“I am a longtime Gone With the Wind collector and researcher, and give presentations at GWtW events. I’ve also been the GWtW Answer Lady on several websites. Some asked: Did Churchill and Roosevelt read Gone With the Wind? It seems that FDR read quite a bit of the novel, but I couldn’t come up with anything about Churchill.

“I hope you don’t mind me tossing you this question. I assume that Churchill did see the film, as FDR did, on 26 December 1939, after it opened in Washington. Gone With the Wind opened in London on 18 April 1940.”  —K.M., Royal Oak, Michigan

A: Yes; with several side stories….

On the contrary, your question sent me on an interesting dive through the archives to learn about a compelling story and one of Churchill’s favorite novels.

Leslie Howard’s misfortune:  To start with a side note: Leslie Howard, who played Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind, had a business manager, Alfred Chenhalls, who closely resembled Churchill, affecting similar clothing and a homburg hat.

Legend has it that German spies in Lisbon, observing Chenhalls and Howard boarding a flight to London, mistook them for Churchill and his bodyguard. They informed the Luftwaffe, who shot down the plane. Poor Ashley Wilkes, ever the loser.

The story is not verified, but Churchill heard the tale of mistaken identity. He found it ridiculous and telling. “The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents,” he wrote in his war memoirs.

Gone With the Wind

In the late 1930s everybody was reading Gone With the Wind, from my mother (I have her copy) to Neville Chamberlain. (His biographer, Keith Feiling, wrote that Chamberlain was “taking delight in it” during the Czech crisis in 1938.)

Winston Churchill was reading it as he wrote the American Civil War chapters of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples (not published until after the war). Thanks to Martin Gilbert’s biography we know quite a lot…

Winston S. Churchill to Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds, a Civil War authority (Churchill Papers: 8/626), 24 March 1939:

When one comes to look at it en bloc, the Confederates never had any chance at all. It was only a question of the North getting under way and the amount of time required to destroy, if necessary, every living soul in the Confederate states.

The dramatic point is the wonderful resistance which they made…. Have you read Gone With the Wind? It is a terrific book.

It is interesting to re-read Churchill’s Civil War chapters in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples in the knowledge that he was reading Gone With the Wind as he wrote. Norman Rose stated:

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is generally acknowledged to be the least satisfactory of [Churchill’s] books. It reads as a kind of pastiche that proclaims his “secular [Whig] faith,” its finest section (written as he read Gone With the Wind) telling the story of the American Civil War….

[But] the fact that Churchill was not a trained historian had its merits. As every scholar knows, in research it is necessary to be dogged in pursuit of sources, but also ruthless in sensing when to stop and to start writing. —Norman Rose, Churchill: An Unruly Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 211

The Film

The 1939 film version also impressed Churchill. From the John Colville diary, 15 December 1940, Ditchley Park, Oxford:

We saw Gone With the Wind which lasted till 2.00 a.m. I thought the photography superb. The PM said he was “pulverised by the strength of their feelings and emotions.” —Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Vol. 15, Never Surrender, May 1940-December 1940 (Hillsdale College Press, 2011), 1241.

Sir Martin Gilbert adds:

On Sunday December 15, at Chequers, after watching the film Gone With The Wind, he had sat from two until three in the morning discussing the campaign in North Africa with Eden. As they talked, the total number of Italian prisoners of war captured by Wavell’s army reached 35,000. —Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 6, Finest Hour 1939-1941 (Hillsdale College Press, 2011), 946.

The first time Churchill met Vivien Leigh he was rendered speechless by her beauty. This stemmed not only from her role as Scarlett O’Hara, but as Nelson’s “Lady Hamilton” (“That Hamilton Woman”)—beyond doubt his favorite film.

Following that film she married Laurence Olivier, whom Churchill had known since the 1920s. The Oliviers and Churchills were guests of each other. Alas we can only imagine their dinner table conversation.

Gone With the Wind in Churchill’s Pre-Munich speech…

Margaret Mitchell’s wonderful title inspired Churchill to use it twice. The march toward Munich in 1938 saw his first, highly effective application:

For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet….

If mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory —gone with the wind! —Winston S. Churchill, Arms and the Covenant (London: Harrap, 1938), 465: “The Danube Basin,” House of Commons, 4 March 1938.

In his memoirs…

…he summed up the results of Appeasement:

Look back and see what we had successively accepted or thrown away: a Germany disarmed by solemn treaty; a Germany rearmed in violation of a solemn treaty; air superiority or even air parity cast away; the Rhineland forcibly occupied and the Siegfried Line built or building; the Berlin-Rome Axis established; Austria devoured and digested by the Reich; Czechoslovakia deserted and ruined by the Munich Pact, its fortress line in German hands, its mighty arsenal of Skoda henceforward making munitions for the German armies…

…President Roosevelt’s effort to stabilise or bring to a head the European situation by the intervention of the United States waved aside with one hand, and Soviet Russia’s undoubted willingness to join the Western Powers and go all lengths to save Czechoslovakia ignored on the other; the services of thirty-five Czech divisions against the still unripened Germany Army cast away, when Great Britain could herself supply only two to strengthen the front in France; all gone with the wind. —Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 271

Postscript

Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston’s grand-daughter-in-law, having read the above, offers another Churchill connection to Gone With the Wind, or at least Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Here is Gable on bended knee with the then-Minnie d’Erlanger, on a date in Jamaica. “He was a complete gentleman.”

Walter Henry Thompson 

…was Winston Churchill’s protection officer and detective, on and off between 1921 and 1945. They had many adventures together, and Thompson wrote four books about his experiences. The first, Guard from the Yard (1938, now very rare) involved Churchill and others whom Thompson protected.

