“Her gleaming, mystic figure…”

Churchill waxed eloquent on Joan of Arc in 1938. His words would likely not pass with today’s minders of Political Correctness:

We see her gleaming, mystic figure in the midst of the pikes and arrows, and it needed not her martyrdom to win her canonization as a saint not only from the Pope but from the modern world. Less enthusiasm would have been excited if, for instance, Joan of Arc had displayed extraordinary proficiency with the crossbow, and if history recounted the numerous victims who had fallen to her unerring aim. We are thrilled by the spectacle of a weak woman leading and encouraging strong men. We do not relish the idea of her killing strong men by some ingenious apparatus; for that strips womanhood of the sex-immunity from violence which is so precious to the dignity of man.

I suppose that will be taken as solid proof that Churchill was an incurable misogynist. In fact, no one had a greater respect for women than he—except perhaps Hilaire Belloc. Men, Belloc said, “come to look on the intelligence of women first with reverence, then with stupor, and finally with terror.” Joan of Arc proved this to the English.

“The winner in the whole of French history”

Churchill in 1938 was writing of Joan in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Laid aside during the Second World War, it  began appearing in 1956. Describing Joan, Churchill was at his eloquent best:

…an Angel of Deliverance, the noblest patriot of France, the most splendid of her heroes, the most beloved of her saints, the most inspiring of all her memories, the peasant Maid, the ever-shining, ever-glorious Joan of Arc. In the poor, remote hamlet of Domrémy, on the fringe of the Vosges Forest, she served at the inn. She rode the horses of travellers, bareback, to water. She wandered on Sundays into the woods, where there were shrines, and a legend that some day from these oaks would arise one to save France.

It is possible that Churchill’s original opinion was less effusive. In January 1946 he told a literary advisor, Professor Denis Brogan, that he had corrected his Joan of Arc section “after reading Anatole France’s highly documented study.” He hoped that Brogan would not think his praise of Joan “excessive.” Nevertheless, he had admired the Maid a long time.

An Early Appreciation

Churchill was soon aware of Joan’s qualities. In April 1908, he was simultaneously fighting an election in Manchester and courting Clementine Hozier. One of his campaigners was Lady Dorothy Howard, “last of the great Liberal ladies,” a champion of women’s suffrage. “Lady Dorothy arrived of her own accord, alone and independent,” he wrote Clementine (who was also pro-suffrage). “I teased her by refusing to give a decided answer about women’s votes, and she left at once for the North in a most obstinate temper.” Later, after reading his campaign statements, “back she came and is fighting away.” Churchill handily won the seat. “Lady Dorothy fought like Joan of Arc before Orleans,” he wrote Clementine. “…tireless, fearless, convinced, inflexible—yet preserving all her womanliness.”

In the First World War Churchill saw Joan-like qualities in two great Frenchmen, Ferdinand Foch and Georges Clemenceau. The latter represented “the French people risen against tyrants.” Foch expressed the “more ancient, aristocratic heritage of Joan of Arc.” Together he saw them as a “cameo…. But when they gazed upon the inscription on the golden statue of Joan of Arc: ‘La pité qu’elle avait pour le royaume de France’ and saw gleaming the Maid’s uplifted sword, their two hearts beat as one.”

Joan de Gaulle: “But my bishops won’t burn him”

In May 1943, prior to the invasion of Sicily. Churchill cabled Eisenhower: “Many congratulations. …Give my love to Joan of Arc.” I believe but cannot prove this referred to Charles de Gaulle, prickly leader of the Free French. Churchill admired de Gaulle’s fighting qualities, but not his constant interference and demands.

Flight Lieutenant James Coward was an aide at Chequers one night in 1942 when de Gaulle rang. “Oh no,” groaned the Prime Minister, “can’t you put him off? We’ve only started the soup.” De Gaulle insisted, so Churchill went to the phone. He returned livid. “That bloody de Gaulle had the effrontery to tell me that the French looked on him as the second Joan of Arc. I had to remind him that we had to burn the first.” This is likely the origin of Churchill’s famous crack about de Gaulle to Brendan Bracken: “But my bishops won’t burn him.”

Later Churchill was more charitable: “It was said in mockery that he thought himself the living representative of Joan of Arc, whom one of his ancestors is supposed to have served as a faithful adherent. This did not seem to me as absurd as it looked. Clemenceau, with whom it was said he also compared himself, was a far wiser and more experienced statesman. But they both gave the same impression of being unconquerable Frenchmen.”

“His Joan of Arc stance, his pugnacity, his passion…”

On 15 March 1946, after his controversial “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Churchill spoke in New York. Reporters asked, did he regret what he said? Slowly, enunciating each syllable, Churchill replied: “I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word.” This was said as much to Stalin as his audience, wrote Robert Pilpel. “It brought to mind Joan of Arc’s famous retort to the bullying Duke de la Tremouille: ‘Thou’rt answered, old Gruff-and-Grum.'”

“Winston was not a modern Joan,” his doctor Lord Moran wrote, “exalted and inspired by voices from God.” Like Lincoln, he dominated his colleagues by “sheer moral force.” But another Joan of Arc, Moran considered, was what the British people received. Professor Manfred Weidhorn expands on this thought:

Some of his greatest weaknesses were transmuted by the elixir of global crisis into his greatest strengths. His fervid patriotism, his melodramatic approach to events, his archaic thinking, his theatrical, romantic mode of expression, his Joan of Arc stance, his pugnacity, his passion for obtaining power and leadership, his downright obstinacy, above all his conservative faith in tradition, empire, the British mission and his zeal for war making—these traits were often irrelevant, boring, or obnoxious. But in 1940 nothing else seemed to the point, and he was the only man for the challenge.

Churchill’s book Joan of Arc

Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples began serial and book publication in Spring 1956. In May, Paris Match reprinted his passage on Joan as an article, “Jeanne d’Arc” (Cohen C692/1). Then, four years after Churchill’s death, his U.S. publishers Dodd, Mead & Co. issued the same text as a hardback, Joan of Arc (Cohen A279). This lovely little book, beamed at ages 8 and above, cost only $3.50.

The publishers explained in a note that the text opens shortly before the end of the Hundred Years’ War. “The events which are recounted were to lead at last to the breaking forever of England’s hold over France.”

Bibliographer Ronald Cohen says the decision to publish might have had something to do with the illustrator, Lauren Ford. “She herself wrote four books, which she also illustrated: The Little Book about God, Our Lady’s Book, The Ageless Story, and Lauren Ford’s Christmas Book. All had also been published by Dodd, Mead, where she was a fixture.”

Joan of Arc had only one printing and is the scarcest among extracts from Churchill’s History. As a Churchill bookseller I encountered fewer than a half-dozen copies over twenty years. Marc Kuritz of the Churchill Book Collector has recorded sale prices of $129 to $600, varying with condition. Occasionally one finds a copy inscribed by Lauren Ford herself, often with a charming sketch. These sell for up to $1250.

Joan as agent of Brexit? 

Churchill was always ambivalent about France, wrote his last private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne. His love was “sentimental and long-standing, based on personal experience in peace and war. But this did not deter him from taking a firm line with the French if he felt it was required.” And yet in the end, thirty years after he spoke of Joan as “the winner,” Sir Anthony still believed she was:

WSC had quite a pantheon of highly regarded individuals, historical and present. It was unwise to reflect unfavourably on the former, however well-founded subsequent negative evidence might be. I was blasted into orbit with exuberant intellectual energy for making some disparaging remarks about Napoleon and, what was worse, casting doubts on the accuracy of some of the Joan of Arc legend…. His greatest heroine, or indeed hero for that matter, was Joan of Arc.

“Toynbee, rather more tactlessly, argued that Britain’s skepticism about Europe was all the fault of Joan of Arc,” wrote John Ramsden. Joan “taught us to turn our backs on Europe” by inflicting heavy defeats on the invading English in the 15th century. Joan as an agent of Brexit? It seems a stretch.

