Richard II and “This Sceptr’d Isle.”

We are asked: “Churchill quoted Shakespeare’s famous lines, ‘This scepter’d isle,’ in one of his speeches. They are the words of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, from Richard II, Act 2, sc. 1. Could you direct me to the speech?”

Churchill knew his Shakespeare and had a near-photographic memory. Darrell Holley’s Churchill’s Literary Allusions tells us he alludes to Shakespeare more than any other English author. King John, Richard III and Hamlet are his most frequent references. Henry V also moved and inspired him. He also closely read Richard II, generally accepting Shakespeare’s portrayal of his cruelty and vindictiveness. (Alas, Holley’s book enjoyed only one brief printing and is now rare and expensive. It is a standard work and richly deserves reprinting.)

“Let’s Boost Britain”

Churchill quoted the “Scepter’d Isle” passage in part, but not in whole. It first appeared in his article, “Let’s Boost Britain,” in the weekly Answers, for 28 April 1934. (His topic has considerable relevance at present.) Answers was one of the most obscure periodicals to which Churchill contributed. Fortunately, the late Michael Wolff, one of Randolph Churchill’s assistants on the official biography, scoured its pages to compile The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill (1975). The essay, thus reappeared, is in volume IV, Churchill at Large. It begins:

This week we celebrate St. George’s Day, which is also Shakespeare’s Day, who wrote the noblest tribute ever penned to this England of ours:

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise …
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea …

“Time-honoured Lancaster”

Churchill however was not finished with John of Gaunt, famous scion of the House of Lancaster. Ultimately, he and others deposed Richard II and installed Gaunt’s son Henry IV. Another quotation occurs in The Birth of Britain, the first volume of Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Writing of Gaunt’s death, Churchill refers to him as “time-honoured Lancaster.” That phrase is from Richard II, Act 1, sc. 1.

“Some love, but little policy”

How closely Churchill read and absorbed Richard II is suggested by another deathless line he deployed at least twice. In negotiating her husband’s exile, Queen Isabel begs leave to go to France. Knowing they might then raise an army and return, the Earl of Northumberland exclaims: “That were some love, but little policy.” (Richard II, Act V, sc. 2.)

Churchill remembered that turn of phrase. In 1916, disgraced over the Dardanelles, he was fighting at the front. His wife Clementine, and his friend Archibald Sinclair, urged him to stay there until the time was ripe for his return to politics. Anxious to be back in the thick of debate, Churchill wrote Sinclair: “I can almost hear you and Clemmie arriving by the most noble of arguments at the conclusion that I must inevitably stay here till the day of Judgement: NO NO – ‘That were some love, but little policy.’”

Twenty years later, writing his Life of Marlborough, Churchill described one of Marlborough’s enemies: “Why, then, should he give up his weapon and the chance of setting a hostile House of Commons loose upon him? ‘That were some love, but little policy.’”

Interestingly, in both cases, Churchill put Shakespeare’s words in quotes but did not cite the author. That was a time when every English school child knew Shakespeare thoroughly. He simply didn’t have to.

“Death of Kings” 

Churchill’s best-known line from Richard II comes in The Gathering Storm, his first volume of Second World War memoirs. He writes of his visit to the fleet after becoming First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 for the second time, Uniquely, he had last held that office almost exactly twenty-five years earlier…

My thoughts went back a quarter of a century to that other September when I had last visited Sir John Jellicoe and his captains in this very bay, and had found them with their long lines of battleships and cruisers drawn out at anchor, a prey to the same uncertainties as now afflicted us. Most of the captains and admirals of those days were dead, or had long passed into retirement… It was a strange experience, like suddenly resuming a previous incarnation. It seemed that I was all that survived in the same position I had held so long ago …. I motored from Loch Ewe to Inverness, where our train awaited us. We had a picnic lunch on the way by a stream, sparkling in hot sunshine. I felt oddly oppressed with my memories.

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

Once again, Churchill didn’t bother to reveal the source of his quotation. In that time a grammar school education was truly comprehensive, and not only in Britain. Churchill simply assumed that all his readers would know. 

Further Reading

“Churchill, Lincoln and Shakespeare,” by Lewis E. Lehrman

“Churchill and Shakespeare,” by Richard M. Langworth

“Churchill, Shakespeare and Agincourt,” by Justin D. Lyons

“Mirrored in the Pool of England,” lecture by Richard M. Langworth

We all know how a certain American politician was nicknamed “Pocahontas,” years after claiming to be, without foundation, a native American. This has often been tried. Sometimes, however, it backfires. “A friend got his son into a better public school by declaring he was tribal,” a colleague writes. “Unfortunately, they didn’t tell the boy, who was then invited to an after-school meeting for those interested in Indians. My friend attempted to correct himself, but he found that in that city, you can change your racial identification only once.” (Who writes these rules?)

During a recent encounter with the medical world I received a questionnaire with the inevitable question, “Race.” I checked, “Other” and then wrote in “Human,” hoping for a repercussion—but alas no one noticed.

Pocahontas redux

I was inspired by Randolph Churchill, son of Sir Winston, who used a parallel but different tactic when confronting the Race Question on a South African landing card in the days of Apartheid:

Randolph was outraged by the question. “Damned cheek!,” he shouted, and began writing furiously:

Race: human. But if, as I imagine is the case, the object of this enquiry is to determine whether I have coloured blood in my veins, I am most happy to be able to inform you that I do, indeed, so have. This is derived from one of my most revered ancestors, the Indian Princess Pocahontas, of whom you may not have heard, but who was married to a Jamestown settler named John Rolfe …

The story goes that the authorities did not take this at all well. Upon landing, Randolph was denied admission to the Republic of South Africa and put on the next plane out. Or so legend has it.

“Perhaps we are related!”

A leading Churchill myth is that WSC was descended in part from an Iroquois Indian. Even the myth does not claim Pocahontas, who has been linked as an ancestor to two American First Ladies, Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan, but not to the Churchills. I suspect Randolph knew there was no Pocahontas in his background, but with his usual zeal embroidered the story to express his outrage.

The fable of Churchill’s Indian forebears is exploded in detail in my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality. (Please do not buy the hardback copy presently being offered on Amazon for only $3327.62. The paperback is only $29.95.)

Most of the Churchill family always believed the legend. Confronted with evidence proving it untrue, WSC’s daughter Mary admitted there was no basis in fact. Her nephew Winston, the late Member of Parliament, was harder to convince.

Once after one of his book tours my wife and I took him down to Plimoth Plantation, the living history museum of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. As we drove up, we encountered a young man dressed as an Indian. I’m sure he was as Indian as I am. Enthusiastically, Winston alighted from the car and held out his hand. “I’m Winston Churchill, grandson of the prime minister,” he said. “Perhaps we are related!”

As he climbed back in the car, we burst out laughing. “Winston,” I said between guffaws, “You are as native American as my Siamese cat.”

