Churchill the Young Carouser
Michael Shelden, author of Young Titan, a new biography of Churchill, set London media buzzing with speculation that young Violet Asquith attempted suicide after Churchill decided to marry Clementine Hozier (Finest Hour 158: 6). Not only that, reports the Daily Mail, “He caroused with West End call girls and proposed to THREE society beauties—who turned him down.”
The society beauties were Pamela Plowden, Muriel Wilson and the actress Ethel Barrymore. But the most rakish thing Mr. Shelden reports Churchill doing is showering Miss Barrymore with “armfuls of flowers” and showing up at Claridge’s each night after her West End play ended, where he would “insist she have dinner with him.”…