Q: Origins of the Lalique rooster

Many visitors to Chartwell admire the René Lalique crystal cockerel, which resides in the drawing room. It belonged to Clementine Churchill from the 1940s.

The story of its provenance is very strong, since it was a personal gift from Charles de Gaulle, likely in the Second World War era. What little we know is based on Celia Sandys’ description (in Churchill’s Little Redhead). There doesn’t appear as yet to be any textual record in the Cambridge Archives, and I’ve not yet found it mentioned elsewhere in print. Were there any other mentions? —Eugene McConlough, England (Mr. McConlough is a Chartwell docent)

A: De Gaulle’s apologia

René Jules Lalique (1860-1945) was a French jeweler known for his crystal and glass art, from diminutive perfume bottles to chandeliers. Uniquely, Lalique glass sculpture also served as motorcar bonnet mascots (hood ornaments).

As an automotive writer in another life, I am familiar with Lalique’s work on classic luxury cars of the Twenties and Thirties. Of course in that application, it usually comprises only the rooster’s head. The Lalique cockerel at Chartwell is the whole bird—large, complete, and unusually posed with his feathers folded.

The cockerel is the symbol of France—thus often Lalique’s subject. There is no doubt, as you say, that Chartwell’s was a gift to Clementine Churchill from Charles de Gaulle. Katherine Carter, the National Trust administrator, kindly provided the photo above, showing its location in the drawing room.

Celia Sandys, and the guidebook Churchill at Chartwell by Robin Fedden, both mention the Lalique bird. But there another important reference that sheds light on the loyalty and character of Clementine Churchill.

Clementine Churchill, 1979

According to Lady Churchill’s daughter and biographer, the Lalique cockerel symbolized Gaulle’s regard for Clementine. This blossomed after a wartime argument. At Winston Churchill’s personal decision, Britain destroyed large elements of the French fleet at Mers el-Kebir. The object was to prevent their falling into German hands. Mary Soames writes:

On 3rd July [1940],  the Royal Navy opened fire on the French Fleet; three battleships were destroyed, with the loss of 1300 lives, and the remaining French ships at Oran and in other North African ports were either destroyed or immobilised.

It must have been just at the time of these searing events—the painfulness of which no one felt more keenly than Winston himself—that General de Gaulle lunched at Downing Street. The conversation turned to the future of the French Fleet, and Clementine said how ardently she hoped that many of its ships and crews would carry on the fight with us.

To this the General curtly replied that, in his view, what would really give the French Fleet satisfaction would be to turn their guns “On you!” (meaning the British).

Clementine from the first had liked and respected this dour man, but she found this remark too much to bear and, rounding on him, she rebuked him soundly, in her perfect, rather formal French, for uttering words and sentiments that ill became either an ally or a guest in this country.

“Certain things a woman can say…”

From the other side of the table Winston sensed that something had gone amiss and, in a conciliatory tone, said to the General: “You must forgive my wife. Elle parle trop bien le français [She speaks French too well].”

Clementine interrupted him, and said in French: “No, Winston, it is because there are certain things that a woman can say to a man which a man cannot say, and I am saying them to you—General de Gaulle!”

After this verbal fracas, the General was much upset, and apologised profusely; and the next day he sent a huge basket of flowers for Clementine. Later on in the war he was to give her a beautiful Lalique cock—the emblem of France—which she greatly treasured.

“The Constable of France”

Surely whenever Churchill looked upon the glass bird, he must have remembered his many ups and downs with the great Frenchman. Yet their mutual respect survived. WSC wrote memorably in his war memoirs:

On the afternoon of June 16 [1940] M. Monnet and General de Gaulle visited me in the Cabinet Room…. [Monnet] turned to our sending all our remaining fighter air squadrons to share in the final battle in France, which was of course already over…. But I could not do anything to oblige him in this field.

My two French visitors then got up and moved towards the door, Monnet leading. As they reached it, de Gaulle, who had hitherto scarcely uttered a single word, turned back, and, taking two or three paces towards me, said in English: “I think you are quite right.”

Under an impassive, imperturbable demeanour he seemed to me to have a remarkable capacity for feeling pain. I preserved the impression, in contact with this very tall, phlegmatic man: “Here is the Constable of France.”

Related articles

Diana Cooper, “Duckling, Wormwood and the War,” 2024.

“Dieu Protège La France,” 2015.

“Churchill’s War Memoirs: Aside from the Story, Simply Great Writing,” 2023.

”Casablanca, Admiral Darlan, and Rick’s Letters of Transit,” 2021.

“Churchill on Joan of Arc: Agent of Brexit? Maybe Not,” 2020.

“Origins of the de Gaulle Quote, “I’ll Kiss Him on All Four Cheeks,” 2019.

“Churchill’s Christmas” is excerpted from a two-part article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the complete text with footnotes, please click here. To Churchillian colleagues, and those who have encouraged and supported our Churchill work at Hillsdale College so many years: thank-you for being our friends.

Washington, 24 December 1941

“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter… Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world. And so, in God’s mercy, a Happy Christmas to you all.”  —WSC

“My juvenile friends…”

Churchill’s ninety Christmases saw family joy interspersed with loneliness and separation, owed to a stern sense of duty. The festival was not always a joyous time, but it always illustrated Churchill’s sensitive, caring nature.

Young Winston wrote his first letter in January 1882. He was seven, celebrating Christmas at Blenheim, minus his parents: “My dear Mamma, I hope you are quite well. I thank you very very much for the beautiful presents those Soldiers and Flags and Castle they are so nice it was so kind of you and dear Papa I send you my love and a great many kisses.”

When he was home, he was a handful. Reports of his mother’s disinterest are exaggerated. Lady Randolph was often absorbed in the lives of her two sons, if sometimes exasperated. In 1891 his parents planned to send him to France to polish his French over the holidays. Winston erupted: “I am forced to go to people who bore me excessively…. I should like to know if Papa was asked to ‘give up his holidays’ when he was at Eton.”

His mother angrily returned his letter unread, only to reap the whirlwind: Never, he replied, would he write her a letter of any length, “as in my letter’s length I can perceive a reason for your not reading it….I expect you were too busy with your parties and arrangements for Christmas.”

“Are gentlemen all fox hunting?”

Childhood frustrations were forgotten after his father’s untimely death in 1895. Now his mother was his ardent facilitator. As she aged her feelings deepened, along with her desire to have her sons with her at Christmas. Many times this was not to be. Winston was a soldier and war correspondent now, consumed by duty and ambition.

In 1899 in South Africa, he escaped from a Boer prison camp. He spent Christmas Eve at British Commander General Buller’s headquarters in Chieveley. He awoke Christmas day in a hut a few hundred yards from where he had been captured. His thoughts were not of good will toward men.

Cabling a column to the Morning Post, he urged the dispatch of more troops to the Boer War: “More irregular corps are wanted. Are the gentlemen of England all fox hunting? Why not an English Light Horse? For the sake of our manhood, our devoted colonists, and our dead soldiers, we must persevere with the war.”

This was not received with pleasure back home. He recalled later that a London acquaintance cabled: “Best friends here hope you won’t go making further ass of yourself.”

But two years later, on an extensive lecture tour of North America, his situation had improved:  “I have promised to eat Christmas dinner with Lord Minto, Governor General of Canada, at Ottawa.”

“There’s a European in the bath”

Winston did like to move around. At Christmas 1907, now Undersecretary for the Colonies, he was in Khartoum, where he had charged with the 21st Lancers nine years earlier. Now he was making an inspection tour of African colonies. His secretary Eddie Marsh dispatched a servant to prepare him a tub. The man reported, “there’s a European in the bath.” [7] Churchill had got there first. He usually did.

He stayed home more after he married Clementine Hozier in 1908, but never at the expense of official responsibilities, which mushroomed during the First World War. From his post at the front after the Dardanelles debacle in 1915, he managed to secure leave, returning on Christmas Eve.

Christmas as Chartwell

Churchill enjoyed more conventional Christmases in the 1920s, after the war ended. The first venue was Blenheim. After his cousin “Sunny,” the 9th Duke of Marlborough had divorced, the scene shifted to Chartwell, the Churchill home from 1922.

Clementine Churchill, a marvelous hostess, was inevitably the director of events. With the births of Sarah (1918) and Mary (1922) it was a crowded household, and guests were restricted to close family: Winston’s brother Jack and Lady Gwendoline (affectionately nicknamed “Goonie”), their children Johnny and Peregrine and baby Clarissa (who would later marry Anthony Eden).

Sometimes they were joined by Clementine’s sister, the widowed Nellie Romilly, with her two “tiny monsters,” Esmond and Giles. One of the few outsiders was Winston’s scientific adviser, Professor Frederick Lindemann, who would bring along fine cigars and a case of champagne, even though he himself was a teetotaler.

Those were wonderful times, Sarah Churchill remembered. Maryott Whyte, a cousin and Mary’s beloved nanny, played Father Christmas and decorated the Christmas tree: “One day in full array she leant to put one tiny thing right and was nearly burnt to death…. The smaller children, which included me, were not told and somehow Nana as Father Christmas still appeared.”

“Associate and fraternal bottles”

Jack’s son Johnny recalled how his Uncle Winston adored children and gift-giving:

Charades, with its secrecy, dressing up and acting, particularly appealed to him. He was a generous uncle, and we in return always gave him the best presents we could afford, though choosing a gift for someone who already had everything he needed was a worry. I solved it by asking the advice of his butler or his valet….

Some of the presents, such as a pair of braces or a toothbrush, struck me as most dull, but at least I felt they were needed. The wonderful part about it is that my uncle loved, and always has loved, receiving presents. No matter how small and humble the gift, he accepted it with surprise and pleasure. “For me?” he would ask, his eyes lighting up. “How very kind!”

Johnny’s brother Peregrine remembered Christmas 1932, when their uncle created his famous still life, “Bottlescape.” Churchill had received as a present “a huge bottle of brandy, and decided to paint it, accompanied by lesser bottles.

“He sent us children scurrying around Chartwell to find them: ‘Fetch me Associate and Fraternal bottles to form a bodyguard to this majestic container.’”

“This sad crepuscule”

For a man who underwent civilization’s greatest storms, engineering a special Christmas was no problem. One useful prop was his outdoor heated swimming pool.

Lady Diana Cooper referred to “this sad crepuscule” as “Winston’s delightful toy.” Taking her turn in a wintery pool, Lady Diana remembered Churchill summoning Inches the butler:

“Tell Allen to heave a lot more coal on. I want the thing full blast.” Inches returned to say that Allen was out for the day. “Then tell Arthur I want it full blast,” but it was Arthur’s day out as well, so the darling old schoolboy went surreptitiously and stoked it himself for half an hour, coming in on the verge of apoplexy. Again all had to bathe in the afternoon.

More separate Christmases superseded those halcyon days. In 1934, his wife was en route to the South Seas on a voyage with their friends the Moynes; the next two holidays would also be spent apart.

In 1935, Churchill repaired for painting and sunshine to Majorca, remembering to invite Lindemann: “It would be very nice if you could come out…. Clemmie and I will have everything ready for you on the 19th. I am not sure whether she is staying for Christmas or not.” Alas she was not.

Christmas apart

In 1936 Churchill faced his ever-present money problems. “There is no less than £6,000 to pay in income and super tax during 1937,” he wrote his wife. He would sail to America on December 18th for a series of lucrative lectures. “I am disappointed not to be with you all at Christmas: and I don’t know how I shall spend my poor Christmas day [but] I feel that this particular toil is a measure of prudence.”

It didn’t work out. Instead Churchill spent a bleak holiday in the wake of the Abdication of King Edward VIII and mounting European dangers. He pleaded in vain on the King’s behalf; the House hooted him down. Temporarily he lost all the credibility he had gained in the rearmament debate.

Christmas amidst war

Nineteen thirty-nine found Britain at war. The family gathered for the last Christmas of a dying era. Now that he was again First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill’s sense of duty prevailed. “In view of the danger of surprise attacks at a time when the enemy may expect to find us off our guard, there must be no break or holiday period at Christmas or the New Year,” he minuted.

