Another in a long line of Churchill tours is being promoted in England. Like most, it follows the well-worn “Churchill Trail”: Blenheim, Chartwell, the War Rooms, London shops he patronized, a hotel or two he supposedly frequented. Only $15-21,000 per couple for a week.

I sent the news to our friend Garry Clark—tour manager for the eleven Churchill Tours we ran over twenty-five years. I could not help being catty: “And to think that you, Barbara, Ann and I used to deliver two weeks, and places these people never heard of, for a third the money or less, not so long ago…..”

Garry replied: “That seven-day tour equates to five days after travel is taken into account. Also just think back to the people we met with Churchill connections who are no longer with us. And in many cases our tours visited their homes. Quite unique when you think about it—in fact impossible to be repeated. We definitely had the best.”

One of our guests, Randolph Churchill, remarked: “One thing for sure—they will not have as much fun as we did with Barbara and you and me at the Olde Bell at Hurley.” (Sir Winston’s great-grandson momentarily lost his thread while speaking to us at “the oldest inn in England.” I reminded him of how Robert Hardy, the greatest Churchill actor ever, immediately stood and ad libbed the rest of his talk.) Ah, the memories….

Genesis of the Churchill Tours

The Packard Club, whose magazine we published from 1975 to 2001, first suggested that our travels in and knowledge of Britain might be harnessed to produce a tour for members. By the time we revived the Churchill organization in 1982, we had hosted three vintage car tours. So it was only natural to do a Churchill.

The first was in 1983, when we brought forty people across the pond. There we met our Patron, Lady Soames, for the first time and visited the then-rather-fewer places on the “Churchill Trail.” Over the next twenty-five years, the traffic became worse but many things improved. The cramped Cabinet War Rooms became an expansive museum; many archives not previously accessible opened; historic venues burnished their Churchill connections. We even got into the RAF Battle of Britain bunker at Uxbridge: the plotting room where Churchill witnessed the peak of the great struggle.

Chartwell, of course, was the highlight when our tours visited southern England. They always welcomed us on a day closed to the public. We had the run of that historic home in company with friends and family of Sir Winston who had known it in its glory days. We encouraged everyone to march up the hill to the line of trees for “the finest view in England.” As Sir Winston told longtime secretary Grace Hamblin: “You’re a fool if you’ve not been up here before.”

Chartwell was just the beginning. Through what often seemed 24/7 Churchill labors, we met and became friends with many old colleagues, friends, family, scholars and historians. Some of them generously joined our tours.

With the Jellicoes to Scapa Flow

One such benefactor was George, Second Lord Jellicoe, son of the First World War Admiral. (Churchill called him “the only man who could have lost the war in a day.”) George and his wife Philippa traveled with us to the Orkney Isles, off Scotland’s north coast. Acting as our guides, they showed us everything—from Orkney’s remarkable runic monuments to the famous fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow.

The name Jellicoe is sacred at Scapa, and George arranged for the pilot boat to take us out. There on color sonar, we observed the wreck of HMS Royal Oak, torpedoed in 1939. Remaining in commission, she bears a White Ensign, renewed every year by Royal Navy divers. A war grave, she still oozes oil. A sombre vision.

Working southwest along the Scottish coast, we put our coach on a small ferry and navigated narrow Hebridean roads on the Isle of Mull. At Torosay Castle, we were welcomed for tea by Jacquetta James, sister of Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, “Life of the Party.” This made a full circle, since we had earlier visited their ancestral home, Minterne Magna, Dorset.

Suffolk to Wiltshire

Our devotion to the Churchill saga found tours visiting many private places that were simply never open to the public. In Suffolk we visited Stour, the beautiful pink brick Regency House where Randolph Churchill launched the “great work.” That was the Official Biography, which Hillsdale College has now completed. The owners, Paul and Birte Kelly, welcomed us for lunch. Sir Martin Gilbert, deeply moved, paid his first visit since Randolph had died in 1968. Amidst tears of memory he shared his experiences as Randolph’s assistant, and later as his successor.

Farther south in Surrey, we paid three calls on Hoe Farm, where a forlorn Churchill retreated after being sacked from the Admiralty in 1915. Life tenant Arthur Simon showed us where WSC first began to paint in oils. Three times Arthur summoned his neighbors to help dish out lunch. Similarly, Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath, showed us his Churchilliana collection at Longleat, Wiltshire.

Determined to see “everything”

We found and thrice visited “Lullenden,” an obscure and beautiful Elizabethan manor house in West Sussex. Little known, this was Winston and Clementine’s first country home (1917-19). Again the owners were kindness itself, despite a formidable crowd—some seventy on our last visit.

In the West Country, accompanied by genealogist Elizabeth Snell, we meandered through homes of the early Churchills, from the first Sir Winston to the First Duke of Marlborough. At Blenheim we thrice dined in the Great Hall through the generosity of the 11th Duke and his gracious Duchess Rosita.

Churchill tours found the house in Broadstairs, Kent, where the Churchill’s infant daughter Marigold died in 1921. We also visited her grave at Kensal Green Cemetery. We dined in the Pinafore Room, Hotel Savoy, meeting place of The Other Club. Our guest speakers ran from Lord and Lady Soames to Anthony Montague Browne and Jock Colville.

Isle of Wight odyssey

Garry and Ann Clark, Barbara Langworth and I cannot possibly repay the debt we owe to the many people who kindly put up with forty to seventy people traipsing through their property. I remember particularly a small row house in Ventnor, Isle of Wight. Here young WSC spent holidays with his nanny, Mrs. Everest. From the back garden, “little Winnie,” aged four, had watched the tragic sinking of HMS Eurydice, out in the Channel after a gale.

Garry had stopped at the house to enquire whether a “Churchill party” might visit. The residents had enthusiastically said “yes,” and their children were ready with drinks and snacks. To their surprise, fifty strangers walked through their ground floor to the back garden. We stood there lost in thought while I unfolded the story of Eurydice.

Nanny Everest was a staple of young Winston’s life. We found and often visited her grave at the City of London Cemetery. On our visit, digging with our hands, we found the half buried inscription on the base of her headstone: “By Winston Spencer Churchill and John Strange Spencer Churchill.”

The next day, going from the everyday to the posh, we toured Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s summer mansion, and Cowes, where Lord Randolph met Jennie Jerome in 1873. Returning to the mainland we were met by Robert Hardy at Henry VIII’s immortal flagship, the Mary Rose. As Archery Consultant to the Mary Rose Trust, Robert told us all about Tudor weaponry and archers. Our host was Margaret Rule, the Trust administrator, who had contributed so much to the ship’s revival. We celebrated later with a dinner at Blenheim Palace.

France and Oz

In 1989 we crossed the Channel. In Epernay, Christian and Danielle Pol-Roger welcomed us at the home of Churchill’s favorite champagne: “The world’s most drinkable address.” Together they showed us cellars where the formidable beauty, Odette Pol-Roger, had walled off the best bottles from the occupying Germans.

We entertained each other at two groaning repasts of lunch and dinner. “Sir Winston made us promise to keep enough of the ’45 to last his lifetime,” Christian said. “Well, a few bottles were left over, so….” Pop went the corks, and the heavy fragrance of old-style vintage bubbly filled the room. “Try it with some cheese,” he added. “In France we have a saying: If you do not find the cheese, the cheese will find you.”

