The organization arose from an unlikely pastime—philately. It attracted Dal’s interest because, while a devoted all-purpose “Churchillian,” he was also a stamp collector. His enthusiasm was infectious, combining an encyclopedic knowledge of Churchill with our own passing interest in Churchill commemorative postage stamps.

Newfield created an informative adjunct to Churchill philately with what he called “CRs”—Churchill-related stamps not depicting him but closely involving him. They were a mainstay of the original Churchill Study Unit until it morphed into the larger Churchill Society. That too, was the work of Dal Newfield, who realized that stamps were but a blip in the Churchill story—that a broader approach was indicated.

Dal’s imagination produced many “CR” stories, among which this was most intriguing. It features the German battlecruiser Goeben, later the Turkish flagship Yavuz. It involves fateful decisions by the British Admiralty, and their effect on career of Churchill—which the activities of Goeben almost stopped in its tracks.

“For Want of a Nail”: The Goeben Story

by Dalton Newfield

In the early years of the 20th Century, Turkey was known as “The Sick Man of Europe,” torn between rival factions, between old and new worlds. On one side was Sultan Mehmed V and the conservatives. On the other was Enver Pasha‘s group, the Young Turks. They agreed about one thing: Russia must be ousted from the Caucasus.

Raising money by popular subscription, Turkey ordered two Dreadnought-class battlecruisers from Britain. They also asked the British to modernize their fleet, and the Germans to modernize their army.

By 1914 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, was bringing England’s navy up to fighting trim. War was imminent, and the Turkish ships were almost complete. In fact, the crew of one was already standing by to take over. Churchill, unsure of Turkey, decided to commandeer the ships for the Royal Navy.

War between France and Germany was declared on August 3rd. The Turks, divided, were in a quandary. Enver Pasha, on his own, signed an alliance with Germany. The next day, panic stricken, he tried to make an alliance with Russia! Sultan Mehmed V stood fast for neutrality.

Drama in the Med

One of France’s best army corps was in North Africa, and with war threatening was needed back in France. To protect the crossing, France had a powerful navy. But the swiftest capital ship in the Mediterranean was SMS (Seiner Majestät Schiff) Goeben, a two-year-old German battlecruiser. She had just finished refitting in Pola, the Austro-Hungarian navy base on the Adriatic. Goeben was capable of making mincemeat of the French convoys.

On 30 March 1914, Admiral Lord Berkeley Milne, Commander-in-Chief of the British Mediterranean fleet, received new orders. Even then, war scares were prevalent. Milne’s primary mission was to protect French convoys from Goeben, and not to let Goeben escape into the Atlantic. This was tall order, since war had not yet been declared by any country.

Milne sent a force of light warships under Admiral Charles Troubridge toward the mouth of the Adriatic. He concentrated the rest of his forces including HMS Indomitable and Indefatigable, at Malta. Together the two forces were capable of destroying Goeben.

Then the French had second thoughts about crossing the Mediterranean at this time. Inexplicably, they did not tell the British of this decision. Next, Italy declared herself neutral and Britain informed Italy that she would respect her neutrality within six miles from Italian shores.

Easy prey

On August 2nd Goeben coaled at Messina, then, with her accompanying cruiser SMS Breslau, bombarded the French North African ports of Bone and Philippeville. On that day Britain sent an ultimatum to Germany: Get out of Belgium by midnight. At about 3pm, west of Sicily, Goeben passed within 10,000 yards of Indomitable and Indefatigable—easy prey for the British, who could fire three times more metal at Goeben than she could return. Troubridge regretted that the German admiral’s flag was not flying. Otherwise he would have fired a salute which, in view of the tense situation, might have precipitated war on the spot.

In London, Churchill and the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, begged the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, to allow the British warships to strike. Asquith agreed, but the Cabinet declared it would not be “cricket” to fire before the British ultimatum expired on August 4th. The German ships steamed away unmolested.

Goeben returned to Messina where she topped off her bunkers. Again, the British could have sunk her with little trouble. Again, it was decided that to attack her inside Italy’s six-mile limit was unsporting.

German Konteradmiral Wilhelm Souchon made out his will and sailed south out of Messina, to what he was sure would now be the long-awaited British attack and his almost certain death. To his surprise, only light cruisers awaited him. Milne’s force was still to the west, screening nonexistent French convoys!