The French historian François Kersaudy was not quite ready to grant Joan top rank in Churchill’s pantheon: WSC “knew the history of France as well as any Frenchman, and even better than most. With his intensely sentimental and romantic mind, he greatly admired ‘France’s contribution to human freedom and wisdom’; the heroes of French history he admired even more, first and foremost Joan of Arc and Napoleon.”

“Dans le grand drame, il était le plus grand”

But did Churchill rank Joan above Napoleon? Emotionally perhaps, for valiant stands against heavy odds always excited him. In his broad view of French history, however, this writer agrees with Andrew Roberts. Napoleon, whose bust Churchill kept on his desk, stood at his pinnacle. Joan of Arc was close behind. Third in line, I believe, was Clemenceau.

Many historians might place Charles de Gaulle fourth. Churchill had more respect for him than he usually let on, and de Gaulle repaid this on Churchill’s death. “Dans le grand drame,” he wrote Lady Churchill, “il était le plus grand.” In the great drama, he was the greatest.

Whether invented by the President or his scriptwriters, some of Trump’s nicknames were very effective. “Low-energy Jeb” torpedoed Governor Bush‘s 2016 presidential campaign better than any debate gaffe. “Mini-Mike” didn’t help Mayor Bloomberg‘s in 2020. But except in extreme cases like Hitler, Churchill’s name-calling was more effective and less wounding. Especially when he rather admired certain qualities in opponents. (He called Lloyd George a “cad” in his youth, but ever after praised the “Welsh Wizard.”)

* Asterisks indicate nicknames not used in a public setting. Churchill, after all, had some discretion. But I leave them in for fun. 

Nicknames: Admiral Row-Back to Can’t Tellopolus

Admiral Row-Back: Admiral Sir John Roebuck (1862-1928), Royal Navy officer. Commanded the initial Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles in 1915. Having nearly succeeded, he turned back after losses to mines, incurring Churchill’s permanent loathing and censure and an appropriate nickname.

*Block: Herbert H. Asquith (1852-1928), Liberal Prime Minister, 1908-16. He let Churchill dangle in the Dardanelles/Gallipoli debacle, which sent WSC packing as First Lord of the Admiralty. This was a private nickname between Churchill and his wife. It may refer to Asquith’s frequent role as a block to Churchill’s proposals.

Bloodthirsty Guttersnipe: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German Chancellor and Führer, 1933-45. First publicly declared in a broadcast after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. It wasn’t the first Churchillian jab, nor by any means the last.. There is no shortage of insulting nicknames in Hitler’s case; but this is as good an example as any. (See also “Corporal Schicklgrüber,” in comments below.)

Boneless Wonder: James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Prime Minister, 1924, 1929-35. A devastating comparison to a circus attraction, applied in 1931. Churchill was ridiculing Ramsay Mac’s lack of principle and wavering domestic policies. In private he considered MacDonald a servant of Crown and Parliament. But only in private.

Canting Bus Driver: Frank Pick (1878-1941), headed London Passenger Transport Board 1933-40. “Never let me see that-that-that canting bus driver again.” Churchill wrote this in red ink on a memorandum from Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper when Pick resigned.

*Can’t Tellopolus: Panagiotis Kannelopoulos (1902-1986), Minister of Defense, Greek exile government in Cairo, 1942-45. Churchill was impatient with his indecision about Greek resistance to the occupying Germans. Alexander Cadogan, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, heard these “mutterings from Churchill’s bathroom, between the splashings and gurgles.”

Chattering Cad – Green-Eyed Radical

*Chattering Little Cad: David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Liberal Prime Minister 1916-22. Said in 1901, when Churchill was still a Conservative. After he switched to the Liberals in 1904, his attitude changed. He rarely spoke ill of Lloyd George afterward, despite many provocations. WSC’s wife regarded LG as treacherous. He duly refused to join the Churchill coalition in 1940.

*Coroner: Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). Conservative Prime Minister, 1937-40. Originally coined by Brendan Bracken (also “Ironmonger” for Baldwin), this remained in the family lexicon. In 1961, Lady Diana Cooper introduced young Martin Gilbert to Randolph Churchill by saying “he hates the Coroner.” (A bit strong—he surely didn’t hate Chamberlain).

*Dull, Duller, Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, 1952-60. After Stalin’s death, Churchill argued for a “settlement” of the Cold War, but Dulles (and Eisenhower) were obdurate. “Ten years ago I could have dealt with him. Even as it is I have not been defeated by this bastard. I have been humiliated by my own decay.” —Churchill at the Bermuda Conference, December 1953.

Green-eyed Antipodean Radical: David Low (1891-1963), New Zealand cartoonist. Churchill had a certain affinity for the left-wing cartoonist whose attacks he admired. He called Low the greatest of modern cartoonists. There was mutual respect despite political differences, and Low drew a beautiful cartoon tribute on WSC’s 80th birthday.

Half-Naked Fakir – Llama

Half-Naked Fakir: Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian independence leader. The worst sobriquet attached to the Great Mahatma, when Churchill thought Gandhi an upperclass Brahman posing as a champion of the downtrodden. Yet they both nursed a private respect for each other and, in the end, were more forgiving. See “Welcome, Mr. Gandhi” herein.

Holy Fox: Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax (1881-1959, Foreign Minister, 1938-40, Ambassador to Washington, 1940-46. Verified by Halifax biographer Andrew Roberts, who writes: “It was a Churchill family nickname, of course a reference to his High Church beliefs as well as his love of hunting. And a certain amount of political foxiness….”

*Home Sweet Home: Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel (1903-1995), British Prime Minister 1963-64. Neville Chamberlain’s “eyes and ears” in Parliament, he always maintained that the Munich deal had saved Britain by giving it an extra year to prepare for war, ignoring the fact that it also gave Hitler an extra year, and he prepared far more rapidly. (His name was pronounced “Hume,” but that didn’t stop Churchill.)

*Llama: Charles de Gaulle ( 1890-1970 ), French General and President. Lord Moran wrote: “Was it true, [Lady Limerick] asked, that he had likened de Gaulle to a female llama who had been surprised in her bath? Winston pouted, smiled and shook his head. But his way of disavowing the remark convinced me that he was in fact responsible for this indiscretion…”

Limpet to Prince Palsy

Lion-hearted Limpet Leader: Clement Attlee (1883-1967), Labour Prime Minister 1945-51. Many disparaging cracks about Attlee (arriving in an “empty taxi”) are apocryphal. But this was an April 1951 jibe at Attlee and Labour MPs clinging to power. Churchill and the Conservatives turned them out in a general election the following October.

Minister of Disease: Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Labour Minister of Health 1945-51, founder of the National Health Service. One of the rougher nicknames, applied in the Commons, 1948. “…is not morbid hatred a form of mental disease, and indeed a highly infectious form?” Churchill asked. He also called Bevan a “squalid nuisance.”

Old Grey Tabby: Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Conservative Prime Ministers, 1902-05. After he succeeded Churchill at the Admiralty in 1915, WSC feared the “Old Grey Tabby” would dissolve the Royal Naval Division. (Balfour did resemble a tabby cat in old age, but Churchill continued to admire him, and memorialized him in Great Contemporaries.)

Pink Pansies: Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) and his friends. Member of Parliament, 1935-45. I am aware this violates P.C. decorum and will no doubt be added to Churchill’s “sins.” True, Nicolson was bisexual, but a) Churchill was emphatically not homophobic, and b), the reference (Parliament, late 1945) was to non-combative young Tory MPs.

Prince Palsy: Paul of Yugoslavia (1893-1976), Prince Regent of Yugoslavia, 1934-41. His palsied hand signed a treaty with Hitler. This  assured German occupation, the end of his Regency, and Churchill’s disdain. Exiled in Kenya, he appealed for refuge in Britain, but Churchill considered him a traitor and war criminal.