“Never mind,” he fired back. “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

More serious reading

“The Art of the Possible: Churchill, South Africa, Apartheid, Part 1,”

“The Art of the Possible, Part 2,” The Age of Mandela

“Joyful Humbug: Indian Forebears“

Memory: “The stars still shone in the sky”

Lost in the pell-mell rush to denigrate his memory was the 8oth anniversary of Churchill becoming Prime Minster, 10 May 1940. I thought of his words as I read the ignorant, ill-informed, false attacks on his character. They occurred amid protest over a tragic event that had nothing to do with him. He wrote at the end of Their Finest Hour:

And now this Britain, and its far-spread association of states and dependencies, which had seemed on the verge of ruin, whose very heart was about to be pierced, had been for fifteen months concentrated upon the war problem….With a gasp of astonishment and relief the smaller neutrals and the subjugated states saw that the stars still shone in the sky….

And now his defenders in far-spread association have concentrated on the slur problem. The battle for accurate information is still being fought. Who’d have thought his memory would ever be in jeopardy? Many faithful colleagues have joined the effort. The work goes on, the cause endures.

Letters to the Editors

“Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill, and the comparison is ludicrous.” John Ivison, National Post, 4 June 2020.

Mr. Ivison correctly writes that the comparison is ludicrous. Then he proceeds to state that Churchill was “massively flawed.” He says “Churchill ‘signed off’ on terms at the Yalta Conference that consigned tens of millions to Soviet Rule.” At that time Soviet troops occupied almost the whole of Eastern Europe. The only alternative for Churchill would have been to start a third World War. Next: “Churchill was prime minister at the time of the Bengal famine in 1943 when an estimated three million people died. His only possible defence was that he was preoccupied by the war in Europe.” The fact is that on 8 October 1943 Churchill sent an order to Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India, on the “actual famine,” saying “every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes to deal with local shortages.” —Terry Reardon, International Churchill Society Canada

Churchill as Racist

“Was Churchill a racist? Yes, but he still deserves respect.” —Max Hastings, The Sunday Times 14 June 2020.

Max Hastings writes that Winston Churchill’s decisions at the time of the 1943-44 Bengal famine were “the gravest blots on his lifetime reputation.” In fact my great-grandfather felt strongly the responsibility of empire and saw himself as bound in duty to advancing the well-being of its indigenous peoples.

Of course Britain did not meet all requested food deliveries in the famine: not only was Japan in control of the Bay of Bengal at the time, as well as Burma, Thailand and Malaya, but as Dr. Tirthankar Roy, of the London School of Economics, wrote: “The war cabinet . . .  believed what the Bengalis told it: there was no shortage of food in Bengal.” And as Arthur Herman, nominated for a Pulitzer prize for his book Gandhi & Churchill, concluded: “Absent Churchill, India’s 1943 famine would have been worse.”  —Randolph Churchill, Kent

Bengal: What Did Gandhi Say?

A week later a reader quoted Viceroy Wavell that Churchill didn’t answer him about food relief, so I had a go. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel…

Mr MacShane should educate himself on what Gandhi not Churchill did about the Bengal Famine. As did Arthur Herman, Pulitzer nominee for Gandhi and Churchill: “For all his reputation as a humanitarian, Gandhi did remarkably little about the emergency. The issue barely comes up in his letters.” In February 1944, Gandhi finally brought himself to reply to British anxieties about food relief, writing to Wavell: “I know that millions outside are starving for want of food. But I should feel utterly helpless if I went out and missed the food [i.e. independence] by which alone living becomes worthwhile.” Which of them was the humanitarian?

India (again)

“How Has Winston Churchill Become a Central Figure in the British Black Lives Matter Debate?” —Alex Hudson, Newsweek, 17 June 2020. 

Since Churchill was manifestly not “a man of his time,” you incorrectly represent his racial attitudes. From his twenties to his eighties, his views on the rights of native peoples marked him as a dangerous radical to the establishment of the day. Most of his alleged slurs of Indians, for example, are hearsay from Leopold Amery, who crammed more racist epithets into one of his personal diaries than Churchill ever imagined. Churchill  meanwhile praised “the unsurpassed bravery” of 2.5 million “Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu [and] the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers,” in World War II. —Richard M. Langworth

Africa

“The Churchill factor: Boris Johnson would rather everyone talked about Winston.” —Otto English, Politico, 15 June 2020.

Castrating people is a new Churchill outrage, and I thought I’d heard them all. Churchill did not advocate for Boer War concentration camps. In his maiden speech (18 February 1901) he complimented the Boers’ “unusual humanity and generosity” in the war and urged a generous peace. He did fruitlessly argue with his Boer jailer about equal rights for native Africans. He did say dreadful things about Gandhi, though the elephant crack is pure fiction. And he also said: “Mr. Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.” (Gandhi replied with a “good recollection” of Churchill and “that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill.”) Gandhi took a regrettably detached view of the 1943 Bengal famine; Churchill didn’t. Arthur Herman, biographer of them both wrote: “Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine would have been worse.”

The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya had more native opponents than supporters. Both it and the local government indulged in atrocities, though the Mau Mau’s were worse. If Mr. English would consult the cabinet minutes, however, he would find only two instances where Churchill mentioned the Mau Mau. In one he was concerned over loss of life. In another he warned against “mass executions.” Jomo Kenyatta, father of modern Kenya, said: “Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.” —RML

Ireland and the Jews

“What Churchill’s legacy means for the country now.” Jessica Baldwin, Camden News Journal, June 18th.

Ms. Baldwin says it is immoral to look at the “reality” of Churchill “and still believe him to be unsullied.” Of course he was sullied. She correctly notes his support for the Dardanelles/Gallipoli operation and the Black and Tans. As to the rest of her catalogue, Churchill once said: “…it would hardly be possible to state the opposite of the truth more compendiously.”

Churchill didn’t “partition” Ireland. He negotiated the Irish Treaty which gave the Republic independence. Tanks to Tonypandy? They hadn’t been invented yet. In cabinet he spoke of the Mau Mau twice, once to warn against “mass executions.” Bengalis starved from several factors, despite Churchill’s efforts. (What was Gandhi’s position on the famine? Detached and non-committal.)

Britain didn’t go to war “to save the Jews” but to save liberty. Churchill jailed Britain’s leading fascist Oswald Mosley—an odd act for an alleged fascist. The colonial war effort was often cited by Churchill. He praised “the unsurpassed bravery” of 2.5 million “Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu.” Serious inquiry will show that Churchill believed people of all colors should enjoy the same rights, and that it was the mission of his country to protect those rights.

We can believe Churchill was always right, and we can believe with Ms. Baldwin that we’ve been “fed a line.” Churchill himself offered a middle approach: “It seems to me, and I dare say it seems to you, that the path of wisdom lies somewhere between these scarecrow extremes.” —RML

“Nuking the Maralinga people”

In March I published a modest glossary,  “Churchill Derangement Syndrome: A is for Aryans, R is to Racism.” How far “CDS” has progressed since may be seen by a correspondent who replied: “N is for nuking the Maralinga people.”

I seriously investigated this charge, which was new to me.  I carefully read the link above, and about Australians who witnessed and remembered the 1952 nuclear tests. The Churchill Documents and several scholars offer accurate data. Conclusions:

(1) You can’t have nuclear weapons without testing whether they work. (2) Australian permission for testing in the uninhabited Monte Bello islands was sought in 1950 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee. (3) Churchill had replaced Attlee when the tests occurred: two on the islands in 1952, two in the Great Victoria Desert in 1953.

