, “Le Chanteclair,” with a large retinue of admirers. The brothers Dreyfus were hardpressed to seat such a large assembly. They eventually did, at a long table with Brooks as centerpiece. Here he held forth for three hours to his impromptu court.

Le Chanteclair was never the place for a cheap meal. The bill came, for what I recall was uncomfortably close to a thousand 1974 dollars. Brooks quietly laid down his American Express card. Those who had no intention of socking him with that tab surreptitiously handed him cash, but a good half the company didn’t bother. There was no sign that our host was in the least disappointed: the measure of a man who spared no expense for the pleasure of an evening among friends, provided your description of “friends” is fairly elastic.

Stevens triumphs

I once stole a line from Schlitz and called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous.” He was one of the ten charter Fellows of the Industrial Design Society of America. To the automotive trade he brought impeccable credentials. Ultimately he would contribute designs to over 40 makes of car. One of his earliest associations was with Willys-Overland, during and after World War II. He conceived of Willys’ most interesting products: the the first all-steel station wagon (1946); and the 1948-51 Jeepster, the world’s last production touring car.

A contributor to Kaiser-Frazer from almost the outset of that venture, Brooks proposed the first practical facelifts for the plug-ugly 1947-48 models, including wagons and hardtops, which they desperately needed but rejected.

Management didn’t take his advice, but assigned him a design competition for the new-generation 1951 Kaiser. It is the consensus today that the basic shape selected was Darrin’s, but the contest was not winner-take-all (see Kaiser photo above). Kip was simultaneously busy on a score of accounts in a half dozen countries, with corporations like Allis-Chalmers, Miller Beer, Briggs & Stratton, Evinrude, Lawn-Boy, 3M, Outboard Marine Aviation, Sears Roebuck, and Club Xanadu in Costa Rica. At the time of the Kaiser styling contest he was involved with Alfa Romeo on the 6C 2500. Darrin had only the Kaiser project on his plate. Had it been a one-on-one contest, things might have been different.

Kaiser and beyond

And many of his contributions were used on Kaiser products. After the Kaisers bought Willys in 1953, Stevens designed the Jeep Wagoneer, a shape that lasted 30 years. He always referred to this and his other styling projects in the plural: “we” did this or that. He simply wanted to make it clear that Brooks Stevens Associates was not a one-man company.

Kip also did his own thing on a Kaiser chassis. While Darrin was placing a pretty fiberglass body over a stock Henry J chassis to create the Kaiser-Darrin, Stevens moved in the opposite direction with the Excalibur J. This was a highly modified, dual purpose, road-and-track sports car. It could pace the vaunted Jaguar XK120, and often did in competition.

In the late Fifties, Stevens created the Excalibur-Valkyrie-Scimitar design exercise, which showed what could be done with aluminum. In the 1960s he reskinned the Aero-Willys for Willys-Overland do Brasil. This facelift persuaded Studebaker President Sherwood Egbert to let him modernize the aging “Loewy coupes.” The result was the sinfully beautiful Gran Tursimo Hawk of 1962-64.

Next Kip applied crisp, modern styling to the dowdy Studebaker Lark, giving it an extra lease on life. He produced the first sliding-roof station wagon in the Wagonaire, and his Studebaker prototypes for a new generation of cars were things of breathtaking beauty. (See “Why Studebaker Failed.”)

Faithful but unfortunate

Unhappily, most of his automotive efforts were for dead or dying companies. Had Kip worked for say, Chrysler, they would be more famous. Still, he managed to cap his career with an unequivocal success. This was the Excalibur line of “modern classics” based on a successive series of Mercedes-Benz commencing with the immortal SSK. Among “replicars” the Excalibur was the best selling, best engineered, and most carefully built.

Automobiles were but one facet of a half-century career, but they were his first love. He established the Brooks Stevens Automotive Museum, small and select, including some of the finest: the Packard Twin Six, Duesenberg Indy racer, Brescia Bugatti,  Mercedes-Benz 500K and 540K, Cord L29 and 812, Marmon V-12. Its frontispiece was a staggeringly beautiful 1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B, the world’s fastest prewar sports car. He added many of his own personal designs, like the Jeepster and Brazilian Willys, and the Alfa 6C 2500.

Clifford Brooks Stevens (1911-1995)

Kip did not come in for the universal plaudits he deserved. Too often, casual observers saw only him as hopeless exponent of chrome and tailfins. This is very shortsighted, for it fails to take the full measure of the man.

He was one of the supporting pillars of the automotive community: manufacturers and collectors. His whimsical, brilliant, imaginative, formal and radical designs were truly unique. His non-automotive work served America’s great corporations. Many of his designs, still around today, gained international renown.

He was as well a great companion, not at all self-centered (rare among designers). Always he drew out the best in his friends—car nuts, fellow stylists, lowly automotive writers. No one escaped his attraction. Everyone became proud and delighted to have their work encouraged by a man of such distinction.

There are many ways to measure wealth, but Kip Stevens banked his greatest treasure in the hearts of his friends. We cherish his memory.