Scheming Prelate to Turnip

Scheming Prelate: Damaskinos Papandreou (1891-1949), Archbishop of Athens, 1945-49. Churchill, mediating the Greek civil war in late 1944, allegedly asked if he was “a man of God or a scheming Mediterranean prelate?” Assured that he was the latter, Churchill supposedly said, “Good, he’s just our man.” (Not verified)

Snub-nosed Radical: Liberal heckler, 1887. Aged only twelve, young Winston was attending a pantomime where he heard a man hissing a portrait of his father. He burst into tears, then turned on the perpetrator: “Stop that row, you snub-nosed radical!” This may be Churchill’s first political zinger.

Spurlos Versenkt (Sunk without a Trace): Sir Benjamin Smith (1879-1964), Labour Minister of Food, 1944-46. After he resigned from Parliament, Churchill searched “for the burly ‘and engaging form of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman. He has departed ‘spurlos versenkt,’ as the German expression says—sunk without leaving a trace behind.”

Turnip: Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), Conservative Prime Minister, 1925-29, 1935-37. Baldwin made Churchill Chancellor in 1925, but later kept him out of the Cabinet. After his final resignation, “S.B.” appeared in the House of Commons smoking room. Churchill quipped, “Well, the light is at last out of that old turnip.”

Useless Percy to Wuthering Height

*Useless Percy: Eustace Percy, First Baron of Newcastle (1887-1958). Board of Education President, 1924-29. At the Exchequer 1924-29, Churchill tried to lower the defense budget. Percy and Minister of Health Chamberlain  were opposed. “Neville is costing £2 millions more and Lord Useless Percy the same,” WSC wrote his wife on 30 September 1927.  “…these civil departments browse onwards like a horde of injurious locusts.”

Whipped Jackal: Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian Prime Minister, 1922-43, Duce of Fascism, 1943-45. Churchill praised him briefly before the war, but after joining Hitler he became a “whipped jackal… frisking up at the side of the German tiger with yelpings not only of appetite—that can be understood—but even of triumph!”

Wincing Marquess: Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (1845-1927), House of Lords, 1886-1927. Churchill, 1909: “he claimed no right…to mince the Budget, [only] the right to wince when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim…. If his Party are satisfied with the Wincing Marquess, we have no reason to protest.”

*Wuthering Height: John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith (1889-1971),  BBC Director General, 1923-38. The towering Reith was briefly in the wartime Coalition Cabinet. But he’d kept Churchill off the air in the 1930s, and no love was lost between them. WSC rejoiced to have seen “the last of that Wuthering Height” around 1940.

“Churchill: The Wilderness Years”

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has just republished “Scaling Everest,” Robert Hardy’s recollections of playing the Wilderness Years Churchill. They are from 1987, his speech to one of our Churchill Tours, at the Reform Club, London. We are grateful to his executors, Justine Hardy and Neil Nisbet-Robertson for permission to reprint. For Part 1, click here.

I thought the occasion appropriate to republish my original review of the “Wilderness Years” from 1981, some years before we met. I thought at the time I had “laid an egg”—in Churchill’s phraseology, not RH’s. (In his business, as he explains, laying an egg means something different.) Now I am not so sure. I hope, to use Robert’s terms, that it was not a noxious egg.

Boston, 1981

Well, it was a great show, folks. And, inasmuch as any good material about Churchill is a plus, we welcomed and enjoyed it. We are beholden to WGBH in Boston, which most kindly mentioned Martin Gilbert’s accompanying Wilderness Years book.

Let us dismiss Lord Boothby’s complaint that this Winston is “a grumpy, vindictive old man [who] shouts all the way through.” Robert Hardy captures the Churchill of the Thirties. He was politically frustrated, ineffective as a father, worried about Germany. Simultaneously, he enjoyed of his most productive decades as a writer and historian. Perhaps it would be remarkable of anyone else. Churchill was engaged in multiple literary projects, any one of which would fully occupy a normal person. Simultaneously he turned Chartwell into a paradise and was a force, however spurned, in politics. His only wilderness was the one observers assigned to him.

And this may be the weakness of the production. It is hard to provide much TV action around the writing of Marlborough, though we’d have enjoyed seeing the great Duke’s battlefields. There is no drama to painting a canvas or building a brick wall.

We are given instead what plays well: politics, love, scandal, hate. Here enter several exaggerations. Adolf Hitler (Gunter Meisner), on the eve of power, glares through a restaurant window at the Churchill he refuses to meet. Of course the real Hitler did no such thing. Neville Chamberlain (Eric Porter), and his toady Sir Horace Wilson (Clive Swift, “Richard Bucket” in “Keeping Up Appearances”) still think well of Hitler after March 1939. That is unfair to Chamberlain, who knew by then what he was up against. The desert scene with William Randolph Hearst (Stephen Elliott) and Marion Davies (Merrie Lynn Ross) never happened.

On the money historically

On the other hand, “The Wilderness Years” brings out important aspects of the story. Randolph (Nigel Havers) couldn’t be more like Randolph. The risks run by Ralph Wigram (Paul Freeman), Desmond Morton (Moray Watson) and Wing Commander Tor Anderson (David Quilter), in bringing Churchill news of German rearmament, are rightly emphasized. How often Stanley Baldwin (Peter Barkworth) played Churchill foul in the 1930s! (And how often WSC forgave him.) “The Wilderness Years” relays all this well.

In general the casting was superb. British television draws on an army of brilliant actors, and can always find a near-clone of anybody. I thought Baldwin was too pixieish, Ramsay MacDonald (Robert James) too mousy, Hitler a caricature. But Frederick Lindemann, “The Prof” (David Swift), Brendan Bracken (Tim Pigott-Smith), and Beaverbrook (Stratford Johns) were perfect. So was Lord Derby (Frank Middlemass, transformed from the kindly head master in “To Serve Them All My Days”). Neville Chamberlain couldn’t have been closer to life. Samuel Hoare (Edward Woodward) comes across as the evil force he really was.

Most of the women—WSC’s vivacious sister-in-law “Goonie” (Jennifer Hilary), noisy Nancy Astor (Marcella Markham) and Sarah Churchill (Chloe Salaman)— were well played. But there was one exception. Clementine Churchill (Sian Phillips) was simply awful. A friend who remembers Phillips for her role in the Roman drama “I Claudius” says: “I keep seeing her sipping wine and wearing a toga.” Was she typecast? Viewers must be the judge.

Flaws and edits

Phillips was not the “Clemmie” we know through Martin Gilbert’s and Mary Soames’s biographies. Instead we see a pretentious, unhappy aristocrat. Less a pillar of strength than a flitting mayfly, she is always ready to run off with some handsome adventurer. All the more curious (for Phillips said she researched the role), Clemmie is at sea literally and figuratively. The scene in which she returns from a South Seas voyage with an unnamed swashbuckler (in life, Terence Phillip) would thrill the National Enquirer, however unsubstantial its implications. Phillips could have saved the scene by reciting Clementine’s own words. “Do not be vexed with your vagabond cat. She has gone off toward the jungle with her tail in the air, but she will return presently to her basket and curl down comfortably.”

We could have done without the bowdlerization of Churchill’s great speeches. Robert Hardy had his part down perfectly. (One soon forgets the lovable vet Siegfried Farnon in “All Creatures Great and Small.”) But almost every great speech, though beautifully delivered, was mercilessly cut to ribbons by the editors. The hatchet job on Churchill’s greatest prewar speech (“I have watched this famous Island…”) is unforgivable.

Still it is a great yarn. What historical character other than Churchill could excite a latter-day audience by reprising his life’s lowest ebb? As ever, Winston Churchill stands alone. I hope that the fine reception of “The Wilderness Years” has been sufficient to encourage further dramatizations of equally important periods—particularly the Admiralty sojourn of 1911-15, and of course, 1940. We’ll be waiting for it.

My friend Steve Hayward had the wit to paraphrase, in reaction to the arrival of Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street, some comments about another incoming PM, eighty years ago next May. “Cambridge Cute,” says another friend of Steve’s good piece.