The war clamped many a lid on Christmas celebrations. When Eric Seal, his principal private secretary, asked to arrange a week’s leave for the private office, Churchill replied: “Your minute about Christmas holidays surprises me. No holidays can be given at Christmas, but every endeavour should be made to allow members of the staff to attend Divine Service on Christmas Day, either in the morning or afternoon. My own plans will be to work either here (Chequers) or in London continuously.”

He set off from Downing Street wishing the staff he left behind “a happy Christmas and a frantic New Year.” Private Secretary John Martin wrote:

We had a festive family Christmas…. For lunch we had the largest turkey I have ever seen…. Afterwards we listened to the King’s speech and Vic Oliver, Sarah Churchill’s actor husband, played the piano and Sarah sang. It was the same after dinner.

“Up to the neck”

December 1941 found the United States in the war, “up to the neck and in to the death,” as Churchill put it—and found him, quite naturally, in Washington, for the memorable remarks above.

By the end of 1942 things began to improve. Christmas at Chequers found Churchill in “a grand temper,” secretary Elizabeth Nel remembered. He “left us in peace most of the time and just sat up in bed reading a book and looking like a benevolent old cherub.”

To President Roosevelt he telegraphed: “I passed a happy Christmas in your home and now I send my heartfelt wishes to you and all around you on this brighter day than we have yet seen.” Roosevelt replied, “The old team-work is grand.”

Churchill nearly died of pneumonia in North Africa following the Teheran Conference in late 1943; his wife and doctor rushed to his side in Carthage. His doctor Lord Moran spoke of his emotion when told she was coming. “Oh, yes,” she replied, “he’s very glad I’ve come, but in five minutes he’ll forget I’m here.”

Sure enough, by Christmas Day he was back on whisky and cigars, enjoying an epic plum pudding, and meeting with General Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander. General Alexander, Air Marshal Tedder and Admiral Cunningham were also there to discuss the coming invasion of Europe.

“This brand I snatched on Christmas Day”

The following year drew him away again, without protest from the stalwart Clementine. The family had gathered at Chequers with a huge Christmas tree, the gift of President Roosevelt. Suddenly, telegrams brought news of a civil war in Greece. Churchill immediately left for Athens, to negotiate a truce between communists and royalists that saved Greece.

Nine months later he remarked that the “Bolshevisation of the Balkans” was almost complete. All “the cabinets of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe are in Soviet control, excepting only Athens. This brand I snatched from the burning on Christmas Day.”

At Chartwell on Christmas 1946, Churchill’s presents included honey from Sir Stewart Menzies, head of the Secret Service throughout his premiership. Two bottles of port arrived from Duncan and Diana Sandys. Sir Stafford Cripps, perhaps in jest, sent a bottle of turpentine.

Despite political opposition the Churchills remained good friends with the Clement Attlees. Replying to their Christmas greeting, he mentioned struggling with his war memoirs. “It is a colossal undertaking…. However, it is a good thing to get a certain amount of material together which, if not history, will still at least be a contribution thereto.”

“Whirl me round the floor once, Mule”

An aging Churchill was now less able to cope with England’s damp, cold winters. Christmas 1947 found him in Marrakesh, where he came to paint and write. At the Mamounia Hotel he hosted a party for staffers who had given up their holiday to accompany him. “There was a 25-foot Christmas tree, windows hung with orange branches, and daubs of white paint on the window panes made it seem that a blizzard was blowing outside,” wrote his daughter Sarah. “Everyone was ‘dolled up’….When midnight struck they raised their classes and clapped—and ‘Vive Churchill’ and ‘Bravo’ echoed round the room.”

The band played It’s a Long Way to Tipperary as a Christmas pudding was brought in. Much moved, Churchill bowed to them all.

Suddenly he stood. Sarah thought it was time to go. Instead he turned to her. “Whirl me round the floor once, Mule—I think I can manage it.” They took the floor for a waltz amidst a roar of applause. Then Churchill danced with all his secretaries.

“You are the Christmas Fairy”

Suddenly he noticed “a good-looking fair lady” seated by herself. Sarah remembered him asking, “Why is she alone? Dance me around the floor.” They stopped before this proud but forlorn looking woman. Churchill said: “You are the Christmas Fairy. May I have a dance?”

Sarah had no idea what they said, but “he never liked to see a beautiful woman alone. When their turn at dancing was done, he left her at her place. Meanwhile, the detectives were wondering if she had been imported as a spy.” A telegram arrived later:

YOU WILL NEVER KNOW MY NAME BUT I AM PROUD TO HAVE DANCED WITH WINSTON CHURCHILL.

Having written about cars and Winston Churchill for fifty years, I finally produced a piece on them both. From exotica like Mors, Napier and Rolls-Royce to more prosaic makes like Austin, Humber and Wolseley, the story was three decades in coming. But I am satisfied that it is now complete.

Humber for the Man

After the war, Lord Rootes and Churchill became close friends, exchanging Christmas gifts and farm animals, even collaborating politically. “So sorry that we did not do better in Coventry,” Rootes wrote after the 1950 general election.

Churchill was offered a new Mark III Humber Pullman that October, but demurred. The Tories had lost only narrowly, and he was sure he’d be returned to office soon. The following year they won. He remained prime minister until he retired in 1955.

By then he needed a new limo, but Humber had discontinued the Pullman. Churchill was forlorn: “I’m sure you could build one for me if you tried,” he wrote his friend. “You can’t let me down now, I need another Pullman that I can stretch out in.”

The sympathetic Billy Rootes found a low-mileage Mark IV and expensively rebuilt it. Technically works property, it remained on loan to Churchill for the rest of his life. It is now at the Louwman Museum in The Hague, Netherlands.

Churchill was a loyal Rootes customer. He bought a Hillman Minx in 1948, a Hillman Husky in 1958. In 1955, marking his 80th birthday the previous November, the Rootes Group presented him with a 1956 Humber Hawk Mark VIA estate, “a token of our appreciation of his services not only to the country, but to all of us.” The Hawk often accompanied Churchill on his holidays in France, where it was ideal for transporting his oil painting paraphernalia. 

Auxiliaries

Notable among Chartwell’s postwar farm vehicles was an army-surplus Jeep supplied by Wolfe’s Garage in Westerham (still doing business). Phil Johnson, a mechanic, devised a step to help Churchill climb in and out: “I altered it several times to his instructions. He was a meticulous man.”

In 1954, Churchill was presented by the Rover factory with a new Land Rover. It bore the number plate UKE 80. Rover said this stood for “UK Empire” and eighty years.”

UKE plates were current at the time in Kent, so it must have been easy to get one. I suspect Rover might have hunted around for the owner of UKE 80 to get the number they wanted, plates being transferable in Britain.

The technician who delivered the Land Rover offered to find some rough terrain to demonstrate where it could go: Sir Winston’s response was that he wanted to see terrain where it couldn’t go.

Dead shot

He often rode shotgun to his son-in-law on Chartwell Farm. Once they drove up to a square of uncut wheat, where workers had cornered a rabbit. Aged 80, Churchill alighted, grabbed his piece, and dispatched the hare with one shot. “He was a great marksman,” said Christopher Soames. The Land Rover sold at auction for £129,000 in 2012.

At the end there were two Morris Oxfords: Farina saloons, mostly used by Clementine Churchill. George Weatherley of the Cambridge-Oxford Owners Club has tracked both; they are currently insured, but not taxed. In 2013 the ’64 made £51,000 at auction, through its famous association. There is however no Churchill record of a Vanden Plas 4 Litre R allegedly owned by Lady Churchill, destroyed in a banger car race a few years ago.

“Familiars”

The Churchill car roster lists several “familiars”—not Churchill’s, but known to or used by him.

The best-known over his last years was a 1934 Rolls-Royce 20/25 limousine by Thrupp & Maberly, hired from Frank Jenner of Westerham.

Jenner said he bought the car because Sir Winston hankered for a Rolls-Royce, perhaps recalling his old Silver Ghost with more pleasure than it gave in 1921. In it, Jenner said, Churchill made his last journey from Chartwell to London, in October 1964. He died there three months later. This beautiful Rolls is available for hire from Advantage CarHire.

To the last, Churchill’s staff remembered the sense of urgency so characteristic of the man. In the old Humber, “Murray, the detective, would sit at [the chauffeur’s] side, quietly murmuring, ‘slow down here’ or ‘pull in to the left a little more,’” wrote Roy Howells, a male nurse.

“At the back Sir Winston would be…tapping on the glass partition and calling out, ‘Go on!’ Whenever he felt Bullock was slow in overtaking he would lean forward and bellow, ‘Now!’ It does Bullock great credit that he never really took the chances his passenger would have liked….”

Addendum: Churchill’s last ride

BBC Regional News reports that the Austin Vanden Plas hearse which transported Sir Winston’s coffin at his funeral has been fully restored. The work was by done by Jo Burge of Classic Marine Engines in Suffolk.

The Vanden Plas was used for some time on funeral work, but deteriorated over the years and was head for the scrap heap. Bristol Memorial Woodlands had it restored—a frame-off project which took Burge three years. “It wasn’t really the car we were restoring,” Burge told the BBC. “It was the story.”

“Sir Winston was not a motorist but enjoyed good transport as a means to an end,” recalled Phil Johnson. “Comfort and reliability came through as paramount. He saw cars as incredible time wasters and they were surely not his scene.” Well, they are ours—and intertwine amusingly with the saga of the great man.

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(Update from 2013.) Michael Shelden, author of Young Titan, set London media buzzing with speculation that young Violet Asquith attempted suicide after Churchill decided to marry Clementine Hozier.  (An upcoming Q&A to be discussed by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.)

Not only that, reported the Daily Mail, “He caroused with West End call girls and proposed to THREE society beauties—who turned him down.” (Some girlfriends! Capitalization theirs.)

The society girlfriends were Pamela Plowden, Muriel Wilson and the actress Ethel Barrymore. But the most raffish thing Mr. Shelden reported Churchill doing is showering Miss Barrymore with “armfuls of flowers.” He also showed up at Claridge’s each night after her West End play ended, where he would “insist she have dinner with him.”

The rest of the Mail‘s lurid headline—“He caroused with West End call girls”—concerns a story Churchill himself first told. As a Sandhurst cadet, he stood up for London showgirls at the Empire Theatre when “prudes on the prowl” attempted to erect barriers sheltering their promenades from more upright society. Churchill reported this in My Early Life (1930). As the barriers fell, he made what was apparently his first speech ever: “Ladies of the Empire! I stand for Liberty!”

Stretching the sources

The “carousing story” was apparently caused by Mr. Shelden’s note that Churchill and Lord Rosebery once dated a pair of “Gaiety Girls.” Each of them took one home. Alas, Winston’s date later told Rosebery he’d “done nothing but talk into the small hours on the subject of himself.” This sounds familiar from reports by his actual girlfriends. (Clementine Hozier said the same.) It jibes with many descriptions of young Winston’s encounters with women.

Mr. Shelden’s very well done book reports, “Everywhere he went he wore a glossy top hat, starched wing collar and frock coat. His accessories included a walking stick and watch chain.” He even wore silk underwear. This was the standard dress of most Edwardian Members of Parliament. I’m not sure if they all wore silk underwear…. But as Winston explained to his young wife, who complained about the cost: “I have a very sensitive cuticle.”

Read the book, but take the media—as always—with a grain of salt.

✸  ✸  ✸

My Visit to Russia is the only book by Clementine Churchill, It was published to support the Aid to Russia Fund, of which Clementine was chairman (the word was gender-neutral in those days). Moya Poezdka V SSSR, a Russian limited edition, was also published. Unlike the pulpy paperback, it was printed on high quality coated paper, but comprised only 20 pages. The Russian text was abridged from the English edition.

Aid to Russia Fund

The Aid to Russia Fund began in 1941 after Hitler’s invasion of Russia. It was founded by the Joint War Organisation, under the British Red Cross and Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Its object was to provide Russians with medical supplies during Germany’s invasion and partial occupation of the USSR. Quickly, £1 million was raised, and reached £8 million by war’s end. The fund provided X-ray units and ambulances, along with containers of blankets, clothes and medicine.