Further reading

“The Greatness of Alex Tremulis,” Part 2: Tucker to Kaiser-Frazer,” 2020

“Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History,” first of two parts, 2019

“All the Luck: Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” first of three parts, 2017

“Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep,” first of three parts, 2011

Memories of Bud

Bud Juneau gave me my first real job. I don’t mean “work,” the things we do for some entity which pays us. I mean what we do individually, hoping for pay and solely responsible for success or failure. For me, this began with Bud.

In 1975 I resigned as senior editor at Automobile Quarterly and set out to be an independent motoring writer. The word “independent” cannot be stressed too highly, because the responsibility for my fortunes—including all that dull stuff like office equipment and health insurance—was entirely mine.

Well, not entirely. My wife, a bacteriologist, kindly agreed to sustain us until I got going. To this day she says “he’s been out of work since 1975.” I always retort with Churchill’s line: “The fortunate people in the world—the only really fortunate people in the world, in my mind—are those whose work is also their pleasure.”

The market for car books was wide open, but I also needed jobs that paid more regularly than sporadic, often whimsical annual royalties. My idea was that car clubs, which were growing rapidly then, might welcome a paid editor. The first person I approached was Bud Juneau, the Packard Club’s Publications VP. Ultimately I was churning out three magazines in 16 issues per year, but Bud was the first to grasp this “unprecedented opportunity.”

Bringing back a classic magazine

What intrigued Bud was my idea to invigorate the club quarterly by recreating Packard’s former house organ, The Packard Magazine, last published in 1931. We proposed using the same wide margins, elegant typefaces, art deco layouts and golden picture frame cover. With his keen imagination, Bud was my leading advocate, even when challenged about the cost. (Actually it cost no more per member, because membership increased and print costs held, since we kept almost every issue to 40 pages.)

Flipping the bird

One aspect put Bud in the hot seat. My intention was total—including the title, which meant dispensing with previous title, The Cormorant. Packard’s famous bird is the heraldic pelican, symbol of devotion and loyalty, not the common cormorant or shag. (“Which lays its eggs in a paper bag.”)

Unfortunely, around 1930, an unknown wag in the ad department called it a cormorant for a few years, and somehow it stuck. To some it seemed snootier, so when they learned my plans they erupted. They even produced a Cormorant Preservation Newsletter, as if I were proposing to eradicate the entire species Phalacrocorax carbo, that waterlogged fish-stealer of the Maine coast.

At this point the kind and generous Bud Juneau knew he had to step in. Reviewing a set of proofs, he noticed that I had “greyed out” the word Cormorant in the title. He guessed correctly that I planned to grey it out more each issue until it disappeared entirely. I was flipping the bird to the cormorant partisans.

“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” Bud quipped. “I have to advise that for the sake of peace and quiet, this is not a hill we want to die on.” I love nothing more than tweaking fanatics—but Bud was wise, and right. The Packard Cormorant has a certain ring to it, and under Stuart Blond’s fastidious editorship it so remains—now fifty-plus years on.

I mention this because it was so typical of Bud—ever the diplomat, ever sensitive as well to the mood of the club and its members. He rarely overruled an idea, although he sometimes reacted with words of caution, when we ran a badly over-decorated Packard, or one in outlandish non-factory colors.

Master photographer

Bud labored especially hard as our chief photographer—in the days when sharp, large format color photos required a 4×5” view camera on a gigantic tripod, a relic nowadays.

I’ll never forget his struggling to film the greatest Packard convocation ever, the “Magnum Opus.” Over 1000 Packards gathered at the company’s birthplace in Warren, Ohio, on Packard’s centenary in 1999. That was the hottest weekend I can remember, and Bud was especially sensitive to sun. Yet he was everywhere, toting that humungous camera, and we all hoped he could get through without collapsing with sun-stroke. But he did it.

I remember his taste for fun, as when he and club president Alan Adams piled into my press car Jaguar and drove right over the Napa range to find a fabled winery during the Berkeley National Meet in 1974. Alan amused himself by seeing how many electric windows he could move simultaneously by pressing all the buttons. “Don’t do that,” Bud shouted. “This is a Jaguar, not a Packard—and that means Lucas electrics!” Alan subsided.

Bud often picked us up in his “modern Packard,” which I’m sorry to say was in those days a Cadillac Brougham. “This the best you’ve got?” I kidded him. No, he had better cars at home, including a beautiful 1937 Twelve named “Helen Twelve Cylinders.”

He was not GM-averse. (Nobody’s perfect!) He owned a yellow 1949 Buick Roadmaster Riviera and a red 1951 Oldsmobile 88, both pristine. The Olds was a show model with plexiglas hood sections, so customers could gaze at the mighty V8 below. Bud was thoughtful about history. Once, as we looked at that fine engine, he remarked: “If only Packard built something like this in 1951.”

Packard Motorcar Foundation

When Bud became involved with the Packard Motorcar Foundation, I followed his lead again, making donations, joining the board, and placing my entire automotive library in trust for the Foundation to keep or dispose of as they saw fit. “We’ll probably only keep the Packard stuff, you know,” Bud cautioned. “But we’ll be happy to cash in on the rest.” I said that was fine. The PMCF has done made incredible progress preserving the most historic parts of the old Packard Proving Grounds. Bud knew that, and was devoted to its work.