The longest of the tours was to Australia in 1991, where Sir Winston himself never traveled. The welcome from local Churchillians was robust. In Canberra we were hosted at the American Embassy by Ambassador Melvin Sembler. Its cornerstone, he told us, was laid on a fateful day: December 6th, 1941. The news from Pearl Harbor arrived the next morning, and the Embassy wired Washington: “What do we do now?” The answer came back: “Keep building it, or the Aussies will think we’re on the run.”

These were features of Churchill Tours that just don’t exist in potted travel agency excursions.

Last of the line, 2008

We gathered in Glasgow, diverting south into England for a brief visit to Sedbergh School. Here young Brendan Bracken was educated, later becoming its patron. We visited the campus where Bracken’s foremost biographer, Charles Lysaght, spoke of Churchill’s great friend. After a Lake District tour we motored over the Pennines to Edinburgh, stopping at Lennoxlove, home of the Dukes of Hamilton. This was where Rudolf Hess parachuted in May 1941, hoping to find pro-Nazi dissidents. (The 14th Duke had him arrested.) The Duke’s private museum was full of artifacts, from the Hess flight to the death mask—wait for it—of Mary, Queen of Scots.

In Edinburgh we enjoyed lectures on Churchill and Scotland by the great historian Paul Addison, and a visit to the exhibits at the Centre for Second World War Studies. At a memorable dinner aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, David Stafford spoke about Churchill and Secret Intelligence. From Edinburgh we traveled to Gleneagles, the famous resort, via Dundee, Churchill’s 1908-22 constituency. Met by Lady Soames and the Lord Provost John Letford, we joined a celebration of the centenary of WSC’s election as Member of Parliament for Dundee.

Memories of Fitzroy

After days of falconing, golf and horseback riding at Gleneagles we drove to Airlie and Cortachy Castles, Angus. For the second time on Churchill tours we were hosted by David Ogilvy, 13th Earl of Airlie, and the Countess of Airlie. A relative of Clementine Churchill, he had served as Lord Chamberlain of Britain. I remember a fabulous luncheon with the largest salmon we’d ever seen.

Spending two nights at magnificent Cameron House on Loch Lomond, we called for tea on Sir Charles and Lady Maclean at Strachur House, Argyll. Here on two previous occasions, his late parents, Sir Fitzoy and Lady Veronica Maclean, had entertained our tours with tales of their long and storied Churchill association. (Click here for Fitzroy’s story of “Lili Marlene.”)

Looking back

For the Clarks and Langworths, 2008 was the end. Hotels and restaurants were getting pricier, and increasingly hard to deal with. Managers we used to plan with over a drink were now demanding huge deposits and guarantees of exact numbers months in advance. Age and slothfulness were catching up to us, and we didn’t like the regimented contracts increasingly presented to us.

In the beginning we had no experience and were very ignorant. Nobody told us that tours had to be on a hectic schedule, changing hotels every night. No one said that tours must be militarized, “do it or else.” Certainly no one suggested we use second-rate facilities or less than luxury transport. Yet we always kept the price down. We offered unbeatable value for money to some 800 Churchillians who joined us over those twenty-five years. Our philosophy was that a number of individuals organize around certain mutual objectives but with their own tastes and interests.

That concept guided all our tours, Churchill and automotive. We look back on them and the friends we met with pride and affection. It was an honor to be asked to those exalted places, and to join in mutual respect for the Greatest Briton. That was something, as Sir Fitzroy Maclean once said, that left you both wiser and warmer at heart.

Thirty-two years

1977: Packard Automobile Classics, England
1978: Vintage Triumph Register, England
1979: Milestone Car Society I, England
1981: Car Collector magazine, England
1983: Churchill I, England
1984: Milestone Car Society II, Scotland
1985: Churchill II, England
1986: Car Collector magazine II, England
1987: Churchill III, England and Scotland
1987: Jaguar Cars I, England
1989: Churchill IV, England and France
1990: Jaguar Cars II, England
1991: Churchill V, Australia
1992: Churchill VI, England
1994: Churchill VII, Scotland
1996: Churchill VIII, England
1999: Churchill IX, England
2006: Churchill X, England
2008: Churchill XI, Scotland

For those of a certain age, my friend Dave Turrell sent a message under this title on January 24th. On that day fifty-nine years ago, the Great Man departed.  I saved the words for today’s anniversary, six days, later: the interment at Bladon.

Recalling January 30th, Lord Moran reached what Anthony Montague Browne described as “the top of his stylistic form.” As did dear Anthony himself, and the irreplaceable Grace Hamblin.

The poem “At Bladon” was read by Robert Hardy at the gravesite during our penultimate Churchill Tour in 2006. It is today fifty-nine years since Richard Dimbleby made the words indelible.

Charles Wilson, Lord Moran MC PRC

“He was taken at night to Westminster, to the Hall of William Rufus, and there for three days he lay in state, while the people gathered in crowds that stretched over Lambeth Bridge to the far side of the river, to do honour to the man they loved for his valour.

“On the fourth day he was borne on a gun-carriage to St. Paul’s. There followed a long line of men in arms, marching to sorrowful music. With all the panoply of Church and State, and in the presence of his Queen, he was carried to an appointed place hard by the tombs of Nelson and Wellington, under the great dome, while with solemn music and the beating of drums the nation saluted the man who had saved them and saved their honour.

“The village stations on the way to Bladon were crowded with his countrymen, and at Bladon in a country churchyard, in the stillness of a winter evening, in the presence of his family and a few friends, Winston Churchill was committed to English earth, which in his finest hour he had held inviolate.” [1]

Grace Hamblin OBE

“At the end, I went down with the family to the funeral, near his beloved birthplace, Blenheim, and to me that quiet, humble service in the country churchyard was much more moving than had been the tremendous pomp and glory of the state ceremony in London. As the train made its slow journey through the snow-covered countryside on that bitterly cold day, men and women were standing in their little gardens behind their cottages, out in the fields or in the stations as we passed, the men with their heads bared, saying a silent farewell to their hero.

“I thought of these people at home, and I thought of you, and the hundreds and hundreds of letters Lady Churchill received from all over the world. And I pondered on what had made this dynamic but gentle character so beloved and respected—and such a wonderful person to work for. I think what one found first was courage. He had no fear of anything, moral or physical. There was sincerity, truth and integrity, for he couldn’t knowingly deceive a cabinet minister or a bricklayer or a secretary. There was forgiveness, warmth, affection, loyalty and, perhaps most important of all in the demanding life we all lived, there was humour, which he had in abundance.

“I hope I shan’t be infringing any copyright or displeasing anyone if I slightly misquote a passage from one of those many, many letters Lady Churchill had received on his death. It came from a distinguished member of your community here in America, and it has always been in my mind. ‘That he died is unimportant, for we must all pass away. That he lived is momentous to the destiny of decent men. He is not gone. He lives wherever men are free.'” [2]

Sir Anthony Montague Browne CBE DFC

“The procession to the graveyard at Bladon was brief, and we were few in number. We filed past the grave for the last time before it was closed. I was astonished to see a small and not particularly distinguished row of medals lying on the coffin. I could only suppose that it had fallen from the chest of one of the military coffin-bearers, and wondered if it would remain there to perplex archaeologists of many centuries hence.