After World War II, Thompson published I Was Churchill’s Shadow (1951), Sixty Minutes with Winston Churchill (1953), and Assignment: Churchill (1956). He promoted them enthusiastically, with many book signings. As a Churchill bookseller, I used to describe a pristine copy of Sixty Minutes as “the rare unsigned edition.”

In 2005, Sixty Minutes was recently republished as Beside the Bulldog. Simultaneously there appeared Churchill’s Bodyguard: The Authorised Biography, which intersperses some new material with a large number of factual errors. The earlier works are pure Thompson and therefore worth seeking out.

Thompson’s Epic 

Thompson’s first Churchill assignment was the statesman’s Cairo Conference of 1921. Around the same time he was seconded to Churchill during negotiation of the Irish Treaty. When Churchill set out on a North American lecture tour in December 1931, Thompson was again assigned. The detective was resting after twenty-six-hours’ duty on December 13th, when Churchill was struck and nearly killed by a car on Fifth Avenue. Thompson always regretted that he had not been present, and perhaps able to prevent the accident.

Walter Thompson’s tall, angular features are frequently seen on Churchill photos during World War II. From 1939, when recalled to guard duty, he was rarely absent on the Prime Minister’s travels. Along the way, he accidentally shot himself while cleaning a weapon, and lost son in the RAF. He did however romance and later marry Mary Shearburn, one of the PM’s secretaries.

The Bodyguard Mini-series

I approached this production with doubt. The Authorised Biography contained so many howlers that I feared they would reappear in the video. But the episodes avoid this—and any hindsight moralizing, thought so necessary by producers today. It is, in the main, straight reporting from Thompson’s memoirs. Though I disliked Thompson’s steady references to the boss as “Winston,” I found no serious errors. Please advise if the episodes I didn’t watch contain some awful clanger!

The series does speculate in places. One such involves the actor Leslie Howard, “Ashley Wilkes” in one of Churchill’s favorite films, Gone with the Wind. The story goes that Howard and his bodyguard—shot down by the Luftwaffe in the belief they were Churchill and Thompson—were intentional decoys. This is of course nonsense.

The great strength of Churchill’s Bodyguard is its visuals. Some photos aren’t chronologically accurate, but most are little-known and fascinating. The producers cleverly applied the right poses to go with the dialogue, presenting what is almost a motion picture.

The synopses suggest that Thompson saved Churchill’s life in every episode. But I have no doubt that many potential threats did preoccupy him. And to his credit, he disregarded no possibility.

Churchill’s Bodyguard Synopsis (IMdb)

Sadly, all but three of these videos have been deleted from YouTube. Links to the other three (below) were still active in mid-2019.

Introductions. Here we learn how two very different characters met, and how Thompson, born in the East End, saves his boss from an IRA assassination attempt. Ten years earlier, they had both been present, unknowingly, at the Siege of Sidney Street.

Middle East, 1921. Walter Thompson gets the challenge of keeping his boss alive during a visit to the Middle East. A leading British politician is the natural target for assassins, and on several critical occasions, Thompson is helped by the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia.

The 1920s; travels in the New World 1929-32. Churchill buys cars and a house. In 1929 ceases to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Thompson’s duties end. Within two years, Churchill’s outspoken views gain him new and deadly enemies, and Thompson is recalled.

North American Lecture Tour 1932. Thompson keeps Churchill safe during his lecture tour, but then leaves the police force. It seems that Churchill’s career is over, too. But a sinister new force is rising which sees him as an implacable enemy. Threats to his life bring the two men together again.

* * *

From Wilderness to War 1932-40. Despite being out of office, Churchill’s enemies prove dangerous. With war imminent, French Intelligence hears of a German assassination plot. Thompson returns from retirement. Britain goes to war in September 1939, and Churchill is back at the Admiralty.

Dangerous Travels and the Fall of France 1940. Sent to the Admiralty in September 1939, Churchill becomes Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, as Hitler invades the Low Countries. He embarks on a campaign of personal diplomacy, with travels including six trips to France. To Thompson’s concern, they are often within range of Luftwaffe fighters.

Surviving the Blitz, 1940-41. The early days of the war prove difficult and dangerous. The Luftwaffe bombs London. The Prime Minister walks the streets among the people, watches air raids from rooftops, and visits anti-aircraft batteries. Often only Thompson is with him.

Meetings with FDR, 1941-42. Running a gauntlet of U-boats in the North Atlantic, Churchill sets out for meetings with President Franklin Roosevelt. On one return journey, as the PM prepares to board a flying boat for the trip home, a gunman lurks nearby.

* * *

Turning Point, 1942-43. A precarious trip to Moscow to visit Stalin is followed by victory for the Eighth Army in North Africa. Aware that Churchill is traveling, the Germans at least twice try to shoot down his plane.

Teheran, 1943. After two Atlantic crossings and two trips across the Mediterranean, Churchill grows increasingly frustrated with Allied planners and suspicious of Stalin. When the Big Three meet in Tehran in 1943, the Germans launch Operation Longjump, in which commandoes plan to parachute into the city.

The Kiss of Life, 1943. Returning from the Tehran Conference, a sick and exhausted Churchill survives a dangerous illness, Thompson keeping vigil at his bedside.

Athens, 1944. Flying to Greece to forestall a civil war, Churchill plans to stay at a hotel where communist guerrillas had placed dynamite. He changes quarters to HMS Ajax in Piraeus harbor, while guerrillas fire at the ship.

Victory in Europe, 1945. Churchill and Thompson make several journeys through jubilant crowds. Churchill wants to walk among them. Instead Thompson pulls him onto the roof of his car,  accidentally breaking a woman’s arm in the process.