* * *

Moral considerations were considered, but they involved wildlife, not people. On 21 May 1952 Lt. Col. Lipton (Lab., Lambeth Central) questioned Churchill over the destruction of animal life. Churchill replied, trying to be humorous:

The report of a recent special survey showing that there is very little animal or bird life on Monte Bello Islands was one of the factors in the choice of the site for the test of the United Kingdom atomic weapon. I should add, however, that an expedition which went to the  islands fifty years ago reported that giant rats, wild cats, and wallabies were seen, and these may have caused the Hon. Member some anxiety. However, the officer who explored the islands recently says that he found only some lizards, two sea eagles and what looked like a canary sitting on a perch.

Emrys Hughes (Lab., South Ayshire) was not amused: “There are still civilized people in this country who are interested in bird and animal life.” This finally produced a mention of humans—by Mr. Churchill: “Certainly I think everything should be done to avoid the destruction of bid life and animal life and also of human life.” Churchill may been referring to his well-known belief that the bomb’s apocalyptic nature might discourage its use.

* * *

(4) The next tests occurred in 1956, on the Monte Bellos and Australian mainland. These did produce fall-out exposure for some people (the numbers are uncertain). The buck stops with the Prime Minister, but the PM was now Anthony Eden. Churchill was over a year retired. (5) Therefore, Churchill did not “nuke the Maralinga people.”

(6) Massive deserts and uninhabited islands are obviously the best places for nuclear testing. (7) Sixty years later, some Australian veterans who witnessed the original tests developed cancer. Their opinions were divided as to why they contracted it.

(8) The tests led to the nuclear umbrella Britain and America provided Australia, close to two expansionist communist states. (9) The Soviet Union’s last nuclear test was in 1990, the UK’s in 1991. America stopped in 1992, France and China in 1996. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 placed a de facto moratorium on testing. India (twice), Pakistan (twice) and North Korea (six times) have since violated the moratorium.

“Subsidiary craters spouting forth”

Churchill said when attacked by the son of a harsh critic: “Isn’t it enough to have this parent volcano continually erupting in our midst? And now we are to have these subsidiary craters spouting forth the same unhealthy fumes!”

To Arthur Herman’s truths about the Bengal Famine, a reader asked about Japan’s post-invasion plans for India, on which I had offered the Japan’s occupation of the Philippines:

A better example would be Malaya where there was a large resident Indian community. How many Indians did the Japanese slaughter there? And how could the Japanese have topped the British record for allowing famines in its colonies? While you’re at it, could you please present any evidence that Japan had actually intended to conquer India? Did it have the capability to do so without compromising its main objective in China?

This is easily answered: Imperial Japan sought to change Malaya’s official language to Japanese. Malayans were expected to bow to Japanese. Chinese fared particularly harshly, but Malays and Indians were not exempt. The 11/43 Greater East Asia Conference did not include Malaya because the Japanese military wished to annex it. Japan’s plans for India are well detailed. Of course, in 1941, Imperial Japan believed it could do much that turned out to be a little optimistic.

The occupations moderated when Japan started to lose the war. Thanks, in part, as Churchill said, “to the unsurpassed bravery” of 2.5 million “Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu [and] the response of the Indian peoples.” As Arthur Herman wrote, in the 20th century in peacetime, the Raj “handled famines with efficiency.” For balanced pros and cons on Britain’s role in India see Dr. Tirthankar Roy, How British Rule Changed India’s Economy.

Whether invented by the President or his scriptwriters, some of Trump’s nicknames were very effective. “Low-energy Jeb” torpedoed Governor Bush‘s 2016 presidential campaign better than any debate gaffe. “Mini-Mike” didn’t help Mayor Bloomberg‘s in 2020. But except in extreme cases like Hitler, Churchill’s name-calling was more effective and less wounding. Especially when he rather admired certain qualities in opponents. (He called Lloyd George a “cad” in his youth, but ever after praised the “Welsh Wizard.”)

* Asterisks indicate nicknames not used in a public setting. Churchill, after all, had some discretion. But I leave them in for fun. 

Nicknames: Admiral Row-Back to Can’t Tellopolus

Admiral Row-Back: Admiral Sir John Roebuck (1862-1928), Royal Navy officer. Commanded the initial Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles in 1915. Having nearly succeeded, he turned back after losses to mines, incurring Churchill’s permanent loathing and censure and an appropriate nickname.

*Block: Herbert H. Asquith (1852-1928), Liberal Prime Minister, 1908-16. He let Churchill dangle in the Dardanelles/Gallipoli debacle, which sent WSC packing as First Lord of the Admiralty. This was a private nickname between Churchill and his wife. It may refer to Asquith’s frequent role as a block to Churchill’s proposals.

Bloodthirsty Guttersnipe: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German Chancellor and Führer, 1933-45. First publicly declared in a broadcast after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. It wasn’t the first Churchillian jab, nor by any means the last.. There is no shortage of insulting nicknames in Hitler’s case; but this is as good an example as any. (See also “Corporal Schicklgrüber,” in comments below.)

Boneless Wonder: James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Prime Minister, 1924, 1929-35. A devastating comparison to a circus attraction, applied in 1931. Churchill was ridiculing Ramsay Mac’s lack of principle and wavering domestic policies. In private he considered MacDonald a servant of Crown and Parliament. But only in private.

Canting Bus Driver: Frank Pick (1878-1941), headed London Passenger Transport Board 1933-40. “Never let me see that-that-that canting bus driver again.” Churchill wrote this in red ink on a memorandum from Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper when Pick resigned.

*Can’t Tellopolus: Panagiotis Kannelopoulos (1902-1986), Minister of Defense, Greek exile government in Cairo, 1942-45. Churchill was impatient with his indecision about Greek resistance to the occupying Germans. Alexander Cadogan, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, heard these “mutterings from Churchill’s bathroom, between the splashings and gurgles.”

Chattering Cad – Green-Eyed Radical

*Chattering Little Cad: David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Liberal Prime Minister 1916-22. Said in 1901, when Churchill was still a Conservative. After he switched to the Liberals in 1904, his attitude changed. He rarely spoke ill of Lloyd George afterward, despite many provocations. WSC’s wife regarded LG as treacherous. He duly refused to join the Churchill coalition in 1940.

*Coroner: Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). Conservative Prime Minister, 1937-40. Originally coined by Brendan Bracken (also “Ironmonger” for Baldwin), this remained in the family lexicon. In 1961, Lady Diana Cooper introduced young Martin Gilbert to Randolph Churchill by saying “he hates the Coroner.” (A bit strong—he surely didn’t hate Chamberlain).

*Dull, Duller, Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, 1952-60. After Stalin’s death, Churchill argued for a “settlement” of the Cold War, but Dulles (and Eisenhower) were obdurate. “Ten years ago I could have dealt with him. Even as it is I have not been defeated by this bastard. I have been humiliated by my own decay.” —Churchill at the Bermuda Conference, December 1953.

Green-eyed Antipodean Radical: David Low (1891-1963), New Zealand cartoonist. Churchill had a certain affinity for the left-wing cartoonist whose attacks he admired. He called Low the greatest of modern cartoonists. There was mutual respect despite political differences, and Low drew a beautiful cartoon tribute on WSC’s 80th birthday.

