Q: Who were John Evans and Tom Leonard?:

Question: In the 2017 film Darkest Hour, on Churchill in May 1940. I am puzzled by two characters. There is a young man who is seen near Churchill at Chartwell and the underground War Rooms. The Darkest Hour cast names him “John Evans.”

The name of another man in the cast, “Tom Leonard,” suggests nothing. He is the driver of Churchill’s car when the PM abruptly bolts and heads for the Underground. (There follows the dramatic but fictional “Underground scene” described in your review.)

I wonder who those young men are supposed to be? An explanation of the above-ground Annexe and the below-ground War Rooms would also be helpful, since Churchill seems to appear in both.

Respectively, John Colville, sort of, and the PM’s chauffeur

Neither “John Evans” (played by Joe Armstrong) nor “Tom Leonard” (Eric MacLennan) were real characters. Evans, a private secretary seems closest in demeanor to John “Jock” Colville, private secretary in 1940-41, 1943-45 and 1951-55. Leonard represents a chauffeur from the government pool Churchill used during the war.

Typist-secretary Elizabeth Layton (brilliantly played by Lily James) did exist, but her appearing in 1940 is dramatic license. The real Elizabeth actually didn’t join Churchill’s staff until May 1941. And there is some small confusion about Downing Street Annexe and the more famous War Rooms.

Elizabeth Layton Nel

The late Elizabeth Layton, a faithful wartime secretary, would love her portrayal by Lily James. Although not present until 1941, her character was probably selected for her singular prominence.

Among many devoted stenographer-secretaries, Elizabeth wrote with humor and eloquence about her experiences. Her book is well worth seeking out: Mr. Churchill’s Secretary (the original 1958 title), or the reprint, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary.

In the Darkest Hour filmscript, “John Evans” is first seen at Chartwell, showing around the newly arrived Miss Layton. The script describes him as “an immaculately-groomed rake…snobbishly thinks himself infinitely superior to the Elizabeth Laytons of the world.” (At times some thought of Jock Colville that way. Told once that working people often drove their children to school, he quipped, “Couldn’t their nannies do that?”)

John Evans’ advising Elizabeth on Churchill’s habits is wonderfully expressive. His instructions, dead accurate, show how carefully this film was scripted: “If he stretches out his hand and says, ‘Gimme,’ you need to anticipate what he wants: Black pen, red pen, paper, or ‘Klop,’  that’s his hole punch.”

(Churchill hated staples, insisting on hole-punched pages connected with a Treasury tag.) “He mumbles, so it’s almost impossible to catch everything. And be prepared to type fast—short bursts and double-spaced. He hates single-spaced—hates it! Good luck.”

Downing Street Annexe

Downing Street Annexe was housed in the ground floor rooms facing St. James’s Park to the right of the War Rooms’ public entrance today. It was considered much safer in an air raid than 10 Downing Street. Today, tourists flock to the Churchill War Rooms, drawn by the drama and hubris of the Blitz. Sir Martin Gilbert understood the rationale—the Annexe, after all, is pricey office space. But he always thought the Annexe should have a blue plaque for its historic role.

On walking tours of London, Sir Martin would always point to small filled-in square holes on each side of all the windows, where brackets for steel air raid shutters were once affixed. “That,” he would say, “is where Winston Churchill really fought the war. Not the ‘hole in the ground,’ as he sometimes called the War Rooms.”

The War Rooms

In her first edition, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, Elizabeth Layton Nel described the War Rooms:

…below [the Annexe] there stretched two whole floors of “safety” accommodation. Beneath a vast concrete block which had been set in at ground level.

There was first of all General Headquarters, known as the Cabinet War Room or C.W.R., where the Prime Minister, all Cabinet Ministers and the Chiefs of Staff had rooms as well as the Service Planning Staffs. Here some of the most brilliant British officers spent their days breathing conditioned air and working by daylight lamps, to emerge white-faced and blinking for a few hours in the evening.

The C.W.R. was reached by a spiral staircase and was supposed to be safe from bombing attack. Below it, on a still lower level, had been constructed a whole floor of tiny bedrooms for the lesser lights, each with its allocated owner, and it was here that those on late duty would retire when bedtime came.

Mr. Churchill could hardly ever be persuaded to descend to the C.W.R. merely for “sheltering” purposes. He often held Cabinet meetings there in the evenings, after which he would return to the ground-level flat to finish off the evening in his study. I never knew him use his bedroom below stairs—thick steel shutters guarded the window of his bedroom in the flat, and these he felt [were] sufficient protection.

Since Elizabeth arrived in 1941, she would not have known that Churchill did sleep a few nights below ground earlier. These were during the height of the Blitz, in the autumn of 1940. After that the bombing eased, and he spent his nights in the Annexe or Number 10.

Click here for my review of “Darkest Hour” with Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill and Lily James as Elizabeth Layton.

I found myself using an alleged Churchill witticism I have long known, but could not find in your book, Churchill’s Wit: The Definitive Collection (2009). As I have it, Churchill was preparing to meet Marshal Stalin, and a diplomatic advisor said, “He will probably expect to kiss you on both cheeks.” “Oh, that’s all right,” said Churchill, “as long as he doesn’t want to be kissed on all four.” Can you verify this one?