Escape of Goeben

Then the second inexplicable incident occurred: Indomitable needed coal, but Milne, instead of sending her to Malta—where the operation would take less time and from where she could cover Messina and the Adriatic—sent her to Bizerte, North Africa. There she was well out of the action. Goeben and Breslau sailed for Pola at the head of the Adriatic, with only Troubridge’s light warships in their way.

Suddenly the German ships altered course to the east-southeast. Admiral Souchon had been advised of the chances of a German alliance with Turkey. The British, still ignorant of the situation, were puzzled. Milne gave Troubridge no orders, so finally he decided to give chase, hoping to get in at least a crippling blow before daylight.

Then the third inexplicable event occurred. Troubridge had 16 vessels, far more than Goeben could sink with the ammunition in her hold. Despite this advantage, Troubridge decided the odds were against him, and turned back to the Adriatic! Milne, by then, was coming up at flank speed.

Then the fourth inexplicable event occurred: A clerk in the Admiralty office, without any authority at all, radioed that war had been declared against Austria-Hungary. Milne’s orders were clear. He reversed his course and headed for Malta. It was 24 hours before Milne’s course was noted and reversed. Except that the British still could not imagine where Goeben was headed, the chase now looked hopeless. But was it?

Another opportunity lost

In Constantinople Enver Pasha and Sultan Mehmed were still at odds. For almost two days Goeben and Breslau wandered about the Greek islands, awaiting permission to pass into the Dardanelles. Finally they were allowed through. With her arrival, Turkey’s alliance with Germany was sealed.

Still the British did not know of the alliance. Winston Churchill protested the presence of Goeben in a “neutral” port, demanding she be interned. Germany responded by announcing that Goeben and Breslau had been “sold” to Turkey. It was a blatant ruse that Churchill recognized. He ordered her sunk if she came out, “regardless of what flag she flew.”

On October 27th Goeben, in company with the Turkish Navy, steamed into the Black Sea, bombarded the Russian fortress of Sevastopol, sank a transport, raided Odessa, torpedoed a gunboat and practically destroyed Novorossiysk, its oil tanks and all the shipping in port. At last the British declared war on Turkey.

“For want of a nail…”

But why is a Turkish commemorative showing the battlecruiser Yavuz a Churchill-related postage stamp?

Had Goeben not passed the Dardanelles, it was very possible Turkey would have remained neutral in the First World War. Absent Turkey, the Allies lost their only supply route to Russia. This loss was so serious that in 1915 Churchill felt it imperative to assault the Dardanelles. The resulting debacle was the principal reason Churchill was ousted from the Admiralty. Because of Goeben, the Russian armies starved for food and materiel. The Czar fell and the Bolsheviks took over. And the rest is history….

Yavuz and her fate

After being mined several times, beached and bombed by Handley Page bombers, Goeben was given to the Turks in  the Treaty of Lausanne. She was ultimately refitted and renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim. She served as flagship of the Turkish Navy until 1954.

Yavuz was offered to West Germany as a museum ship in 1963, but the artifacts of the Kaiser’s war were not popular, and the offer was turned down. She was sold for scrap in 1971. Yavuz was the last Dreadnought in existence outside the United States and the longest-serving of all Dreadnought-class warships. She was also the last survivor of the Imperial German Navy.

“We go back a long way,” Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn recently reminded me. “I knew Dal Newfield.” He realized that would invoke a fond memory. A few still remember the man responsible for where some of us are today.

Dalton Newfield was a Sacramento army veteran who had admired Winston Churchill since he saw him live during World War II. In 1970, I shrank away from Finest Hour after the first eleven issues. I was clearing the decks for an automotive writing career in New York City. Dal rescued the thin little newsletter of the “Winston S. Churchill Study Unit” and produced 22 issues. His first cover was memorable: a replica of The Times front page for 30 November 1874. In the upper left corner, each copy was marked with a hand-applied red dot. It was an announcement: “Born at Blenheim Palace, of The Lady Randolph Churchill, a son….”

The Newfield era

Dal’s increasingly interesting editions extended far beyond the original scope of stamp collecting. We never had more than $300 in the bank, but he found a friendly printer. Here he begged or borrowed what we then called “half-tones”—photos to liven it up. We couldn’t afford typesetting, so he typed each issue on a carbon ribbon Selectric. Running out of space, he’d continue articles up and down the margins. It was a happy, eclectic little news-sheet, brimming with Churchilliana.