Half-Naked Fakir – Llama

Half-Naked Fakir: Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian independence leader. The worst sobriquet attached to the Great Mahatma, when Churchill thought Gandhi an upperclass Brahman posing as a champion of the downtrodden. Yet they both nursed a private respect for each other and, in the end, were more forgiving. See “Welcome, Mr. Gandhi” herein.

Holy Fox: Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax (1881-1959, Foreign Minister, 1938-40, Ambassador to Washington, 1940-46. Verified by Halifax biographer Andrew Roberts, who writes: “It was a Churchill family nickname, of course a reference to his High Church beliefs as well as his love of hunting. And a certain amount of political foxiness….”

*Home Sweet Home: Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel (1903-1995), British Prime Minister 1963-64. Neville Chamberlain’s “eyes and ears” in Parliament, he always maintained that the Munich deal had saved Britain by giving it an extra year to prepare for war, ignoring the fact that it also gave Hitler an extra year, and he prepared far more rapidly. (His name was pronounced “Hume,” but that didn’t stop Churchill.)

*Llama: Charles de Gaulle ( 1890-1970 ), French General and President. Lord Moran wrote: “Was it true, [Lady Limerick] asked, that he had likened de Gaulle to a female llama who had been surprised in her bath? Winston pouted, smiled and shook his head. But his way of disavowing the remark convinced me that he was in fact responsible for this indiscretion…”

Limpet to Prince Palsy

Lion-hearted Limpet Leader: Clement Attlee (1883-1967), Labour Prime Minister 1945-51. Many disparaging cracks about Attlee (arriving in an “empty taxi”) are apocryphal. But this was an April 1951 jibe at Attlee and Labour MPs clinging to power. Churchill and the Conservatives turned them out in a general election the following October.

Minister of Disease: Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Labour Minister of Health 1945-51, founder of the National Health Service. One of the rougher nicknames, applied in the Commons, 1948. “…is not morbid hatred a form of mental disease, and indeed a highly infectious form?” Churchill asked. He also called Bevan a “squalid nuisance.”

Old Grey Tabby: Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Conservative Prime Ministers, 1902-05. After he succeeded Churchill at the Admiralty in 1915, WSC feared the “Old Grey Tabby” would dissolve the Royal Naval Division. (Balfour did resemble a tabby cat in old age, but Churchill continued to admire him, and memorialized him in Great Contemporaries.)

Pink Pansies: Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) and his friends. Member of Parliament, 1935-45. I am aware this violates P.C. decorum and will no doubt be added to Churchill’s “sins.” True, Nicolson was bisexual, but a) Churchill was emphatically not homophobic, and b), the reference (Parliament, late 1945) was to non-combative young Tory MPs.

Prince Palsy: Paul of Yugoslavia (1893-1976), Prince Regent of Yugoslavia, 1934-41. His palsied hand signed a treaty with Hitler. This  assured German occupation, the end of his Regency, and Churchill’s disdain. Exiled in Kenya, he appealed for refuge in Britain, but Churchill considered him a traitor and war criminal.

Scheming Prelate to Turnip

Scheming Prelate: Damaskinos Papandreou (1891-1949), Archbishop of Athens, 1945-49. Churchill, mediating the Greek civil war in late 1944, allegedly asked if he was “a man of God or a scheming Mediterranean prelate?” Assured that he was the latter, Churchill supposedly said, “Good, he’s just our man.” (Not verified)

Snub-nosed Radical: Liberal heckler, 1887. Aged only twelve, young Winston was attending a pantomime where he heard a man hissing a portrait of his father. He burst into tears, then turned on the perpetrator: “Stop that row, you snub-nosed radical!” This may be Churchill’s first political zinger.

Spurlos Versenkt (Sunk without a Trace): Sir Benjamin Smith (1879-1964), Labour Minister of Food, 1944-46. After he resigned from Parliament, Churchill searched “for the burly ‘and engaging form of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman. He has departed ‘spurlos versenkt,’ as the German expression says—sunk without leaving a trace behind.”

Turnip: Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), Conservative Prime Minister, 1925-29, 1935-37. Baldwin made Churchill Chancellor in 1925, but later kept him out of the Cabinet. After his final resignation, “S.B.” appeared in the House of Commons smoking room. Churchill quipped, “Well, the light is at last out of that old turnip.”

Useless Percy to Wuthering Height

*Useless Percy: Eustace Percy, First Baron of Newcastle (1887-1958). Board of Education President, 1924-29. At the Exchequer 1924-29, Churchill tried to lower the defense budget. Percy and Minister of Health Chamberlain  were opposed. “Neville is costing £2 millions more and Lord Useless Percy the same,” WSC wrote his wife on 30 September 1927.  “…these civil departments browse onwards like a horde of injurious locusts.”

Whipped Jackal: Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian Prime Minister, 1922-43, Duce of Fascism, 1943-45. Churchill praised him briefly before the war, but after joining Hitler he became a “whipped jackal… frisking up at the side of the German tiger with yelpings not only of appetite—that can be understood—but even of triumph!”

Wincing Marquess: Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (1845-1927), House of Lords, 1886-1927. Churchill, 1909: “he claimed no right…to mince the Budget, [only] the right to wince when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim…. If his Party are satisfied with the Wincing Marquess, we have no reason to protest.”

*Wuthering Height: John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith (1889-1971),  BBC Director General, 1923-38. The towering Reith was briefly in the wartime Coalition Cabinet. But he’d kept Churchill off the air in the 1930s, and no love was lost between them. WSC rejoiced to have seen “the last of that Wuthering Height” around 1940.

Please can you comment on, the “Dutchman, Burgener by name,” mentioned by Churchill in his account of his escape from the Boers in his autobiography, My Early Life? Is he one and the same person as the Charles Burnham mentioned by Sir Martin Gilbert in Churchill: A Life? Perhaps the surname was changed to protect Mr Burnham`s position in South Africa? Yet thoughthree decades had elapsed by the publication of My Early Life. It seems certain that Churchill knew of Burnham and the role that he had played. The latter had written to him in 1908 (Vol. 1 of the Official Biography, 502-04). He was one of those to whom WSC sent an inscribed gold watch in appreciation of their assistance. —W.A.

“Burgener” was Burnham

You are right. “Burgener” was in fact Charles Burnham. Whether Churchill  disguised his real name in My Early Life I am not sure. In that book, Churchill divulged the name of the mine manager, John Howard. Perhaps he had simply mistaken Burnham’s name.

At any rate, “Dutchman Burgener” was the name WSC assigned to the man who helped Churchill stow away in a consignment of wool on a railway car bound for Lourenço Marques, now Maputo, Mozambique. Further on, Churchill adds that “Burgener” met him in Delagoa Bay and led him to the British Consulate, which enabled his return to Durban and the British lines.

Burnham Identified

Randolph Churchill divulged Burnham’s identity in the official biography document volumes. Randolph received a letter from John Howard’s son, which corrects Churchill’s own account. (Re Burnham, see the paragraph in bold face below).

Howard fils added that the Boers came to arrest Howard some time later. Captain Haldane (who later also escaped) tipped them off about Howard’s role. But Howard entertained them with drinks. Then, with pistols in his pockets and standing over rifles they’d stacked in a corner, he convinced them to go away.