Clementine Churchill was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the Distinguished Red Cross Service Badge for her efforts. In 1946 she was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) though she never affected the title. Clementine was generally unconscious of such honors. As her husband cracked in 1953, when he became a Knight of the Garter (KG): “Now Clemmie will have to be a lady at last.”

My Visit to Russia

To thank Mrs. Churchill, the Soviets invited her to tour Russian health facilities which had benefitted from the Fund. She was accompanied by Red Cross Russian Aid Committee secretary Mabel Johnson and her own secretary, Grace Hamblin. Fate took her from Winston’s side during climactic events: the stark horror as the Allies found the Nazi concentration camps; the deaths of Roosevelt, Hitler and Mussolini; the near-death of Winston’s brother Jack; the German surrender; VE Day; the looming break-up of the Churchill coalition government.

Clementine arrived in Moscow on 2 April 1945, with Soviet intentions toward Eastern Europe plainly threatening. Her daughter wrote: “Winston had had very real qualms about the wisdom of letting Clementine go to Russia. However, her visit afforded a welcome opportunity for smiles, not scowls.” She was met by former Soviet Ambassador to Britain Ivan and Mrs. Maisky and British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr. “Lovely accounts of your speech and reception,” cabled Winston. “At the moment you are the one bright spot in Anglo-Russian relations.”

Hugging the bear

Early in her visit, Clementine was received by Stalin in the Kremlin. The account in My Visit was suitably diplomatic: “The great warrior leader…was exceedingly kind and gracious in his references to the Aid to Russia Fund.” Stalin said her help “has been on a considerable scale. We are grateful for it.”

Clementine presented Stalin with a gold fountain pen, Winston’s gift, a souvenir of their wartime meetings. “My husband wishes me to express the hope that you will write him many friendly messages with it,” she said. “The Marshal accepted it with a genial smile.” She did not include his words, which she related later to her daughter: “I only write with a pencil.”

Despite Winston’s entreaties, her messages, even in cypher, made few other references to Stalin. He would write few friendly letters in future.

Smiles amid devastation

Clementine covered vast territory, from Leningrad to Stalingrad, Rostov-on-Don to Odessa. My Visit is replete with moving descriptions of war’s effects on the country. She did regard Leningrad as “the most beautiful city I have ever seen,”⁷ but Leningrad had avoided occupation. En route to Stalingrad she wrote:

What an appalling scene of destruction met our eyes. My first thought was, how like the centre of Coventry or the devastation around St. Paul’s, except that here the havoc and obliteration seems to spread out endlessly…. The Nazis spread death on all sides. It was a policy of deliberate annihilation. But Russia lives!—And the marvelous tenderness and attention given to the tiny babies struck me as a symbol of the Life Force repairing the ravages of war.

My Visit sympathetically describes the brave Russian children who had survived to smile up at her with soft brown eyes, or share a small toy. Russian children were “attractive and charming to look at,” she wrote, and here was a nod to pre-Soviet Russia:

There is some quality in their upbringing that seems to instill obedience and good manners without fear—at least until the age of seven or eight. I believe that no child is ever beaten in Russia. That was true in the old pre-revolution days as well as in Soviet times.

The rush of events

Farther west, events piled up. Winston was now seriously worried about Roosevelt. “My poor friend is very much alone,” he wrote Clementine,

and bereft of much of his vigour. Most of the telegrams I get from him are clearly the works of others around him. However yesterday he came through [with] a flash of his old fire, and is about the hottest thing I have seen so far in diplomatic intercourse…. [M]uch of this stuff is dynamite….Well  you know how great our difficulties are about Poland, Rumania, and this other row about alleged negotiations. I intend still to persevere, but it is very difficult.

These frank exchanges ceased after Clementine left Moscow. Without the benefit of the cypher code through the British Embassy, their letters were necessarily circumspect. She did pass through Moscow on 13 April, en route to Stalingrad, where she learned of Roosevelt’s death the day before. There she had a brief telephone conversation with her husband. His note the next day gives the lie to assertions that he deliberately snubbed FDR’s funeral: “At the last moment I decided not to fly to Roosevelt’s funeral on account of much that was going on here.”

 M. Herriot on VE-Day, 8 May 1945

At the British Embassy with Clementine to hear Winston’s VE-Day address was Édouard Herriot, recently freed from a German prison. A French radical, Herriot had been prime minister, and had been President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1940. As such he had been present at Churchill’s last 1940 visit to France, when WSC tried to rally the despairing government.

Adamantly opposed to Vichy, Herriot was arrested and imprisoned in Germany. As they listened to Winston’s broadcast he said to Clementine:

I am afraid you may think it unmanly of me to weep. But I have just heard Mr. Churchill’s voice. The last time I had heard his voice was on that day in Tours in 1940 when he implored the French Government to hold firm and continue the struggle. His noble words of leadership that day were unavailing. When we heard the French Government’s answer, and knew they meant to give up the fight, tears streamed down Mr. Churchill’s face. So you will understand that if I weep today, I do not feel unmanned.

A souvenir of sterner days

Despite its modest appearance, My Visit to Russia is worth seeking out. Clementine Churchill’s dramatic word-pictures of Russia’s devastation remind us of Winston’s words to her about war: “I feel more deeply every year—and can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms—what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.”

I am doing some work for my English AS course and  need a comparative piece to go with a poem I am studying. I have tried looking  for Winston Churchill’s goodbye letter to his wife but have been unsuccessful. Is there any way I could even have a part of the text of the letter for my studies? —A.S., UK

A: “In the event of my death…”

This was a great and memorable letter. After his removal as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, Churchill spent six uneasy months in a sinecure position, unable to influence war policy. Finally he decided to report to his regiment in the trenches of the Great War.

As soldiers did then and now, he wrote his wife a letter to be opened in the event of his death. Their daughter Lady Soames wrote: “The letter shows what deep faith he had in her judgment and resolution…” (Clementine Churchill, 127). From Churchill by Himself, (complete text; some paragraphing added):

Duchy of Lancaster Office, 17 July 1915

Darling,
Cox [solicitors] holds about £1000 worth of securities of mine (chiefly Witbank Collieries): Jack [WSC’s brother] has in his name about £1000 worth of Pretoria Cement Shares and [Sir Ernest] Cassel has American Stocks of mine which should exceed in value my loans from him by about £1000. I believe these will be found sufficient to pay my debts and overdraught. Most of the bills were paid last year. Randolph Payne and Lumley are the only two large ones.

The insurance policies are all kept up and every contingency is covered. You will receive £10,000 and £300 a year in addition until you succeed my mother. The £10,000 can either be used to provide interest i.e. about £450 a year or even to purchase an annuity against my mother’s life, which would yield a much larger income at the expense of the capital. Of course it would be much better to keep the £10,000 and live on the interest than to spend it on the chance of my mother living a long time. But you must judge.

* * *

I am anxious that you shall get hold of all my papers, especially those which refer to my Admiralty administration. I have appointed you my sole literary executor. Masterton Smith [private secretary] will help you to secure all that is necessary for a complete record. There is no hurry; but some day I should like the truth to be known. Randolph will carry on the lamp.

Do not grieve for me too much. I am a spirit confident of my rights. Death is only an incident, and not the most important which happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, especially since I met you my darling one I have been happy, and you have taught me how noble a woman’s heart can be. If there is anywhere else I shall be on the look out for you. Meanwhile look forward, feel free, rejoice in life, cherish the children, guard my memory. God bless you.

Good bye
W

Notes

It is interesting that Churchill’s securities were in the Witbank Collieries in South Africa. During his escape from the Boers in 1899, he was spirited into hiding there until they smuggled him onto a departing train.

This moving letter was first published in Martin Gilbert, editor, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume III, Part 2 (1972). It is now republished as The Churchill Documents, Vol. 7, The Escaped Scapegoat, May 1915-December 1916 (Hillsdale College Press, 2008), 1097-98. Hillsdale is committed to keeping the entire Churchill biography of 31 volumes in print forever.

Further reading

“Lady Diana Cooper on Winston and Clementine Churchill,” 2018.

I have been told that Churchill arrived late for a meeting with HM The Queen, expressing his regret by saying, “My sincere apologies Madam, I started too late.” But I haven’t found any reference to this. Can you help? —A.P.H., England

A: His perennial vice

Churchill had somewhat cured his unpunctuality in later years, when as prime minister he commanded prompt transportation. He was not known to be late for Queen Elizabeth II. But his unpunctuality was known to have displeased the  Prince of Wales, later Edward VII (1901-10). And here is the source of your story. Robert Lewis Taylor, in Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness (1952) writes:

As a very young subaltern, he once kept the Prince of Wales and a dinner party of twelve waiting for nearly an hour. The prince, a grand eater and in the blackest kind of mood, refused to go in until the chancy number of thirteen was made fourteen by the dilatory guest. When Churchill arrived, he was asked the meaning of this unseemly breach of good manners.

“Do you have an excuse, young man?” inquired the Prince, before a drawing room full of starved nobility. “Indeed I have, Sire,” explained the unusual boy. “I started too late.”

The only problem here is that he would not likely have addressed the Prince of Wales as “Sire” but rather as “Sir” or “Your Royal Highness.” Robert Lewis Taylor wrote an illuminating book with many unique insights, interviewing people who knew Churchill as far back as the Boer War. But his lack of footnotes makes tracking his quotations difficult.

“All the qualities with which I am least endowed”

Churchill admitted his unpunctuality in his autobiography, My Early Life (1930), Particularly as a young man, he was frequently and incurably late. He himself describes the encounter with the Prince of Wales, dating it 1896: “I realized that I must be upon my best behaviour: punctual, subdued, reserved, in short display all the qualities with which I am least endowed.” Later he added: “I do think unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it.”

Churchill never quite succeeded in curing himself. As his wife and chief critic once remarked: “Winston is a sporting man. He always likes to give the train a chance to get away.”

Clementine Churchill…

was herself sometimes the victim of his unpunctuality. Even after he had government Humber limousines at his disposal, he often failed to allow enough time for road trips. Habitually late, Taylor writes, Churchill would typically

pile into the Humber around 5:30 for a 7:00 speech a hundred miles distant. As his chauffeur swings into the high road, Churchill crouches, with a flask, on the edge of the back seat and urges him to greater speeds. “But the machine is traveling at 85 now,” the chauffeur will protest. “Faster! Whip it up a bit!” comes the answer.

On a campaign trip to Wales, Churchill conversed garrulously with O’Brien, his PR officer. They passed the brandy back and forth. Churchill urged such reckless speed that Clementine Churchill cried: “Please let me out. I refuse to continue this ride.” With the utmost courtesy, Churchill stopped at a country railway station and escorted her to the platform. Then, plying the brandy bottle, he ordered the driver “down the road like a bat out of hell for Cardiff.”

By the time they arrived, what with the brandy and his nerves, O’Brien was done up—out practically cold. Churchill supervised the laying out of his PRO on a table in the rear of the hall. Then he went ahead and made a rouser of a speech. Afterward, he appeared confused about the origin of O’Brien’s trouble, and expressed the opinion that it was “probably something he ate.”

See Churchill By Himself for more quotes on Churchill’s personal habits.

(Any reader bored by pedantic, picayune, obscure meanderings about nothing of importance should stop reading now. For my review of Paul’s book see: “Book of the Year.”)

“Paintatious” was artist Churchill’s word for a scene worthy of his brush. He found many such venues on the French Riviera, which Paul explores so well. But this is a tricky question because “paintatioius” not a real word. It’s a “Churchillism.” (My book, Churchill by Himself, Chapter 3, is full of them.) So the answer to how you spell is: Any way you like!

We thought we could establish his spelling if Churchill used “paintatious” in writing. So we plumbed all his 20 published million words in the Hillsdale College digital archive. Alas, like other famous invented Churchillisms, he mainly used it in conversation. Like “Admiralissimo, Bottlescape, Cantellopolus, Destrigulate, Namsosed, Non-undisinflation” and “Unsordid,” they were mainly in speech or conversation, not in print.