“Look,” Newfield said early on: “Stamps are fine, but they don’t do justice to this grand character. We need a broader approach. You came up aces with the title Finest Hour. Now let’s rename the organization.” I suggested “International Churchill Society.” It seemed like a good idea at the time.

High among Dal’s priorities was Sir Winston’s deep literary heritage. He produced many articles about Churchill’s books and books about him, especially Winston S.. Churchill, the Official Biography. (Actually there was nothing “official” about it, except that it was based on Churchill’s archive. But the biographers were never asked to follow a particular line.) Martin Gilbert had just succeeded first author Randolph Churchill, who had published seven volumes. I invited Randolph to be our first honorary member, two weeks before he died in 1968. Martin, a stamp collector, remembered when my letter arrived.

Books, books and more books

Books were Newfield’s forte—he was the world’s first Churchill specialist bookseller. He worked to get member discounts on Martin’s first volume, The Challenge of War 1914-1916. By 1975, when Martin published the “companion” or document volumes to that work, the book business was taking all Dal’s spare time. He gave up editing, and Finest Hour vanished. Meanwhile he was selling me books and reigniting my Churchill compulsion. In 1981 he slyly suggested: “You’re freelancing now, so why not revive FH? There’s enough in the treasury for one issue, and I have a pretty good promo list.”

He sure did. One of our first subscribers was U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. We returned his check and made him an honorary member. “That way,” Dal said, “he can never get away.” I later came to know this fine man personally. He was the first of many introductions to “the good and the great” through the magic name of Churchill.

Alas only a few months later, Dalton Newfield suddenly died, leaving his many friends bereft. One of those was a scholar named Larry Arnn. They had met in the late 1970s, when Larry was Martin Gilbert’s chief of research, while studying at the London School of Economics and Oxford.

The Official Biography falters

Larry had joined Martin in 1977, after publication of biographic Volume 5, Prophet of Truth 1922-1939. Martin and his staff developed the document volumes for Prophet of Truth. Working with them was a Lancashire girl named Penny, the future Mrs. Arnn. They left for the States in 1980, and the third and last of the Volume 5 documents did not appear until 1983.

Martin and his team were fastidious, and would not be rushed. They interviewed anyone who knew Churchill, vacuuming every archive and resource. Originally Randolph had envisioned five volumes of biography and ten of documents, but the job was exploding. At 1106 pages, Prophet of Truth was nearly double the size of the first narrative volume. At 4592 pages, its accompanying documents nearly quadrupled the page count for the “companions” to Volume I.

Martin Gilbert was not independently wealthy, his pay for the biography low. Often he would set it aside to take on other assignments. Like Sir Winston himself, he was “living from mouth to hand.” The Official Biography was repeatedly delayed. The last three narrative volumes were done by 1988, but of their accompanying documents, there was no sign. After the last biographic volume the publishers, Heinemann and Houghton Mifflin, lost interest. They saw the job as essentially finished; the slow-selling documents were unprofitable. Yet from a scholarly standpoint, they were the heart of the work.

Stepping up

Here was where the seeds Dal Newfield planted took root. Born among two-dozen stamp collectors, the Churchill Society by the mid-1980s had acquired some serious visionaries. “If you want to do something lasting,” they said, “find a way to publish things commercial publishers won’t touch.” In 1986, launching the Churchill Literary Foundation, we set out to do just that.

It began small, with a booklet by the aforesaid Caspar Weinberger. Through it we raised support for more. By 1992 we’d produced ten specialized publications including Churchill’s The Dream and his Chartwell Bulletins, even a series of fifty-year calendars (1940-90, and so on). The last special publication, The Churchill Companion (2013) brought the total to twenty-four. The Foundation (part of the Churchill Centre after 1995) worked with publishers to reissue long out-of-print books. In short order we saw the Malakand Field Force, Savrola, The Boer War, the six-volume World Crisis. I even published one myself—India, Churchill’s rare book of speeches. But the question remained: how to finish the Official Biography?

Wendy Reves and the War Papers

Fortune then smiled in the person of Wendy Reves, vivacious widow of Emery Reves, Sir Winston’s literary agent. The devoted Reveses had hosted WSC in his old age at their Riviera villa, “La Pausa.” Emery died in 1981 but Wendy still lived there. I met Wendy at the Hotel Pierre in New York in 1986. There was no mistaking the former fashion model: smartly dressed, dark glasses, trademark headband. She became an enthusiastic supporter.

