Having written about cars and Winston Churchill for fifty years, I finally produced a piece on them both. From exotica like Mors, Napier and Rolls-Royce to more prosaic makes like Austin, Humber and Wolseley, the story was three decades in coming. But I am satisfied that it is now complete.

Humber for the Man

After the war, Lord Rootes and Churchill became close friends, exchanging Christmas gifts and farm animals, even collaborating politically. “So sorry that we did not do better in Coventry,” Rootes wrote after the 1950 general election.

Churchill was offered a new Mark III Humber Pullman that October, but demurred. The Tories had lost only narrowly, and he was sure he’d be returned to office soon. The following year they won. He remained prime minister until he retired in 1955.

By then he needed a new limo, but Humber had discontinued the Pullman. Churchill was forlorn: “I’m sure you could build one for me if you tried,” he wrote his friend. “You can’t let me down now, I need another Pullman that I can stretch out in.”

The sympathetic Billy Rootes found a low-mileage Mark IV and expensively rebuilt it. Technically works property, it remained on loan to Churchill for the rest of his life. It is now at the Louwman Museum in The Hague, Netherlands.

Churchill was a loyal Rootes customer. He bought a Hillman Minx in 1948, a Hillman Husky in 1958. In 1955, marking his 80th birthday the previous November, the Rootes Group presented him with a 1956 Humber Hawk Mark VIA estate, “a token of our appreciation of his services not only to the country, but to all of us.” The Hawk often accompanied Churchill on his holidays in France, where it was ideal for transporting his oil painting paraphernalia. 

Auxiliaries

Notable among Chartwell’s postwar farm vehicles was an army-surplus Jeep supplied by Wolfe’s Garage in Westerham (still doing business). Phil Johnson, a mechanic, devised a step to help Churchill climb in and out: “I altered it several times to his instructions. He was a meticulous man.”

In 1954, Churchill was presented by the Rover factory with a new Land Rover. It bore the number plate UKE 80. Rover said this stood for “UK Empire” and eighty years.”

UKE plates were current at the time in Kent, so it must have been easy to get one. I suspect Rover might have hunted around for the owner of UKE 80 to get the number they wanted, plates being transferable in Britain.

The technician who delivered the Land Rover offered to find some rough terrain to demonstrate where it could go: Sir Winston’s response was that he wanted to see terrain where it couldn’t go.

Dead shot

He often rode shotgun to his son-in-law on Chartwell Farm. Once they drove up to a square of uncut wheat, where workers had cornered a rabbit. Aged 80, Churchill alighted, grabbed his piece, and dispatched the hare with one shot. “He was a great marksman,” said Christopher Soames. The Land Rover sold at auction for £129,000 in 2012.

At the end there were two Morris Oxfords: Farina saloons, mostly used by Clementine Churchill. George Weatherley of the Cambridge-Oxford Owners Club has tracked both; they are currently insured, but not taxed. In 2013 the ’64 made £51,000 at auction, through its famous association. There is however no Churchill record of a Vanden Plas 4 Litre R allegedly owned by Lady Churchill, destroyed in a banger car race a few years ago.

“Familiars”

The Churchill car roster lists several “familiars”—not Churchill’s, but known to or used by him.

The best-known over his last years was a 1934 Rolls-Royce 20/25 limousine by Thrupp & Maberly, hired from Frank Jenner of Westerham.

Jenner said he bought the car because Sir Winston hankered for a Rolls-Royce, perhaps recalling his old Silver Ghost with more pleasure than it gave in 1921. In it, Jenner said, Churchill made his last journey from Chartwell to London, in October 1964. He died there three months later. This beautiful Rolls is available for hire from Advantage CarHire.

To the last, Churchill’s staff remembered the sense of urgency so characteristic of the man. In the old Humber, “Murray, the detective, would sit at [the chauffeur’s] side, quietly murmuring, ‘slow down here’ or ‘pull in to the left a little more,’” wrote Roy Howells, a male nurse.

“At the back Sir Winston would be…tapping on the glass partition and calling out, ‘Go on!’ Whenever he felt Bullock was slow in overtaking he would lean forward and bellow, ‘Now!’ It does Bullock great credit that he never really took the chances his passenger would have liked….”

Addendum: Churchill’s last ride

BBC Regional News reports that the Austin Vanden Plas hearse which transported Sir Winston’s coffin at his funeral has been fully restored. The work was by done by Jo Burge of Classic Marine Engines in Suffolk.

The Vanden Plas was used for some time on funeral work, but deteriorated over the years and was head for the scrap heap. Bristol Memorial Woodlands had it restored—a frame-off project which took Burge three years. “It wasn’t really the car we were restoring,” Burge told the BBC. “It was the story.”

“Sir Winston was not a motorist but enjoyed good transport as a means to an end,” recalled Phil Johnson. “Comfort and reliability came through as paramount. He saw cars as incredible time wasters and they were surely not his scene.” Well, they are ours—and intertwine amusingly with the saga of the great man.