Version 1: “Paintatious”

This was my choice, following WSC’s daughter, Lady Soames. In Churchill by Himself I list as a “passim” this quote: “This is a most paintatious place!” (41) Reference is to Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (1979), 204 (U.S. edition 268). She writes of a holiday in 1921:  “…he continually felt drawn to “paintatious” (his own adjective) places, where the sun might be expected to shine brightly and continuously.” She uses it again on page 407 (English edition):

In the summer of 1948, Winston and Clementine stayed for several weeks in Aix-en-Provence; I had married Christopher Soames in 1947, and we were both included in this lovely holiday. We all stayed in the Roi René Hôtel at Aix, the weather was perfect, and almost every day we used to set out, equipped with a delicious picnic, to spend the day in some lovely and “paintatious” place.

Lady Soames continues the use of “paintatious” in her Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter (1990). Dr. Capet thought Churchill might have spelled it thus when writing to the British Consul in Madeira, looking for a suitable hotel in 1949. Alas not: he only asked for a “paintable” location.

Version 2: “Paintaceous”

I spelled it thus several times in old articles, but only one other author did: Barbara Leaming, in her superb account of his years after 1945, Churchill Defiant. (We rated that the “Book of the Year” in 2010. Haven’t issued another such bouquet until Rafferty’s, although there were some deserving titles.)

Ms. Leaming wrote of WSC’s Lake Como painting holiday in 1945: “They drove along the lakefront while Churchill scouted for what he liked to call a “paintaceous” scene.” (40) Of his sojourn in Miami Beach before his “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, she added: “Seated beside a bed of red poinsettias near the pink brick seaside house his wife had arranged to borrow from a friend, Churchill contentedly scanned the coconut palms overhead in search of a ‘paintaceous’ angle.” (60)

Version 3: “Paintacious”

We finally hit upon the one and only instance where Churchill actually spelled the word in print—introducing a third variation! It was in a letter to Clementine from Marrakesh—yet another painting holiday—on 19 December 1950. (Martin Gilbert, Never Despair, page 577; The Churchill Documents vol. 22, Leader of the Opposition, August 1945-September 1941, page 1976. Speaking of painting destinations he wrote:

Alas Timbuktoo is 1500 miles, so it cannot be considered. However the British Consul at Casablanca, a young man, who met me at the airfield here and came to dinner afterwards, says there is a far better trip the other way—left-handed instead of right. When you go through the mountains you come to two lovely native cities with extraordinary springs of blue water and rocky gorges, which seem by all accounts to be most paintacious.

Madelin Evans at the Churchill Archives Centre kindly answered our request to look at the letter itself (Baroness Clementine Spencer-Churchill Papers 2/38). She confirms the spelling. But this was a typed letter, and they were dictated—so a secretary did the spelling! Still, Churchill himself signed the letter. If he didn’t approve, he would likely have corrected it—as he did the odd word in typed letters. He did so in this one, Madelin says, but did not correct “paintacious.”

Which is Correct?

To be absolutely pedantic, WSC’s only written occurrence, “paintacious,” is correct. But this appeared exactly once, so I don’t think it is dispositive.

Mary Soames’s strikes me as the most melodious version. Also with her spelling, I don’t have to modify my entry in Churchill by Himself.

In April 1995 Johnson, then a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, deplored the £12.5 million purchase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lottery-supported National Heritage Memorial Fund, said Johnson, was frittering away money on pointless projects and benefiting Tory grandees. Johnson added: “…seldom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”

The Memorial Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a national heirloom under threat of being sold outside the country. Johnson snorted that they had simply “run out of sporting and artistic projects to endow.” His “unsentimental approach to Churchill’s records may seem surprising given that in 2014 he published a eulogistic biography of the former Conservative premier,” wrote The Guardian. 

I remember the Great Churchill Papers Flap very well, having published articles about it back then. It is the same tempest in a teapot today that it was in 1995. Except that nowadays, Churchill and his memory are fair game to grunting mobs and virtue-signaling nannies. So the whole business is again somehow newsworthy.

A threat to Britain’s heritage

Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s foremost biographer, called the Churchill Papers “the largest single private repository of recent British history.” Their acquisition, he said, was “an imaginative stroke of national policy.” Among other triumphs, the Papers inform thirty-one volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the longest biography on the planet.

Scholars have long mined these fifteen tons of documents. Many individual items have been reproduced. It was the possibility that they might be sold to an overseas buyer, Gilbert explained, that focused concern on their physical future:

The first alarm involved certain specific documents, such as Churchill’s wartime speeches, which clearly constitute part of the national heritage. Photocopies and reproductions are all very well, but the actual pieces of paper are what matters. The originals alone convey the full sense of historical drama.

The idea that Churchill’s final draft of “we will fight on the beaches” would end up in a library overlooking a beach in the Pacific, or some other distant shore, was not attractive. As a result of the decision to use National Lottery money to secure the Churchill Papers, it is not only letters written by Churchill that are to be preserved in this country and guarded, as hitherto, in the specially designed archives of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Sir Martin explained that “Churchill’s Papers” are very much more than his own notes and monographs. Of course they include handwritten or typed manuscripts of books and speeches, if not copies of his own letters. He also kept every letter that he received. “These letters, written to him, constitute the real historical value of this collection.”

A great glory saved

Churchill’s original letters reside in 500 libraries and archives around the world. The Churchill Papers, however, represent the whole range British history. Sir Martin offered examples:

Here we have letters from David Lloyd George, setting out the most radical proposals for social reform before the First World War. Here we have Lord Kitchener’s letters during the early months of the First World War, including the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition. We see here the Irish leaders on both sides struggling for a compromise to end the civil war. Here, too are Labour leaders negotiating with Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to resolve the 1926 coal strike. Secretly, they visited him at a house in London to work out a compromise.

Throughout the 1930s the Churchill Papers abound in letters from civil servants, airmen and members of the intelligence community. They sent secret information, much of it from Nazi Germany, enabling Churchill to wage his campaign for greater rearmament. While his own letters consist in the main of carbon copies, it is the originals from other people that are the great glory of the papers saved for the nation.

A letter from his good friend Val Fleming (father of Ian) describes the slaughter on the Western Front. There is a letter from his brother Jack describing the first awful moments of the Dardanelles campaign. Letters from his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, are full of the political gossip of 1916. There are letters from Admiral “Jackie” Fisher urging Churchill to return from the trenches and break the government. Churchill did return, but his efforts to harm the government in debate were a dismal failure.

A rich seam of historical gold

“The Papers represent every twist and turn of British political debate,” Sir Martin continued. Every file contains gems. “Having read and edited them all, I can only conclude that the Churchill archive will provide in the future, as it is already doing, a rich seam of historical gold.”  It is the richest seam outside the Government’s own National Archives, which house Churchill’s voluminous war papers, and those of his four-year peacetime premiership.

Every VE-Day, the Churchill Papers are there to prompt remembrance of heroic times. A letter on VE-Day itself was sent to WSC from Anthony Eden: “All my thoughts are with you on this day which is so essentially your day. It is you who have led, uplifted and inspired us through the worst days. Without you this day could not have been.”

And among the hundreds of letters from Churchill’s children is one from his daughter Mary, written when he was an old man long parted from power or influence: “In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving generous father, I owe you what every Englishman, woman and child does, Liberty itself.” For this reason alone, Sir Martin concluded, “the assurance that the Churchill Papers are to remain in Britain is to be welcomed.”

Controversy and rebuttal

Remarkably in view their importance, some historians and media were outraged that one-fourth of the Churchill Papers’ value inured to private parties. They should have been donated, they said. On which, a few observations:

1) In later years, Churchill considered how he could provide for his family. Almost his only property of significant value was his papers. A typical Victorian, he willed them to his male heirs. However, as his daughter Mary told me, “all his dependents were provided for, and all were appreciative of what he did for them.”

2) Appraisals of the papers were £40 and £32.5 million respectively. The government took the lower estimate, subtracted £10 million for anything official and £10 million for tax. That left £12.5 million. J. Paul Getty II generously put up £1 million and the Heritage Lottery Fund £11.5 million—a fraction of their value on the open market.

3) Taxpayers did not provide the £11.5 million. Lottery profits go to various sports, arts, charities and Heritage materials. Almost always, Heritage items are in private hands, so their acquisition often benefits private parties.

4) Comparisons to the post-1945 papers left to Churchill College are irrelevant. Lady Churchill bequeathed them late in life, knowing her children had been provided for. Had she been younger she could have sold them, and would have had every right to do so.

5) While the copyright was retained (to documents originated by WSC), this should be kept in perspective. Until Hillsdale College took them on, no publisher would underwrite the final document volumes. Academic publications, non-profit institutions, even hostile biographers, have used the material without charge.

Why the uproar?

The reason for the flap has nothing to do with the rights of ownership, and everything to do with making political hay and sowing scorn. Such activities have vastly multiplied in the last quarter century. The biographer William Manchester was well aware of this when he memorably wrote The Times in 1995:

The controversy over the sale of the Churchill Papers to the British nation, with proceeds going to members of his family, is bewildering. One British historian in a U.S. newspaper labeled the transaction “just tacky.” One wonders why it is even newsworthy.

When out of office, Churchill, a professional writer, supported his household with his pen. His literary estate was his property. He had every reason, both moral and legal, to expect that title to it would pass on to his survivors through the trust fund which he established before his death. The sum of £12.5 million, however raised, seems hardly excessive. The collection would sell for far more than that in the United States. But that would have raised a genuine storm, which would have been justifiable.

Some critics believe that the Papers should have been donated to the country. That has a familiar ring. Authors are forever being told that they should give their work to society—that to expect money in return is, well, tacky. The origin of this presumption lies in a misapprehension of the word “gifted.” Many believe that talent is literally a gift, which the writer should pass along. The fact is that writing is very hard work, and that here, as elsewhere, the laborer is worthy of his hire. Surely any working person should be able to understand that.

“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.

Lady Diana Duff Cooper had a penetrating mind and brilliant pen, capable of capturing a time when women considered the world laden with opportunity for fulfillment.

She proved this with her famous seven-year performance in Max Reinhardt’s “The Miracle.” Her “Winston and Clementine,” first published in The Atlantic just after Sir Winston’s death, was as fine a tribute to the Churchill marriage as we are likely to encounter.Her collaboration with her husband’s ambassadorship to France was notable. So was her beautiful and literate trilogy of memoirs.

Sir Alfred Duff Cooper was one of Churchill’s most stalwart friends and allies, serving loyally as WSC’s first wartime Minister of Information and then as his liaison to de Gaulle. The end of the war found him serving as British ambassador in Paris.

In 2013 their son John Julius (Lord Norwich) published Darling Monster, the correspondence between him and his mother. Excerpts of Lady Diana’s letters offer many wonderful views of Winston Churchill, whom she deeply admired throughout a lifelong friendship.

Diana on Winston

18 October 1940: “Papa [Alfred Duff Cooper] came home all right at about nine [after dining at Downing Street], as Winston dines at seven in a little blue sort of workman’s overall suit. He looks exactly like the good pig who built his house of bricks.”

19 February 1941: “Great excitement last weekend. We went to Ditchley where Winston was staying….Winston does nearly all his work from his bed. It keeps him rested and young….We had two lovely films after dinner —one was called Escape and the other was a very light comedy called Quiet Wedding. There were also several short reels from Papa’s Ministry. Winston managed to cry through all of them, including the comedy.”

9 January 1944: “There was our old baby in his rompers [boiler suit], ten-gallon cowboy hat and very ragged oriental dressing gown, health, vigour and excellent spirits.”

13 January 1944 (at a picnic): The Colonel [Churchill’s codename] is immediately sat on a comfortable chair, rugs are swathed round his legs and a pillow put on his lap to act as table, book-rest, etc. A rather alarming succession of whiskies and brandies go down….

….[Churchill then insisted on descending a gorge, and had to be heaved up with a rope.]  Clemmie said nothing, but watched him with me like a lenient mother who does not wish to spoil her child’s fun.”