In 1990 we began seeking to restart the document volumes. They had ended in 1939—tantalizingly, the eve of Churchill’s finest hour. To cover 1940-65, Martin Gilbert said, would require at least six more. We passed his thoughts to Wendy—she always referred to him in French as Monsieur Geel-bear. “How much will it take?” she asked. We told her. She said, “When can he start?”

Thus followed three huge document volumes, The Churchill War Papers, covering September 1939 through December 1941. The publisher was W.W. Norton. Heinemann in London tagged along, popping their logo on the spine and selling their version at twice Norton’s price, pleasing nobody.

Martin’s output, vast and wonderful as it was, didn’t please the sponsor. The first two volumes arrived in quick succession in 1993 and 1994. Then Martin became sidetracked again, and we didn’t see the third until 2000. Wendy had faithfully kept her bargain, paying the bills for each (mainly secretarial and research staff). But the six-year delay exhausted her patience. “I’m done,” she declared. I recall that Martin himself didn’t greatly object. I think he was fairly exhausted, too.

Larry Arnn raises the Tattered Flag

Now what? Unbeknown to us, another champion was in the field who would finish the job. Happily, it was somebody we knew and trusted, a man who has never let us down. So it was that Larry Arnn, by now president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, set out to finish the longest biography in history. In so doing, as Churchill said, he raised “a tattered flag found lying on a stricken field.”

The task ahead was daunting. Raw material for the remaining document volumes was mainly assembled. It comprised thousands of papers covering 1943-65. Indeed Martin Gilbert had compiled a “wodge” of documents for almost every day of Churchill’s life. But all had to be edited into a coherent whole. Sources needed to be checked, cross-references listed, rejects weeded out, additions pondered, facts verified. A comprehensive index and footnotes were needed, including thumbnail biographies of every person mentioned. And Martin wasn’t getting any younger.

The rescue

So Hillsdale College arranged to buy the Gilbert Papers, to work out rights and permissions, and to publish the volumes—not with an outside publisher but through Hillsdale College Press. Martin Gilbert would remain editor, with this proviso: “If for any reason you are unable to finish it, we will.”

Dave Turrell, my former associate editor at FH, recalled the  “heart-stopping moment” when we realized Dr. Arnn’s full plan: “Not only would Hillsdale produce the remaining seven documents of the Official Biography. It would first go back to the beginning, reissuing all twenty-four previous volumes in a uniform edition, modestly priced within everyone’s pocketbook. Those of us waiting for new material would have to wait awhile longer. It was frustrating, but in hindsight it was the correct decision. It incidentally broke the hearts of secondhand booksellers around the world. The Churchill Documents 11-13 sold for $60 each, compared to thousands for the old Companion Volumes to Volume 5.

In 2006, forty years after they had first appeared, Hillsdale reissued Volume 1, Youth 1874-1896 and its two volumes of documents. It wasn’t until 2013 that new ground opened with The Churchill Documents Volume 17, Testing Times, 1942. Dear Martin Gilbert died in 2015, leaving the majestic legacy of eighty-eight books on Churchill, Jewish and 20th Century history and a global following. He lived to see all his past volumes back in print, and one new volume too. Testing Times bore his name as editor. All six volumes published since his death carry his and Larry Arnn’s bylines.

“History lived and made in real time”

Careful attention to detail makes these books invaluable. Start with pagination: each reprint carries the same page numbers as the originals. So citations are always the same, regardless of edition. The scholarly endnotes were largely the work of Hillsdale’s Churchill Fellows: students engaged in Churchill classes or research, under the supervision of Dr. Arnn and Research Director Soren Geiger. My own role was to read the manuscripts, querying points, providing new references, or possible additional material.

The indexing is exhaustive, far deeper than the earlier volumes. Indexer Sheila Ryan won the American Society for Indexing Excellence 2019 Award for The Churchill Documents 21, The Shadows of Victory, January-July 1945. E-book versions of the eight narrative volumes are available, and electronic document volumes are forthcoming.