“We took our departure for London in the freezing dusk…. At the back of my own mind there was the old quotation from WSC himself, of the death of Richard Coeur de Lion: ‘Worthy, by the consent of all men, to sit with King Arthur and Roland and other heroes of martial romance at some eternal Round Table, which we trust the Creator of the Universe in His comprehension will not have forgotten to provide.’

“On the way home, my mind was a blank. I tried to say some silent prayers for that brave and generous soul, but they were choked and confused, and came to nothing. I could not mourn for him: he had so clearly and for so long wanted to leave the World. But I was submerged in a wave of aching grief for Britain’s precipitous decline, against which he had stood in vain. When I reached our flat in Eaton Place it had been burgled.” [3]

“At Bladon”: Robert Hardy CBE

Drop English earth on him beneath
do our sons; and their sons bequeath
his glories and our pride and grief
at Bladon.

For Lionheart that lies below
that feared not toil nor tears nor foe.
Let the oak stand tho’ tempests blow
at Bladon.

So Churchill sleeps, yet surely wakes
old warrior where the morning breaks
On sunlit uplands. But the heart aches
at Bladon. [4]

Credits

1. Charles Wilson, Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (London: Constable, 1966), 842.

2. Grace Hamblin, “Frabjous Days: Chartwell Memories 1932-1965,” International Churchill Conference, Dallas, 20 October 1987.

3. Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunset: Memoirs of Winston Churchill’s Last Private Secretary (London: Cassell, 1995) 328.

4. Richard Dimbleby read the poem “At Bladon,” by Avril Anderson, in a breaking voice over the BBC on 30 January 1965.

Portent: 1737

Over 200 years before the Battle of Britain, the poet Thomas Gray, famed for his Churchyard Elegy, wrote a remarkable, predictive verse. It was brought to my attention by Richard Cohen, founder of the excellent Facebook forum Winston Churchill. Translated from the Latin from Luna Habitabilis (The Habitable Moon), 1737.

The time will come when thou shall lift thine eyes

To watch a long-drawn battle in the skies

While aged peasants too amazed for words

Stare at the flying fleets of wondrous birds.

England so long mistress of the sea

Where winds and waves caress her sovereignty

Her ancient triumphs yet on high shall bear

And reign the sovereign of the conquered air.

20 August 2010

Seven decades to the day after Winston Churchill’s inspiring salute to the Royal Air Force as the Battle of Britain was reaching its height, Timothy Robert Hardy, the greatest actor ever to portray Churchill, delivered portions of his 1940 speech containing the famous tribute: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

The original speech was a long overview of the war situation, covering many events beside “the great air battle” raging over Britain. In deference to the occasion, Robert Hardy deftly provided Churchill’s tribute to the airmen, and other excerpts from the full speech delivered in the House of Commons 70 years before. (Available via email.)

Battle: The Greatest Actor

In 2010 Robert Hardy was approaching his 85th birthday—though it was impossible to visualize him as much more than 70. (He left us at 91 in 2017.) His Churchill roles began with the marvelous television series “The Wilderness Years” and extended through numerous film performances and even a stage play. He often said Churchill led us through 1940 with the force of his speeches, courage and charisma. We say in reply that Robert Hardy’s work expressed all the Churchillian qualities. Through his skill the true Churchill emerged for new generations.

At the end of his August 1940 speech Churchill expressed his optimism for a coming alliance of English-speaking peoples. Free nations everywhere will understand those words. If or when we are faced by such a peril again, pray that we find such a leader.

Churchill was referring to President Roosevelt’s interest American military facilities in Newfoundland and the West Indies when he concluded:

The British Empire and the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days.

Susskind’s  WSC (update)

I have been searching for video of a  stage performance of Churchill by Robert Hardy. It was produced by David Susskind in 1986 for the Public Broadcasting Network. PBS has no records older than five years. Can you help? —R.S.

The Robert Hardy performance you are looking for is “Churchill” in the David Susskind “Leaders” series. PBS broadcast the 90-minute one-man show in 1986. Robert was a the greatest Churchill ever, but his “Wilderness Years” performance, scripted by Sir Martin Gilbert, was far more accurate. The script here is laced with many errors.

Excerpts come and go on YouTube, so check there first. Here is a two-minute clip on socialism.  The producers sent me a VCR at the time, and videotapes were probably once available. To find one, try searching Google or eBay for “susskind churchill” or similar word combinations.

Here is my review of Susskind in Finest Hour 52, Summer 1986:

Hardy-Winston by David Susskind

Sir John Gielgud, who ought to know better, leads off the errors: “Just after the end of World War II, Churchill was voted out of office.” (Wrong: the war was still on.) “He found himself without any immediate means.” (Wrong: the advances on his war memoirs were enormous, and in August 1946 a group of generous friends relieved him of the burden of Chartwell by buying it for the National Trust, providing that he and his wife could live out their lives there).

“And so he embarked on a lecture tour of America,” Gielgud continues. “This is what you might have seen if you were seated in the audience in Los Angeles, Chicago or Kansas City.” (No. Churchill’s final American lecture tour was in 1932. In 1946 he gave the Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, addressed the Virginia Assembly, made three other short appearances and went home.)

The first time I watched the Susskind effort I almost got up and left. By round three the edges had blurred and the rough spots had smoothed, and I began enjoying it. Admittedly I am too close to my subject. And all those involved in the production are such nice people that I hesitate to complain. As Lady Soames has often reminded us, however, there’s reason “to keep the memory green and the record accurate.”

Nits to pick

The problem with Churchill by Susskind is twofold: (1) It plants an inaccurate image  in the mind of the average viewer. (2) It is laced with errors, the correction of which would have lost none of the drama and warm humanity which are its most admirable features.

Churchill never “delivered a series of informal talks across America” in 1946, as the producers state. Why say he did? Why not admit, as script writer James Humes did, that this is a composite picture, drawn from WSC’s writings?

Churchill made it a rule, when abroad, never to criticise his political opponents at home. Why then cast him in an ill-suited role as stand-up comic, stumping America to deliver one-liners about “sheep in sheep’s clothing” (a fictitious crack about Attlee)?

Robert Hardy deserves full marks for holding his audience, which responds with hearty laughter. (Both he and Humes had wanted only 60 minutes, but Susskind insisted on 90.) Hardy has Churchill’s mannerisms down perfectly and of all Churchill portrayals, his is the most convincing. But the first reaction of anyone moderately steeped in facts is that this is a vulgar caricature. Is the truth so boring that it cannot prevail?

Cornucopia of errors

Churchill would not have joked about his being seen as a wastrel by his father. Britain did not “rule all India.” And never did. He would not have said that the Lloyd George Coalition lost the 1922 election because of his work over the Middle East and Ireland. (“In spite of” would be more accurate.) Churchill never called Jock Colville “Jack,” or made the unattributed remark about Montgomery (“in victory insufferable”). He didn’t resign as Chancellor of the Exchequer because of the “Tory appeasers.” Churchill resigned as Chancellor before not after the Depression, because the Conservatives lost the 1929 election—long before appeasement became an issue.

I will not bore you with a list of inaccuracies, but here are some of the more crucial: At Malakand, WSC says, “the whole company was ambushed—except me.” (No.) In the Sudan, he says he wrote for the Morning Telegraph (a weird merger of Morning Post and Daily Telegraph). The Sudan dervishes were not nicknamed “whirling” because of the way they twirled their sabres. In Parliament he says, “I made my oath to Queen Victoria and took my seat in October 1900.” (He made his oath to King Edward VII and took his seat on 14 February 1901.)

