Jennie’s Encounter

Winston on Blenheim

Her son inherited her way with words. He wrote in his biography, Lord Randolph Churchill, published in 1906:

The cumulative labours of Vanbrugh and ‘Capability’ Brown have succeeded at Blenheim in setting an Italian palace in an English park without apparent incongruity. The combination of these different ideas, each singly attractive, produces a remarkable effect. The palace is severe in its symmetry and completeness…. Natural simplicity and even confusion are, on the contrary, the characteristic of the park and gardens. Instead of that arrangement of gravel paths, of geometrical flower-beds, and of yews disciplined with grotesque exactness which the character of the house would seem to suggest, there spreads a rich and varied landscape…. And yet there is no violent contrast, no abrupt dividing-line betwee

n the wildness and freshness of the garden and the pomp of the architecture.

The whole region is as rich in history as in charm….. Here Kings—Saxon, Norman and Plantagenet—have held their Courts. Ethelred the Unready, Alfred the Great, Queen Eleanor, the Black Prince loom in vague majesty out of the past.

What we have lost

Lady Randolph’s and her son’s beautiful words always remind me of ​ David Dilks​’s remark in his discussion and later essay on The Queen and Winston Churchill:

…the monarchy signified for him something of infinite value, at once numinous and luminous; and if you will allow the remark in parenthesis, ladies and gentlemen, do you not sometimes long for someone at the summit of our public life who can think and write at that level?

Transformers: Blenheim Palace bedizened with Nazi Swastikas? File this in the overflowing catalogue of much ado about nothing.

Blenheim Affront

On September 25th, several Churchill writers received an email: “Urgent Media Request—the Sin.” (A typo for the Sun newspaper, though ironically appropriate.)

“I’m a journalist with the Sun,” we were told by a member of their staff. “I’m working on a story in our paper tomorrow about a disgusting act which tarnishes Sir Winston Churchill’s memory.” He didn’t say what, but it was easy to guess.

The disgusting act, already blasted around via the Internet, was to drape Blenheim (“Churchill’s home” according to reports) with huge Nazi banners. This was for an episode for the fifth “Transformers” film, The Last Knight, opening next June.

Offense

Transformers huff and puff! Not only was Blenheim Churchill’s home, the Jerusalem Post informed its readers. Sir Winston himself “is buried on the grounds.” (Blenheim was never Churchill’s “home,” and he is buried in the nearby village of Bladon.)

None of us replied to this naked attempt to stir artificial uproar. A friend and colleague in London wrote: “I told the Sun when they called that I can manufacture synthetic outrage as much as the next man, but couldn’t on this occasion.”

Of course that did not stop the quality press from flogging newspapers over movieland’s affront to Churchill and Blenheim. The scene crawled with Nazi storm troopers, they reported. Why, there was even a representative German Jeep (Kübelwagen). The newspaper found two veterans to denounce the sacrilege. “I know its a film,” said a colonel who served in Afghanistan. “But it’s symbolically disrespectful to Churchill. He will be turning in his grave.” The grave in Bladon, I presume.

Some Churchill admirers joined the ruckus, saying it would mislead the young. Into what? Believing the Nazis won World War II? Even assuming the film identifies the building as Blenheim, the young are familiar with the Internet. Two or three clicks will inform them that the Germans, er, never got quite that far.

Remarkably, but perhaps typically, the Sun seems the only paper willing to publish photos of the offensive scene. It was in place only for a short time. It appears to have been shot in the dead of night. The banners were pulled down before the day trippers arrived.  Blenheim is a popular venue, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough.

Defense

“Transformers” director Michael Bay defended the shoot, claiming Churchill would in fact be pleased with the plot of The Last Knight. “People have not been fortunate enough to read the script and they don’t know that Churchill in this movie is a big hero,” he told the BBC. “Churchill would be smiling. When you see the movie, you’ll understand.”

What is the problem with using Hitleriana as a prop in some fictional story? It’s been going on for years. Back in 1972, Norman Longmate displayed a Swastika flying over the Palace of Westminster on the jacket of his alternate history, If Britain Had Fallen. Nobody was even slightly outraged. Perhaps this latest kerfuffle is a product of our all-too-ready habit of taking “offense” at anything that might disturb 0.001% of the citizenry.

Sir Winston’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, is always able to put nonsense in perspective. Speaking to the Guardian, he described the episode as “a completely manufactured row” and “absolutely the most dismal, idiotic story I’ve ever read….

“They do as all newspapers do,” Soames continued. “They go until they can find some wretched veteran who is prepared to say, ‘Winston would be turning into his grave.’ They’ve no idea what my grandfather would have thought!”