A expanding endeavor

Scores of scholars have testified to the historic value of all this labor. “We will never again have so thorough a record of any statesman’s decision-making, so vast and consequential,” wrote Eliot Cohen. “Accompanied by a full apparatus of footnotes identifying persons mentioned, correcting dates, and clarifying obscure references, the document volumes contain an extraordinary array of materials: official memoranda, correspondence, speeches, diary entries by friends (and enemies), reports, instructions, recollections, and even dinner lists.” They also have a use beyond research, Dave Turrell added: “They can also be read in their own right. Not only do they tell their own story, but the voices we eavesdrop on increase our understanding. They read as a radio play, where we get to hear history being lived and made in real-time.”

Publishing the world’s longest biography would be enough for many, but it didn’t stop there. Simultaneously, Dr. Arnn started the Hillsdale College Churchill Project to exploit and apply the lessons of Churchill’s rich, inspiring life. “The study of statesmanship,” he says, “is central to Hillsdale’s mission, which includes cultivating the moral and spiritual values. The classics teach that we can best understand the art of statesmanship by studying those who have a reputation for it. One sees prudence, the virtue of the statesman, most clearly through the words and actions of those who pursued justice in the midst of the obstacles and necessities of political life.”

End of the beginning

What better model for teaching statesmanship? “Churchill’s career was long, the facts so well recorded, the quality so very high. It spanned the largest wars, the greatest depression, the worst tyrannies, and the most rapid advancement of technology and therefore of human power. As he faced these crises, Churchill wrote with profuse detail and with great ability about his doings, thereby leaving one of the richest records of human undertaking.” Its legal structure ensures that the Churchill Project will continue long after all of us are gone. For that reason I joined the team in 2014. Working with Hillsdale’s bright young students is a privilege and an inspiration. A center for Churchill Studies is something I dreamed about for 40 years. Dalton Newfield dreamed about it too.

“A right understanding of Churchill’s record” requires deep resources. Along with the Gilbert Papers, the Project acquired the Ronald Cohen collection of Churchill essays, forewords and contributions—Sections “B” through “G” of his Bibliography. Ron himself donated his collection of recordings, the authentic voice of Churchill, now being digitalized for online access. The College has received or is in line for other collections of Churchill books, artifacts and papers, my own included.

These materials combine to teach statesmanship through the best teacher of modern times. The method includes national conferences, symposia, scholarships, online courses and an endowed faculty chair. A steady flow of new publications will follow. One is an electronic version of the Cohen Bibliography. We hope to do more publishing of original texts, obscure writings not seen since first publication. Most recently, the Project marshaled a battery of scholars to defend Churchill’s good name from an outburst of defamation. Suitable, I think, for a college whose motto reads, “Pursuing truth and defending liberty since 1844.”

“Ambassadors of Providence”

Through these endeavors, Hillsdale is building an institution for Churchill research, scholarship, and learning. You may also subscribe, with 60,000 others, to bulletins on new articles, research papers and video resources, and announcements of free online courses and events. For details visit winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu or email this writer.

The official biography is done, the work goes on, the subject is evergreen. “Great men are the ambassadors of Providence sent to reveal to their fellow men their unknown selves,” said President Calvin Coolidge. “To them is granted the power to call forth the best there is in those who come under their influence.” Here in Winston Churchill, we have the story of one man, it is true; but a man who shows us what we are, all of us, at our best.

Colin Reith Coote

Sir Colin (1893-1979) was a British journalist and Liberal politician. For fourteen years he was editor of the Daily Telegraph. There he came to know and admire Churchill. Shortly after World War II, he thought to compile a book of Churchillisms, annotated to validate each entry. He wrote for permission, and received a kind and revelatory reply, which provided Churchill’s view of his literary assigns:

28 Hyde Park Gate, 21 July 1946

My dear Colin,

Thank you for your letter of July 15. I should be much honoured by the collection which you wish to make and would not, on any account, receive any royalty for it.

However I must tell you that I have parted with all my literary copyrights and therefore permission would have to be sought, either from Messrs. Harraps in respect of Marlborough, or from Odhams Press in respect of my other works. The Speeches which have been published by Cassells have no strict copyright attached to them because they have already been printed in the Press. I should think it would not be difficult to obtain permission from Odhams and I cannot think that Harraps would make any difficulty.

You are very welcome to quote from the rest, so far as I am concerned, and I cannot see who could interfere.