He says he heard the news broadcast about Pearl Harbor in Downing Street. (It was at Chequers.) His famous aside, “Whatever happens at Dunkirk, we shall fight on,” was delivered in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street, not in the House of Commons. After Pearl Harbor he says he sailed for New York. (He sailed for Hampton Roads.) Such things are easily looked up.

Other people’s words

Not all of Churchill’s script is accurate. “Always give the train a sporting chance to get away” was by Clementine Churchill. “That dear and excellent woman” (Mrs. Everest) was from Gibbon, whom WSC quoted. “When all save Englishmen despaired of England’s life” was by President Kennedy. His crack about the only traditions of the Royal Navy (“rum, sodomy and flogging”) apparently occurred, but he was repeating a navy catchphrase dating back two centuries.

Churchill’s own quotes are sometimes misplaced. “Shot at without result” was said about Cuba, not Malakand. “Boneless wonder” (singular) was a blast at Ramsay MacDonald, not the Tory appeasers. Other quotes are familiar but hopelessly muddled. “They asked what my program would be—I told them Victory”… “Give us your faith and your trust” (for “trust” read “blessing”).

Other quotes are far wide of the mark. “A bull who carries his own china shop with him,” if said at all, was said about Dulles, not the State Department.  When King George VI summoned Churchill on 10 May 1940 he said, “I want to ask you to form a Government,” not “take over the Government.” There is a difference.

But with all its flaws and inaccuracies, the performance brings out Churchill’s greatest characteristic. That was his essential humanity, which made him so different from other leaders past and present. James Humes noted another quality. “Churchill told his audiences what he wanted them to hear.”

And Sir John Gielgud, making up for his introduction, closes with words to remember. “Churchill was as ordinary as any of us—and as extraordinary as any of us can hope to be.”

Further reading

“The Wilderness Years with Robert Hardy,” 2019

“Tim: In Memory of Robert Hardy,”  2017

“James Humes: Irrepressible Admirer of Old Excellence,” 2020

The Burton – Churchill Kerfuffle

The airwaves and Twitterverse are full of Churchill bile following recent sad events that have nothing to do with him. Surfacing again are attacks half a century old by the famed actor Richard Burton. Film critic John Beaufort first reported these in the Christian Science Monitor in 1972:

December 9th, 1972— Richard Burton has just given two of the oddest and most contradictory performances of his career. Both involved his portrayal of Winston Churchill in film The Gathering Storm. The prologue consisted of two articles by the actor in TV Guide and The New York  Times. Mr. Burton put on a good show as Winston Churchill, a bad show as Richard Burton.

Burton had previously expressed only admiration for Churchill. Their encounters at the Old Vic, when Burton played Hamlet, were legendary. Burton called Churchill “this religion, this flag, this insignia.” Lady Williams of Elvel, a former Churchill secretary, remembered him well: “Richard came down to the front of the stage to speak the great Shakespearean words with Churchill. The audience was ecstatic. I had the impression that Richard worshipped Sir Winston.”

“To play Churchill is to hate him…”

…was now suddenly Burton’s refrain. “Churchill and all his kind…have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history,”  he wrote. He was the “son of a Welsh miner.” Meeting Churchill was “like a blow under the heart…. My class and his hate each other to the seething point.”

The actor’s words are in vogue again. They fit well. Journalism seems largely to have parted company with old stand-by rules like “have multiple sources” or “verify your quotations.” Burton’s outburst fits today’s narrative. Churchill was a war-mongering racist imperialist who despised the poor, brown and black. Here is Burton, bending quotes a half century ago:

Churchill quote, Burton version: “They [Germans] must bleed and burn, they must be crushed into a mass of smouldering ruins.” Churchill’s actual words: “It is our interest to engage the enemy’s air power at as many points as possible to make him bleed and burn and waste on the widest fronts” (23 April 1942).

Burton: “That morbid creature, Hitler, of ferocious genius, that repository of human crime.”  (Burton adds: “He might have been talking about himself.”) Churchill’s actual words: “…a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast” (The Gathering Storm, 9).

Doubling down

Burton correctly quoted “We are revolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime” (broadcast, 22 June 1941). Then he interpreted it: “What he was really saying was that ‘every vestige of the Nazi regime’ included the entire German race.” Churchill wrote of his visit to Berlin in 1945: “My hate had died with their surrender” (Triumph and Tragedy, 545).

We should be glad these were the only Churchill “quotes” in Burton’s catalogue of disdain. The rest consisted of boilerplate condemnation. Everything from despising Clement Attlee to WSC’s “baby-like, hairless, effeminate right hand, slowly slamming the table, that bizarre cadence of his curious voice: ‘We were right to fight, we were right to fight,’ I went home and had a few nightmares.” Readers possessed of reason might have had a few nightmares themselves.

Reactions

In those days we felt more confidence toward our heroes, and Burton reaped the whirlwind. The BBC Drama Department banned him for life. (Today they would probably be offering him a TV special.) In Parliament, Norman Tebbit spoke of “an actor past his peak indulging in a fit of pique, jealousy and ignorant comment.” More pointedly, Neville Trotter said: “If there were more Churchills and fewer Burtons we would be in a very much better country.”

The actor received scores of protesting letters. They went unanswered, even from friends like Robert Hardy. Instead, Burton doubled down. “Churchill has fascinated me since childhood,” he retorted—“a bogeyman who hated us, the mining class, motivelessly. He ordered a few of us to be shot, you know, and the orders were carried out.” Historian John Ramsden observed: “The myth of Tonypandy was still around to haunt Churchill’s memory.”

Why did Burton do it?

Richard Burton played to his audience. In 1962 he earned $100,000 for recording Churchill’s words in Jack Le Vien’s television series The Valiant Years. Dr. Ramsden believed he was nominated for that role by Churchill himself: “‘Get that boy from the Old Vic.’ [It was] arguably one of the best things he ever did.” Like Lady Williams, Le Vien saw in Burton only an admirer. A bust of Churchill was his treasured possession. He told both Clementine Churchill and Sir Winston’s grandson how much he admired “the old man.”

To different audiences Burton revealed other opinions. On television chat shows, Dr. Ramsden wrote, he would often emphasize: “‘I’m the son of a Welsh miner.’ Here too he was playing a part, for his lifestyle was way beyond the comprehension of Welsh miners.”

Dr. Ramsden’s final judgment is apposite: “As his career and life deteriorated around him and the fog of alcohol descended, Burton was trying desperately to play the man he had been long ago, and he at least knew what young Welshmen had been expected to believe about Winston Churchill. He was not asked to play either part again.”

Further reading

“Churchill Bio-Pics: The Trouble with the Movies”

John Ramsden quotations are from his thoughtful book Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and his Legend Since 1945 (London: HarperCollins, 2002).

“Churchill: The Wilderness Years”

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has just republished “Scaling Everest,” Robert Hardy’s recollections of playing the Wilderness Years Churchill. They are from 1987, his speech to one of our Churchill Tours, at the Reform Club, London. We are grateful to his executors, Justine Hardy and Neil Nisbet-Robertson for permission to reprint. For Part 1, click here.