“There’s nothing to be said when a friend dies,” said my best editor ever, Don Vorderman. “There’s just a great big hole where someone you loved once was.” Everyone who knew Bud Juneau well loved him. And that’s one crowd I’m proud to be a member of.

Further reading

“The Packard: Ne Plus Ultra of House Organs,” 2021

“Automobile Quarterly: The Memories,” 2021

“Don Vorderman: Best Editor I Ever Had,” 2019

“The Packard Adventures of Howard ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” 2017

“Old Jags and Allards: The Whimsy of Dick O’Kane,” 2020

Sean Connery was a Scottish National Party separatist and a bit of an eccentric; and also, most everyone avers, a good guy. He lived in gated, ultra-posh Lyford Cay in New Providence, fifty miles from us on Eleuthera. He was intensely private—hard on visitors, who were always trying to see him. Appropriately, he chose to live where he filmed so many escapades—romancing lovelies while fighting sharks, frogmen, tarantulas, barracuda, octopi, gorgeous spies and implacable masterminds.

Nassau

He used to go to this little bistro outside of Lyford Cay. The restaurant belonged to the sister of a good friend. We would go there whenever we were in Nassau. One night my friend I and had just returned from a northern fishing trip. We brought back salmon, some of which was featured on the menu. Seated a couple of tables over were Sean Connery and his wife Micheline, feasting on our fish.

The waitress, my friend’s niece, gestured toward us, telling Sean we were the ones who had actually caught the salmon. As he was leaving he stopped at our table to thank us.

Another friend who was at the table, but not on the fishing trip, shook hands with Mr. Connery and said, “You’re welcome.” We of course gave our friend action for having taken credit for something he had no part of. He said he didn’t care what we thought—it was one of the highlights of his life. He tells the story of shaking Sean Connery’s hand quite often.

London threesome

Here is another snippet that would otherwise be lost to memory. My friend Garry Clark, our manager on a dozen Churchill tours, runs a fleet of limousines and private cars in London. In 1989 he drove for the cast of the third Indiana Jones movie. He drove Sean Connery, Harrison Ford and screenwriter George Lucas for a stag night on the town. Behind the wheel, Garry was in stitches the entire ride. “Each of them was taking turns, telling the other two how far past it they were.”

Bond girls? Sure, but what about Bond cars?

Every car nut growing up in that era was struck by the great cars in Ian Fleming‘s thrillers. Sean Connery drove them with verve and assurance. Each of us conjured up the sensation of being pressed against the seatback under the urge of the car’s terrific power.

Early on there was Bond’s supercharged 1930 Bentley 4 1/2-liter coupe. Arch-villain Sir Hugo Drax ambushed and totaled it on the Dover Road in Moonraker (1955). Drax himself drove a Mercedes-Benz 300S cabriolet. “Bond had once dabbled on the fringe of the racing world,” Ian Fleming writes. “Lost in memories, he heard again the harsh scream of Caracciola‘s great white beast of a car as it howled past the grandstands at Le Mans.” Or the huge silver grand prix Mercs of Lang, Seaman and von Brauchitsch, “drifting the fast sweeping bends of Tripoli at 190, or screaming along the tree-lined straight at Bern with the Auto Unions on their tails.”

“He disagreed with something that ate him”

Bond’s friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter, drove a Cadillac-powered Studillac in Diamonds are Forever (1955). Leiter let it out on the Taconic State Parkway, doing 80 in second. Then his “hook” slammed the column shift into high on the way to 100. (Leiter’s “hook” had replaced his right hand, eaten by a shark in Live and Let Die, 1954, Fleming wrote: “He disagreed with something that ate him.”) The Studillac didn’t impress Bond. “This sort of hotrod job’s all right for kids who can’t afford a real car,” he told Leiter.

Most memorable of all was Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 (DB3 in the original text of Goldfinger (1957). Hollywood immortalized it with trick machine guns, rotating number plates, ejection seat, water- and oil-sprayers, a bullet-proof deck shield, and knock-off hubs which extended to rip the guts out of opposition vehicles.

“The Locomotive” (Bentley S2)

Never seen in the films was Bond’s Bentley Continental S2, which he called “The Locomotive.” It appeared in the novel Thunderball (1961). Fleming called it “the most selfish car in England….. Some rich idiot had married [it] to a telegraph pole on the Great West Road. Bond bought the wreck, straightened the chassis and fitted a new engine.”

Next he had Mulliners fit a custom body: “A trim, rather square convertible with only two armed bucket seats in black leather. The rest was all knife-edged, rather ugly, trunk.” [Not “boot”?] The Bentley was battleship grey, “painted in rough, not gloss…. She went like a bird and a bomb and Bond loved her more than all the women at present in his life rolled, if that were feasible, together.”

Fleming’s readers….

…were struck by The Locomotive, envisioning this incongruous Bentley heading to “work.” That took place in the mysterious, unmarked building on Regent’s Park, “Universal Exports,” cover for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Ian Fleming continues:

The twin exhausts—Bond had demanded two-inch pipes—he hadn’t liked the old soft flutter of the marque—growled softly as the long grey nose, topped by a big octagonal silver bolt instead of the winged B, swerved out of the little Chelsea square and into King’s Road.