Speaking of Cambridge Cuties, I immediately thought of what Andrew Roberts described as “The Respectable Tendency,” the British establishment, in his great book, Eminent Churchilllians.  So I dug into the sources to find more of what they said back then about the new Prime Minister. (Lightly paraphrased.)

“Coup of the rabble…”

“Even whilst the new PM was still at Buckingham Palace kissing hands, the junior private secretary and Chamberlain’s PPS, Lord Dunglass [Alec Douglas-Home] joined Rab Butler and ‘Chips’ Channon at the Foreign Office. And there they drank in champagne the health of the ‘King over the Water’ (not King Leopold, but Mr. Chamberlain).”

“Rab said he thought that the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history…. The sudden coup of the rabble was a serious disaster and an unnecessary one. The ‘pass had been sold’ with a weak surrender to a half-breed American whose main support was that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type.”

“Since the new PM came in, the House of Commons had stunk in the nostrils of the decent people. The kind of people surrounding him are the scum and the peak [bottom? -RML] came when Brendan [Bracken] was made a Privy Counsellor! For what services rendered heaven knows. The PM’s adventurism is suspect, and his promotion of those  in whom he detected the buccaneering spirit, doubly alarming.”

“A bright blue suit, cheap and sensational looking…”

“He has not put his own henchmen in the highest offices. That does not prevent his detractors from convincing themselves otherwise. Butler is one of a number who contend with the fact that they are serving in an administration led by the man they have spent the best part of a decade briefing against and cat-calling.”

“His appointment sent a cold chill down the spines of the staff at 10 Downing Street…. Our feelings were widely shared in the Cabinet Offices, the Treasury and throughout Whitehall. Seldom can a Prime Minister have taken office with the Establishment…so dubious of the choice and so prepared to find its doubts justified.”

“He sees no way of putting his ideas into practice at present and is not ashamed of admitting the fact. Lloyd George was afterwards offered the Ministry of Agriculture (for which the cheap press has always tipped him). He refused it because he thinks the country is in a hopeless position and he is generally despondent.”

Jock Colville: “I spent the day in a bright blue new suit from the Fifty-Shilling Tailors, cheap and sensational looking, which I felt was appropriate to the new Government. But of course Winston’s administration, with all its faults, has drive, and should be able to get things done….”

Retrospective

Thus spake the Respectable Tendency of new Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940. Flash forward seventy-nine years. Nobody, of course, knows what Mr. Johnson will make of his honorable and ancient office. Friends of Britain must wish him well. What happens now is up to him. But opinion can change rapidly.

Back in 1940 Jock Colville soon shed his cheap blue suit. June 1940 found him in conservative pinstripes, an ardent admirer of his new Prime Minister. Correctly he surmised that the PM’s administration would “get things done.”

On getting things done today, refer to a thoughtful piece by John O’Sullivan on the now-nearly-complete Johnson Cabinet.

We report, you decide. And for historical perspective on the British establishment in days gone by, read Andrew Roberts’ book.

___________

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is rapidly completing final volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. (The name is somewhat of a misnomer; no one has ever censored any material.) Suitably, all thirty-one volumes will be complete by June 2019: the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. It will be fifty-six years since Randolph Churchill and his “Young Gentlemen” including Martin Gilbert began their work. Coinciding is a Hillsdale College cruise around Britain. A fitting climacteric.

After World War II,  The Churchill Documents offer testimony to Churchill’s vast preoccupations. Volume 22 (August 1945-October 1951, due late 2018) brings the stark realization of a new threat to liberty. Urgent messages flew across the ether between Washington, London, Ottawa, Paris. Speeches were made, partisans quarreled, editorials raged. There were communist incursions in the Balkans. The Red Army stalled on removing its troops from Iran. There was Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, a coup in Czechoslovakia. The Berlin Airlift was won, China was lost. War broke out in Korea.

These critical papers, amassed  by Sir Martin, represent every day of Churchill’s life. Woven between the weighty issues are lighter interludes. Documents of small importance—except to Churchill, his family, his colleagues, scholars. They round out our picture of a the man in a unique and personal way.

One of these was written by a Labour Member of Parliament. He became Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, KG OBE PC FRS (1916-1995).  He served thirty-three years in the Commons. His first cabinet position was the same as Churchill’s: President of the Board of Trade. By canny electioneering, he became prime minister in 1964-70 and 1970-76.

Wilson fancied himself part of the “soft left.” No one could ask for a more partisan advocate. And yet there was this deep collegial respect between him and the veteran Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Churchill.

Early on Wilson supported socialist firebrand Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Health Service. But in April 1951, the Labour government introduced NHS medical charges to meet the financial demands of the Korean War. In protest, Wilson, Bevan and John Freeman resigned from the government. Churchill, leading the opposition and smelling an election, trumpeted the split. Privately, however, there was this interlude. I post it as bait, for there is much more like it to come in The Churchill Documents. Order them today.

Harold Wilson: Recollection

(A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers, pages 267-68)

Winston Churchill was, above all things, a Parliamentarian. He loved the House, he had dominated it over the years. In its most degenerate days it had refused to listen to his warnings and had treated him with disdain and hostility. His loyalty to Parliament, and his obeisance to the courtesies of an almost forgotten age, caused him to take personal initiatives which the world of today might find it hard to understand.

When Aneurin Bevan and I resigned from the Attlee Government in April 1951, because we could not accept the unrealistic arms policy forced on the Government—and in Bevan’s case its consequences for the National Health Service—Winston came up to us. He expressed sympathy with us: we were facing a situation which had been much familiar to him, though, as he pointed out, we would never be obsecrated as he had been. We had gone out with honour, but, he added with a twinkle in his eye, he and his party would make the most of the situation which resulted.

* * *

That evening Brendan Bracken sought me out. He had been charged, he said, “by the greatest living statesman, for that is what Mr. Churchill is,” to give me a message to convey to my wife. First, Mr. Churchill wanted me to know, he had been “presented” to my wife, otherwise he would not presume to send her a message. The message was that whereas I, as an experienced politician, had taken a step of which he felt free to take such party advantage as was appropriate, his concern was with my wife, an innocent party in these affairs, who would undoubtedly suffer in consequence.

He recalled the number of occasions his wife had suffered as a result of his own political decisions. Would I therefore convey to her his personal sympathy and understanding? Thanking Bracken, I went home about 1 am…. I conveyed the message, which was greeted with gratitude and tears. I was enjoined to express her personal thanks. On leaving home the next morning I was again enjoined to see “the old boy” and make sure I delivered the message.

* * *

In the early evening I saw Winston in the smoke-room. I went up to him and told him I had a message from my wife…. I expressed her thanks. Immediately—and with Winston this was not a rare event—tears flooded down his face, as he expatiated on the way that wives had to suffer for their husbands’ political actions, going on to recall a number of instances over a long life.

When I reached home it was 2 am, but she was awake. I was asked if I had seen the old boy and thanked him. I had, and recounted the interview. She burst into tears, and I was moved to say that whereas two days earlier I had been a Minister of the Crown, red box and all, now I was reduced to the position of a messenger between her and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other. Of such is the essence of Parliament, or at least of bygone Parliaments, But this was the essential Winston Churchill.

Days past

What must strike the reader is this sheer affection between the idealistic socialist and dominant Tory. Would President Trump offer condolences if Senator Schumer resigned? Will Adam Schiff when Paul Ryan leaves as Speaker of the House? Yet as recently as 1981, Tip O’Neill prayed by the bedside of a stricken Ronald Reagan. Politics have changed. Not for the better.

Of course, Churchill was quick to assure Wilson he would take political advantage. And he did. As The Churchill Documents report, he was soon hard at it. Wilson and his colleagues had “rendered a public service,” he said, “by exposing to Parliament the scandalous want of foresight in buying the raw materials upon which our vital rearmament programme depends.”

“Of such is the essence of Parliament,” Harold Wilson mused, “or at least of bygone Parliaments.” And not just Parliaments.

