Stark naked

Churchill (step­ping naked from his bath): “The Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain has noth­ing to hide from the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.” **

[Also quot­ed as: “You see, Mr. Pres­i­dent, I have noth­ing to hide.”]

Churchill alleged­ly said this dur­ing his vis­it to the White House in Decem­ber-Jan­u­ary 1941.  The Japan­ese had attacked Pearl Har­bor and Amer­i­ca was in the war.  The encounter was con­firmed by Churchill’s body­guard, Wal­ter Thomp­son, and one of his sec­re­taries, Patrick Kin­na. On the strength of their com­ments I includ­ed it as “like­ly” in Churchill By Himself.

The sto­ry goes that Roo­sevelt thought to call the new world body  he hoped to orga­nize after the war the “Unit­ed Nations.” Excit­ed about the name, he wheeled him­self into Churchill’s room. There he found Churchill, as Har­ry Hop­kins, put it, “stark naked and gleam­ing pink from his bath.” Hop­kins repeat­ed his ver­sion of this remark (using “con­ceal” instead of “hide”) often enough to raise a pre­sump­tion in favour of its verac­i­ty. But per­haps not!

Churchill’s recollection

Churchill nev­er con­firmed the wise­crack attrib­uted to him by Thomp­son and Kin­na. Queried by Roo­sevelt biog­ra­ph­er Robert Sher­wood, Churchill said: “I could not pos­si­bly have made such a state­ment as that. The Pres­i­dent him­self would have been well aware that it was not strict­ly true.” Churchill told Sher­wood he “nev­er received the Pres­i­dent with­out at least a bath tow­el” wrapped around him.

Of course, receiv­ing the Pres­i­dent in a bath tow­el may have been enough in Churchill’s mind tell  King George VI (just after return­ing from Wash­ing­ton): “Sir, I believe I am the only man in the world to have received the head of a nation naked.”

Churchill must have repeat­ed his crack to the King to Roo­sevelt. FDR told his con­fi­dante, Daisy Suck­ley, and the British Ambas­sador, Lord Hal­i­fax, on 17 Jan­u­ary 1945. (See Geof­frey C. Ward, Clos­est Com­pan­ion: The Unknown Sto­ry of the Inti­mate Friend­ship between Franklin Roo­sevelt and Mar­garet Suck­ley, 384-85.) In Suckley’s ver­sion, Churchill did not say he had “noth­ing to hide,” which he had denied say­ing to Sher­wood. Accord­ing to Suck­ley, Roo­sevelt sim­ply said, “Unit­ed Nations!” and Churchill respond­ed, “Good!”

**Paul Scree­ton prompt­ed this post, ref­er­enc­ing colum­nist and TV show host Jere­my Kyle. Kyle won­dered whether Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron had sim­i­lar­ly sealed the bond of Britain and Amer­i­ca with Barack Oba­ma. (The Sun, 26 May 2011)

Reader comments: “Made in England. Size: medium.”

I take the lib­er­ty of trans­lat­ing the amus­ing exchange with Anto­nio Car­los Da Cos­ta in the com­ments sec­tion below:

Related legends

“Roo­sevelt and Churchill: Don Quixote and San­cho Pan­za,” 2018.

“Churchill’s Ersatz Meet­ing with Lincoln’s Ghost,” 2018.