It was 9 o’clock, too early for the bad traffic, and Bond pushed the car fast up Sloan Street and into the park. It would also be too early for the traffic police, so he did some fancy driving that brought him to Marble Arch in three minutes flat. Then there came the slow round-the-houses into Baker Street and so into Regent’s Park. Within ten minutes of getting the Hurry call, he was going up in the lift of the big square building to the eighth and top floor….

The Locomotive Lives! (Update, 2021)

We recently heard from professional car designer and Bond fan Tony Hunter, who has brought Bond’s coachbuilt S2 Bentley back to life. The design, writes Tony

Naturally we asked, what about the big silver bolt radiator mascot? (In his drawings above, artist Tom Rivel interpreted this literally.) But Tony Hunter doubts this is what Fleming imagined:

Whatever you think was in Fleming’s mind, Tony’s recreation is truly magnificent. (I’m glad he painted it in gloss, not rough!) It’s authentic down even to the vintage telephone, Bond’s connection to “Universal Exports.”

Further reading

Exuma, Jewels in the Sea: Diving the Thunderball Grotto, 2013.

Alec Arthur Graham Robson 1936-2021

Graham was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, the only child of Clifford and Kathleen Robson. He was educated locally before going to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read Engineering. His first job was as a graduate trainee at Jaguar Cars in 1957. His subsequent career became a perfect training path for someone destined to become a leading author.

In 1961 Robson became a development engineer, then competition secretary at Standard-Triumph, then a writer for The Autocar. By 1969 he was at the Rootes Group as chief engineer, product proving. He became a full-time independent motoring writer, researcher and author in 1972.

That word “independent” cannot be stressed too highly, because whatever his links with the manufacturer of a car he was writing about, his research was always thorough and he never pulled his punches. He wrote nearly 170 books and countless articles—one of most prolific motoring writers ever. Many Robson books were about motorsport, for he had been a rally co-driver in the mid-Fifties. His passion for writing was triggered by his 1950s rally reports for Motoring News.

Quantity did not affect quality. Robson books were all meticulously researched and well written. On many subjects his books are now the “standard works.” Because of his wide knowledge, Robson was also a frequent master of ceremonies or commentator for national club events. He was president, vice-president or an honorary member of several Triumph clubs.

Graham married Pamela in 1962 and they had two sons. Hamish is now a senior design engineer with Toyota Motorsport in Germany. Jonathan is a landscape gardener in Dorset. In 1981 Robson moved from the Lake District to a picture-postcard village in Dorset, thereafter traveling widely on business and pleasure. Sadly, Pamela died in 2014 after a long illness.

Triumphant passage

I wrote Graham in 1974, after I wrote a brief history of Triumph for my employer, Automobile Quarterly magazine. He had recently published The Story of Triumph Sports Cars (1973). And so I wrote with trepidation, the acolyte at the foot of Olympus. He couldn’t have been kinder over my amateurish efforts. After I became a freelance, we met personally in London. There to my astonishment, he offered to co-author with me a complete history of our mutual passion, Triumph Cars, and to find us a publisher.

Appearing in 1977, the book has had a long run in three editions—the current, and by far the most elaborate, in 2018.  While I had equal billing, Graham sold the job to Veloce Publishing, and did literally all the work. I had, originally, written Triumph’s history through 1940, and a few postwar sections. That part of the story was told. But Graham had to update everything that had happened since the previous edition in 2004.

He tackled the job with his usual celerity, rounding up dozens of exciting new photographs. The fabled 1930s Dolomite Straight Eight was also Graham’s to update: he had test-driven the newly restored car it in the 2000s. He never complained and treated me as his full partner. As a result of his efforts, Triumph Cars is one of my two proudest automotive histories.

Sunbeam sublimities

Graham helped in innumerable other ways. Together we co-authored the long-running Complete Book of Collectible Cars. He enabled a mutual friend get his dream job with Motor Racing Publications. When I tackled my second-favorite English marque, Robson was there again. Here is what I wrote in Tiger Alpine Rapier: Sporting Cars from the Rootes Group (1982):

Graham Robson’s efforts on behalf of this book and myself could not be listed in 100 pages. He began by recording a long interview with the Tiger’s visionary, Lewis Garrad. Then he compiled the specifications for Sunbeam and Humber. Next he read and critiqued the manuscript, located the photo archives and got filthy helping me select images. Graham liaised with E.M. Lea-Major of Talbot UK’s PR department. He also wrote the appendix on Hillman Imp rallying. (My file on the Imp consisted only of Bob Fendell’s comment that he could keep his rally Imp going by stringing a wire over his shoulder to the carburetor when the linkage broke.) I cannot begin to express my thanks to Graham for saving me from myself, for helping make the book as accurate as possible, for being so tolerant of my faults, and for being, in short, such a good friend.