* * *

In his book Lord Wilson also reprised what he said in 1965 after Churchill death. Naturally he remembered that kind action fourteen years before. Politicians today might ponder his sentiments:

For now the noise of hooves thundering across the veldt; the clamour of the hustings in a score of contests; the shots in Sydney Street, the angry guns of Gallipoli, Flanders, Coronel and the Falkland Islands; the sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy; the urgent warnings of the Nazi threat; the whine of the sirens and the dawn bombardment of the Normandy beaches; all these now are silent. There is a stillness. And in that stillness, echoes and memories.

To each whose life has been touched by Winston Churchill, to each his memory…. Each one of us recalls some little incident—many of us, as in my own case, a kind action, graced with the courtesy of a past generation and going far beyond the normal calls of Parliamentary comradeship. Each of us has his own memory, for in the tumultuous diapason of a world’s tributes, all of us here at least know the epitaph he would have chosen for himself: “He was a good House of Commons man.”

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has published two articles on Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s loyal ally and friend for four decades. The first begins with a memoir by the late Ron Robbins, a Canadian journalist who early on covered the House of Commons, where he met Bracken. The postscript is by me, followed by reviews of the two Bracken books by George Gale and A.J.P. Taylor.  A second feature—Bracken’s defense of Churchill’s frequent visits to war fronts—is also published.

Excerpts follow. For the full articles click on “Great Contemporaries:  Brendan Bracken” and “Necessary Risk: Churchill at the Front.”

Bracken Observed

There was no more enigmatic figure in Churchill’s life than Brendan Bracken, who cloaked his birth and upbringing with mystery while hinting broadly that he was the great man’s illegitimate son. Close friendship, not errant fatherhood, encompassed their relationship. But Churchill, with characteristic impishness, apparently never gave the direct lie to Bracken’s implied claim. This annoyed Churchill’s wife and peeved his son, Randolph, who spoke satirically of  “my brother, the bastard.” To quell the noisome rumor Churchill quipped: “I have looked the matter up, but the dates don’t coincide.”

By the time I encountered him, he was a formidable figure in corridors of power and London financial circles. The Labour Party came to power in July 1945. Bracken’s arch opponent was the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, a fiery Welshman. Bevan was steering the National Health Bill, the first large-scale national heath service, through morning committee meetings. I wrote “running reports.” A copy boy would come in every five minutes or so, collect what I had written, and phone it to the agency.

* * *

Bracken would thrust at Bevan, jolting him in a tough fight over every clause in the Bill. Bracken always attacked in time to catch new editions of the evening papers. This ensured him headlines, especially in the Evening Standard, owned by Lord Beaverbrook, an intimate friend of his and Churchill’s.

One morning as I hurried to the committee, Bracken caught up with me and complimented me on my coverage. No journalist worth his salt likes to feel exploited, particularly by a politician. So I said: “You have a great knack of talking in headlines just in time to catch every edition.” He roared with laughter and produced a pocket diary. He flaunted a page on which he had written the edition times of all the London papers. Smiling ruefully, I said: “I didn’t imagine that you were relying solely on chance.” “No,” he replied, “it’s a trick I learned early on from Churchill.”

Bracken died of cancer in 1958 at the age of 57. Churchill reacted sorrowfully to the news of his death. Churchill mourned for him with a father’s grief. —Ron Cynewulf Robbins

Bracken postscript

We have a memorable glimpse of Brendan Bracken on 11 May 1940, Churchill’s first full day in office. One of the first axes fell on Chamberlain’s toady Sir Horace Wilson, a civil servant promoted far above his station. He was an arch appeaser, both indirectly (as an adviser) and directly (as an emissary to Hitler).

With his usual courtesy, Churchill told Wilson he would obliged if Sir Horace left Ten Downing Street by 1pm. Wilson characteristically took this as a “negotiable demand” and toddled off to lunch. Returning, he found Bracken and Randolph Churchill seated on his office sofa, smoking huge cigars and glaring at him. They exchanged no words. Wilson turned and fled. Later he sent for his effects. He never appeared at Number Ten again.

During the war, Bracken enabled Evelyn Waugh to obtain leave so that he could write Brideshead Revisited. Waugh unkindly wrote Bracken into the story as Rex Motram, a boorish, money-grubbing exploiter of the colonies. That was typical of Waugh, but undeserved. As Lord Beaverbrook said: “To know Bracken was to like him; those who didn’t know him did not like him.”

Bracken in biography

The Bracken biographies may be viewed in similar light. (Click here and scroll to “Further reading.”) Boyle’s Poor Dear Brendan is the more showy and brash, Lysaght’s Brendan Bracken the deeper and more revealing. “Above all,” wrote Charles Lysaght,

Bracken was great fun. He found appropriate names for everyone. Baldwin was “the ironmonger,” Neville Chamberlain“the coroner.” Eden was “Robert Taylor,” or “the film star at the Foreign Office.” He described Harrow, Churchill’s old school, as “that bloody old Borstal of yours.” Only Churchill himself was exempt from Bracken’s darts. His description of Aneurin Bevan, enjoying Beaverbrook’s champagne, is of classic quality: “You Bollinger Bolshevik, you ritzy Robespierre, you lounge-lizard Lenin! Look at you swilling Max’s champagne and calling yourself a socialist.” Bevan listened to this tirade with delight.

After the war Bracken seemed to burn out like a fallen meteor, contemplating a future with, alas, all too accurate a vision. He said of Keynes: “He will be best remembered as the man who made inflation respectable.” He said of himself: “I shall die young and be forgotten.” History will not forget him. —RML

Necessary risk: Bracken’s defense

During World War II, Churchill’s frequent excursions to various fronts caused critics to complain that he was taking unnecessary risk. Criticism mounted when Churchill hied to France only six days after D-Day.  He revisited the front several times through March 1945.

Captain Alec Stratford Cunningham-Reid DFC (1895-1977) was a distinguished flying ace in World War I. In 1922-45 he served periodically as a Conservative Member of Parliament. Peppery and contentious, he engaged in numerous arguments, which in 1943 resulted in fisticuffs with another MP. Both apologized the next day, but in America the Los Angeles Times headlined, “England Grins as Members of Commons Trade Punches.”

Churchill went to France in mid-June 1944. Cunningham-Reid complained: “The Prime Minister should not risk his life unnecessarily…. Was there ever such a good target as the one presented by our not inconspicuous Prime Minister perched up high on a Jeep? Nobody could have mistaken or missed that massive figure, complete with cigar to identify him…. Subsequently, the Prime Minister, General Montgomery, Field-Marshal Smuts, General Sir Alan Brooke, and, in all probability, the Supreme Commander [Eisenhower] and other key men got into a huddle…. The Minister of Information will, no doubt, correct me if that is not so.”

* * *

The Minister of Information was Brendan Bracken, who did indeed respond. In a brilliant few minutes, Bracken delivered a superb defense of Churchill’s visits to the front. Because it has not been published, even in The Churchill Documents, we thought it worth bringing to the attention of readers. Here is an extract:

I think it is a good thing for prime ministers that they should go into the front line and see the troops, and the soldiers, who matter most, like to see them. I daresay some hon. Members of this House remember that, in the last war, some suggestions were made by timid French Ministers to M. Clemenceau that, owing to the Germans having a big gun that shelled Paris, they should leave that city for a safer place. They discovered for the first time that the old Tiger was amenable. He said, “Yes, let the Government leave Paris. Let it go to the front.” It was a very sound piece of advice. If men like Clemenceau lived in this generation, France would not be in its present predicament.

Click here for Bracken’s complete speech.

“Churchill’s Secret“: good film portrayal of how Bracken and two other Press Barons dekated the news about Churchill’s 1953 stroke.

Excerpted and condensed from “Great Contemporaries: Hilaire Belloc,” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the full article click here.

_______________

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc

(1870-1953)—writer, sailor, poet, friend of Churchill—helped fuel Churchill’s passion for the survival of free government. Anti-statist, anti-collectivist and anti-establishment, he deplored the servitude of the industrial wage-earner and longed to reconcile his two great loves, “the soil of England and the Catholic faith.”