14 November 1944, Paris: The first night we dined…with the Duckling [WSC] at the Quai d’Orsay. It was rather boring. Clemmie was sleepy and Winston as difficult as he always is until the champagne has warmed him….but after the feast, in the Napoleon III salon, with English [Scotch!] whisky dropping on the exquisite Savonnerie carpet, his old magic took charge of us all as he weaved his slang and his pure English into a fantastic pattern.”

Diana on Duff

Lady Diana was a worldly woman who took no notice of Duff’s many affairs: “Why should I mind if they made him happy? I always knew: they were the flowers, I was the tree.” She left her son with practical advice (31 December 1957): “Drink less for your health and looks and charm’s sake, beware of unclean whores, love your mother, and sleep deep.”

Diana and Duff were two bright lights of the Churchill era. It is a joy to read their correspondence (A Durable Fire: The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper 1913-1950 (London and New York 1983, edited by their granddaughter Artemis), if only to preserve such writing as this, Diana to Duff (in the trenches), 1918:

It is I that must read [our letters] to the envious young—flauntingly, exultantly—and when they hear yours they’ll dream well that night, and waking crave for such a mythical supreme lover and regret that they are born in the wrong age—as once I did before I saw your light, crying for Gods and wooers…

Shortly after they met, Duff wrote to Diana: “Bores with God’s help we will never be.” They weren’t.

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

* * *

4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart

Your book Churchill By Himself is a treasure to which I frequently refer. I am a retired professor who recently lost his wife. I am preparing a memorial to her and found Churchill’s words as quoted in Andrew Roberts’ recent biography to be perfect. The sense of his words is that his wife Clementine was was a frequent, strong and fair critic of his writings, always helpful. I know that is not much to go on but I would appreciate corroborating information.  —M.S., via email

A: “Here firm, though all be drifting”

I will have to ponder your question, because his remarks about Lady Churchill are mainly tributes to her as wife, friend and advisor, not literary critic–although of course she was that too. I don’t think she vetted many of his books. An exception perhaps is The World Crisis, which she experienced personally, often painfully. “Here firm,” he often said of her in those harder days, “though all be drifting.”

Her counsel was more frequently sought over his speeches, but was sometimes rejected. In 1945, for example, she warned him not to say the Labour Party would have to rely on “some form of Gestapo” to enforce their programs if they were elected. Aside from the injudicious comparison, voters had a hard time seeing Clement Attlee, the mild-mannered Labour leader, as a stormtrooper. (I can’t resist a note: In the 1980s a London friend, lifetime Labour voter, said the activities of certain London Labour councils “indeed remind me of the Gestapo.” Whoops!)

“…shaking her beautiful head [over] some new and pregnant point I am developing…”

There are probably many instances where she closely influenced his compositions. We must look out for them. (I am compiling a new, extended and revised edition of Churchill by Himself.) Her role as critic was noted by many beside her husband. One such was  Lady Diana Cooper, quoting WSC in on page 512 of my book. I will elaborate on that by supplying some of the surrounding words:

Calm she also had, with a well-balanced judgment of people and situations—consistent and reliable. She often knew the sheep from the goats better than Winston did. “Clemmie sits behind me on the platform, shaking her beautiful head in disagreement with some new and pregnant point I am developing,” I remember his saying, with pride in her stable Liberalism, after some Tory meeting. Her devotion never subjected her to becoming a doormat or to taking the easier way with her high-powered Hercules.

Lady Diana’s tribute to CSC is beautiful. You can read it in a few minutes, and you should. Her son, Lord Norwich, did not know it existed until we wrote him for reprint permission. The full text (elaborated somewhat with excerpts from her other writings) is on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website.

“Warm summer sun, Shine kindly here…”

I will keep your request in mind and add anything I find to this page. Baroness Spencer-Churchill died on 12 December 1977, outliving her husband by over a dozen years. After cremation, her ashes were placed in Churchill’s grave at Bladon at a private family service on 16th December.

My sympathies on your loss. I cannot imagine that myself, and always hope I shall go first. This was Churchill’s luck. It is, I realize, selfish. On wifely tributes, my favorite, from Mark Twain to his wife Livvy, also applies to to Clementine:

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

See also my tribute to Lee Remick as “Jennie.” and Part 1 of the film. 

David Lough…

…added significantly to our knowledge with No More Champagne (2015), his study of Churchill’s finances. Now he fills another gap in the saga with this comprehensive collection of Churchill’s exchanges with his mother Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill. They range from Winston age seven to the very last letters before Jennie’s death, aged 67, in June 1921.

On the surface it may seem an easy task. Most of the letters are at the Churchill Archives in Cambridge. What could be simpler than digitalizing and publishing the lot? Not so fast. To publish them all would overwhelm the reader, not to mention the publisher. David Lough had to eliminate (or insert ellipses in) many of Winston’s letters from school, for example. This was acceptable, especially for the mandatory weekly “letter home.” Repeatedly those ask for money or parental visits, or offer exaggerated tales of prowess at sport or lessons. Lough offers “a representative but not exhaustive sample.”

Jennie was much better at keeping Winston’s letters than he hers. As a result, “connecting tissue” is often required from the editor to explain the context. The dearth of Jennie’s letters requires familiarity with her own story. At this Mr. Lough excels, providing us with just enough narrative, without taking over and distracting the reader from his subjects. He also provides excellent maps and uncommon photographs.

“You are in danger of becoming a prig!”

Having David Lough as narrator is like having a skilled tutor guiding us through the four-decade relationship between mother and son. He never falls short. “If we accept that Jennie ‘forgot’ about Winston during his schooldays,” Lough writes, “the ease with which they took up the striking intimacy of their correspondence after Winston left school suggests that she must have forged a stronger bond in his pre-school years than was typical of Victorian parents.” She certainly did—witness her own diaries, and her loyal support of Winston when rebuked by his father. Do well in your grades, she wrote him, and it will eclipse your father’s low view of your prospects. Yet she didn’t hesitate to criticize. Once, finding him adopting a “pompous style,” she warned: “You are in danger of becoming a prig!” For the most part, though, she took joy in his letters.

There are early examples of Churchill’s wry wit and powers of observation. Take Calcutta—please: “A very great city and at night with a grey fog and cold wind—I shall always [be] glad to have seen it—for the same reason Papa gave for being glad to have seen Lisbon—namely ‘that it will be unnecessary ever to see it again.’” On his grandmother Frances, 7th Duchess of Marlborough: “Old age is sufficiently ugly and unpleasing without its too frequent accompaniments, capriciousness and malevolence.” Ouch.

Once commissioned, Winston was desperate for action: “scenes of adventure and excitement,” where he could “gain experience and derive advantage.” He felt hampered in “tedious” India, denied both “the pleasures of peace and the chances of war.” Before long, he was yearning for Crete. Why? Because, Lough explains, he hoped for assignment as a war correspondent during the Greek revolt against Ottoman rule. In a paragraph, Lough explains how this promising fracas was resolved, much to young Winston’s frustration. Yet India would soon provide plenty of war’s chances with the Malakand Field Force. It was the grist for Churchill’s first book.

“Your political career will lead you to big things”

Throughout his letters, notably in his soldier years, we see how Churchill planned his course, always aiming toward politics. “My soldiering prospects are a present very good,” he wrote Jennie from India. “I should continue in the army for two years more. Those two years could not be better spent on active service.” He would ride fame into Parliament. And he did. Politically, his mother’s predictions were more accurate than his. Winston was sure the Conservatives would lose power by 1902, for example. As Jennie expected, they hung on for another four years. Yet, with the sense of timing for which he was renowned, Winston managed to bolt to the Liberals in time for the 1906 election.

Jennie “did nothing to discourage a switch of careers,” David Lough tells us. Indeed his “political ambitions excited her after the premature end of her husband’s ministerial career.” This is exemplary of Lough’s penetrating observations. It is often overlooked that Lord Randolph’s precipitate political fall greatly depressed Jennie, more even than his death. Their son revived her hopes, especially after his hair-raising Boer War adventures: “I am sure you are sick of the war,” she wrote. Now “you will be able to make a decent living out of writings, & your political career will lead you to big things.” She was right again. He was also safer—relatively. In politics you can be killed many times, he later observed; but in war only once.

Separated as they were by oceans and continents, two-thirds of their letters span the years before Churchill entered politics. The rest are largely from early in his political career. There is much more than politics, including details of his romances. He broke up with Pamela Plowden, whom Jennie was sure he would marry, writing his mother in 1901: “We had no painful discussions, but there is no doubt in my mind that she is the only woman I could ever live happily with…” (Not quite.)

Disappointingly, there are no Jennie letters about Lord Randolph’s death. We have no inkling of what she thought: relief, grief, both? Neither will the prurient find the oft-rumored, unsubstantiated, Jennie letters about Clementine Hozier, another woman with whom Winston soon found he could live happily. Jennie had reintroduced them in 1908, after a bad start four years earlier. A long, happy marriage began that year. A fine coda to their early relationship is Winston’s letter to his mother a few days after she ceased being the most important woman in his life: “Clemmy v[er]y happy & beautiful…. You were a great comfort & support to me at a critical time in my emotional development. We have never been so near together so often in a short time.”

“I might have known that 50 miles behind the line was not your particular style…”

Nor do we find revealing letters at critical junctures to come: Churchill’s appointment to the Admiralty, the outbreak of the Great War, his abrupt fall from power. Only after he has resigned to join his regiment do we find him in Jennie’s thoughts again: “I might have known that 50 miles behind the line was not your particular style….It is no use my saying ‘be careful.’ It is all in the hands of God. I can only pray & hope for the best.”

God granted her prayer and he was soon back in the thick of politics. But they never indulged much in political exchanges, as Winston did with Clementine. Jennie’s few letters now were filled with family things: pride in grandchildren, happiness at Winston’s political success, her 1918 marriage to Montagu Porch. His step-father was actually three years younger than Winston, but the marriage worked somehow. Moreover, his mother was happy, and that was what mattered to her son.

This is quite a wonderful collection, shedding bright light on the youthful Churchill’s hopes and dreams, while revealing the worldly, solicitous, loving influence of his American mother. No son could wish for more. For those of us similarly blessed in our lives, David Lough conveys an understanding of why a man is fortunate if he is his mother’s son. As Jennie would write to him often, as our mothers wrote to us: “God bless you my darling and keep you safe.”

============== Continued from Part 1…

Part 2: Dislocations

On 18 December 1898 Winston Churchill wrote to his friend Aylmer Haldane. “I am leaving the army in April. I have come back merely for the Polo Tournaments.”  He told his mother he would stay at Government House. He was “playing polo quite well now. Never again shall I be able to do so. Everything will have to go to the war chest.”

Fortune interfered: “Everything smiled until last night—when I fell downstairs and sprained both my ankle and dislocated my right shoulder,” he wrote his brother Jack in February.

In his autobiography three decades later, Churchill wrote that he first dislocated his shoulder on arriving in India in 1896. At the Bombay quayside he had grabbed an iron hand-hold ring when the boat fell with a sudden surge and he wrenched his shoulder. Thereafter, he wrote, he had to play polo with his arm strapped to his side.

* * *

His letters at the time make no mention of this incident. It was his habit to mention injuries—an injured knee in December 1896, for example. In the first version of this article (1991), I suggested that Churchill’s first dislocation likely occurred after falling at Government House in 1898, rather than the much more romantic quayside episode in 1896. Upon reflection and expert advice, I believe Churchill’s version is correct. After describing the Bombay accident he writes: “Since then, at irregular intervals my shoulder has dislocated on the most unexpected pretexts; sleeping with my arm under the pillow, taking a book from the library shelves, slipping on a staircase, swimming, etc.” (Emphasis mine.) This makes it clear that Bombay was the initial incident, although his staircase fall two years later certainly aggravated his condition.

Even with his arm immobilized, Churchill managed to play well. His team beat the 5th Dragoon Guards 16-2, and the 9th Lancers 2-1, in the first round on 23 February. “Few of that merry throng were destined to see old age,” Churchill ruminated sadly. “Our own team was never to play again. A year later Albert Savory was killed in the Transvaal, Barnes was grievously wounded in Natal, and I became a sedentary politician increasingly crippled by my wretched shoulder.”