My own main area of scholarly research is Samuel Johnson, another subject often misattributed. Good quote collections more than just the quotation and its source. Your book with comprehensive coverage and thorough sourcing is impressive. That is the real guarantee of the ideas, wit or imagination of the quoted person, but of their ongoing presence in the cultural memory. —P.T., New Zealand

A: De Gaulle not Stalin

Your query sent me on a troll of my hard drive,  I couldn’t imagine how I left the kiss gag out! But I did. Not only in Churchill’s Wit, but in the unabridged original Churchill by Himself, from which Churchill’s Wit was derived.

However, the kiss quote above is inaccurate, and stems from something Churchill said about Charles de Gaulle, not Joseph Stalin:

“All right, all right. I’ll be good. I’ll be sweet. I ‘ll kiss him on both cheeks—or all four if you’d prefer it.”

Source

The kiss crack was related by a highly reliable source, Elizabeth Layton Nel, one of Churchill’s principal wartime secretaries. Her charming 1958 memoir, Winston Churchill by His Wartime Secretary, was recently reprinted in electronic and print editions. She was a dear lady and a faithful recounter of her experiences. She first told me the story in 1988.

October 1942: At Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence, Churchill was preparing to receive the prickly Frenchman. There was a quandary over what to tell the General of “Torch,” the invasion of North Africa, scheduled to begin November 8th. Only a few months before, the Allies had been badly rebuffed in an abortive raid on the channel port of Dieppe. There was some suspicion that de Gaulle’s Free French had somehow leaked advance knowledge of the raid. The Germans had been alerted by French double agents that the British were showing interest in the area.

As Mrs. Nel recalled, Churchill opposed informing de Gaulle of “Torch” until afterward. His advisors warned him to be  diplomatic. Hence the Prime Minister’s generous offer to kiss the General on all four cheeks if necessary.

Churchill on Johnson

Researching the quotations of Samuel Johnson work must be more challenging than than Churchill, since the latter left such copious archives. Incidentally, I found this in Keith Alldritt, Churchill the Writer: His Life as a Man of Letters (1992):

Writing to his wife Clementine, while off researching [Marlborough], Churchill again applied to Marlborough the word ‘sublime’, so current a word for the eighteenth-century prose stylists whom he so admired, Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson.

Part 3: Servants and Staff

Winston Churchill was a Victorian, with most of the attitudes of his class and time toward the common folk. “Servants exist to save one trouble,” he told his wife in 1928, “and sh[oul]d never be allowed to disturb one’s inner peace.”

Once before World War II he arrived in a violent rainstorm at his friend Maxine Elliott’s Chateau d’Horizon in the South of France. “My dear Maxine,” he said as she ushered him in, “do you realise I have come all the way from London without my man?” Never lost for words, Elliott replied: “Winston, how terribly brave of you.” (Quotations from Churchill by Himself.)

“When anyone came to his staff,” his his 1946-47 Scotland Yard bodyguard Ronald Golding told me,

Churchill treated them much as one of the family. We all know how plainly we speak to one’s spouse or children: no discourtesy is intended but there are no frills. This is how Churchill treated his staff. He just told them what he expected. His plain speaking ruffled some, but he was not being rude. It was just his way of getting the maximum done in the minimum of time. He worked his staff to the limit of endurance. When they reached the breaking point he became sympathetic and solicitous. They were gratified, and so continued beyond the limit of endurance!

Staffers who knew him only briefly and not well, like the American Phyllis Moir, who was his secretary on his U.S. lecture tour in 1931-32 and had the chutzpah to write a book about it, complained of his gruff manner. They were mistaking his single-minded intensity on the job at hand, whether it was compiling a gracious thank-you letter to a host or a major speech on Anglo-American relations.

William Manchester famously said that while Churchill’s “early reactions were often emotional, and even unworthy of him, they were usually succeeded by reason and generosity.” This extended to servants and staffers. When Churchill stopped to realize he was being too hard on someone, he would find a way to express his regret—but never directly.

Elizabeth Layton (later Nel), a secretary during the war who wrote an excellent memoir, recalled how she once had a very bad cold and was sniveling when he sent for her and was very demanding. He dictated a brief message and then took it from her: “That’s most beautifully typed,” he told her. He thought she was sniveling because of his impatience beforehand. Shortly after she went to work for him, Elizabeth told me, she burst into tears following his rude criticism of her typing. “Good heavens, you mustn’t mind me,” Churchill told her. “We’re all toads beneath the harrow, you know.”

Ronald Golding remembered an occasion at the London Churchill home at Hyde Park Gate, when visiting dignitaries arrived to bestow one of WSC’s many Freedoms of Cities:

After the ceremony, a glass of sherry and speeches, Mr. Churchill said, “Greenshields, bring the cigars.” The butler went away and came back with a cigar box, handing them around. The civic dignitaries lighted up, as did Mr. Churchill. He took one puff, hesitated, then fixed a stony stare at Greenshields: “Not these, you damn fool!” Churchill said in a stage whisper. Poor Greenshields! The butler had made the mistake of handing round Mr. Churchill’s best cigars.

Later, Churchill complimented Greenshields on the elegance of his manner!

continued in part 4…