I thought the occasion appropriate to republish my original review of the “Wilderness Years” from 1981, some years before we met. I thought at the time I had “laid an egg”—in Churchill’s phraseology, not RH’s. (In his business, as he explains, laying an egg means something different.) Now I am not so sure. I hope, to use Robert’s terms, that it was not a noxious egg.

Boston, 1981

Well, it was a great show, folks. And, inasmuch as any good material about Churchill is a plus, we welcomed and enjoyed it. We are beholden to WGBH in Boston, which most kindly mentioned Martin Gilbert’s accompanying Wilderness Years book.

Let us dismiss Lord Boothby’s complaint that this Winston is “a grumpy, vindictive old man [who] shouts all the way through.” Robert Hardy captures the Churchill of the Thirties. He was politically frustrated, ineffective as a father, worried about Germany. Simultaneously, he enjoyed of his most productive decades as a writer and historian. Perhaps it would be remarkable of anyone else. Churchill was engaged in multiple literary projects, any one of which would fully occupy a normal person. Simultaneously he turned Chartwell into a paradise and was a force, however spurned, in politics. His only wilderness was the one observers assigned to him.

And this may be the weakness of the production. It is hard to provide much TV action around the writing of Marlborough, though we’d have enjoyed seeing the great Duke’s battlefields. There is no drama to painting a canvas or building a brick wall.

We are given instead what plays well: politics, love, scandal, hate. Here enter several exaggerations. Adolf Hitler (Gunter Meisner), on the eve of power, glares through a restaurant window at the Churchill he refuses to meet. Of course the real Hitler did no such thing. Neville Chamberlain (Eric Porter), and his toady Sir Horace Wilson (Clive Swift, “Richard Bucket” in “Keeping Up Appearances”) still think well of Hitler after March 1939. That is unfair to Chamberlain, who knew by then what he was up against. The desert scene with William Randolph Hearst (Stephen Elliott) and Marion Davies (Merrie Lynn Ross) never happened.

On the money historically

On the other hand, “The Wilderness Years” brings out important aspects of the story. Randolph (Nigel Havers) couldn’t be more like Randolph. The risks run by Ralph Wigram (Paul Freeman), Desmond Morton (Moray Watson) and Wing Commander Tor Anderson (David Quilter), in bringing Churchill news of German rearmament, are rightly emphasized. How often Stanley Baldwin (Peter Barkworth) played Churchill foul in the 1930s! (And how often WSC forgave him.) “The Wilderness Years” relays all this well.

In general the casting was superb. British television draws on an army of brilliant actors, and can always find a near-clone of anybody. I thought Baldwin was too pixieish, Ramsay MacDonald (Robert James) too mousy, Hitler a caricature. But Frederick Lindemann, “The Prof” (David Swift), Brendan Bracken (Tim Pigott-Smith), and Beaverbrook (Stratford Johns) were perfect. So was Lord Derby (Frank Middlemass, transformed from the kindly head master in “To Serve Them All My Days”). Neville Chamberlain couldn’t have been closer to life. Samuel Hoare (Edward Woodward) comes across as the evil force he really was.

Most of the women—WSC’s vivacious sister-in-law “Goonie” (Jennifer Hilary), noisy Nancy Astor (Marcella Markham) and Sarah Churchill (Chloe Salaman)— were well played. But there was one exception. Clementine Churchill (Sian Phillips) was simply awful. A friend who remembers Phillips for her role in the Roman drama “I Claudius” says: “I keep seeing her sipping wine and wearing a toga.” Was she typecast? Viewers must be the judge.

Flaws and edits

Phillips was not the “Clemmie” we know through Martin Gilbert’s and Mary Soames’s biographies. Instead we see a pretentious, unhappy aristocrat. Less a pillar of strength than a flitting mayfly, she is always ready to run off with some handsome adventurer. All the more curious (for Phillips said she researched the role), Clemmie is at sea literally and figuratively. The scene in which she returns from a South Seas voyage with an unnamed swashbuckler (in life, Terence Phillip) would thrill the National Enquirer, however unsubstantial its implications. Phillips could have saved the scene by reciting Clementine’s own words. “Do not be vexed with your vagabond cat. She has gone off toward the jungle with her tail in the air, but she will return presently to her basket and curl down comfortably.”

We could have done without the bowdlerization of Churchill’s great speeches. Robert Hardy had his part down perfectly. (One soon forgets the lovable vet Siegfried Farnon in “All Creatures Great and Small.”) But almost every great speech, though beautifully delivered, was mercilessly cut to ribbons by the editors. The hatchet job on Churchill’s greatest prewar speech (“I have watched this famous Island…”) is unforgivable.

Still it is a great yarn. What historical character other than Churchill could excite a latter-day audience by reprising his life’s lowest ebb? As ever, Winston Churchill stands alone. I hope that the fine reception of “The Wilderness Years” has been sufficient to encourage further dramatizations of equally important periods—particularly the Admiralty sojourn of 1911-15, and of course, 1940. We’ll be waiting for it.

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

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4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart

Update for 2019

Assault and battery…

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* * *

Nearly forty years ago an equally great Churchill performance, Robert Hardy in The Wilderness Years,  was received with equal acclaim by press and public. Most importantly, there was no chorus of hate, no trumped-up charges, no hint that Churchill’s overall record was in anything except positive. Alas times have changed.

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Justine Hardy posted a lovely three minute video about the wrench of parting with the effects of her father’s robust, admirable life. She wrote: “My father was such a mountain in our landscape, it has been quite a shuddering since the mountain fell.”

Robert as Raconteur

Great Contemporaries

Politics of 1940

Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved unconquerable. It fell to me to express it, and if I found the right words you must remember that I have always earned my living by my pen and by my tongue. It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

What if?

Oldman’s portrayal

Tears came into his eyes as he answered gravely: “God alone knows how great it is. I hope that it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.” As he turned away he muttered something—to himself. Then he set his jaw and with a look of determination, mastering all emotion, he began to climb the stairs of the Admiralty. It was the greatest privilege of my life to have shared those few moments with him.

Setting a mark

David Franco, reviewing the film Churchill, starring Brian Cox, raises questions he says everyone should be asking. “Isn’t the ability to accept one’s mistakes part of what makes a man a good leader? …. To what extent should we rely [on] past experiences in order to minimize mistakes in the future? These are the questions that make a bad movie like Churchill worth seeing.”

Well, I won’t be seeing this bad movie. Described as “perverse fantasy” by historian Andrew Roberts, it joins a recent spate of sloppy Churchill bio-pics that favor skewed caricatures over historical fact.

Revisionism: A Thriving Industry

Makers of movies might think it novel to criticize Churchill, but this is far from the case. Attacks on his leadership began early after World War II and have continued ever since. There’s a thriving mini-industry in “Churchill revisionism.” But it started with books, not movies.

In 1963, R.W. Thompson’s The Yankee Marlborough portrayed Churchill as a man of flesh and blood, who made mistakes, like anybody else. In his 1970 study, Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939, Robert Rhodes James focused on Churchill’s political gaffes, such as his dogged support of King Edward VIII in the 1936 Abdication crisis. Edward, later Duke of Windsor, gave up the throne to marry an American divorcee. The Duke’s tepid admiration of Hitler, and dismal performance as Governor of the Bahamas, caused Churchill to reflect: “I’m glad I was wrong.”