Churchill himself did not let out Howard’s name until My Early Life. But one John Hulme published an account of the escape in The Temple Magazine in 1901. He mentioned Mr. Dewsnap of Oldham (as did Churchill in his first political campaign, but Dewsnap was not harmed). Hulme also implied that the miners had killed a Boer who had learned they were hiding the fugitive.

From the Official Biography

The Churchill Documents, vol. 3, Early Years in Politics 1901-1907 (Hillsdale College Press, 2007), 1132-35:

L. C. B. Howard to RSC

EXTRACT

31 May 1963 10 Coronation Buildings, Germiston, Transvaal

… First of all, on reading through your Father’s narrative I see he does not mention the fact that while down the mine at the T. and D. B. Collieries, a few days after he was lowered into the mine, he took ill and had to be brought to the surface again, where he was ensconced in a room in the mine office building, which was used for storing office equipment; of course big empty packing cases and bundles of grain bags etc, were introduced into the room to make his concealment more secure, and so safeguard his presence there; how many times didn’t my old Dad relate these facts to me, and how he arranged special signals for your Father, so that he would not be taken unawares should any unwanted person happen to knock at the door….

Secondly, your Father in his writings, talks about the Transvaal Collieries, the correct name of the mine is the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Collieries.

Thirdly, he says, our house where he first met my Dad that memorable evening many years ago, was a double storey building, it was only a single storey structure; however, no one could blame your Father for these mistakes, under these very trying circumstances, and what is more it was very dark at the time.

“A fine type of man”

Fourthly, the name of the man whom my Dad had to introduce into his plans for your Father’s safety, in helping him out of the country, because of the wool which was urgently required, was a Mr. Burnham and not Burgener as your Father has it. Burnham was also a fine type of man.

And lastly, your Father mentions the corrugated iron fence at the Staats Model School in Pretoria, which he scaled in his escape from there as being about ten feet in height; it was only 6 ft and is there to this very day. I went and had another look at it, on the afternoon of our gathering of the 20th instant. The house which stood on the other side of the fence, I see, has been demolished. Too bad; it should have been preserved as well….

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has published two articles on Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s loyal ally and friend for four decades. The first begins with a memoir by the late Ron Robbins, a Canadian journalist who early on covered the House of Commons, where he met Bracken. The postscript is by me, followed by reviews of the two Bracken books by George Gale and A.J.P. Taylor.  A second feature—Bracken’s defense of Churchill’s frequent visits to war fronts—is also published.

Excerpts follow. For the full articles click on “Great Contemporaries:  Brendan Bracken” and “Necessary Risk: Churchill at the Front.”

Bracken Observed

There was no more enigmatic figure in Churchill’s life than Brendan Bracken, who cloaked his birth and upbringing with mystery while hinting broadly that he was the great man’s illegitimate son. Close friendship, not errant fatherhood, encompassed their relationship. But Churchill, with characteristic impishness, apparently never gave the direct lie to Bracken’s implied claim. This annoyed Churchill’s wife and peeved his son, Randolph, who spoke satirically of  “my brother, the bastard.” To quell the noisome rumor Churchill quipped: “I have looked the matter up, but the dates don’t coincide.”

By the time I encountered him, he was a formidable figure in corridors of power and London financial circles. The Labour Party came to power in July 1945. Bracken’s arch opponent was the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, a fiery Welshman. Bevan was steering the National Health Bill, the first large-scale national heath service, through morning committee meetings. I wrote “running reports.” A copy boy would come in every five minutes or so, collect what I had written, and phone it to the agency.

* * *

Bracken would thrust at Bevan, jolting him in a tough fight over every clause in the Bill. Bracken always attacked in time to catch new editions of the evening papers. This ensured him headlines, especially in the Evening Standard, owned by Lord Beaverbrook, an intimate friend of his and Churchill’s.

One morning as I hurried to the committee, Bracken caught up with me and complimented me on my coverage. No journalist worth his salt likes to feel exploited, particularly by a politician. So I said: “You have a great knack of talking in headlines just in time to catch every edition.” He roared with laughter and produced a pocket diary. He flaunted a page on which he had written the edition times of all the London papers. Smiling ruefully, I said: “I didn’t imagine that you were relying solely on chance.” “No,” he replied, “it’s a trick I learned early on from Churchill.”

Bracken died of cancer in 1958 at the age of 57. Churchill reacted sorrowfully to the news of his death. Churchill mourned for him with a father’s grief. —Ron Cynewulf Robbins

Bracken postscript

We have a memorable glimpse of Brendan Bracken on 11 May 1940, Churchill’s first full day in office. One of the first axes fell on Chamberlain’s toady Sir Horace Wilson, a civil servant promoted far above his station. He was an arch appeaser, both indirectly (as an adviser) and directly (as an emissary to Hitler).

With his usual courtesy, Churchill told Wilson he would obliged if Sir Horace left Ten Downing Street by 1pm. Wilson characteristically took this as a “negotiable demand” and toddled off to lunch. Returning, he found Bracken and Randolph Churchill seated on his office sofa, smoking huge cigars and glaring at him. They exchanged no words. Wilson turned and fled. Later he sent for his effects. He never appeared at Number Ten again.

During the war, Bracken enabled Evelyn Waugh to obtain leave so that he could write Brideshead Revisited. Waugh unkindly wrote Bracken into the story as Rex Motram, a boorish, money-grubbing exploiter of the colonies. That was typical of Waugh, but undeserved. As Lord Beaverbrook said: “To know Bracken was to like him; those who didn’t know him did not like him.”

Bracken in biography

The Bracken biographies may be viewed in similar light. (Click here and scroll to “Further reading.”) Boyle’s Poor Dear Brendan is the more showy and brash, Lysaght’s Brendan Bracken the deeper and more revealing. “Above all,” wrote Charles Lysaght,

Bracken was great fun. He found appropriate names for everyone. Baldwin was “the ironmonger,” Neville Chamberlain“the coroner.” Eden was “Robert Taylor,” or “the film star at the Foreign Office.” He described Harrow, Churchill’s old school, as “that bloody old Borstal of yours.” Only Churchill himself was exempt from Bracken’s darts. His description of Aneurin Bevan, enjoying Beaverbrook’s champagne, is of classic quality: “You Bollinger Bolshevik, you ritzy Robespierre, you lounge-lizard Lenin! Look at you swilling Max’s champagne and calling yourself a socialist.” Bevan listened to this tirade with delight.

After the war Bracken seemed to burn out like a fallen meteor, contemplating a future with, alas, all too accurate a vision. He said of Keynes: “He will be best remembered as the man who made inflation respectable.” He said of himself: “I shall die young and be forgotten.” History will not forget him. —RML

Necessary risk: Bracken’s defense

During World War II, Churchill’s frequent excursions to various fronts caused critics to complain that he was taking unnecessary risk. Criticism mounted when Churchill hied to France only six days after D-Day.  He revisited the front several times through March 1945.

Captain Alec Stratford Cunningham-Reid DFC (1895-1977) was a distinguished flying ace in World War I. In 1922-45 he served periodically as a Conservative Member of Parliament. Peppery and contentious, he engaged in numerous arguments, which in 1943 resulted in fisticuffs with another MP. Both apologized the next day, but in America the Los Angeles Times headlined, “England Grins as Members of Commons Trade Punches.”