Born in France but educated at Birmingham and Oxford, he served with the French Artillery before becoming a naturalized British subject in 1902. Between 1906 and 1910 he was Churchill’s Parliamentary colleague.

* * *

French though he was, Belloc looked more like John Bull than anyone: “He wore a stand-up collar several sizes too large for him [and] was big and stocky and red of face.” Churchill’s nephew John Spencer-Churchill described him as “plump and cherub-like…. He used to take me sailing. We would start early in the morning, chug down the narrow Sussex lanes in his vintage Ford, lustily singing shocking French songs, and board his boat at Arundel.…Belloc was a devout Catholic, and undoubtedly his intellectual approach to the Catholic religion influenced my own interpretation of it in later years.”

Although English by choice, Belloc shared Churchill’s reverence for France. A friend remembered an Oxford Union debate in 1893. The motion was “That at the present juncture the advent of a Dictator would be a blessing to the French people.” Belloc replied with “passionate eloquence…reminding us of all that France had meant to human thought and human freedom, of how treacherously she had been forced into war in 1870 and how ruthlessly dismembered. It was one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard…. Belloc’s eloquence prevailed and the motion was defeated.”

Incandescent Brilliance

His book, The Servile State, championed “Distributism,“ a combination of apparent opposites. At the same time it involved broad land distribution, corporate organization of society and workers’ control of the means of production. It also emphasized decentralization of power, Jeffersonian democracy, and private property. Like Churchill, Belloc had traveled in America. It is odd that he never saw aspects of the USA as close to his vision.

Belloc shared Churchill’s interest in John Churchill First Duke of Marlborough. But Churchill thought Marlborough’s victories had contributed to British glory. Belloc disagreed, saying they had only entrenched the class system and rule by elites. In stimulating sessions at Chartwell they hashed over their differences. Few English writers, thought Brendan Bracken, “could hold a candle to Belloc, in his day, for wit, hard logic and felicity of phrasing.”

What a joy to have been to be present at such conversations! “Wit, charm, genius for friendship, conversational brilliance, all these are transitory qualities not easily captured,” wrote John Charmley.  “Bob Boothby recalled a lunch with Alfred Duff Cooper and Belloc when ‘the food was excellent, the claret superb,’ where he would never again ‘hope to listen to talk of such incandescent brilliance.'” Belloc started to recite some of his own poems, but laughed so much that Duff had to finish them…. A unique experience, not repeated.

World War II

Churchill was a fiftyish 65 when the next German war came. Belloc was an aging 69, and in no way ready for it. Uniquely and sadly, he had lost his first son in World War I, his second in World War II. He did not like the modern world. Still less he liked the horrific, blacked-out streets of shattered London. The England of his time was far away. He flourished only there. Churchill offered him a high honor in the name of the King, in the twilight of Belloc’s life. Belloc turned him down courteously.

Old and dispirited, Belloc had become pessimistic about the future. An admirer noted lines of his (often repeated by William F. Buckley, Jr. in morose moments). They might describe everyone you met at your last cocktail party….

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

Churchill’s Tribute to Belloc

Nearing his eighty-third birthday, Belloc was dozing before the fire in his daughter’s home when he fell into the flames. Badly burned, he died in hospital on 16 July 1953. The mourners were few. Churchill was one of them.

After the war Hatch Mansfield, Churchill’s wine merchants, bought up all the ’28 and ’34 Pol Roger champagne in France for Churchill’s exclusive consumption. In 1954, they investigated Chartwell’s cellar and pronounced it a “shambles.” Accordingly, Ralph Mansfield threw out the dross and instituted a cellar book. It was scarcely necessary. The cellar was almost all Pol Roger, vintage Hine and Johnny Walker scotch.

One set of bottles, which Mansfield pronounced “awful,” was designated for the rubbish bin, but Sir Winston intervened. They contained a white burgundy which Churchill had personally bottled with Belloc.

Don’t touch them, declared Sir Winston Churchill. Let them rest.

Fateful Questions, September 1943-April 1944, nineteenth of a projected twenty-three document volumes in the official biography, Winston S. Churchill, is reviewed by historian Andrew Roberts in Commentary. 

These volumes comprise “every important document of any kind that concerns Churchill.” The present volume sets the size record. Fateful Questions is 2,752 pages long, representing an average of more than eleven pages per day. Yet at $60, it is a tremendous bargain. Order your copy from the Hillsdale College Bookstore.

Here is an excerpt from my account, “Fresh History,” which can be read in its entirety at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

Questions: Science

A criticism frequently leveled at Churchill is that he was so fixed on defeating Hitler that he never looked ahead—to the problems of the peace as well as the likelihood of a powerful, proselytizing Soviet Union. Proof that Churchill recognized the Soviet danger is well documented in this book; he also looked toward the years of peace, and the potential of science for good or ill. (Professor A.V. Hill, who married a sister of John Maynard Keynes, was Independent MP for Cambridge University, 1940-45.)

30 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Professor A. V. Hill. (Churchill papers, 20/94).

Dear Professor Hill, I am very glad to have the opportunity to send through you my greetings and good wishes to Indian men of science and especially to the six Indian Fellows of the Royal Society, of which I am honoured to be myself a Fellow.

It is the great tragedy of our time that the fruits of science should by a monstrous perversion have been turned on so vast a scale to evil ends. But that is no fault of science. Science has given to this generation the means of unlimited disaster or of unlimited progress. When this war is won we shall have averted disaster. There will remain the greater task of directing knowledge lastingly towards the purposes of peace and human good. In this task the scientists of the world, united by the bond of a single purpose which overrides all bounds of race and language, can play a leading and inspiring part.

Questions: Recrimination vs. Magnanimity

Churchill famously deplored blaming British and French leaders for mistakes in the years leading up to the Second World War: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present,” he declared after France fell in June 1940,“we shall find that we have lost the future.” He made good that magnanimous philosophy on many occasions—as these excerpts suggest, concerning Prime Minister Chamberlain and French General Georges. (Brendan Bracken was Minister of Information.)

4 October 1945. Winston S. Churchill to Brendan Bracken: Prime Minister’s Personal Minute M.638/3  (Churchill papers, 20/104)

In the film “The Nazis Strike” I must ask that the section showing Mr. Chamberlain’s arrival at Heston Airfield after Munich, and also the shot of his going fishing with a reference to the “tired old man of Munich” should be cut out, otherwise I could not be associated with the series. The story would run quite well from the signature at Munich to the meeting in Birmingham where Mr. Chamberlain made his declaration that we would support Poland, &c.

*****

19 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Alfred Duff Cooper: excerpt.  (Churchill papers, 20/94)

Personal and Secret: With regard to General Georges. In my opinion he is a very fine, honourable Frenchman. For him I feel a sentiment of friendship which started to grow when we made our tour of the Rhine front together a month before the War. I do not think he was to blame for the catastrophe, except that he ought to have been very much stronger in demanding the retirement of Gamelin at the outbreak of war. Much of his strength and energy was expended in opposing Gamelin, but the inherent rottenness of the French fighting machine and Government would have denied victory to any General.

Moreover, Georges is crippled from wounds received both in the late War and the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia. I do not forget, though this is a point which should not be mentioned to the French, that when Petain and Weygand at Briand in May 1940 were clamouring for our last reserves and resources, including the last Fighter Squadrons, well knowing that the battle was lost and that they meant to give in, it was Georges who informed our Military Liaison Officer that the French Government would ask for an armistice and that we should take our steps accordingly.

Questions: The Second Front

The greatest Anglo-American-Soviet strategy questions were over how much to throttle back the campaign in Italy (which had begun in September 1943) in support of “Operation Overlord,” the invasion of France, which all three allies agreed was the most direct route to Berlin and must go forward in 1944. Though this subject dominates our volume, these documents frame the debate. Among other things, they  illustrate that Churchill was not the only British leader who fumed over lost opportunities in Italy.

