Tag: Walter Graebner

Help
Ample time was always set aside for house guests. At Chartwell, 19 September 1931, L-R: Mr. Punch, Mary Churchill’s naughty pug; The Hon. Tom Mitford (Clementine’s cousin, friend of Diana and Randolph and only brother of the Mitford sisters, killed in Burma in 1945); WSC; Freddie Birkenhead (Second Earl of Birkenhead, who had succeeded his father the previous year and became a historian and biographer of his father); Clementine, Diana and Randolph Churchill; Charlie Chaplin. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Churchill’s Daily Routine (Or: You Can’t Get Good Help Anymore…)

Churchill’s Daily Routine (Or: You Can’t Get Good Help Anymore…)

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When help was cheap

Mov­ing right along, the 1911 Cen­sus was recent­ly released in Eng­land. No address was “ex-direc­to­ry” in those days. Win­ston Churchill is list­ed at 33 Eccle­ston Square, Lon­don (sev­en­teen rooms) with wife Clemen­tine, daugh­ter Diana and eight ser­vants. The help com­prised a cook, nurse, lady’s maid, house­maid, par­lor maid, under-par­lor maid, kitchen maid and hall boy). Can this be so? —A.J., NSW, Australia

Absolute­ly. By the 1920s and 1930s, when the Churchills were ensconced at Chartwell, the help had grown to fif­teen or more, count­ing gar­den­ers, handy­men, sec­re­taries and house­hold staff.…

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taxes
Lighting up with a pile of proofs to read, Chartwell, mid-Fifties.
Churchill and his Taxes: “Genius has many outlets”

Churchill and his Taxes: “Genius has many outlets”

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Taxes and the Man

On the mat­ter of Churchill’s tax­es, a friend quotes a very good his­to­ri­an we both respect: “His rela­tion­ship with the tax­man was scan­dalous. As Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer, Churchill exploit­ed tax loop­holes and he retired as an author on more than one occa­sion to avoid pay­ing tax.”

My friend writes: “Sure­ly what Churchill did was just on the bor­der­line of tax-opti­miza­tion? It would only be scan­dalous if it was tax eva­sion. But it was in fact legal.”

I am not an expert on Churchill’s tax­es. I accept that he took what­ev­er mea­sures that were open and legal to min­i­mize the bite.…

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