Halcyon days

Betimes Graham would come to the States, always with a book to write or an appearance to make. On several occasions I took him to Detroit, which fascinated him. I always tried to line up interesting “press cars.” I was astonished at his reaction to the 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V Bill Blass Designer Edition. Two tons, over 20 feet long, extravagantly trimmed, with acres of sheetmetal, it was the biggest coupe Ford ever built. Surely a monument to Utter Excess? But Graham was enthralled. “Do you Americans realize what you have here? This much sheer motorcar? Do you understand that the same money in England will barely buy you a Mini?”

Five years later Robson tore up the Detroit motorways in a Ford Mustang SVO, which he loved. (He was a superb driver, practicing rally ace Paddy Hopkirk‘s technique: “Fill Up Their Mirrors.”) I thought we were going to gaol, but somehow the coppers missed us. On the same trip we borrowed a Chrysler Laser, only just announced. We parked it in front of the GM Tech Center, and laughed when every single window of that famous styling emporium was filled by someone peering out.

In England we were welcomed at his two homes, first Croft House in Cumberland, then Girt House in Dorset. (“Dorset has a helluva lot more sunshine.”) Here, accompanied by the sonorous tones of sleeping English bulldogs (“a family tradition”), we whiled away evenings with Famous Grouse, talking cars. For the automotive tours of England, which Barbara and I ran in 1977-90, Graham paved the way. His good offices allowed us access to places where ordinary tourists were usually barred: Vanden Plas Coachworks, Aston Martin Lagonda, the metal-benders in the Rolls-Royce radiator shop. The magic name of Robson was our Open Sesame.

Always pressing on

Graham’s world was motoring, and by the 1990s his friend and fellow car nut was turning increasingly toward Winston Churchill. He understood, of course, and was happy to fall in when Churchillian missions brought me to England. When I sold Churchill books, he turned over his garden shed for me to pack up my purchases to ship home. In 2019 we arrived in London after the Hillsdale College Cruise. Graham made it his business travel up from Dorset. (“One always says ‘up,’ never ‘down’ to the Great Wen,” he once warned me.)  We dined luxuriously at Horse Guards Hotel. He hadn’t changed a bit. Even if he had, how could Robson be forgotten after 170 books?

I quoted to him the words of Alistair Cooke—a maxim I know he shared. “I shall never retire, because I have observed that many of my friends who do immediately keel over.” Alistair lived to 95, and broadcast his final BBC Letter from America only months before he left us. Good, sound policy.

On to the end

Graham Robson shared and typified Alistair Cooke’s philosophy—and mine. “We shall go on to the end,” as Churchill said. And sure enough: Last April Graham wrote me about another book! It was his last message:

Lee Remick 1935-1991

May 2021 marks thirty years since we lost dear Lee Remick. She was the accomplished actress who brought Winston Churchill’s mother vividly to the screen.

One of the finest-ever Churchill films,  Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, is available on CD. It was originally a television documentary, “The Life and Loves of Jennie Churchill,” broadcast on ITV in Britain and PBS in the USA in 1974. Co-starring with Remick were Ronald Pickup as Lord Randolph Churchill and Warren Clarke as young Winston.

Lee and Greg

In 1991, two months before she died,  we held an award dinner for Ms. Remick on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. It was a gala evening to celebrate her film contribution to our knowledge of Churchill’s life and times. And a bittersweet occasion, for she was stricken with cancer. This would be her last appearance in public. We did her proud, thanks to the participation of a special guest, Gregory Peck, who added luster and eloquent words.

It was fun to watch people’s reactions as Mr. Peck and his wife Veronique walked the ship’s passageways. But sadly, Lee was heavily medicated, difficult in speech. Mr. Peck hadn’t seen her in years. Her husband, British film producer Kip Gowans, briefed him in advance. The consummate professional, Gregory Peck spoke as if nothing had changed:

It was my privilege to work in only one film with Lee Remick. It was called “The Omen.” The plot involved Satanism, with some horrifying special effects. It was a spine tingler, excruciatingly suspenseful. It was complete nonsense—and a blockbuster! People lined up for blocks to see it.

While the studio executives took bows as the money rolled in, only Lee and I knew the secret of the film’s extraordinary success: We did it! It was our artistry, our sensitive portrayal of a married couple very much in love, to whom all these dreadful things were happening. We provided the human element that made it all work.

“A depth of womanliness”

In the lift with us was Luce Churchill, married to Sir Winston’s grandson. Overhearing, she cracked: “They may even have pills that you two don’t think you need.” Hmm. At any rate, Dr. Mather sent me the forms, and I’ve been a satisfied VA customer ever since. It’s strange how you think of such odd snippets when a friend dies.

Life and times

Of Scottish heritage, John Mather was educated at John Lyon School, Harrow. There as Head Boy he met Sir Winston Churchill—something he always cherished. He studied medicine at Middlesex Hospital Medical School. In school he met his first wife Susan, moved to Maryland, and became an American citizen in 1975. In 2004 he retired after 30 years as a VA physician executive. Following a 2010 divorce he moved to Franklin, Tennessee, and subsequently married the psychiatrist Karen Rhea. Failing at retirement, he became an independent medical examiner.