In 1993, John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory rocked Churchill’s supporters by claiming that he should have backed away from the Hitler war to preserve Britain’s wealth, power, and empire. More recently, Max Hastings criticized Churchill’s war leadership on multiple issues in both World Wars: Catastrophe 1914, on the opening months of WW1, and Winston’s War, 1940-45.

Whatever we make of their assessments, these historians were qualified critics whose thoroughly researched theses merit consideration. Alas, we cannot say the same about the recent round of Churchill movies.

Movies Faithful to Reality

Churchill movies started off well and were honest for decades. Young Winston (1972), starring Simon Ward as WSC and Anne Bancroft as his mother, was a vivid presentation based on Churchill’s own account of his first twenty-five years. Its inaccuracies stemmed from Churchill himself in his autobiography. (In it, Anthony Hopkins played David Lloyd George. Lady Randolph says: “He has the most disconcerting way of looking at women.”)

In 1974, Lee Remick brilliantly reprised the role of Lady Randolph the television series Jennie: as accurate a portrayal as ever existed. We Churchlllians gave her an award for it—the dying Lee’s last public appearance. It was attended by Gregory Peck, who co-starred with her in The Omen, who praised her “depth of womanliness.”

That same year, Richard Burton played a believable Churchill in The Gathering Storm, about the years leading up to World War II. Again, it didn’t deviate from fact, although Burton spoiled the effect by denouncing Churchill for fictitious acts against Welsh miners, including Burton’s father. Privately, Burton had expressed his admiration for “the old boy”.…but later, the cameras were on.

The 1981 TV series Churchill: The Wilderness Years, remains the model Churchill bio-pic. Herein Robert Hardy showed us both Churchill’s human frailties and his greatness. Hardy and his writers partnered with Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert to portray the anxious politician of the 1930s, out of power, vainly warning of the Nazi menace. Brilliantly cast, the result was a masterpiece.

More Recently…

Albert Finney was a solid Churchill in the second Gathering Storm (2002), a 90-minute film for television. As skillfully cast as The Wilderness Years, it featured Vanessa Redgrave in a bavura performance as Clementine Churchill. The story line, while not uncritical, did not deviate from fact. Even in the cynical, anti-heroic 21st century, it seemed, filmmakers could still tell his story without reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or godlike caricature. Then came “Into the Storm,” a 2009 television drama broadcast by the BBC and HBO. Here in a series set in 1945 with 1940 flashbacks, Brendan Gleeson gave us the most accurate Churchill since Robert Hardy. Things were looking good.

Or so I thought. Alas, in the last couple of years, we’ve had three films which can only be described as “fake history,” and a one-dimensional documentary that fails to tell the full story.

A Turn to the Worse

The Crown, a 2016 Netflix series covering the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II, was well acted. But John Lithgow portrayed a senile prime minister who hides his 1953 stroke from the Queen and repeatedly paints his goldfish pond in a muddle of depression. Factually, the Queen knew of Churchill’s stroke three days after it happened—and he was never so dotty as to make repeated paintings of his fish pond. The Duke of Windsor resurfaces here, promising that he will get the new Queen to move into Buckingham Palace if Churchill restores his royal allowance. Where do they think of this stuff?

Viceroy’s House has not been seen yet in the US, and we’re missing nothing. A visually elaborate production, it covers the end of British rule in India, under the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, whitewashing the latter at Churchill’s expense. Mountbatten’s insistence that Britain leave before the India-Pakistan boundaries were settled led to violent strife and the massacre of millions. Somehow, the film manages to blame this on Churchill, who was not even in power at the time.

* * *

Churchill starring Brian Cox is built around the myth that Churchill opposed D-Day virtually to the moment of the Normandy landings. In reality, Churchill had sought “a lodgment on the continent” since the British were thrown out of Dunkirk in 1940. His concept of floating “Mulberry Harbors” for landing tanks and equipment dated back to 1917. This hasn’t prevented Mr. Cox from flaunting his ignorance in interviews repeating a host of canards, including the notion that Churchill wanted to invade Germany over the Alps.

I held my breath when the film Dunkirk appeared, hoping it would not be another dose of lame propaganda. Churchill doesn’t appear in it. But his absence, along with other heroes of the Dunkirk evacuation, reduces the film to a one-dimensional portrait. It’s war on a beach, with moving scenes of heroism and survival. Who was the enemy? A viewer has no idea why Churchill said after Dunkirk, “We shall never surrender”—though his words are read movingly by a soldier in the final scenes.

Hope Ahead? We’ll See

There’s no question that fictitious scenes and conversations are legitimate devices in bio-pics. But they must not depart from what we know. And thanks to historians like Martin Gilbert and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, we know a lot.

There is cause for hope. This autumn, Gary Oldman will star as Churchill in another bio-pic, Darkest Hour, about facing Hitler’s armies in 1940. Promisingly, Oldman has consulted with qualified historians, striving to find “a way in” to the real Churchill. Colleagues who’ve seen previews say he has Churchill down perfectly. But his script contains some bizarre counterfactuals.

One can only wish him success. Perhaps this film will answer David Franco’s questions. Yes, accepting one’s mistakes does make a person a good leader. Yes, Churchill did learn from his mistakes. He was a man of quality—a good guide for our troubled decade. And after a long lapse, he deserves a film that does him justice.

Hardy at Hillsdale

I’m glad we were in time. In October 2015, we hosted him at a Hillsdale College Churchill Conference, where he wowed an audience of 600, guests, students and faculty. He told us that he strove imperfectly to play Churchill—to find, as he said, “a way in.” On another occasion he had said: “I shall never look down from that peak, but as long as I live I shall delight in gazing upwards towards those towering rocks.”

He was, of course, expressing the winning modesty that always accompanied him, gaining the affection of the world in his every role, from Shakespeare’s classics, to Siegfried Farnon, the Yorkshire vet of All Creatures Great and Small, to Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic in Harry Potter. (Of the latter role, his regretted only that he had no personal owl.)

And on to the end…

In April 2016 he was back at Hillsdale to talk to students about acting as a career. As before, he was a one-man show, launching into long quotes in Old English from Canterbury Tales.  Students and faculty alike were awestruck by his memories of Oxford, and his tutors, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

I feel his loss deeply, because on countless occasions he was there for me, appearing regularly at Churchill events, and our Churchill tours of England. On one of these he arranged a special tour of the Mary Rose restoration project at Portsmouth. A historian of the English longbow, he was the Mary Rose Trust’s archery consultant.

Everywhere he went he was always ready for an affable chat with everyone who admired him, and they were many. To those who knew what he had accomplished in his roles as Sir Winston, no actor however good could ever come close.

I will gaze forever at Robert Hardy’s towering rocks of achievement. He was the most genuine “Churchill” of them all. Far beyond that, he was a noble spirit, the most genuine human being. He is irreplaceable. I shall mourn him forever.

Addendum, 8 March 2018

His daughter Justine comments on the estate auction of Robert Hardy, a sad event, redolent of what Churchill wrote in Great Contemporaries: “I felt the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling, or lets it fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.”

Excerpted from a review for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

PBS and ITV have succeeded where many failed. They offer a Churchill documentary with a minimum of dramatic license, reasonably faithful to history (as much as we know of it). Churchill’s Secret limns the pathos, humor, hope and trauma of a little-known episode: Churchill’s stroke on 23 June 1953, and his miraculous recovery. For weeks afterward, his faithful lieutenants in secret ran the government. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, the film is worth seeing, and worth going to see.