Playing on

Despite his departure from the home of polo, Churchill continued to play. An appointment book for 1901, his first year in Parliament, showed ten dates in May and June. Listed for Saturday July 6th was “House of Commons versus Guards.” The games on Monday-Wednesday August 5th-7th were marked “Windsor.” 

In 1902 Churchill wrote a long letter to Secretary of State for War St. John Brodrick. He argued against a proposed prohibition of inter-regimental polo tournaments. He attributed the increasing cost of ponies to the English gentry’s participation in the game. Polo, he wrote, contributed to building a soldier’s character and skill. Two years later (after opposing Brodrick over the latter’s army estimates), Churchill left the Tories for the Liberal Party. As a consequence, he felt obliged to alter his club membership. It is often said that Churchill was unaware of the political animus he engendered. But in May 1905 he remarked to Liberal MP Alexander Murray (later Baron Murray of Elibank):

I foolishly allowed myself to be proposed for Hurlingham as a polo playing member; & was of course at once black-balled. This is almost without precedent in the history of the Club—as polo players are always welcomed. I do not think you and your Liberal friends realize the intense political bitterness which is felt against me on the other side.

Polo in later life

Pushing fifty, polo was still very much Churchill’s sport. In the summer of 1921, for example, he and his wife were looking for a family summer cottage. Clementine rented one of the houses at Rugby School, near Ashby St Ledger. “The plan was that Winston would stay with them all,” her biographer wrote, “and be diverted by polo with his Guest cousins.” This the same year Clementine cautioned Winston against speculating in stocks…. “Politics are absolutely engrossing to you…and now you have painting for leisure and polo for excitement and danger.”

At Chartwell, which he bought in 1922, Churchill would sometimes embark on a well-meant but briefly kept economy programs. In 1926 he suggested that Chartwell be rented and that all livestock—except the two polo ponies—be sold. The ponies were still sacred! Many photographs exist of the mature Churchill at play, always with his right arm strapped to his side. A group picture taken on 18 June 1925 shows WSC with fellow players Capt. G.R.G. Shaw, Captain Euan Wallace and Captain the Hon. Freddie Guest, after Churchill’s Commons team defeated the House of Lords. Winston and Clementine are seen at Hurlingham the same year, to watch the British Army play polo against an American team.

Last chukka

Winston’s last game had the longest gestation of all. Plans for it began in the autumn of 1926, when Admiral Sir Roger Keyes invited Churchill, who was taking a holiday cruise in the Mediterranean, to inspect the fleet. They were old friends, having met during polo around 1904, according to Keyes’s biographer. In those days young Keyes and his friends “would drive down to Wembley and play polo on hired ponies from 8 to 9 am. Often, before they finished, a party of young Members of Parliament would arrive to play from 9 to 10 am. It was at Wembley that [Keyes] first made the acquaintance of Winston Churchill.”

Responding to Keyes’s invitation, Churchill replied on 15 November:

As to Polo, of course I should love to have a game. It is awfully kind of you to offer to mount me. It would have to be a mild one as I have not played all this season. However I will arrange to have a gallop or two beforehand so as to ‘calibrate’ my tailor muscles [sartorius]. Anyhow I will bring a couple of sticks and do my best. If I expire on the ground it will at any rate be a worthy end!

Taken at a gallop, he must have reasoned, and would later write in My Early Life, it would be a very good death to die.

* * *

The enthusiastic Sir Roger replied immediately. “Don’t bother to bring polo sticks—you will find all kinds and lengths here. What is your Hurlingham handicap? We’ll get up a four chucker [sic] match for one day after you’ve had a bit of practice. I expect 4 would be about enough if you haven’t been playing—also where do you like playing?”

On 24 December 1926 Churchill wrote Keyes in Malta. “I shall be with you in plenty of time to play on Saturday afternoon [8 January]. I do not think one day’s practice would do me much good; in fact it would only make one stiff. I hope to do a little hacking in the next few days, if the snow which now overlays us should permit.”

Evidently, Churchill managed his final game without mishap. From Admiralty House, Malta, 10 January 1927 he wrote Clementine: “I got through the polo without shame or distinction & enjoyed it so much.”

At age 52, that was the last recorded occasion when Winston Churchill played polo.

Author’s note

Barbara F. Langworth is a New Hampshire publisher and editor. “Churchill and Polo” was first published in 1991. This updated, amended version is published by kind permission of the author in response to reader requests for more information on Churchill’s favorite team sport. The article incidentally demonstrates the rich store of material available in The Churchill Documents, published by Hillsdale College Press.

Endnotes

Barbara Langworth is a bacteriologist, editor and publisher in New Hampshire. Multi-talented, she runs everything.

“Churchill, Suffrage and Black Friday”: excerpted from my article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the full text, including Churchill’s letters to the head of the Metropolitan Police (22 November 1910) and to Prime Minister Asquith (21 December 1911), click here.

A London University student writes for help with his dissertation. Its topic is the relationship between Home Secretary Winston Churchill, the Metropolitan Police, and their handling of women’s suffrage demonstrators in November 1910. His questions illustrate Churchill’s domestic statesmanship. Our answers refute the belief that Churchill stridently opposed women’s suffrage except on isolated occasions in political tactics.

The suffrage argument was simply: give women the vote. Today it sounds perfectly straightforward. The issue was more complicated a century ago. The vote was restricted to “heads of household” (male). If extended to women, it would cover only the small number of female householders. A possible compromise was to enable married women to vote with their husbands as co-householders. Conservatives opposed this, along with some of Churchill’s fellow-Liberals. Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, for example, feared that a “householder” franchise would increase the Conservative vote at Liberal expense. “The long-term solution, no doubt, was universal suffrage,” wrote Paul Addison in Churchill on the Home Front. “but this was sure to be rejected by the House of Lords, and could not be enacted until their lordships’ powers were reduced.” In 1910-11, Churchill and other Liberals were working to do that.

On to the questions…

“Edge of the wedge”

Churchill is alleged to have said: “The women’s suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers and husbands.” In your bookWinston Churchill, Myth and Reality, you maintain on page 25 that Churchill never said these words. Another source suggests that Churchill did say them, in a letter to Asquith on 21 December 1911. Would you be able to shed light on why you dismissed the quoted statement?

Actually my book provides the answer on the same page:

[Churchill] did write something similar in 1897, when he was twenty-three: a note pasted into his copy of the 1874 Annual Register, where he was reviewing political issues to decide which side he would take. Parliament in had drafted a women’s suffrage bill…. [Young Winston dissented] “on the grounds that it is contrary to natural law and the practice of civilized states[;] that no necessity is shown[;] that only the most undesirable class of women are eager for the right[;] that those women who discharge their duty to the state viz marrying and giving birth to children are adequately represented by their husbands[;] that those who are unmarried can only claim a vote on the ground of property, which claim on democratic principles is inadmissible…” (WSC, “Comments on [1874] Annual Register, 1897,” in The Churchill Documents, vol. 2, Young Soldier 1896-1901. Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2006, 765.)

* * *

Churchill’s 1897 opinion was not only those of most Britons then, but most British women, including his mother. It seems incredible by today’s standards, but in the 19th century many women considered politics a rowdy, alcoholic pastime for menfolk and had no wish to participate. With the turn of the century, and the increase of State involvement in people’s lives, their views changed. Churchill changed with them—influenced by his wife Clementine, a pro-suffrage Liberal. Myth and Reality continues:

“From his entry into Parliament, Churchill never wavered from his view that the sex disqualification was unwarranted in principle…. Churchill voted for suffrage as early as 1904. His hesitations in 1905-12 arose when militants tried to break up his speeches. He was against certain measures at certain times, for tactical reasons—unlike, say, Asquith, who opposed the very principle.”

Churchill on Suffrage 

Churchill’s alleged words to Asquith on 21 December 1911 are a manufactured quotation, made up to suit some writer’s preconceived notions. (I will not quote the source, since it deserves no publicity.)

For Churchill to have said that female suffrage was a “wedge” for “every liberal cause under the sun” is questionable on its face, since he was himself a Liberal (and quite a radical one). “Women represented by male relatives” is from his 1897 notes in the Annual Register, inaccurately transcribed. None of these words appear in his 1911 letter to Asquith.

Churchill actually wrote Asquith to advise on political tactics by the government, not to debate the merits of women’s suffrage. Asquith’s response, suggesting that he might attend an anti-suffrage rally, incidentally shows that on that issue he was far more a diehard than Churchill was. (This is also reproduced on the Hillsdale site.)

Fictitious quotes twisted or made up to suit people’s preconceived prejudices pervade much of today’s Churchill discourse. Worse, in my opinion, are incorrect website abstracts of historical documents.

Back to our student queries….

“Black Friday,” 1910

My second question involves Churchill’s instructions for handling demonstrators on 16, 18 and 22 November. Churchill issued them to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Have you come across these instructions?

 On the 16th and 18th Churchill’s instructions were not in writing. On the 22nd they were, and are quite clear. But first consider the context.

In January 1910, Women’s Social and Political Union leader Sylvia Pankhurst declared a halt to militant protests, hoping the Liberal government would introduce a suffrage bill. Henry Noel Brailsford, of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, asked for Churchill’s support. Paul Addison in Churchill on the Home Front writes that Churchill “gave his blessing to the formula, while carefully reserving his position on the detail.” Parliament reassembled on 18 November 1910, having failed to act on the promised bill. Dr. Addison writes:

[On that day] a deputation of three hundred women set out for the House of Commons. As on previous occasions, they tried to break through police cordons. In the past this had led to scuffles with the police, but this time the police adopted more aggressive tactics: “Reluctant to make arrests, the police used a variety of means to force the women back: women were kicked, their arms were twisted, their noses were punched, their breasts were gripped, and knees thrust between their legs. After six hours of struggle, 115 women and four men had been arrested.” These events, with their disturbing overtones of mass sexual assault, were to pass into the folk memory of the women’s movement as “Black Friday.” Churchill, who recognised at once that something discreditable had occurred, intervened to order the release of most of the women arrested. 

* * *

Four days later came a confrontation at Downing Street. The Prime Minister hastily scuttled as demonstrators threw stones and broke windows. Addison continues: “We cannot resist the conclusion that the police as a whole were under the impression that their duty was not merely to frustrate the attempts of the women to reach the House, but also to terrorise them in the process…. once more Churchill intervened to withdraw charges against most of those arrested.”

The Churchill Archives contain no written instructions for handling protestors on 16-18 November 1910. They do contain Churchill’s 22 November letter to Sir Edward Henry, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Churchill refers to his earlier (verbal) instructions, and objects to the way police had acted:

I am hearing from every quarter that my strongly expressed wishes conveyed to you on Wednesday evening and repeated on Friday morning that the suffragettes were not to be allowed to exhaust themselves but were to be arrested forthwith upon any defiance of the law, were not observed by the police on Friday last, with the result that very regrettable scenes occurred. It was my desire to avoid this even at some risk; to arrest large numbers and then subsequently to prosecute only where serious grounds were shown and I am sorry that, no doubt through a misunderstanding, another course has been adopted. In future I must ask for a strict adherence to the policy outlined herein. (WSC to Henry, 22 November 1910, The Churchill Documents, vol. 5, 1456.)

The truth

Black Friday “was not a Churchillian atrocity,” Paul Addison concluded. Churchill tried to prevent the situation. “The nub of the matter was the reluctance of the police to make arrests in the early stages of the demonstration.” It is true that Churchill later resisted a public inquiry over the atrocities. With militants launching bombing campaigns, beating up cabinet ministers and slashing paintings at the National Portrait Gallery, an inquiry would have demoralized the police who had to cope with those evil things. Death or serious injuries would be a stronger case for an inquiry.

Churchill was not philosophically hostile to the principle of women’s suffrage at any time in the 20th century. He voted for it as early as 1904. His hesitations in 1905-12 arose when militants tried to break up his speeches. He resisted certain measures at certain times for tactical reasons—unlike, say, Asquith, who in 1910-12 opposed the very principle.