Churchill went to France in mid-June 1944. Cunningham-Reid complained: “The Prime Minister should not risk his life unnecessarily…. Was there ever such a good target as the one presented by our not inconspicuous Prime Minister perched up high on a Jeep? Nobody could have mistaken or missed that massive figure, complete with cigar to identify him…. Subsequently, the Prime Minister, General Montgomery, Field-Marshal Smuts, General Sir Alan Brooke, and, in all probability, the Supreme Commander [Eisenhower] and other key men got into a huddle…. The Minister of Information will, no doubt, correct me if that is not so.”

* * *

The Minister of Information was Brendan Bracken, who did indeed respond. In a brilliant few minutes, Bracken delivered a superb defense of Churchill’s visits to the front. Because it has not been published, even in The Churchill Documents, we thought it worth bringing to the attention of readers. Here is an extract:

I think it is a good thing for prime ministers that they should go into the front line and see the troops, and the soldiers, who matter most, like to see them. I daresay some hon. Members of this House remember that, in the last war, some suggestions were made by timid French Ministers to M. Clemenceau that, owing to the Germans having a big gun that shelled Paris, they should leave that city for a safer place. They discovered for the first time that the old Tiger was amenable. He said, “Yes, let the Government leave Paris. Let it go to the front.” It was a very sound piece of advice. If men like Clemenceau lived in this generation, France would not be in its present predicament.

Click here for Bracken’s complete speech.

“Churchill’s Secret“: good film portrayal of how Bracken and two other Press Barons dekated the news about Churchill’s 1953 stroke.

The most touching and durable vision left by Mr. Maier comes toward the end of this long book: the famous White House ceremony in April 1963, as President Kennedy presents Sir Winston Churchill (in absentia) with Honorary American Citizenship—while from an upstairs window his stroke-silenced father, Joseph P. Kennedy, watches closely, with heaven knows what reflections:

Whatever thoughts raced through the mind of Joe Kennedy—the rancor of the past, the lost opportunities of his own political goals, and the tragic forgotten dreams he had once had for his oldest son, could not be expressed. His weak, withered body, with its disfigured mouth, no longer served him…could say nothing in his own defense.

This is a readable book, elegantly written, which commits some errors. It contains much known information, except perhaps for encyclopedic revelations of which Churchills and Kennedys were sleeping with whom. In some ways one is reminded of a description applied by Warren Kimball to Volume 3 in the Manchester Churchill trilogy The Last Lion: “A nice cruise down a lengthy river you’ve sailed before.”

Meetings and consequences

The biographies surround occasions when the two families meet (or collide): 1933, 1935, 1938, and so on. Much of what we read about John F. Kennedy’s remarkable affinity for Churchill has been recorded earlier, by Barbara Leaming, in Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman (2006).

Along the way are interesting takes. Churchill’s interest in secret intelligence, for example, is traced to the Boer War, when young Winston “performed a bit of reconnaissance work, posing as a civilian riding a bicycle” in the Boer capital of Pretoria. Mr. Maier tracks the Joe Kennedy-Churchill relationship thoroughly, establishing that it began in 1933 (five years before JPK became Roosevelt’s Ambassador to Britain), when he and Churchill did some joint business involving the liquor trade. This, he suggests, might today be termed influence peddling—but Churchill held no office from 1929 to 1939.

Mr. Maier gets quite a few Churchill points wrong. There’s an incomplete account of the scandal involving Lord Alfred Douglas, who in 1916 libeled Churchill (“short of money and eager for power”), accusing him of manipulating war news to benefit his mentor Sir Ernest Cassel. Maier might have added that Churchill sued and won…or that in 1941, when Douglas published a sonnet praising the now-prime minister, Churchill forgave him on the spot, saying, “Time ends all things.”

Balanced criticism

Perhaps it is hard nowadays to credit many people with kindness and altruism, like Sir Henry Strakosch, who took over Churchill’s portfolio and preserved WSC’s dwindled finances. Maier calls this a “bailout plan…considered more a gift than graft by Churchill and his benefactors….” But graft is “the unscrupulous use of a politician’s authority for personal gain.” Strakosch never made one demand of Churchill. He acted only in appreciation for the man and the leader.

Churchill the imperialist is not ignored. “Winston showed little enthusiasm for the revolutionary spirit of independence among those living in former colonies of the British Empire such as India, South Africa, Kenya, or even neighboring Ireland,” Maier writes. Not so fast! What about his post-1935 encouragement to Gandhi and Nehru; his loyalty to Smuts, who opposed Apartheid; praise of locally-ruled Kenya in 1908; his instrumental role in the 1921 Treaty that brought independence to Ireland? Against such omissions, the canard that Churchill wanted to use “poison gas” against Iraqi tribesman stands in some contrast.

In World War II, Maier writes, “when the Communist guerrillas threatened to take control of Yugoslavia, Churchill underlined his concern by sending his only son.” No: Churchill had determined that Tito’s Communists were “killing more Huns” than the royalists, and sent his son to aid Tito. And Tito was not a “Soviet puppet.”

Kennedys and Winston

Maier says Joe Kennedy “blamed Roosevelt and Churchill for the death of his son Joe Jr.” No specific evidence exists for this.

A media kerfuffle was raised by the book’s report that after the war, WSC told Senator Styles Bridges (R., N.H.) that America should nuke Moscow before the Russians got their hands on the bomb. This was perfectly legitimate to record, but raised shock headlines among the ignorant media. As noted elsewhere, the story is not new. Churchill often voiced apocalyptic notions to visitors to observe their reaction. He never made that proposal to any plenary U.S. authority. As Graham Farmelo wrote in Churchill’s Bomb: “This was the zenith of Churchill’s nuclear bellicosity.” He soon softened his line, telling Parliament in January 1948 that the best chance of avoiding war was “to arrive at a lasting settlement” with the Soviets. Maier doesn’t acknowledge Churchill’s change of view until 1952. He adds that Churchill “would drop the bomb if he could.” That is simply unproven. And unlikely.

* * *

Other basic errors include the assertion that Winston’s father never visited him at school, that Churchill’s war memoirs comprised four volumes, that the Munich Agreement was in 1939, that Egypt was a former British colony (508). Among the trivial are mis-titling a Churchill article and identifying “Toby” the green parakeet as Churchill’s “white canary.”

Churchill’s description of Munich as a “choice between War and Shame” was not said in Parliament; “MBE” does not stand for Member of the British Empire. Lord and Lady Churchill, Lady Nancy Astor or “Sonny” Marlborough never existed. Tw0 nannies are misnamed: Elizabeth Everest (not “Everett”) and Marriott Whyte (not “Madeleine White).”

Fathers and sons

The book finishes with thoughtful reflections. Jack and Bobby got on much better with their father than Randolph with his, Maier suggests. Yet the Kennedy sons were far from their father in outlook and policy. After Joe’s stroke, “Jack and Bobby interacted with their father as they always did, as if he might suddenly talk back to them.” But poor Randolph Churchill just talked back. “I do so very much love that man,” Randolph says in tears, after being pointedly ejected from the Onassis yacht following a flaming attack on his aged father, “but something always goes wrong between us.”