Transformers: What Would Churchill Think?

I know what he would have thought! Churchill loved movies. He’d be fascinated, and would greet the fiction with a guffaw as he puffed on a big cigar in his easy chair at Chartwell.

I have no particular objection to the “offensive” photo. But I won’t add to its fifteen minutes of fame. So you’ll have to click on the Sun link to see it.

Unintentionally, perhaps, the Sun included a photo of Churchill giving his famous V-sign palm-in, not palm-out. In England, this means quite something other than “Victory.” Perhaps it is appropriate to the occasion.

•Coming up: another Swastika-bedraped British icon, in my review of Norman Longmate’s alternate history, If Britain Had Fallen.

“You shouldn’t call him ‘Your Grace,’ you know.”

It was 2005. Lady Soames was coaching me on a letter to her cousin the Duke of Marlborough. It was to ask (again) for the lease (at a friend-of-the-family discount) of the Great Hall at Blenheim Palace. Another black tie dinner was in store for another Churchill Tour.

“What should I call him, then? I can’t call him ‘Sunny,’ as you do!” (The family nickname stemmed from one of the Duke’s early titles, Earl of Sunderland.)

“Of course not. But ‘Your Grace’ is too formal, or for servants. Write, ‘My Dear Duke’”

“Sounds medieval,” I said, drawing a snort from Winston Churchill’s daughter. “Well,” she said, “if you want to be completely unimaginative you may write ‘Dear Sir.’ But it will sound like a solicitor’s letter.”

“Sunny”

Always having benefited from her advice, I duly wrote “My Dear Duke,” and he quickly replied (“Dear Richard,” signed “Sunny”). We could have the Great Hall; yes, at a reduction; and thank-you, he and the Duchess would be glad to attend. Just one thing, he said at the end: “This will have to be the last time at that price. I have to answer to my trustees, and they simply don’t understand when I make exceptions.”

I remembered that episode when I heard he’d left us, because it illustrates not only what a generous person he was, but how much he cared about Blenheim. The estate so often run down in its history waxed glorious under his stewardship, with his attention to detail and canny business sense. And to ensure continuity, he had placed Blenheim under a board of trustees, to whom even he paid deference, knowing that they were devoted to its survival as the national monument to John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough.

Make no mistake, it is no easy task. I remember asking him why, every time I visited, there was scaffolding up somewhere around the building. “Because,” he said with a smile, “every time we finish painting the window sash, it’s time to start all over again.” I had to think he was speaking figuratively, but it certainly emphasized the work needed to maintain and preserve this grand edifice.

Commitment

The Marlboroughs were involved at every level. “People must visualize me lounging on a divan in leopardskin leotards with a long cigarette holder,” joked his then-wife, the former Countess Rosita Douglas, in the Orangery during a lesser Churchill banquet. “But I’ve been up there on the scaffolding scrubbing the dentils with a toothbrush, like everybody else.” She was as welcoming as he was.

For our first Great Hall dinner, warned that the Duke was notoriously hard to converse with, I seated at his right my secret weapon, Mrs. Barbara Langworth, who is capable of engaging with anybody. The two of them chatted gaily throughout the meal. “I thought he was hard to talk to?” I asked her afterward. “How did you do it?” “Cows,” she said. We lived next to a New Hampshire dairy farm at the time; Barbara simply mentioned cows, and the Duke was off and running on the fine points of bovine husbandry.

Churchillians came to Blenheim not to gape at its wonders but because it was the birthplace and frequent location of the man they revered. Twice we dined in ultimate splendor in the Great Hall, the Duke and Duchess standing in the receiving line, putting everyone at ease. Another time it was the Orangery, as always organized by the Duke’s indispensible manager, Paul Duffie.

Once it was the Spencer-Churchill Conference Room, which the Duke made available for an academic symposium on Marlborough: His Life and Times. Yet again it was the Blenheim Muniment Room, off limits to all but scholars, where we were shown the Marlborough archives that Churchill had himself perused while writing his great biography. At every one of those occasions the Duke and Duchess made themselves available, even when pressed by other concerns, to welcome us to their home.

“In Years to Come…”

The Long Library at Blenheim is dominated by an 1891 Henry Willis organ, which bears a poignant legend: “In memory of happy days & as a tribute to this glorious home, we leave thy voice to speak within these walls in years to come, when ours are still.”

The 11th Duke of Marlborough went to his rest knowing that his great work to preserve and protect a Churchillian monument goes on under his trustees. I am confident that his voice will speak through their example, in years to come, when ours are still.