Sadness attends our mortality, death comes to us all. Sir Winston teetered in 1953; only his inner circle knew how close he had come. The “secret” has been public now for fifty years, since publication of his doctor’s diaries in 1966. But at the time it was a secret. Not a word leaked, thanks to family, staff, and three press barons—Beaverbrook, Bracken and Camrose. Private secretary John Colville wrote: “They achieved the all but incredible, and in peace-time possibly unique, success of gagging Fleet Street, something they would have done for nobody but Churchill.”

Secret Pathos

Exactly how ill the Prime Minister really was I leave to experts. At the time, many close to him thought he would die. Colville wrote: “he went downhill badly, losing the use of his left arm and left leg.” In the film Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran (Bill Paterson), summoned to Downing Street, finds the PM singing incoherently: “I’m forever blowing bubbles.” Great heavens, I thought, they are going to link this to Marigold….

“Bubbles” was the favorite song of a 2 1/2-year-old daughter who died in 1921. Rarely mentioned, Marigold was buried in a corner of their hearts. With poignant flashbacks, the film unfolds their memories of the loss they still deeply felt. In a moving scene, Clementine tearfully recounts Marigold’s story to her husband’s nurse. As a device for portraying her and Winston’s humanity, this is a touch of genius.

The nurse, Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) is the film’s only fictional character. She is meant to represent “the help”—too numerous to catalogue in the space of a short film. Millie has a Yorkshire accent but her father, she tells Churchill, was Welsh: “and no fan of yours.” (WSC once allowed deployment of troops during the Welsh miners strike in 1910.) Devoted to his recovery, but always her own woman, Millie sees the job through. Confronting all challengers, she’s a perfect foil for Churchill, his wife, and their sometimes obstreperous family.

Expert Casting

Critics who say PBS dotes on British drama forget that UK theatre offers unequalled depths of talent. There are so many exceptional actors that casting lookalikes for a historical film is a relative breeze. In Churchill’s Secret, the casting is superb.

Michael Gambon is an excellent Churchill: more drawn, less cherubic, but perfect in his mannerisms and bearing. Lindsay Duncan as Clementine is almost up to the standard set by Vanessa Redgrave, brilliant alongside Albert Finney’s Churchill in “The Gathering Storm” (2002)—and far superior to Sian Phillips, the great Robert Hardy’s opposite number in “The Wilderness Years” (1981).

Supporting actors are outstanding. Colville (Patrick Kennedy) and Christopher Soames (Christian McKay)—who bore the burden of state in those anxious days—could not be more lifelike. R.A. “Rab” Butler (Chris Larkin)—a Chamberlainite who had never liked and hoped to replace Churchill, whom he had hoped would retire since 1945—is the same weak reed he was in life. “I hope you don’t think of me as an enemy,” says Rab to a rapidly recovering Churchill in August. The Prime Minister replies: “I don’t think of you at all, Rab.” 

The portrayal of the Churchill children, boozing and bickering (correctly excepting Mary), is over-emphasized. These scenes are admittedly fiction. No one alive knows what really happened at Chartwell in those secret weeks. The family and staff I talked to never mentioned rows during those weeks. The film strives however to represent how the three elder children must have felt, and certainly acted, at one time or another. They had grown up under a great shadow in trying times. As Moran (perhaps wise before the fact) is made to remark: “There’s a price to pay for greatness, but the great seldom pay it themselves.” 

What Good’s a Constitution?

More time could have been spent on how Colville and Soames held the fort while the boss recovered.  Churchill once wrote a famous article, “What Good’s a Constitution?” In 1953, they must have asked themselves that question.

Today it would be impossible to keep a lid on such a secret. What they did might indeed be thought unconstitutional. Yet the nation owed a debt to those responsible lieutenants, who acted only when they knew the PM would approve. As Colville remembered:

…the administration continued to function as if he were in full control. We realised that however well we knew his policy and the way his thoughts were likely to move. We had to be careful not to allow our own judgment to be given Prime Ministerial effect. To have done so, as we could without too great difficulty, would have been a constitutional outrage. It was an extraordinary, indeed perhaps an unprecedented, situation….Before the end of July the Prime Minister was sufficiently restored to take an intelligent interest in affairs of state and express his own decisive views. Christopher and I then returned to the fringes of power, having for a time been drawn perilously close to the centre.

K.B.O.

While the testimony of insiders certainly suggests a close call, many were confident that Churchill would recover. The morning after the stroke, wrote Mary Soames, he “amazingly presided at a Cabinet meeting, where none of his colleagues thought anything was amiss.” She quoted Harold Macmillan: “I certainly noticed nothing beyond the fact that he was very white. He spoke little, but quite distinctly.” By the time he arrived at Chartwell on the 25th, he was at rock bottom. Yet a month later he was well enough to be driven the three-hour journey to Chequers, the PM’s official country house, and was resuming his literary and political work.

Churchill’s Secret is replete with Sir Winston’s famous admonition in the face of misfortune, K.B.O. (Keep Buggering On.) Amid growing calls for his retirement, he was determined to stay—long enough at least for one more try at his final goal: a permanent peace. The film is not clear about how much time elapsed between the stroke and the “test” Churchill set for himself. That was the Conservative Party Conference at Margate. There on October 10th he would have to make a major, fifty-minute speech. It was do or die: We are rushed through the weeks to Margate, actually almost four months after he was stricken.

Of course he brought the house down. Jock Colville noted: “He had been nervous of the ordeal: his first public appearance since his stroke and a fifty-minute speech at that; but personally I had no fears as he always rises to occasions. In the event one could see but little difference, as far as his oratory went, since before his illness.”

“See them off, Winston”

Some observers have faulted the portrayal of Clementine in Churchill’s Secret—not for Lindsay Duncan’s skillful acting, but for the words the script has her say. To some she seems a whiny, self-centered neurotic, the very picture given in recent biography.

I honestly didn’t have that impression. At Margate Clementine tells him firmly: “See them off, Winston.” Their daughter told me Clementine had thought in June that his life was ending. The film suggests that Lady Churchill had many regrets; and she did. She genuinely believed—and had for a long time—that he had stayed too long. “Clementine bore the brunt of all this,” Mary wrote, “and her anxiety concerning his political intentions was great.”

The film establishes a reasonably accurate picture of Lady Churchill. “None of us would be here without him,” one of his children says, “And he wouldn’t be here without you.” Winston himself tells her: “I shall face anything with you, the Tories, the Russians—even death itself.”

Unlike certain frothy popular accounts, Churchill’s Secret makes it clear that come what may, Clementine was the rock on which he depended. As he said of her on many occasions: “Here firm, though all be drifting.”

Churchill was certainly a “Constructive Alternative” to established policies throughout his career, and 2015 contains many significant Churchill anniversaries: his first election to Parliament (115 years), the Dardanelles and Gallipoli disasters (100 years), his first premiership (75 years), his retirement as Prime Minister (60 years), his death and state funeral (50 years). To that end, Churchill was the subject of Hillsdale College’s first Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) event of the 2015-16 academic year.