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A work of art on Churchill’s art

This beautiful book combines Churchill’s favorite French painting venues with fastidious research on their locations. The horizontal format blends quality binding with brilliant color on thick, coated paper, and the price is a bargain. Paul Rafferty, himself an artist, brings Churchill’s oils alive as adjuncts to WSC’s personality. (N.B.: this writer played a minor part in verifying quotations.)

The book’s forte is its “then and now” juxtaposition of Churchill’s art with photos of the precise venues. Again and again, the eye feasts on double-page spreads nearly two feet wide, showing a Churchill painting alongside the very spot today. Finding those spots often required exhaustive research and exploration.

Sometimes, Rafferty relied on photos Churchill had snapped to allow him to finish a portrait back at his studio. Familiarity with the area helped locate many spots. Occasionally a passerby would know where Sir Winston painted. But more often, it required Sherlockian sleuthing, sometimes resulting in bizarre adventures.

In search of the “Red Rocks”

Rafferty carried 100 laminated cards of elusive paintings to help him “reacquire” Churchill’s targets. Among the elusive was “Red Rocks, L’Esterel.” There the whole coastline is red rocks! With two artist friends he drove along, vainly searching. Finally they stopped at one last lay-by. There they were! Paul and his friends decided this was one scene they would try their hands at painting themselves:

Venturing down to see if access was possible, we came upon a nudist beach, much to our—and their—surprise…. We climbed over the cliff and down into the empty cove, with only piles of driftwood lying around. We began painting and after an hour or so I looked up to see a naked woman on top of the ridge we had just climbed over. She waved, probably wondering what we were doing: I waved back, certainly wondering what she was doing. I returned to my painting and suggested to the others, “You don’t see that, painting in Trafalgar Square.”

Mentors and paraphernalia

The depth of research is not confined to venues. Rafferty devotes pages to Riviera artist mentors, like Sir William Nicholson, John and Hazel Lavery and Alfred Munnings. Other pages illustrate his equipment, including his traveling easels, brushes, paintboxes and oils, even his Stetson hat.

Most of Churchill’s oil paints came from his “colourman” Willy Sax. Having tried Sax’s oils, WSC became devoted. In his famous essay, Painting as a Pastime, he compared oil painting to a military campaign:

You have a medium at your disposal which offers real power, if you only can find out how to use it…. You need not build downwards awkwardly from white paper to your darkest dark…. strike where you please, beginning if you will with a moderate central arrangement of middle tones, and then hurling in the extremes when the psychological moment comes. Lastly, the pigment itself is such nice stuff to handle (if it does not retaliate).

In one of his letters to Sax he asks for “six tubes garance (Rose Madder), Rose Dorée or Pink Madder, two tubes Neutral Tint, four tubes Pale Violet Cobalt.” This reminds us of his dialogue with Field Marshal Alexander, painting together at Lake Como. “I always use just a touch of Rose Madder; do you use Rose Madder, Winston?” “But of course, Alex, I always use Rose Madder.”

Rafferty on the Churchill trail

A double page spread (right) offers a map showing the amazing breadth of the Riviera places Churchill painted. Some are familiar: Three favorites were Roquebrune-Cap-Martin: “La Pausa” (Emery and Wendy Reves) “Les Zoraïdes” (Daisy Fellowes) and “La Dragonnière” (Lord Rothermere). Then there were Lord Beaverbrook’s “La Capponcina” at Cap d’Ail, and Maxine Elliott’s Chȃteau de l’Horizon, in Golfe-Juan.

Rafferty also tracked the more obscure places, such as Consuelo Balsan’s villa near Eze, and Ralph Curtis’s “Villa Sylvia” at St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Churchill painted churches and chapels, like St.-Paul-de-Vence, and loved water scenes. The River Loup in the Alps Maritimes whetted his passion for depicting water. He loved and painted certain preferred restaurants, like Restaurant Philip at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in Provence. Its proprietor, aged 92, still remembers him: a gourmet who would order from the menu. He particularly fancied the trout that abounded in the cold river—which again excited his artists’s eye.

The work continues

Satiated with this vivid display of artistry and erudition, the reader is disappointed to get to the end. No worries. Just flip the book over and start again. There is so much detail, so many amazing comparisons of then and now, that it always seems fresh and new. Even trivia, such as Churchill’s motorcars (a sideline of this writer) gets some attention.

I’d never seen a photo of his 1956 Humber Hawk estate car, presented by his friend Lord Rootes. Churchill was rumored to have used it to haul his painting gear on the Riviera. Sure enough, Rafferty shows him seated in the Hawk, arriving at Villa La Pausa, no doubt driven by his faithful bodyguard Sergeant Murray.

And the work is not complete. In the back of the book Raffety offers a dozen Churchill paintings not yet pinpointed. They are “the elusive ones still to find.” Perhaps there will be a future addendum, with these paintings matched to vivid photographs of the venues today. It would be fun, even if only online, perhaps here. We’ll be hoping for it.