Did Winston spoil Randolph to the point of disaster? Or did he subconsciously communicate a wish that Randolph could never be his equal? Did Joe Kennedy accept early on that great political prizes would not be his, but  for his sons? Mr. Maier leaves his readers to draw their own conclusions. His summary well crafted summary:

This legacy between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the eternal questions about families and fate, and our lasting impression of greatness, were all part of the shared experience between the Churchills and the Kennedys. In the twentieth century, no two families existed on a bigger world stage…. With courage, wit, and unforgettable determination, both Winston S. Churchill and John F. Kennedy helped define and save the world as we know it today.

That is a bit of overreach: comparing the lengths of their careers and the scales of the two salvations. But save it they did.

Did WSC Send Troops Against Strikers?

For a century it has been part of socialist demonology that Churchill sent troops to attack strikers during a 1910 miners’ work stoppage in Tonypandy, Wales. In 1967 an Oxford undergraduate wrote that Churchill faced down strikers with tanks. This was very prescient of him, since tanks didn’t exist in 1910.

And for half a century Churchill’s defenders, beginning with his son and including this writer, insisted all this was a lie. Churchill, were said, deferred from using troops against the mineworker strikers and left law enforcement to the local constabulary.

Out of this has grown a considerable muddle, to which I have added my share. So this is to correct the record: Churchill did send troops to areas containing strikers and riots in 1910-11. He withheld their deployment in 1910, but in 1911 their presence at one location resulted in fatalities.

Now, as the traffic judge used to allow me to do in my leaded-footed days as a teenage driver, I shall plead on Churchill’s behalf: “Guilty with an explanation.”

Tonypandy, Wales, November 1910

A coal miners’ strike grew out of disputes over wage differentials for working hard and soft seams. Up to 30,000 miners were involved, and local authorities appealed for troops to the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, who consulted Churchill, then Home Secretary. They agreed to send police, but to station some troops nearby if worst came to worst.

Churchill reported to the King that he had restored peace without resort to soldiers. The Conservative press attacked. The Times said that he did not understand the need for “decisive handling.” The Liberal press defended him, a Liberal MP. “The brave course was also the wise one,” wrote the Manchester Guardian…“Instead of a score of cases for the hospital there might have been as many for the mortuary.”

Writing to David Lloyd George the following spring, Churchill expressed his wish to help the miners. The government, he said, should meet their requests for stronger safety regulations and inspections, given the highest death rates since mining statistics had begun—and finance the expense with a surcharge on mineowners’ royalties.

Llanelli, Wales, August 1911

Nine months later, a national railway strike broke out when rail operators refused to recognize the unions as negotiators. This time troops arrived at numerous scenes of disturbances around the country. Mostly they acted with caution, and when they did fire, they usually aimed over the heads of crowds.

Lloyd George settled the strike by convincing the railways to recognize the union negotiators. But in Llanelli, Wales—two days, ironically, after the strike had ended—the only fatalities from the use of troops occurred. Rioters held up a train and knocked the engine driver senseless. Soldiers attempted to clear the track but looting began, and they fired into the crowd, killing two or four rioters (accounts vary).

Troops left when the strike ended. On August 20th King George V telegraphed Churchill: “Glad the troops are to be sent back to their districts at once: this will reassure the public. Much regret unfortunate incident at Llanelli. Feel convinced that prompt measures taken by you prevented loss of life in different parts of the country.”

Randolph Churchill wrote in the official biography:

For all the criticism that came Churchill’s way from the Labour members of Parliament for his attitude to the use of troops during this strike, there is little doubt that the King’s telegram represented public opinion at the time. But Labour was not to forget….

Concluded in Part 2…

Continued from part 1… “Stop that!” Seated beside him the first time we’d met—the second Churchill Tour on 17 September 1985—I caught Martin Gilbert riffling through a briefcase crammed with sheets of yellow foolscap. As the minutes ticked by before his talk, “Churchill’s London,” he would toss some sheets away. “What are you doing?” I whinged to my new friend. It was the my first Martin Gilbert speech, and here he was, culling it already.

“This is my ‘Speech Form,’” Martin explained, referring to the term Churchill used for his own speech notes: typed texts including every word, the lines picked out like verses of the Psalms.

Martin Gilbert was a superb extemporaneous speaker, with no need for that. His own sheets contained only a few handwritten words. When he began a new subject he would pull one out, glance at the line, toss it aside and ad-lib flawlessly for five or ten minutes. Then he’d pull out another and the process was repeated. If he thought he might run too long, he would self-edit by omitting the sheets he thought superfluous.

“A bore is somebody who tells everything,” my best editor told me. But here at this time, at the Waldorf Hotel in London, we wanted Martin to leave nothing out. We were Churchillians. We would hang on every word. But Martin kept culling, sympathetic to his audience, determined to fit his talk into what he thought was the right amount of time.

“Humility, humour, command”

A Gilbert lecture, wrote Matthew Gould, British Ambassador to Israel, was a mix  of “humility with humour and extraordinary command of detail.” There were no grand flourishes or great cadences. Martin “kept his audiences rapt in attention. His understated and diffident style often left me feeling he was on the verge of running dry—only to answer every question with a great depth and understanding.”

His written work is much the same. Critics would complain that he was too methodical, too “stuck” on chronology. But for Martin, as Andrew Roberts observed, chronology was the key. It was his job in the “Great Work” to place the reader on Churchill’s shoulder, personally observing the march of events. He would explain what happened when, and what stemmed from it.

Let others make broad pronouncements about whether Churchill was wise or foolish; Martin Gilbert made his views plain from his selection of material. And few ever challenged the validity of that selection. The only times I saw him disgruntled were when later writers treated as a revelation some fact or anecdote he’d published decades before.

Always the same Martin

I marveled at his spontaneity. Like Churchill’s, his public voice was the same as his private one. Martin was conversational with vast recall, and a studious disregard for “revisionist” nonsense. He knew the story so well, you see. He knew it having sifted through more papers, documents, interviews and transcripts than anyone else on the planet. His words simply flowed, fact upon fact, with irrefutable logic.

Always he would portray the same Churchill, a character with human faults and frailties, driven by a love of liberty and his fellow man. “I never felt that he was going to spring an unpleasant surprise on me,” Martin remarked to Max Hastings. “I might find that he was adopting views with which I disagreed. But I always knew that there would be nothing to cause me to think: ‘How shocking, how appalling.’”

Asked once to describe Churchill in a single sentence, Martin said nothing about blood, toil, tears and sweat. Churchill, he said, “was a great humanitarian who was himself distressed that the accidents of history gave him his greatest power at a time when everything had to be focused on defending the country from destruction, rather than achieving his goals of a fairer society.” I think this illuminates Martin’s Churchillian optimism: That somehow, in the end, “all will come right.”

He meant so much to us all

Many Churchill writers, like Douglas Russell, remembered how honored they were by a Gilbert foreword to or approval of their books. In my own book of quotations, Churchill by Himself, he not only wrote the introduction, but coined the best promo line we could hope for: “Unputdownable.” I was so very honored by his praise.