Churchill did express doubts over a universal franchise. In the 1920s he opposed extending the franchise to women 21-30, fearing it would increase the Labour vote. In the 1930s, with dictatorship on the rise through democratic elections, he again expressed doubts about universal suffrage. On these Churchill is open to valid criticism, though the issues are hardly antique. We hear similar arguments about other groups of new voters today.

* * *

Churchill’s notes from 1897 (inaccurately bowdlerized) do not apply to 1910-11. To place what he wrote in 1897 in the context of the Edwardian era is to ignore his political evolution from Tory to Liberal, from youthful imaginings to political maturity.

Churchill’s support for women’s votes increased after he observed the crucial role women had played in the First World War. Before then, he was less assertive than his wife, though she was an influence. His worries about expanding suffrage carry a certain irony. In the 1945 election that rejected him as prime minister, the Labour margin of victory was 19% among males but just 2% among females. “Papa supported votes for women,” smiled his daughter Mary, “when he realized how many women would vote for him.”

See also “Churchill and Women’s Rights“

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He installed projection equipment for movies at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946.

“Churchill and the Movies” is the final event by Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. It explores two movies regarded as Churchill’s favorites and two biographical movies in historical context. My lecture addresses Henry V with Laurence Olivier. We will discuss Churchill’s understanding of Shakespeare, and application of the lessons of The Bard’s plays.

The venue for this event is the Searle Center, which seats 800. It includes a new spacious entrance and lobby and a completely renovated kitchen. The facility also boasts an escalator, the first one in Hillsdale County.For current information click here.

In 2019, Hillsdale completes the final volume of Churchill’s official biography.  The largest biography in history, it began under Randolph Churchill, fifty-six years ago. Hillsdale also houses the Sir Martin Gilbert Papers, and sponsors Churchill seminars, publications, tours and online courses. Though located in Michigan, Hillsdale is certified as a charity by Revenue Canada as well as the IRS.

In 2014 I joined joined Hillsdale College as Senior Fellow for the Churchill Project, an endowed, permanent center for Churchill Studies. The culmination of my Churchill work over the years, it is an honor to be associated with this preeminent institution. I have now been with its students on many occasions. Inspiring work. I have never met such uniformly learned, thoughtful young people, able to converse on, and seriously to debate, a myriad of topics. They give us the feeling that Churchill was right: Never despair. There is hope yet.

The Freshman Pledge

We, the students of Hillsdale College, commit ourselves to diligent study and patient reflection. Having come to learn, we are proud to do so with integrity and will conduct ourselves with exemplary honor. As sacrifices past and present make possible our education, we too become stewards of this College for the generations yet to come. We pledge ourselves to the pursuit of truth, the love of the good, and the cultivation of beauty, for the sake of our minds and hearts and for an ennobled society. By so doing, we embrace the high calling of liberal education.

* * *

See also “Churchill Bio-Pics”

Turned Back: The Home Secretary and his Motor

Daily Herald, 10 April 1911— Mr. Winston Churchill had a curious experience on Saturday while motoring to Banstead. Part of Sutton High Street is under repair, and two barriers are erected. The first barrier does not completely bar the way.

Mr. Churchill’s car was able to proceed past the first barrier before having to stop. As the car stopped, Adams, the foreman in charge of the work, stepped out and told the chauffeur he would have to turn back as the road was stopped.

Mr. Churchill sent the chauffeur to ask permission of the constable on the beat for the passenger of the car, and the barrier was at once lowered. The foreman, however, placed himself in front of the car and said they would have to go over his body first.

“Don’t you know who it is?” whispered the officer.

“I don’t care who it is,” retorted the foreman.

Mr. Churchill, gently remonstrating, said, “Don’t get cross,” to which Adams responded, “You’re not going through here, whoever you are. Those are my instructions.”

After a few words with the constable, the car was turned round and proceeded on its journey through the side streets.

Pressing on Regardless

Churchill stopped driving himself in the late 1920s, after numerous hair-raising motor adventures between London and his country home Chartwell. When WSC decided to drive personally, his bodyguard Walter Thompson worried: “It either means that he is cross and subconsciously wants to smash up something, or that he is dangerously elated and things will get smashed up anyhow through careless exuberance.”

This didn’t make him any less a menace on the road, since he constantly urged his drivers to exceed speed limits and overtake frequently. Two anecdotes from Part 2 of my article, “Blood, Sweat and Gears”….

Once, doing 80 on a curve, a rear tyre blew and “a van full of irate constables screeched to a halt alongside. They had been trying to catch the runaway for miles.” Realizing who it was, they helped fix the tyre. “Churchill stood off to one side, serenely puffing at a cigar. He made no sign of apology but only got in and cried, ‘Drive off!’ The constables saluted humbly.”

On a campaign trip to Wales, Churchill conversed garrulously with O’Brien, his PR officer. They passed the brandy back and forth. Churchill urged such reckless speed that Clementine Churchill cried: “Please let me out. I refuse to continue this ride.” With the utmost courtesy, Churchill stopped at a country railway station and escorted her to the platform. Then, plying the brandy bottle, he ordered the driver “down the road like a bat out of hell for Cardiff.”

By the time they arrived, what with the brandy and his nerves, O’Brien was “done up—out practically cold. Churchill supervised the laying out of his PRO on a table in the rear of the hall. Then he went ahead and made a rouser of a speech. Afterward, he appeared confused about the origin of O’Brien’s trouble, and expressed the opinion that it was ‘probably something he ate.’”

“Here Firm, Though All Be Drifting” —WSC

It’s all over the Internet, so it must be true. Not only did Winston Churchill oppose women’s rights, gas tribesmen, starve Indians, firebomb Dresden, nurse anti-Semitism and wish to nuke Moscow. He even cheated on his wife—in a four-year affair with Doris Delevingne, Viscountess Castlerosse.

So declare the authors of “Sir John Colville, Churchillian Networks, and the ‘Castlerosse Affair’”—unreservedly repeated by British television, multiple media, even a university: (“Winston Churchill’s affair revealed by forgotten testimony.”)

All these fables—every one demolished by serious inquiry—are commonplace today. As Secretary of State Cordell Hull observed: “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.”

Why is “Churchill’s Secret Affair” (the television title) important? Who cares? It matters because the Churchill marriage was admirable and historically significant. Winston Churchill would have saved liberty without his wife Clementine, if not quite as effectively. Shucks, calling him a mass murderer is easy. But if you’re going to besmirch his marriage, you need to present facts.

Castlerosse or Elliott?

“The Castlerosse Affair” declares that Churchill’s philandering, “hidden until now, was something in the nature of a bombshell.” It was neither hidden nor a bombshell. Rumors of it have been around ninety years—with conflicting dates and two different women.

Late in his life I came to know Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath, a Churchill admirer and collector. He told me that Sir Winston, famously loyal to Clementine, had “strayed only once”—with the American actress Maxine Elliott. Elliott was a lifelong friend, whom Churchill visited at her Riviera villa, Chateau d’Horizon, in the 1930s. She was then in her seventies, but Lord Bath placed the affair twenty years before that. He could offer no proof, save his own circle of friends. Was there anyone beside Maxine? I asked him. “Not that I ever heard of.”

Ironically, Doris, Lady Castlerosse, was also a friend of Elliott’s. Indeed, according to the authors, her affair with Churchill took place in 1933-36, at Chateau d’Horizon.

Gossip about l’amour between Churchill and Castlerosse actually began five years earlier. The rumor’s ephemeral nature is suggested by the first alleged encounter—at the Paris Ritz in 1928. Four years later Doris, a notorious courtesan, apparently did sleep with Churchill’s son Randolph. The story goes that when her husband rang him saying, “I hear you are living with my wife,” Randolph replied: “Yes, I am; and it’s more than you have the courtesy to do.”

The only source for that quote is John Pearson’s Citadel of the Heart, a scathing tell-all about the Churchill family. Yet even Pearson, who omitted no scandal, dismissed the idea of a Castlerosse affair with Randolph’s father: “As with so many rumours of this sort, it is unprovable either way.”

Sir John Colville

Now the Castlerosse story is back, with an apparently solid source: Churchill’s longtime private secretary. In a 1985 interview with the Churchill Archives Centre, Sir John “Jock” Colville disclosed the “evidence,” which we are told no-one previously listened to. (This is inaccurate; other historians had heard it, but dismissed it as unprovable.)

Colville said he was having tea with Winston and Clementine when literary assistant Denis Kelly approached with what Colville said were love letters from Castlerosse. “Clementine read the correspondence and went pale,” the article states. “She had never previously thought that Winston had been unfaithful….she was frightfully anxious about it for months….Colville, in response, tried to play it down….” (Actually, Colville says he told her, “I bet he didn’t,” in effect contradicting himself.)

All this begs a rather obvious question: What was Sir Winston’s reaction? After all, Colville says, he was right there. Did he admit his sin and ask forgiveness? Hotly deny it? Would a man revealed to his wife as a philanderer say nothing? Neither Colville nor the authors tell us.

* * *

In the 1980s I had several conversations with Jock Colville, whom I loved and respected as a “keeper of the flame.” I do not pretend they were of any great importance, but we did discuss Lord Bath’s belief in Churchill’s affair with Maxine Elliott. Sir John labeled this ridiculous. He did not refer to Castlerosse. Of course, that is hardly dispositive.

Moreover, Colville did not even meet Churchill until 1940, years after the supposed indiscretions. The best “The Castlerosse Affair” can offer is that “he believed it” and “would not have made the allegation lightly.” In my experience he was not above repeating chatter among his social set. Before the Kelly episode, that is the only way he could have heard about it.

And that is how everybody heard about it. The television program is replete with family tittle-tattle: “It was known….a tradition in our family….my mother told me.” Decades ago, biographer George Malcolm Thomson speculated that the couple “may have enjoyed a ‘romantic friendship.’” In 2016 (well before the current article) Lyndsy Spence, Castlerosse’s biographer, cited “much repeated gossip,” citing Pearson. “On the face of it,” the authors state, “Pearson’s and Spence’s claims do not look well supported.” But Pearson did not make the claim—he denied it. Still they insist that “Colville’s claim of an affair was, at least, plausible.”

Denis Kelly

The only real evidence Colville offered was the Kelly episode, but “The Castlerosse Affair” doesn’t tell us what Kelly thought. As it happens, he thought a great deal.

I knew Denis Kelly well, corresponded with him, and published an imaginative article of his about conversing with the ghost of Sir Winston. He was a dear man, a gifted barrister. In 1947-57 he’d worked at Chartwell, Churchill’s home, sorting out the muniment room for his official biography—“to make Cosmos out of Chaos,” as Churchill put it.

Like Colville, Kelly laughed off the Maxine Elliott story, saying it wasn’t the boss he’d known. “Of course,” he said honestly, “that was long before my time.” To the best of his belief, Sir Winston had never been unfaithful (Churchill Archive Centre, file CHOH 1/DEKE). If, per Colville, he had handed Lady Churchill “love letters,” he therefore had no inkling of their content—which sounds nothing like the Denis Kelly I knew. 

Documentary evidence?

Surviving Churchill-Castlerosse correspondence cannot be described as “love letters.” Most of it comprises the bread and butter notes people wrote in those days—how nice to see you, will you be back next season, you were “a ray of sunshine around the swimming pool.” At the same time, Churchill was writing lovingly to his wife, describing his days at Maxine’s and everyone present, including Castlerosse—not the letters of a cheater.

“The Castlerosse Affair” tries to make the most of them anyway. In 1937, Doris wrote Churchill: “I should like to see you. I am not dangerous anymore.” This, we are told, “could be read as an indication that the affair was now over, and that Doris did not mean to try to revive it.” She was referring to her divorce, but it could equally be read that she was over a case of ’flu. In it she provides Winston with her London telephone. This has to be the first time in history of affairs that the philanderer did not have his mistress’s phone number.

The authors say Colville “implied” that the really incriminating “love letters” were destroyed, “presumably by Clementine.” True, she was not above destroying offensive material—for example, she burned the appalling portrait presented by Parliament on Sir Winston’s eightieth birthday. I guess she overlooked the “I am not dangerous” letter. But let’s assume she destroyed the rest. Why then did she include a Churchill portrait of Doris Castlerosse among the paintings she set out for display at Chartwell by the National Trust after Sir Winston’s death? (It’s still there.)