I was pleased to be part of a program featuring two old friends: Timothy Robert Hardy, the most inimitable and genuine actor to ever play the role of Winston Churchill; and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston’s granddaughter-in-law, an expert on Churchill’s oil paintings. We were joined in presentations by two outstanding scholars, Andrew Roberts and John Maurer. CCA events are open to Hillsdale students, faculty and members of the College’s President’s Club.

Program

Sunday, October 4th

4:00 pm: “Churchill’s Early Life,” with Andrew Roberts, author, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.

8:00 pm: “Churchill and His Pastime of Painting,” with Minnie Churchill, Chairman, Churchill Heritage Ltd., and co-author of Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings.

Monday, October 5th

12:00 pm: “Churchill and the Written Word,” with Richard Langworth CBE, Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

4:00 pm: Showing of selections from “Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years,” starring Robert Hardy and Sian Phillips (1981).

8:00 pm: “Churchill in My Life,” with Robert Hardy CBE.

Tuesday, October 6th

4:00 pm: “Churchill as War Leader,” with John Maurer, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

8:00 pm: “Churchill in Peacetime,” with Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College.

Wednesday, October 7th

4:00 pm: Faculty Roundtable

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“In High Places”: Munich, 1932

In “The Wilderness Years,” Robert Hardy faithfully captures Martin Gilbert’s image of Churchill in the Thirties: politically frustrated, less than effective as a father and a husband, worried over ominous developments in Germany—yet also enjoying his most productive decade as a writer and historian.

This defining excerpt is set in Munich on 30 August 1932, before Hitler gains power, as Churchill comes as close as he ever will to meeting Hitler face to face—amid sobering scenes of marching, chanting brownshirts singing Die Horst Wessel Lied.

Churchill has been touring the Danubian battlefields of the First Duke of Marlborough, whose biography he is writing. He is accompanied by his wife Clementine (Sian Phillips), their son Randolph (Nigel Havers), their daughter Sarah (Chloe Salaman), his close friend Frederick Lindemann, “The Prof” (played by David Swift). With them are Brigadier Packenham-Walsh who is drafting maps for Marlborough, and his wife (known to Churchill as “Mrs. P-W”).

At the hotel they are met by Randolph’s acquaintance and Hitler’s foreign press secretary, Harvard-educated Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl (played very accurately by Roger Bizley). Putzi hopes to introduce Churchill to his boss.

Writer-director Ferdinand Fairfax takes liberties to shorten and dramatize what actually happened. Hitler (a very grim-looking Gunter Meisner) is shown in evening dress, apparently ready to sit down with the Churchills. But first he watches furtively from a distance, and then balefully gazes through the restaurant window, catching the eye of the ever-curious Prof, who signals Hanfstaengl. Putzi tries to fetch Hitler, but is furiously turned away.

Here is what really happened. Hanfstaengl left the restaurant in mid-meal in search of the Fuhrer, who he found near his Munich apartment. “Herr Hitler,” he said, “don’t you realise the Churchills are sitting in the restaurant?…They are expecting you for coffee and will think this a deliberate insult.” Hitler said he was unshaven and had too much to do. “What on earth would I talk to him about?,” he added. “They say he is a rabid Francophile. What part does Churchill play? He is in opposition and no one pays any attention to him.” Hanfstaengl replied: “People say the same about you.”

Fairfax neatly gets around all this with the brief, dramatic scene we see here. True to fact, Churchill makes his famous declaration about the pitfalls of anti-Semitism, not to Hitler, but to his press secretary.

Putzi Hanfstaengl is considered reliable. Suave and westernized, he tried to exert a moderating influence, but fell out of favor in 1936. Suspecting he was marked for assassination by Goebbels, he left Germany in 1937 and wound up in the United States, where he advised Roosevelt on the Nazi regime. The anecdote is based on his 1957 book, Hitler: The Missing Years, and corroborates Churchill’s The Gathering Storm.

“Thus Hitler lost his only chance of meeting me,” Churchill cutely wrote. In the film he says he would be glad to meet Hitler in London, but alas the Fuhrer—er—never quite got there. “Later on, when he was all-powerful,” Churchill added, “I was to receive several invitations from him. But by that time a lot had happened, and I excused myself.”

This episode begins with a poignant scene between Winston and Clementine which neatly defines their marriage—one of deep mutual devotion, but needing periods of separation from time to time, lest the high-strung Clemmie collapse from the pressure. Winston longs for a closer relationship; Clementine says he should have married Goonie (Lady Gwendolyne Bertie, his sister-in-law). She wishes he would be content with things as they are.

Written for a birthday tribute in October 2010….

We have all heard about the art of Timothy Robert Hardy, even though we don’t need to do so, since it is self-evident. But that really doesn’t matter, does it? His three-decade involvement with the Churchill saga provides a balsamic reiteration of what we know, are glad that we know, pity those who do not know, and are proud to be associated with.

It began with his peerless portrayals of Sir Winston in the 1981 “Wilderness Years” TV documentary; David Susskind’s 1986 “Leaders” series; a London stage play; the mini-series “War and Remembrance”; and—just this August 20th—a brilliant reading from Churchill’s tribute to “The Few” on its 70th annniversary. (Click here for the video.)

We can only begin to imagine the prodigious effort Tim made to master the role of Winston Churchill—to find, as he put it, “a way in.” Yet playing Churchill, he said, was “one of the best things that has ever happened to me.” Speaking to us in 1986, he likened the job to scaling Everest: “I shall never look down from the peak, but as long as I live I shall delight in gazing upwards toward those towering rocks.” The Churchill Society thought enough of his mountaineering to offer him the Blenheim Award, its highest accolade. But his acceptance honored us much more.

Robert Hardy has the distinction of having been on both sides in the Churchill story—for in 1974 he played von Ribbentrop toRichard Burton’s Churchill in “The Gathering Storm.” He told me he yearned to direct the great Anthony Hopkins as Churchill, but I said this must never occur until he is too old. And he still isn’t!

Long before he played Winston Churchill, this devoted student of Shakespeare played many of the Bard’s heroes and villains—roles he savored. He once remarked to an interviewer: “I have to keep saying to myself, ‘To play Hamlet at your age is out of the question. Stop it!’”

Others know him best for his superb role as Siegfried Farnon in “All Creatures Great and Small.” My wife once said to him, “You’ll always be Siegfried to me.” Tim quickly replied, “You’ll always be Barbara to me.”

Nowadays, we know him as Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter films. He admitted to Barbara that his only regret in that role is that he was not equipped with his personal owl.

His knowledge of archery and his scholarly book, Longbow, led to his becoming archery consultant to the Mary Rose Trust: studying the longbows and arrows found in the famous ship, now being restored in Portsmouth. Through his intervention, one of our Churchill tour parties was given a private tour of the ship by its curator, who explained the lengthy process of drying ancient timbers.

The unfailing quality of Robert Hardy’s work is equaled by the unfailing courtesy of his manner. Those who meet him for the first time are struck by his gentility, as of course by his wit and erudition. There is something about him that is a dramatic betrayal of the persona one expects from a public reputation.

He has said that Winston Churchill was the one man last century who could lead us through the worst of times by the force of his mesmerizing speeches, monumental courage and personal charisma. I say in reply that Robert Hardy’s work expresses all the Churchillian qualities. Through his skill, the true Churchill emerged for out of the blue distance of time, for new generations to contemplate. That is something for which Churchill admirers are deeply grateful and honored—as I am to be part of this tribute to Timothy Robert Hardy, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.