His generosity was unending. A devout Jew, he never failed to wish his Gentile friends a Happy Easter—even those who were not particularly religious. With me at a Boston bookshop, he pulled book after book of his off the shelves, paid for them, and inscribed them on the spot. I wondered how many authors could visit a shop and find four of their books on the racks. (Or what the proprietor thought of this stranger scribbling in his stock!)

A constant friend, Martin was always there for us, answering complicated questions, producing scholarly articles, traveling to lecture at conferences near and far, guiding our tours of “Churchill’s Britain.” In Suffolk, he joined us at Stour, Randolph Churchill’s old home. It was his first visit since Randolph’s death, and Martin shed tears of memory.

“Rose-lipt maidens, lightfoot lads”

His phenomenal recall rarely missed a reference. When I offered him the toast, “Rose-lipt maidens, lightfoot lads,” Martin exclaimed: “Housman. From Out of Africa.” (Sydney Pollack’s great film with Streep and Redford, based on Isak Dineson’s book).

Martin always downplayed and offered no details of his counsel to successive prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Gordon Brown. But he did once share an amusing anecdote. In the Middle East to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Prime Minister John Major introduced Martin as “my guru.” Consternation and a buzz of chatter arose in the Arab delegation. It finally emerged that they weren’t sure what a guru was. Yet Mr. Major had exactly described Martin’s role.

Last autumn I had the honor to produce a festschrift in Martin’s honor, where 20 writers and friends spoke of his devotion to history, his generosity and friendship. His wife Esther was one of the contributors, and able to read each piece to him. She says he signified that he understood. I am glad we were in time.

The time you won your town the race 

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

—A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

We met through the post forty-two years ago, when he became the third honorary member of the Churchill Study Unit, after his grandmother and his father. The latter had only just sent a letter of encouragement to our little group of stamp collectors when he himself died. It was June, 1968. In sending condolences, I asked Winston to take his father’s place. He accepted, adding, “It is consoling to know so many share my loss.”

And for four decades “Young Winston” was a stalwart supporter, friend and a collaborator on projects too numerous to recount. While kidding him that he was fast getting to be the “Not-So-Young Winston,” I felt he was timeless, always there for us: encouraging, prodding, donating, participating. My grief at his loss, far too soon, is deeply felt.

He gave us permission to publish his grandfather’s articles and speeches in Finest Hour. He appeared for speeches and presentations, from conferences to our Churchill Tours of England. He officiated at joint ceremonies like the commissioning of USS Winston S. Churchill, the American Veterans Center, our 2006 Churchill Lecture. When we founded The Churchill Centre in 1995, he was among the first to contribute to its endowment. He freely allowed his signature to be used on solicitations, most recently in a letter asking lapsed members to renew, which, eerily, was received by some after his death.

Like his father, he preferred to communicate by telephone, announcing himself with a cheery “Winston here!” He would call to tell of his adventures, from flying desperate medical missions for St. John Ambulance Air Wing to exploring scenes of his grandfather’s exploits—like the Malakand Pass, where he rode in an armoured car accompanied by soldiers armed to the teeth. Truly, he lived life large. In London and Washington, he knew everybody, just like his mother. As they said of Alistair Cooke: “He could reach back, reach forward, and make the connections. He was always, triumphantly, in touch.”

On one of his trips to New England, when promoting his book of Sir Winston’s writings about America, The Great Republic, we took him to visit Plimoth Plantation. There he accosted an Indian, assuring him they were related, “since my grandfather was part-Iroquois.” Back in the car I let him have it: “Winston, you’re as Iroquois as my cat!” “If you’re so smart,” he said, “prove it. Meanwhile it’s my story and I’m running with it!”

When I first visited him in London, he showed me his personal memorabilia. Here was the peerless Orpen portrait of his sad grandfather after the Dardanelles; an ornamental table once owned by John Churchill First Duke of Marlborough; a collection of WSC’s works, all first editions inscribed by his grandfather. I was a Churchill bookseller at the time, and he wanted to know what I thought of his collection. “Well,” I said, “you’ve made a good start…..”

We had several literary collaborations. When he assembled Never Give In!, his collection of Sir Winston’s best speeches, I was able to dig out some obscure ones he needed, like his grandfather’s remarks in Durban after escaping from the Boers in 1899. His writings appeared in Finest Hour, most recently in recounting the heroic contributions of Poles in World War II, in issue 145. Sir Martin Gilbert read it without realizing who wrote it: “I said to myself, wow,this is really good, I wonder who wrote it (wish it had been me!)”

Our largest “combined operation” was Churchill By Himself, the book I couldn’t have produced without his permission. Winston provided his grandfather’s words, I provided editorial notes. This, I assured him, would be “a production to rival South Pacific: music by W. Churchill, lyrics by R. Langworth.”

There were amusing adventures, like his call for “cigar quotes” for a company producing a new Churchill corona. I supplied the quotes and he asked if I wanted to be paid. “Yes,” I said, “with a box of cigars.” Sniffed Winston: “I don’t touch the dreadful things myself, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t kill yourself if you wish.” The box duly arrived with the price still on it, and I was temporarily elevated to smoking a twenty-five dollar corona, courtesy of my friend in London. (Recently I gave one to a Bahamian pal, its elaborate band sparkling with a red and gilt Churchill coat of arms. He looked as if he’d received a knighthood.)

Political labels are all too freely applied, and some labeled Winston a right-winger, but his views were too complex to be pigeonholed. True, he broke with Mrs. Thatcher by voting against sanctions on Rhodesia; he deplored the skinning-down of Britain’s armed forces; he worried publicly over unrestricted Commonwealth immigration and the muslimization of his country. But he was also pro-Europe; he strove for a more classless society. And last year, when Barack Obama’s Cairo speech was regarded by the right as a surrender, Winston hailed it as a courageous breakthrough in American foreign policy.

It is too easy to compare him to his grandfather and lament that he (or his father) were not equally great. Who was? It is most awfully untrue “that no acorn grows under a mighty oak.” There are just as many progeny of the great who did better than their parents (beginning of course with Sir Winston himself). For every “Randolph” there was a “Winston”—among the Buckleys, the Chamberlains, the Kennedys, the Salisburys, the Roosevelts, the Rothschilds, ad infinitum. It’s simply wrong to imply on this basis that his life was futile. Ultimately, most lives are.

And it is gratuitous to compare him to his female relations, since in those years, women were expected to mind their own business and perpetuate the family. The Churchill women who exceeded those roles did so through their own talent and character. Much more was expected of the Churchill men—more, perhaps, than could be expected of anyone. The onus was upon them both: Randolph, only son of Winston; Winston, only son of Randolph.

Still, with their pens, Winston and his father could reach heights matched by few. Were they great journalists? Read Randolph’s first two volumes on his father; read Winston’s biography of Randolph; read their joint book on the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. The question answers itself.

Concerning his grandfather, Finest Hour once quoted Shakespeare’s Malvolio: “Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Winston was one of those whom some tried to thrust greatness upon. He shook it off by being himself—not what some thought he was obliged to be.

His record was one on which I think he was content to be judged. Having no doubt about the verdict, it seems appropriate to conclude with another quote, by Rossiter Raymond, which adorns the tombstone of  Parry Thomas, the great Welsh racing driver: “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”