

“Randolph Churchill: Present at the Creation,” is from a lecture aboard the Regent Seven Seas Explorer on the 2019 Hillsdale College Cruise around Britain, 8 June 2019. Concluded from Part 2.
“The Great Work” —Randolph S.C.After the war, Churchill willed his archive to Randolph. In 1959, impressed by his son’s biography of Lord Derby, he invited Randolph to be his biographer. Randolph devoted himself to the job, knowing by then that he had wrecked his body, that the process of disintegration was advanced. Could he finish in time? Randolph wondered.
He housed the archives in a fireproof strong room at Stour, his home in Suffolk.…
Famed for her beauty and the “durable fire” of her marriage to Alfred Duff Cooper, First Viscount Norwich, The Lady Diana Cooper was early admitted to friendship with Winston and Clementine Churchill. A stunning beauty and an accomplished actress, she was a glittering writer. Her trilogy of memoirs is redolent of that vanished England the Coopers and Churchills loved. Her books are worth seeking out: The Light of Common Day, Trumpets from the Steep and The Rainbow Comes and Goes (1958-60).
In another age, when even Churchill’s marriage is questioned by the ignorant, Lady Diana offers words worth remembering.…