25 October 1943. General Sir Alan Brooke: diary. (“War Diaries, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke,” page 56)

It is becoming more and more evident that our operations in Italy are coming to a standstill and that owing to lack of resources we shall not only come to a standstill, but also find ourselves in a very dangerous position unless the Russians go on from one success to another. Our build up in Italy is much slower than the German, and far slower than I had expected. We shall have an almighty row with the Americans who have put us in this position with their insistence to abandon the Mediterranean operations for the very problematical cross Channel operations. We are now beginning to see the full beauty of the Marshall strategy! It is quite heartbreaking when we see what we might have done this year if our strategy had not been distorted by the Americans.

*****

26 October 1943. Lord Moran: diary. (“Winston Churchill, the Struggle for Survival,” pages 130–31)

The PM is already beginning to have his own doubts and hesitations….His face was glum, his jaw set, misgivings filled his mind. “Stalin seems obsessed by this bloody Second Front,” he muttered angrily. “I can be obstinate too.” He jumped out of bed and began pacing up and down. “Damn the fellow,” he said under his breath. And then he rang for a secretary. When he began dictating a telegram to the Foreign Secretary I got up to leave the room. “No, Charles, don’t go. This,” grumbled the PM, “is what comes of a lawyer’s agreement to attack on a fixed date without regard to the ever-changing fortunes of war.”

Alex’s [Field Marshal Alexander] fears had upset the PM. His mind was now made up. He turned to the secretary, who held her pencil ready. “I will not allow the great and fruitful campaign in Italy to be cast away and end in a frightful disaster, for the sake of crossing the Channel in May. The battle must be nourished and fought out until it is won. Molotov must be warned,” the PM continued striding to the door and back, “that the assurances I gave to Stalin about ‘Overlord’ in May are subject to the exigencies of the battle in Italy. Eisenhower and Alex must have what they need to win the battle, no matter what effect is produced on subsequent operations. Stalin ought to be told bluntly that ‘Overlord’ might have to be postponed.”

*****

29 October 1943. Winston S. Churchill to Anthony Eden. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1764/3 (Churchill papers, 20/122)

Most Immediate. Most Secret and Personal. There is of course no question of abandoning “Overlord” which will remain our principal operation for 1944. The retention of landing-craft in the Mediterranean in order not to lose the battle of Rome may cause a slight delay, perhaps till July, as the smaller class of landing-craft cannot cross the Bay of Biscay in the winter months and would have to make the passage in the Spring. The delay would however mean that the blow when struck would be with somewhat heavier forces, and also that the full bombing effort on Germany would not be damped down so soon. We are also ready at any time to push across and profit by a German collapse. These arguments may be of use to you in discussion.

 *****

30 November 1943. Winston S. Churchill and Josef Stalin: notes of a conversation, Soviet Embassy, Teheran (Cabinet papers, 120/113)

Most Secret. The Prime Minister said that he was half American and he had a great affection for the American people. What he was going to say was not to be understood as anything disparaging of the Americans and he would be perfectly loyal towards them, but there were things which it was better to say between two persons.

We had a preponderance of troops over the Americans in the Mediterranean. There were three to four times more British troops than American there. That is why he was anxious that the troops in the Mediterranean should not be hamstrung if it could be avoided, and he wanted to use them all the time. In Italy there were some 13 to 14 divisions of which 9 or 10 were British. There were two armies, the 5th Anglo-American Army, and the 8th Army, which was entirely British. The choice had been represented as keeping to the date of “Overlord” or pressing on with the operations in the Mediterranean. But that was not the whole story.

*

The Americans wanted him to attack, to undertake an amphibious operation in the Bay of Bengal against the Japanese in March. He was not keen about it. If we had in the Mediterranean the landing craft needed for the Bay of Bengal, we would have enough to do all we wanted in the Mediterranean and still be able to keep to an early date for “Overlord.”

It was not a choice between the Mediterranean and the date of “Overlord,” but between the Bay of Bengal and the date of “Overlord.” He thought we would have all we wanted in the way of landing craft. However, the Americans had pinned us down to a date for “Overlord” and operations in the Mediterranean had suffered in the last two months. Our army was somewhat disheartened by the removal of the 7 divisions. We had sent home our 3 divisions and the Americans were sending theirs, all in preparation for “Overlord.” That was the reason for not taking full advantage with the Italian collapse. But it also proved the earnestness of our preparations for “Overlord.”

 

Questions: Bombing Civilians

Churchill’s questioning of Allied “carpet bombing” is well established in this volume. Churchill was concerned over bombing civilians in the forthcoming invasion of France. Here he voices his worries to the Supreme Commander; in the event, Eisenhower convinced him that certain French casualties would have to be expected.

3 April 1944. Winston S. Churchill to General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Churchill papers, 20/137)

Top Secret. Personal and Private. My dear General, The Cabinet today took rather a grave and on the whole an adverse view of the proposal to bomb so many French railway centres, in view of the fact that scores of thousands of French civilians, men, women, and children, would lose their lives or be injured. Considering that they are all our friends, this might be held to be an act of very great severity, bringing much hatred on the Allied Air Forces. It was decided that the Defence Committee should consider the matter during this week, and that thereafter the Foreign Office should address the State Department and I should myself send a personal telegram to the President.

The argument for concentration on these particular targets is very nicely balanced on military grounds. I myself have not heard the arguments which have led to the present proposal. The advantage to enemy propaganda seem to me to be very great, especially as this would not be in the heat of battle but a long time before. Would it not also be necessary to consult General de Gaulle and the French National Committee of Liberation? There were many other arguments that were mentioned, and I thought I ought to let you know at this stage how the proposal was viewed.

Questions in the House

Despite his burdens, Churchill routinely faced Questions in the House of Commons. He did so with relish and skill. From many questions and answers, this exchange on “Basic English” provides an example.

Willie Gallacher, a frequent critic, was Communist MP for West Fife, Scotland. Henry Wedderburn, Conservative MP for Renfrew, was jibing Churchill over one of his invented words, “triphibian,” referring to British prowess on land, on sea and in the air. The Prime Minister responded with one of his favorite archaic words, “purblind”….

4 November 1943. House of Commons: Questions

Sir Leonard Lyle asked the Prime Minister when the Committee of Ministers set up to study and report upon Basic English are expected to reach their conclusion?

The Prime Minister: I hope to receive the recommendations of this Committee before very long.

Sir Lonard Lyle: When we do get this Report will the BBC be asked to adopt it, or will they still continue to use Basic BBC?

The Prime Minister: Basic English is not intended for use among English-speaking people but to enable a much larger body of people who do not have the good fortune to know the English language to participate more easily in our society.

Mr. Gallacher: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider introducing Basic Scottish?

Mr. Wedderburn: Does Basic English include the word “triphibious”?

The Prime Minister: I have tried to explain that people are quite purblind who discuss this matter as if Basic English were a substitute for the English language.

 

Questions: Will he die when it’s over?

Little escaped the wide net of Sir Martin Gilbert, who assembled a virtual day-by-day record of Churchill’s life. From here the Hillsdale team has assembled them in readable form, attaching a host of footnotes and cross references. Occasionally we include published recollections. Here is one by Lady Diana Cooper: a startling and grim prediction she heard from Clementine Churchill. Fortuitously, in this case, Clementine was wrong.

 12 January 1944. Mary Soames: recollection. (‘Clementine Churchill’, page 350)

Diana Cooper recounted a “curious calm and sad conversation” with Clementine, after a dinner in Marrakesh:

“I was talking about postwar days and proposed that instead of a grateful country building Winston another Blenheim, they should give him an endowed manor house with acres for a farm and gardens to build and paint in. Clemmie very calmly said: “I never think of after the war. You see, I think Winston will die when it’s over.”