John’s citations were vast. He was an Ordained Elder of the Presbyterian Church, a soccer coach and referee. In the U.S. Army Medical Corps he held the rank of Major and received the Army Commendation medal. A federal mediator and mentor, he held fellowships in the Academy of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, the American Geriatrics Society and the Gerontological Society of America. He was Knight Commander of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem and Grand Chirurgeon for the Grand Priory of the USA. He belonged to the International Bow Tie Society, the Women in War Group, and was Franklin’s designated Town Crier. For International Clan Douglas he served as Tennessee Regent.

His loss was a shock. On December 5th John took himself to hospital with shortness of breath. They diagnosed atrial fibrillation and congestive heart failure. He was Mather to the end. “The doctor said he made them all laugh in the emergency room,” his daughter writes. “His ICU nurse noted his jovial demeanor.” That reminded me of Churchill, who wrote of his last sad encounter with the defeated French in 1940: “I displayed the smiling countenance and confident air which are thought suitable when things are very bad.”

Mather as Churchillian

We were colleagues for over a quarter century. We met over—who else?—Winston Spencer Churchill. John was a pathographer, specializing in Churchill’s medical history. He had deeply researched the subject, through the archives of Sir Winston’s doctors. In 1997 Dr. Mather revealed lengthy research destroying the long-running myth that Churchill’s father died of syphilis. Last year he revised and updated those findings for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Sir Winston’s health was a touchy subject with his family, who believed in doctor-patient privacy. His personal physician, Lord Moran, was heavily criticized for publishing his “diaries” after Churchill’s death. Dr. Mather put off writing a book on the subject, in part for that reason. This didn’t prevent him from enthusiastically supporting Drs. Allister Vale and John Scadding, with their fine new book Winston Churchill’s Illnesses.

Laboring in the vineyard

John Mather joined the Churchill Society’s Board of Governors in the early 1990s. He was at Mary Soames’s right hand when we morphed into The Churchill Centre in 1995. Together we tackled a formidable task: a center for Churchill Studies, something we never quite realized—but we gave our all. We began raising an endowment, John at the forefront. Parker Lee, our executive director, proclaimed him our “super tanker” for funding more of it than most of us put together. He served the board as Secretary for a decade, organized numerous conferences and seminars. We gave him the Blenheim Award, our highest commendation for service. It was woefully inadequate.

John was keen also to promote Churchill interest locally. In Bowie, Maryland he founded and was the longtime president of the Washington Society for Churchill. In Franklin he organized the Churchill Society of Tennessee. I had the privilege to be invited to address both groups, and was impressed by their enthusiasm. To a man or woman, they credited their success to John.

Professor Warren Kimball remembers how in 2016-17, John organized “two imaginative programs on teaching Churchill for Franklin County high school teachers. He brought me and other historians to lecture and then conduct small seminar-like discussions.” (See Richard Knight, below.) When I joined the Hillsdale College Churchill Project in 2014, he was there to encourage and contribute—and wheedle Hillsdale scholars to come to Tennessee.

Always, triumphantly, “in touch”

Above all he cherished the memory of Churchill, whose words fit him well: He “strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful” … “The hopes he raised, the promises he made, the great support and honour he received from them, seemed to require of him strenuous exertions.” John was impatient with the sharks and grifters of this world, tackling every challenge with bulldog tenacity—even when friends urged him not to waste time on forlorn hopes. Again in Churchill’s words: “What were these hopes in which he was frustrated? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart.”

Messages from his friends echo each other. “I just talked with him yesterday”… “Saturday morning he sent me a text” … “He called only a few days ago.” Surely “all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”

Churchill wrote of T.E. Lawrence: “The summons which reached him, and for which he was equally prepared, was of a different order. It came as he would have wished it. swift and sudden on the wings of Speed. He had reached the Last Leap in his gallant course through life. ‘All is over! Fleet career. Dash of greyhound slipping thongs. Flight of falcon, bound of deer. Mad hoof-thunder in our rear. Cold air rushing up our lungs. Din of many tongues.’”*

His epitaph might be the one a great lady, Diana Cooper, penned to the noble figure John revered:

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

“Never doubted clouds would break,

“Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

“Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.”

“Here’s to John”: from the Old Guard

All below served on the old Board of Governors of The Churchill Centre or were advisors thereto.

I am heartsick. Three weeks ago, we together decided that the end of next May or early June, we would travel to Scotland and do as much of the Single Malt Scotch Whisky Trail that we could accomplish in a week. He left a message for us on Friday to call him and listen to all that he had put together. Sadly, I was away for most of the day and didn’t get the message until late Saturday. As with all of you, he was a treasured friend. But he had to buy a Bentley to one-up my Jaguar.  —Randy Barber, Markham, Ontario

John called me a few days ago just to chat. He mentioned you several times and also told me about the new Bentley. Certainly he had medical situations this past year but didn’t mention any of them on the call. He sounded like his usual self. John Mather’s friendship and loyalty often translated into enthusiasm. Last year I advised him I had invited author Lynne Olson to speak at a new lecture series I had created at the University of Virginia. He immediately said he wanted to be there and made the 1100-mile trip from Franklin to Charlottesville and back. His support was so appreciated. His frequent calls were informative and entertaining on many levels. I will certainly miss him. —Parker H. Lee III, Richmond, Virginia