Part 2, continued from Part 1: Excerpt only. For footnotes,  all illustrations and a roster of Churchill’s cars, see The Automobile, (UK), August 2016. A pdf of the article is available upon request: click here.

Wolseley to Austin

In the early 1930s Churchill switched from Wolseley to Austin cars: small fours and big sixes. One of the former, a 1938 Austin 10 Cambridge, was the Chartwell workhorse. It was driven primarily by longtime secretary Grace Hamblin. It was acquired in the 1960s by the 6th Marquess of Bath, who restored and displayed it at Longleat. In 2014 it made £66,000 at auction. Sir Winston referred to it as a “true blue” British motorcar.

The present of a Daimler

In 1929 Churchill lost almost all he had in the Wall Street crash, and two years later went on a North American lecture tour to recoup his losses. Back home, his friend Brendan Bracken was soliciting donations to buy Churchill a new car, a Daimler 35. It was waiting in London: a £2000 landaulette limousine by Barker. Over 140 affectionate friends contributed, among them the Prince of Wales, Charlie Chaplin, John Maynard Keynes, Harold Macmillan and, of course, his longtime and close friend, the Duke of Westminster.

The Daimler was a 5.8-liter sleeve-valve six, then in its last year. Churchill had earlier test-driven a more exotic Double-Six, but the Depression was at its depth and practicality prevailed. “There was some controversy as to whether you would prefer a Rolls-Royce, a Daimler or a Bentley,” Bracken told him. His friends had settled on “the car which is least expensive to maintain.”

Daimler adventures

He liked the Daimler so much that he kept it until the Second World War, repainting it several times. In it he made surreptitious rendezvous with informants who, at risk of their careers, delivered secret reports on German rearmament. In it he paid his last, sad call on Edward VIII at Windsor, who informed him he was abdicating (an act for which Churchill later was grateful).

For a moving episode featuring a lookalike Daimler, as Churchill is warned of German rearmament in the classic documentary “The Wilderness Years” click on this Hillsdale Churchill site and then on the YouTube video.

The advent of war in 1939 found Churchill back at the Admiralty. He sold the Daimler to a London dealer, saying he’d have new one “when the War has ceased.” In 1985, a Daimler 35 said to be his changed hands for £60,500 at Sotheby’s. Found dilapidated in Gloucestershire, it had been restored, and equipped with a bulldog mascot and Churchill coat of arms to emphasize, unnecessarily, its association.

There’s safety in Humbers

In London during the war, Churchill became attached to his bullet-proof Humber Pullmans, government cars skillfully driven by the Royal Army Service Corps. Again Churchill’s fondness for the horsedrawn age was reasserted. When ready to leave on a trip, he would ask not whether the chauffeur was behind the wheel but, “Is the coachman on his box?”

William Rootes founded the Rootes Group, which embraced the marques of Hillman, Humber, Singer and Sunbeam-Talbot. He was a close admirer. The July 1945 election left Churchill out of office and needing a car. Prying him away from his allegiance to Daimler, Rootes sold him a new Pullman. The company let him garage it at Devonshire House, its London headquarters.

When Churchill required a chauffeur, Rootes loaned him John Bullock, a company driver who became a favored part of his entourage. Whenever the boss wanted the Humber he would say, “I think I’ll have the Bullock Cart.”

“The constables saluted humbly”

A biographer recorded Bullock’s frequent experience: Habitually late, Churchill would typically “pile into the Humber around 5:30 for a 7:00 speech a hundred miles distant. As his chauffeur swings into the high road, Churchill crouches, with a flask, on the edge of the back seat and urges him to greater speeds. ‘But the machine is traveling at 85 now,’ the chauffeur will protest. ‘Faster! Whip it up a bit!’ comes the answer.”

Once, doing 80 on a curve, a rear tyre blew and “a van full of irate constables screeched to a halt alongside. They had been trying to catch the runaway for miles.” Realizing who it was, they helped fix the tyre. “Churchill stood off to one side, serenely puffing at a cigar. He made no sign of apology but only got in and cried, ‘Drive off!’ The constables saluted humbly.”

On a campaign trip to Wales, Churchill conversed garrulously with O’Brien, his PR officer. They passed the brandy back and forth. Churchill urged such reckless speed that Clementine Churchill cried: “Please let me out. I refuse to continue this ride.” With the utmost courtesy, Churchill stopped at a country railway station and escorted her to the platform. Then, plying the brandy bottle, he ordered the driver “down the road like a bat out of hell for Cardiff.”

By the time they arrived, what with the brandy and his nerves, O’Brien was “done up—out practically cold. Churchill supervised the laying out of his PRO on a table in the rear of the hall. Then he went ahead and made a rouser of a speech. Afterward, he appeared confused about the origin of O’Brien’s trouble, and expressed the opinion that it was ‘probably something he ate.’”

Concluded in Part 3…