She said this so objectively that I could not bring myself to say the usual “What nonsense!” but tried something about it was no use relying on death; people lived to ninety or might easily, in our lives, die that day…. But she seemed quite certain and quite resigned to his not surviving long into peace. “You see, he’s seventy and I’m sixty and we’re putting all we have into this war, and it will take all we have.”  It was touching and noble.

Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

PBS and ITV have succeeded where many failed. They offer a Churchill documentary with a minimum of dramatic license, reasonably faithful to history (as much as we know of it). Churchill’s Secret limns the pathos, humor, hope and trauma of a little-known episode: Churchill’s stroke on 23 June 1953, and his miraculous recovery. For weeks afterward, his faithful lieutenants in secret ran the government. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, the film is worth seeing, and worth going to see.

Sadness attends our mortality, death comes to us all. Sir Winston teetered in 1953; only his inner circle knew how close he had come. The “secret” has been public now for fifty years, since publication of his doctor’s diaries in 1966. But at the time it was a secret. Not a word leaked, thanks to family, staff, and three press barons—Beaverbrook, Bracken and Camrose. Private secretary John Colville wrote: “They achieved the all but incredible, and in peace-time possibly unique, success of gagging Fleet Street, something they would have done for nobody but Churchill.”

Secret Pathos

Exactly how ill the Prime Minister really was I leave to experts. At the time, many close to him thought he would die. Colville wrote: “he went downhill badly, losing the use of his left arm and left leg.” In the film Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran (Bill Paterson), summoned to Downing Street, finds the PM singing incoherently: “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” Great heavens, I thought, they are going to link this to Marigold….

“Bubbles” was the favorite song of a 2 1/2-year-old daughter who died in 1921. Rarely mentioned, Marigold was buried in a corner of their hearts. With poignant flashbacks, the film unfolds their memories of the loss they still deeply felt. In a moving scene, Clementine tearfully recounts Marigold’s story to her husband’s nurse. As a device for portraying her and Winston’s humanity, this is a touch of genius.

The nurse, Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) is the film’s only fictional character. She is meant to represent “the help”—too numerous to catalogue in the space of a short film. Millie has a Yorkshire accent but her father, she tells Churchill, was Welsh: “and no fan of yours.” (WSC once allowed deployment of troops during the Welsh miners strike in 1910.) Devoted to his recovery, but always her own woman, Millie sees the job through. Confronting all challengers, she’s a perfect foil for Churchill, his wife, and their sometimes obstreperous family.

Expert Casting

Critics who say PBS dotes on British drama forget that UK theatre offers unequalled depths of talent. There are so many exceptional actors that casting lookalikes for a historical film is a relative breeze. In Churchill’s Secret, the casting is superb.

Michael Gambon is an excellent Churchill: more drawn, less cherubic, but perfect in his mannerisms and bearing. Lindsay Duncan as Clementine is almost up to the standard set by Vanessa Redgrave, brilliant alongside Albert Finney’s Churchill in “The Gathering Storm” (2002)—and far superior to Sian Phillips, the great Robert Hardy’s opposite number in “The Wilderness Years” (1981).

Supporting actors are outstanding. Colville (Patrick Kennedy) and Christopher Soames (Christian McKay)—who bore the burden of state in those anxious days—could not be more lifelike. R.A. “Rab” Butler (Chris Larkin)—a Chamberlainite who had never liked and hoped to replace Churchill, whom he had hoped would retire since 1945—is the same weak reed he was in life. “I hope you don’t think of me as an enemy,” says Rab to a rapidly recovering Churchill in August. The Prime Minister replies: “I don’t think of you at all, Rab.” 

The portrayal of the Churchill children, boozing and bickering (correctly excepting Mary), is over-emphasized. These scenes are admittedly fiction. No one alive knows what really happened at Chartwell in those secret weeks. The family and staff I talked to never mentioned rows during those weeks. The film strives however to represent how the three elder children must have felt, and certainly acted, at one time or another. They had grown up under a great shadow in trying times. As Moran (perhaps wise before the fact) is made to remark: “There’s a price to pay for greatness, but the great seldom pay it themselves.” 

What Good’s a Constitution?

More time could have been spent on how Colville and Soames held the fort while the boss recovered.  Churchill once wrote a famous article, “What Good’s a Constitution?” In 1953, they must have asked themselves that question.

Today it would be impossible to keep a lid on such a secret. What they did might indeed be thought unconstitutional. Yet the nation owed a debt to those responsible lieutenants, who acted only when they knew the PM would approve. As Colville remembered:

…the administration continued to function as if he were in full control. We realised that however well we knew his policy and the way his thoughts were likely to move. We had to be careful not to allow our own judgment to be given Prime Ministerial effect. To have done so, as we could without too great difficulty, would have been a constitutional outrage. It was an extraordinary, indeed perhaps an unprecedented, situation….Before the end of July the Prime Minister was sufficiently restored to take an intelligent interest in affairs of state and express his own decisive views. Christopher and I then returned to the fringes of power, having for a time been drawn perilously close to the centre.

K.B.O.

While the testimony of insiders certainly suggests a close call, many were confident that Churchill would recover. The morning after the stroke, wrote Mary Soames, he “amazingly presided at a Cabinet meeting, where none of his colleagues thought anything was amiss.” She quoted Harold Macmillan: “I certainly noticed nothing beyond the fact that he was very white. He spoke little, but quite distinctly.” By the time he arrived at Chartwell on the 25th, he was at rock bottom. Yet a month later he was well enough to be driven the three-hour journey to Chequers, the PM’s official country house, and was resuming his literary and political work.

Churchill’s Secret is replete with Sir Winston’s famous admonition in the face of misfortune, K.B.O. (Keep Buggering On.) Amid growing calls for his retirement, he was determined to stay—long enough at least for one more try at his final goal: a permanent peace. The film is not clear about how much time elapsed between the stroke and the “test” Churchill set for himself. That was the Conservative Party Conference at Margate. There on October 10th he would have to make a major, fifty-minute speech. It was do or die: We are rushed through the weeks to Margate, actually almost four months after he was stricken.

Of course he brought the house down. Jock Colville noted: “He had been nervous of the ordeal: his first public appearance since his stroke and a fifty-minute speech at that; but personally I had no fears as he always rises to occasions. In the event one could see but little difference, as far as his oratory went, since before his illness.”

“See them off, Winston”

Some observers have faulted the portrayal of Clementine in Churchill’s Secret—not for Lindsay Duncan’s skillful acting, but for the words the script has her say. To some she seems a whiny, self-centered neurotic, the very picture given in recent biography.

I honestly didn’t have that impression. At Margate Clementine tells him firmly: “See them off, Winston.” Their daughter told me Clementine had thought in June that his life was ending. The film suggests that Lady Churchill had many regrets; and she did. She genuinely believed—and had for a long time—that he had stayed too long. “Clementine bore the brunt of all this,” Mary wrote, “and her anxiety concerning his political intentions was great.”

The film establishes a reasonably accurate picture of Lady Churchill. “None of us would be here without him,” one of his children says, “And he wouldn’t be here without you.” Winston himself tells her: “I shall face anything with you, the Tories, the Russians—even death itself.”

Unlike certain frothy popular accounts, Churchill’s Secret makes it clear that come what may, Clementine was the rock on which he depended. As he said of her on many occasions: “Here firm, though all be drifting.”

I reviewed the 1940-45 visitors books at Chequers. I was struck by how often Lord Cherwell (Frederick Lindemann) was there—far more than family and staff. He visited more than Bracken and Beaverbrook, or the Chiefs of Staff. What do you make of him? What’s best to read on him? —A.R., London

Most frequent visitor

After the death of the F.E. Smith, the first Lord Birkenhead, Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) was probably Churchill’s closest friend. His signature is also the most frequent in the visitors book at Chartwell, where it appears 86 times, more than anyone else (Brendan Bracken only 31, although visitors usually signed only when staying overnight, and Bracken frequently returned to London). He was invaluable to Churchill in his ability to reduce complicated scientific principles and theories to brief layman terms everyone could understand.