* * *

I just had a text from him Tuesday. He told me about a month ago that following through with a long ambition, he’d just bought a Bentley. What a shock. Very sad. He had so much energy. —Jacqueline Dean Witter, Redwood City, California

He has always been a loyal friend and a tireless worker with an incredible level of passion for everything, and I do mean everything. We are very sad to receive this news. —Craig Horn, Weddington, North Carolina

Our 2016 high school program attracted about 35 teachers over two days. In a surprise move, John invited them all to dinner, and I have the canceled check to prove it! The 2017 program was scaled back to one day and about 20 teachers. Speakers included Warren Kimball, James Muller, Douglas Russell and Chris Harmon. Bill Mott, a retired British Army command sergeant major, was there in full uniform to meet and greet and give the teachers something to remember. It was a memorable moment. —Richard H. Knight, Jr., Nashville, Tennessee

I am hugely shocked. He was a good friend, a fine man, and I shall miss him very much. I recall with great affection his ready smile and cheerfulness from so many of the conferences over the years. A Brit “over there,” he never lost his Englishness. —David Boler, Tonbridge, Kent

* * *

We met memorably in the early 1990s and my first Churchill tour and conference in England. Lunch was at Celia’s Sandys’ and I was seated between Julian Churchill and a Dr. Mather. Being new, I knew nothing about either, but shall never forget their conversation. John was explaining his theory, from studying medical records, that Lord Randolph Churchill’s death was not as reported. I was awestruck! We so enjoyed knowing and working with John over the years. I know my late husband Jerry is agreeing with me from above. —Judith (Kambestad) Shephard, Los Osos, California

Fare thee well, Dr. John. A proud Scot and proud American. An Old Boy at Harrow (though not the same school as WSC). A welcoming host. A generous friend. A rapid talker but a good listener. A man with sense of humor and the ear for anecdote. He was a tireless worker in the cause of keeping the Churchill memory green and the record accurate. Good-bye, old friend. —Judge Douglas S. Russell, Iowa City, Iowa

* * *

I met John Mather through the International Churchill Society. Judith and I often saw him at conferences. We have wonderful memories of times we spent with Warren Kimball, Douglas Russell, and John when he organized Churchill seminars for teachers in Franklin, Tennessee. John was a magnificent host. He cleaned snow off our rental car on a January morning that was colder in Franklin than in Anchorage. He was always upbeat, and we will never forget his enthusiasm. Whatever he did, he threw himself into it 110%. If he meets Winston Churchill in heaven, he’ll have home court advantage in getting answers to all his questions about the great man’s medical history. —James W. Muller, Anchorage, Alaska

John sometimes sounded like a one trick pony when it came to WSC’s medical history! But he was much more: an effervescent, indefatigable, delightful, generous, and persuasive promoter of Winston Spencer Churchill. Best of all he was a nice guy. No memorial should omit John’s personality and accomplishments. —Warren F. Kimball, John Island, South Carolina 

____

*Churchill was quoting from “The Last Leap,” by Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870)

“Shrieking with hilarity and wheelspin, they left—Fast. B.O. sprinted puffing to his cruiser, leapt in and hit the starter, siren and red light all at once. With a wild squeal of rubber, the cruiser shot off after the Allard. That’s when I noticed the chain coiled up under the police car. One end was wrapped securely around a fire plug. The other end seemed to be attached to something underneath the cruiser. There was, oh, maybe 100 feet of it. We watched fascinated as the cruiser picked up speed and the coil grew smaller…and smaller…”  —Dick O’Kane

The O’Kane ouevre

Reader Mark Jones writes of my tribute to Don Vorderman and Automobile Quarterly:

You mention a story by Dick O’Kane and an Allard J2X named “Grendel.” In my youth I enjoyed O’Kane’s stories of the Thunder Beetle, Peter the Fisherman’s Engineering Thesis, the Goat circling the disabled VW van. I can still just see the Land Rover inching the squealing Alfa into traffic. My question is: who was Dick O’Kane, and what became of him?

(Glory, Mark, I can only imagine what O’Kane must have written about the Goat, the Rover and the Alfa…)

I wish I had half the talent of John Richard “Dick” O’Kane (1936-2019), a unique wit and a gentle man, with a whimsical attitude toward cars. I remember his best-seller, How to Repair Your Foreign Car: A Guide for the Beginner, Your Wife, and the Mechanically Inept. Dick was neither the famous Navy admiral nor the Long Island labor leader by the same name. But like them, he was in a class by himself.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Dick was raised there and in Providence, Rhode Island. By the 1960s he was winning awards for TV and print copywriting. His repair book was gleaned from his travels in Europe and North Africa. Driving their VW camper, Dick and his wife Jennifer (Jeffi) observed those lands with wry wit. His later books were The Making of an Aircraft Mechanic (1970), Repairing the Inscrutable Toyota (1974), Most Miles Per Gallon (1975), and Simple Auto Repair (1976).

