Lord Beaverbrook Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill and Professor Lindemann, Lord Cherwell

4 May 2015 Comments 2 Comments

I reviewed the 1940-45 visitors books at Chequers. I was struck by how often Lord Cherwell (Frederick Lindemann) was there—far more than family and staff. He visited more than Bracken and Beaverbrook, or the Chiefs of Staff. What do you make of him? What’s best to read on him? —A.R., London

Most frequent visitor

After the death of the F.E. Smith, the first Lord Birkenhead, Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell (1886-1957) was probably Churchill’s closest friend. His signature is also the most frequent in the visitors book at Chartwell, where it appears 86 times, more than anyone else (Brendan Bracken only 31, although visitors usually signed only when staying overnight, and Bracken frequently returned to London).…

Churchill’s Common Touch (4)

20 March 2015 Comments 3 Comments

continued from part 3…

Part 4: “Being Shouted At”

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

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

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