Yours sincerely,

           Winston S. Churchill

“Maxims and Reflections”

The result was two books (three titles) listed in Curt Zoller’s Bibliography of Works About Sir Winston Churchill, for which this writer provided the annotations:

A120. Coote, Colin R. & Batchelor, Denzil, editors. Maxims And Reflections: of the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1947, 1948, 176 pp.; Toronto: Collins, 1947; Boston; Houghton Mifflin, 1949.; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992. (The first book of Churchill quotations, and still a model of the genre. Coote, a friend of Churchill’s with a long tenure at London’s Daily Telegraph, sought out the most interesting expressions. He verified his citations, arranging them by categories and adding accompanying notes. This is an authoritative source.)

My first edition is inscribed by Sir Colin, “From one author (God save the work!) to another.” Not sure who—alas it was not Churchill. Laid inside is a copy of Churchill’s letter quoted above. A few years later the author published a sequel:

A152. Coote, Colin R., editor. Sir Winston Churchill: A Self Portrait. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954, 304 pp. A Churchill Reader: The Wit and Wisdom of Sir Winston Churchill. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1954, 414 pp. (The final and best evolution of Coote’s classic Maxims and Reflections, 1947, organized under headings: Himself, Likes, Dislikes, Russia, War, Britain, Monarchy, Foreigners, America, Politics, English and Human Conduct. The American edition is printed in larger type and on much better paper.)

The Other Club

Colin Coote made another fine contribution to the Churchill canon: his history of The Other Club, now rare and pricey on the used book market. At present, Bookfinder.com offers some bargains, but when I checked a year ago the cheapest copy cost over $400. A temporary substitute is our review of this work by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

My copy of The Other Club is inscribed by General Sir Ian Jacob, Military Assistant to the Churchill War Cabinet. Aside from lovely and literate writing, it contains a bonus. Laid in is an exchange letters between Sir Colin and my old friend Dalton Newfield. In 1970, Dal encouraged me to expand the philatelic “Churchill Study Unit.” That led to many things, the greatest of was my current association with Hillsdale College.

* * *

Dal Newfield was the world’s first Churchill specialist bookseller. In January 1977, he wrote Sir Colin seeking copies of The Other Club:

My admiration and affection for Sir Winston has never found bounds. While I was privileged to see him but once, at Southwick House just before D-Day, I can still hear his magnificent speeches. I have a library of some thousand or so books by and about him, his family and contemporaries, most of which I have read, and many several times. Of course I have your Maxims and Reflections, Self-Portrait and Churchill Reader. Even though there is overlapping, I feel that each is a valued part of my collection. How fortunate you were to have known him so well.

The Other Club was alas out of print. “I would not reprint it,” Dal assured the author, since “referring to the longevity tables, twenty-four copies would about do me until the end of my life.” Sadly so. Dal died too young in 1982, three years after Sir Colin himself. Some of us still miss their sparking presence.

Sir Colin on Churchlliana

Dal also wanted suggestions for what to call a Churchill organization we were in the process of developing. He wanted to know also how Sir Colin’s book had come to be. CRC cheerfully offered to help. He wrote back in his own hand:

Lord Hartwell, Chairman of the Daily Telegraph, told he very much doubted whether anybody could think of anything original about Churchill. [Imagine! This was in 1977!—RML] The Americans’ best course was to call a spade a spade and name this club simply The Churchill Club. This rather reminds me of Humpty Dumpty’s reply about his wall: “No, that’s not its name, but it’s what its name is called.” I suppose simplification is always sancta. I find my own spark of originality faded to a faint blur. Perhaps “The Citizen Churchill Club” has some merit. Jennie [Lady Randolph] would have liked it, but I don’t!

……

My history of The Other Club was entrusted to me after Winston’s death because I was the second-most senior member and practically the whole membership wanted the Club to continue in some shape or form [which it does —RML]. Lord Longford, an Irish Earl, was a member, and also Chairman of Sidgwick & Jackson. He readily agreed to publish it. I tried to produce something neither fulsome nor fulminating.

I have had a poor winter so far, but can’t expect anything much better at 83. Come to think of it, some of our so-called leaders seem up to the standard of modern difficulties. You are a very charming flatterer. The few people in this country who have retained their balance are grateful for a pat on the back.

Ultimately Dal and I did decide to name the organization something else, and suitably brief. But that was long ago, and far away.