* * *

We are told that the lovestruck Churchill painted Doris four times, and that she owned two. Historian Andrew Roberts writes that he also painted Sir Walter Sickert’s and Sir John Lavery’s wives, Arthur Balfour’s niece, his sister-in-law, his secretary, his wife’s cousin, and Lady Kitty Somerset: “There is no suggestion he was sleeping with any of them. Meanwhile, he painted his wife Clementine three times.”

Ah, but none of those paintings were as sultry as that of a recumbent Doris, wearing shorts, which is supposed to be revealing. Everybody wore shorts on the Riviera in the 1930s. Yet on television a royal biographer says: “She’s lying down, so they’re halfway there.” Can these people be serious?

* * *

In 1942, years after the apparent affair apparently ended, Doris was in New York, appealing to Churchill to help her return to London. This he did. He often performed kindnesses for friends, but this, we are told, was crucial: It “could be taken to imply that Doris tried to blackmail Churchill with the portraits.” Furthermore, Churchill allegedly tried to get the paintings back.

After Lady Castlerosse died in December 1942, the paintings “ended up for a time” with newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook. The television show calls him “Churchill’s political fixer.” More precisely he was a sometime friend and part-time nemesis. After the war, they returned to her family. Which again proves nothing.

Where is the “sultry” painting today? To my amusement, I tracked it to Longleat, home of the late 6th Marquess, who told me the Maxine Elliot story. There is humorous irony in the wriggles and windings of this shaggy dog story.

Retaliatory sex?

“The Castlerosse Affair” also suggests that Clementine herself was unfaithful. “On the long cruise which she took without Winston in 1935, Clementine ‘fell romantically in love’ with one of her fellow voyagers, Terence Philip. Whereas it seems doubtful that she was reacting to knowledge of an affair between Winston and Doris, the episode could be taken as indicative of a coolness in the Churchill marriage at this time.” It certainly does seem doubtful—if she knew about it in 1935, she could not have “gone pale” when confronted by the “love letters” two decades later.

In the television program a Clementine biographer claims that their “marriage was on the rocks” at the time. (It omits to note the same biographer’s denials of both Clementine’s and Winston’s affairs.) Reality check: Terence Philip was a personable, socially useful art dealer, often entrusted to accompany unescorted women. Lady Soames, Clementine’s daughter and best biographer, told me her mother never gave reason to believe Philip was more than Clementine’s affectionate companion.

“Too easy to be good”

At the time of the “Castlerosse affair,” when Churchill was desperately warning of the Nazi threat, the French Ambassador suggested that Britain and France join with Hitler in a war against European communism. Churchill’s reply to that ill-considered proposal precisely applies to this farrago of innuendo: “Too easy to be good.”

Why do we continually encounter character assaults on figures most of the world reveres? It stems from a skewed vision of the egalitarian principle, the theory that there are no great figures, we are all the same. The scholar Harry Jaffa cited a public appetite for books and articles “which denigrate nobility or idealism. Politics as a vocation is today in bad repute. Young people are led to believe that to succeed is to prove oneself a clever or lucky scoundrel. The detraction of the great has become a passion for those who cannot suffer greatness, and will not have it believed.”

The single remark of an old colleague, honorable though he was, is contradicted by other old colleagues, the actions of Churchill’s wife and friends, lack of facts, and plain common sense. The Churchill marriage remains undiminished, as it should: a tribute to a historic partnership. As Churchill was wont to remark of his fifty-seven-year union: “Here firm, though all be drifting.”

Famed for her beauty and the “durable fire” of her marriage to Alfred Duff Cooper, First Viscount Norwich, The Lady Diana Cooper was early admitted to  friendship with Winston and Clementine Churchill. A stunning beauty and an accomplished actress, she was a glittering writer. Her trilogy of memoirs is redolent of that vanished England the Coopers and Churchills loved. Her books are worth seeking out: The Light of Common Day, Trumpets from the Steep and The Rainbow Comes and Goes (1958-60).

In another age, when even Churchill’s marriage is questioned by the ignorant, Lady Diana offers words worth remembering. Few who knew Clementine and Winston spoke better of it. Little was said about it in their time, she writes,“because it was too happy to be heard of.” Her essay corrected that lapse. It first appeared after Sir Winston’s death in The Atlantic. Lady Diana ‘s son, Lord Norwich, had not seen it and was pleased at the discovery. I have inserted her charming picture of a Chartwell weekend from her first volume of memoirs. —RML

*Excerpted from the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. To read the complete article, click here.

Lady Diana writes…

From the solemn moment when the world knew that Winston Churchill had breathed his last, a roll of honour of some 17th-century poet elusively haunted me. To lay it I asked friends, poets, and publishers, even All Souls College. All remembered it, but none could place the lines that say: “O that Sir Philip Sidney should be dead….O that Sir Walter Raleigh should be dead.”’ Many another glorious name is listed, and now we can add: O that Sir Winston Churchill should be dead. No man deserved his laurels more wholly. He left us the example of his prowess, the books that record his great times; and more than these he left us courage.

Some years ago I wrote for my own records what I remembered about him over fifty years, and among these notes comes a facet of his life that in the elegies and paeans of today may not be emphasized. I mean his life with his wife and the part she played in balancing his lion’s heart. For Winston, who in our most dread days armed us with a superhuman courage and endurance, victoriously chose his wife with love, wisdom, and intuition.

Clementine Churchill

Among prime ministers I have personally known, Mr. Asquith chose (or was he chosen by?) a Christian dynamo who loved him till his end and after. Lord Baldwin could not sustain life after his wife’s death. There was Tolstoy’s marriage of unadulterated and increasing misery. Yet who but Sofya Andreevna could he have found to bear him thirteen little Russians and copy War and Peace seven times with her own hand? A wise choice indeed. Disraeli married out of cold sense rather than sentiment, and learned to love his wife tenderly. Mrs. Gladstone was adored by William, for whom she would hide in her bodice cakes and goodies from party tables.

Clementine Churchill could have figured in a Homeric story. She was statue-like, and one expected to see her carrying an agate lamp. Her large, lightest of blue-green eyes, her chiseled nose and elegantly upheld head suggested a goddess of the infant world. Blood coursed through the marble, flushing it with animation, warmth, sometimes rising to passionate heat in partisanship of a cause. Calm she also had, with a well-balanced judgment of people and situations—consistent and reliable. She often knew the sheep from the goats better than Winston did. “Clemmie sits behind me on the platform, shaking her beautiful head in disagreement with some new and pregnant point I am developing,” I remember his saying, with pride in her stable Liberalism, after some Tory meeting. Her devotion never subjected her to becoming a doormat, or to taking the easier way with her high-powered Hercules.

Chartwell reverie

Personally I did not know the Churchills when they married, though they were household words since I first remember adult talk. Later I knew there were children; that a little girl by dying had plunged her mother into deep grief which left a permanent scar. Neither Randolph, an Olympian-looking boy, nor the two older daughters did I set eyes upon till they were grown up. Mary, the youngest, was still a child when, in the Thirties, I came more intimately into the home life of Chartwell.

Life at Chartwell before the war was that of England’s “Little Man” on a titanic scale. I remember particularly a weekend spent mostly in Winston’s swimming pool. Forty winks in the afternoon and then (unexpectedly) bathing at seven in pouring rain, intensely cold with a grey half-light of approaching night, yet curiously enough very enjoyable in its oddness. Freda Ward, Winston, Duff, Clementine, Randolph and a child, in fact the whole party, were splashing about with gleeful screams in this sad crepuscule. The secret was that the bath was heated, and it was Winston’s delightful toy.

Twenty-four hours later he called for Inches, the butler, and said: “Tell Allen to have a lot more coal on. I want the thing full blast.”’ Inches returned to say that Allen was out for the day. “Then tell Arthur I want it full blast,”’ but it was Arthur’s day out as well, so the darling old schoolboy went surreptitiously and stoked it himself for half an hour, coming in on the verge of apoplexy. Again we all had to bathe in the afternoon.

Manners and grace…

Serene, radiant, and selfless, Clementine put her husband above her children, her interests, and the whole world. Manners and grace, order and good taste must have been considered essential, for these virtues showed brightly. And the virtues were vital, for Chartwell was large. Enterprises took the shape of earthworks and waterworks. The staff must include a posse of secretaries to cope with stacks of reference books, red boxes, manuscripts of books to be. Studios and passages bore piled pyramids of canvases. Midnight oil forever burned.

Of all the heroes, of Hector, of Lysander, and of Caesar, Clementine’s paragon was probably the easiest to live beside. At least my eyes saw him as most docile to her rule. I never heard Winston nagged. All great men are more childish than good women, and there must have been, behind the scenes, some Mrs. Caudle lectures, some of the scolding that a nanny gives her charge for childishness, showing off, overexcitement, obstinacy, or sulks, some promise extracted that such behaviour would not happen again.

I can hear his prime minister’s professed penitence, the vow made and never kept by the incorrigible schoolboy. One of his dearest associates tells me that those who were closest to this extraordinary man through the fearful war were struck by the contrast between Winston at work and Winston, the family man, at play. They might spend a whole afternoon listening to him as the great statesman, propounding plans on which the lives of millions of men and the world’s future would depend, and a few minutes later they would see him at the dinner table, a benevolent old codger, twinkling with humour, treated as a naughty child by his wife, and mercilessly teased by his daughters.

“Nor less we praise in sterner days…”

In wartime, away from Chartwell, difficulties increased apace.  There came a time in the war when Winston, aged sixty-five, found the free countries around him gagged and fettered, and all his fortitude was called upon. In those days Clementine’s burden became colossal. Five hours’ sleep at night and an hour’s siesta were all that this restless phenomenon allowed himself. What other wife could have restrained herself from urging him to bed? But she learned in their finest hour to know the moment for self-effacement and the moment to take charge.

Once, he was anxious to see M. Paul Reynaud in France. His colleagues and the flying men tried to dissuade him from a flight through danger and tempest. Clementine was besought by an apprehensive friend to influence her husband against taking this risk. “Are the RAF flying today?” she asked. “Yes, but on essential operations only.” “Well, Winston says that his mission is an essential operation.” That was all the satisfaction he got from this Trojan woman. The Prime Minister went—and returned.

Interrupted Christmas

The task would have been too heavy for most women to carry. It has always been my temptation to put myself in other people’s shoes: into a ballerina’s points as she feels age weight upon her spring; into Cinderella’s slippers as she dances till midnight; inside the jackboot that kicks; into the Tommy’s boots that tramp. With experience of age I have learned to control this habit of sympathy which deforms truth. In war days I often put myself into Clemmie’s shoes, and as often felt how they pinched and rubbed till I kicked them off, heroic soles and all, and begged my husband to rest and be careful. Fortunately, Clementine was a mortal of another clay.

By 1944, Christmas wore a brighter look. On its eve the children were already assembled at Chequers. A special Christmas tree, a present from President Roosevelt, stood ready for lighting. The grandchildren, all agog with anticipation, were frustrated by a telegram from Athens. It brought the disturbing news that the situation there was critical. Winston characteristically decided to leave London by air that very night.

Did Clementine protest? Did she tell him he was being cruel to the children and spoiling everything for everyone? Beg for postponement till after the Christmas dinner, till after lunch, at least till after the giving of presents and kisses? I doubt it. She had become a friend of sacrifice. So Winston flew away that night, managed to scotch a communist coup d’etat, and Greece remained free. That is what the reports told us. I hope they told the Greeks.

Last Words

Death places his icy democratic hand on kings, heroes, and paupers, and in 1965 the free world and the enslaved registered with mourning or contempt the passing of Winston Churchill. Stones were graven, elegies voiced from platforms and pulpits, the muffled drums rolled, the arms were reversed, the hatchments put up, the Last Post sounded. The expressed sympathy for the widow, but said little about his married life, because it was too happy to be heard of. His epitaph might be from Robert Browning:

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
“Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.