Tag: Chartwell

Chartwell and Churchill, 1955

Chartwell and Churchill, 1955

Chartwell, 1955— Here is one of the finest—as it is the most revealing—portraits of Churchill at Chartwell we can read, by the Oxford his­to­ri­an A.L. Rowse, who spent a mem­o­rable day at Churchill’s home.

It gives an insight­ful view of Churchill and Chartwell ten years after World War II, not with­out pathos and sad­ness, for even now he was begin­ning to reflect that he had “achieved a great deal, only to achieve noth­ing in the end”: a thought how­ev­er incon­ceiv­able in his case, but worth pon­der­ing by us all. Read full arti­cle at Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

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Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian

Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian

Remem­ber­ing Grace: 1908-2002

Beloved by all Churchills, Grace Ham­blin died at her home in West­er­ham, Kent, aged 94. Aware she was ail­ing, I had just sent her some lit­tle thing in the post; Car­ole Ken­wright at Chartwell said it arrived in time, and she was able to read from it for a few minutes.

Grace Ham­blin was the longest serv­ing and most loy­al­ly devot­ed of Churchill’s inner cir­cle, arriv­ing at Chartwell in 1932 as an assis­tant to then-prin­ci­pal pri­vate sec­re­tary Vio­let Pear­man. She spent vir­tu­al­ly her entire career as pri­vate sec­re­tary, first to Win­ston and from 1939 to Clemen­tine. In 1966 she became the first Admin­is­tra­tor of Chartwell, serv­ing through 1973. In…

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Churchill and Professor Lindemann, Lord Cherwell

Churchill and Professor Lindemann, Lord Cherwell

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).…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

con­tin­ued from part 3…

Part 4: “Being Shout­ed At”

“I think being shout­ed at was one of the worst things to get over,” said Grace Ham­blin, sec­re­tary to Win­ston and then Clemen­tine Churchill from 1932, typ­i­cal of the com­mon Ken­tish folk who loved them. “I’d come from a very qui­et fam­i­ly and I’d nev­er been shout­ed at in my life. But I had to learn it, in time.”

In the midst of dic­ta­tion one day, Grace told me, Churchill com­mand­ed: “Fetch me Klop!” Klop? she thought—what could it mean?

Final­ly, proud­ly, she strug­gled in with Onno Klopp‘s 14 giant vol­umes, Der Fall des Haus­es Stu­art. “Jesus…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (2)

Churchill’s Common Touch (2)

Con­tin­ued from Part I…

Part 2: Alice Bateman

Two oth­er West­er­ham com­mon folk who ben­e­fit­ted from Churchill’s char­ac­ter­is­tic kind­li­ness were Tom and Alice Bate­man, farm­ers who scratched out a liv­ing near Chartwell. Per­cy Reid, a stringer for a Lon­don news­pa­per, who kept an eye on Chartwell doings after World War II, wrote charm­ing­ly of a cat­tle sale in his book, Churchill: Towns­man of West­er­ham (Folke­stone: Regency, 1969):

Capt. and Mrs. [Mary Churchill] Soames—who then lived at Chartwell Farm—were at the sale most of the time and [their chil­dren] Nicholas and Emma were also tak­ing a child’s inter­est in what was going on.…

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Churchill’s Common Touch (1)

Churchill’s Common Touch (1)

Part 1: Mr & Mrs Don­key Jack

A recent book by a dis­tin­guished his­to­ri­an sug­gests that Win­ston Churchill dis­dained com­mon peo­ple. It cites anoth­er Prime Min­is­ter, H.H. Asquith, dur­ing World War I, pro­vid­ing a tow to a bro­ken-down motorist and giv­ing two chil­dren a lift in his car. The writer adds: “It is hard to imag­ine Win­ston Churchill behav­ing in such a fashion.”

It is not hard at all. In fact, Churchill did fre­quent kind things for ordi­nary peo­ple he encoun­tered, pri­vate­ly and with­out fan­fare. We know about them only through his pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence, thanks to the offi­cial biog­ra­phy, Mar­tin Gilbert, or the tes­ti­mo­ny of observers.…

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Lady Soames Diaries

Lady Soames Diaries

The diaries of Churchill’s youngest and only liv­ing daugh­ter, Mary Soames, are to be pub­lished on her 89th birth­day, Sep­tem­ber 15th, by Dou­ble­day UK, and is avail­able for ship­ment world­wide from Ama­zon UK. An e-book will also be avail­able. Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tion will be in May 2012 by Ran­dom House in New York. The Ama­zon UK price is £16.50 ($26.50) and air­mail ship­ment to the USA costs about £7 ($11).

Much younger than her sib­lings, Mary had an idyl­lic youth, grow­ing up at Chartwell, her father’s beloved Ken­tish home, but always in the back­ground was his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the grow­ing threat of Hitler, and in 1939 the war arrived, and with it Mary’s life was dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered.…

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Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

Dreyfus and Churchill: Don’t display autographed photos

The sig­na­ture on a  fan­tas­tic auto­graphed pho­to of Win­ston Churchill at Chartwell, which a friend framed and kept on his wall and hid from the light, has fad­ed to noth­ing­ness. Even ambi­ent room light will fade ancient inks, and there is noth­ing to be done.

Back when I was senior edi­tor at Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly, I res­cued a won­der­ful big 3×2-foot pho­to of the great Grand Prix cham­pi­on René Drey­fus (the world’s last great French­man), and his Type 35 Bugat­ti, from the dust­bin and brought it over to Le Chante­clair, his won­der­ful French restau­rant on 49th Street, Man­hat­tan, for him to inscribe to me.…

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Black Swans Return to Chartwell

Black Swans Return to Chartwell

 

“All the black swans are mat­ing, not only the father and moth­er, but both broth­ers and both sis­ters have paired off. The Ptole­mys always did this and Cleopa­tra was the result. At any rate I have not thought it my duty to inter­fere.”  —Churchill to his wife, Chartwell, 21 Jan­u­ary 1935

Sev­en­ty-five years ago Lady Diana Coop­er observed that Chartwell’s birds “con­sist of five fool­ish geese, five furi­ous black swans, two rud­dy shel­drakes, two white swans—Mr. Juno and Mrs. Jupiter, so called because they got the sex­es wrong to begin with, two Cana­di­an geese (‘Lord and Lady Beaver­brook’) and some mis­cel­la­neous ducks.”…

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