Settling down

His Arkansas memorial tells us of Dick’s later life:

Tired of traveling, Dick and Jeffi settled in northwest Arkansas in 1973, creating O’Kane Studios. It produces extraordinarily beautiful custom stained glass installations for homes and businesses. A visual artist, Dick always sought new possibilities. He invented unique optical lens mosaics combined with stained glass, watch crystals, bevels, jewels—anything glass—creating three-dimensionality and movement in his works, a startling beautiful innovation. He also invented soldering techniques which have since been adopted by stained glass artists today.

Dick was brilliantly funny, a natural storyteller. Quotes from his first book include… “If you own or drive a foreign car you need this book. In fact you need two copies—one to read by the fireside, the other to amuse you by the roadside.” One chapter was headed: “Why, When Britannia Rules the Waves, Will Her Cars Not Go Through a Puddle?”

[I owned just such a car, “Hilda, the Friendly Hillman.” Reliable as Big Ben, but if you splashed through a puddle deeper than half an inch, the little Minx convertible stopped dead. You had to pop the bonnet and dry off the inside of the distributor cap.]

O’Kane and the English

Like many of us, Dick was besotted by English cars. Not always by their running—when they were running. (“I’d rather be driving my Jaguar, but it’s in the shop.”) No—it is their very old world essence, the leather and walnut, the way the rain beads on the bonnet, that causes us to get bees in our bonnets, and buy and drive and fix the things.

Dick wrote two stories for Automobile Quarterly. One was that bizarre tale of Grendel, the Allard from Hell (Summer, 1970). The other was “Bright Wheels Leaping” (Summer, 1969), about his love affair with a Mark IV Jaguar. Why Mark IV, and not its real name, “1948 Jaguar 3.5 Liter Drophead Coupe”? “Mark IV is easier to say,” Dick explained. But why this car out of all cars?

It was classically pretty—huge Lucas P.100 headlamps, sweeping fenders. I didn’t care much for the sedan. I often was struck with the feeling that the designer got to the back of the car and ran out of patience. Ahh, but that drophead. I think it was the landau bars that made the car truly pretty. They were working ones, too, part of a delightfully baroque top system. The top wasn’t exactly hard to put up and down. Involved would be a better word.

Behind the wheel was pure Edwardian Glitz. Everywhere was walnut, leather and wool. The dashboard was Power, Glory and Excess in all things. There were dials and knobs and switches and cranks. You could do everything from increasing idle speed 25 rpm to winding the windshield out to the horizontal if this pleased you. A man getting behind the wheel of a Mark IV for the first time is lost.

Frustrated lovers

We all know those feelings if we’ve owned English classics. Dick knew the penalties, too. One was “The Adventure of Operating.” Dick explained:

I say “operating,” because that’s what you do to a Mark IV. And operating encompasses more than mere driving…. Oddly, that Mark IV was the only Jag I’ve ever had that laughed into the teeth of a New England winter. It fired up with the first turn of the starter.

The top was reasonably weather-tight, and cold was no problem if you could get the heater to work. This was an involved system of ducts, flaps, knobs, switches, lights and faucets, all rather optimistically labeled AIR CONDITIONING. When you turned it on you would be rewarded with a big green light that said ON, and a little fixture designed for the function would drop antifreeze on your right shoe. The way you fix it is to rip the whole system out and replace it with a ’38 Buick heater.

Ah, the memories…

The Mark IV owners manual was a special experience. Dick called it “Monument to the Quaint Assumption…. It assumed you had all sorts of peculiar doodads lying around.”

The section on brake adjustment begins: “Obtain a steel disc having a circumference of 6.749 inches and being .388 inches in thickness, with a .435-inch square opening offset one-half inch from the centre of the disc…”

Of course, as Dick writes, the day always comes when car and driver must part:

One afternoon the Mark IV owner slips into a nimble, quick little roadster to rediscover the joy of driving a machine that doesn’t argue with him. Sadly, he’ll realize that his Mark IV just isn’t what he has in mind. He’ll sell it—an unhappy day. Right to the end that lovely old car will still be trying its hopeless best.

It will appeal immediately to someone else. I had no trouble getting rid of mine. I swapped with a dealer for a nice Jag roadster and a serviceable Austin sedan, even deal, no cash. Then the dealer turned around and convinced some poor, classic-mad wretch that the Mark IV had been specially built for King Farouk and was worth $4200. [Those were the days.]

* * *

“Dick O’Kane was a man of wisdom, and great kindness,” his memorial reads. “He was an iconoclast, living life as he saw fit, not as others would have him live. He is survived by his wife, Jennifer, his sons Charles and Benjamin, five grandchildren, his beautiful stained glass works, and many wonderful stories.” Rest in peace, Dick. Thanks for the memories.

Further reading: the artists

Dean’s Garage, “Stan Mott’s Autobiography,” 2022.

D.D. Degg, “Stan Mott RIP,” 2022.

Dale Weaver Totten’s Facebook page (maintained by his daughter Tabitha)

”Don Vorderman: The Best Editor I Ever Had” (including more on Grendel, the Allard from Hell)

“Automobile Quarterly: The Memories,” 2021.