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T H E C H U R C H I L L C E N T E RI N T E R N A T I O N A L C H U R C H I L L S O C I E T I E S
r ®UNITED STATES • UNITED KINGDOM • CANADA
PATRON: THE LADY SOAMES, D.B.E. • WWW.WINSTONCIIURCIIILL.ORG
The Cnurcnill Center's mission is to foster leadership, statesmanship, vision, and boldness among democratic and freedom-loving peoples worldwide, through the thoughts, words, works, and deeds of Winston Spencer Churchill.
Tbe Churchill Center was organized in 1995 by tbe International Churchill Societies, founded in 1968 to educate futuregenerations on tbe works and example of Winston Churchill. The Center and Societies sponsor Finest Hour, special publications
and publication subventions, symposia, conferences, tours, and educational programmes. All are non-profit organizations.
JOINT HONORARY MEMBERSThe Lord Black of Crossharbour OC PC (C)Winston S. Churchill • The Lord Deedes KBE MC PC DLSir Martin Gilbert CBE • Grace Hamblin OBERobert Hardy CBE • The Lord Jenkins of Hillhead OM PCWilliam Manchester • The Duke of Marlborough JP DLSir Anthony Montague Browne KCMG CBE DFCElizabeth Nel • Colin L. Powell KCBWendy Russell Reves • Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr.The Lady Thatcher LG OM PC FRSThe Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger GBE
THE CHURCHILL CENTER(Incorporating ICS United States)BOARD OF GOVERNORSRandy Barber • David Boler • Nancy H. CanaryD. Craig Horn • William C. Ives • Nigel KnockerRichard M. Langworth • John H. Mather MDJames W. Muller • Charles D. PlattJohn G. Plumpton • Douglas S. Russell
OFFICERSJohn G. Plumpton, President130 Collingsbrook Blvd., Toronto, Ontario Ml W 1M7Tel. (416) 495-9641 • Fax. (416) 502-3847Email: savrola@winstonchurchill.org
William C. Ives, Vice President20109 Scott, Chapel Hill NC 27517Tel. (919) 967-9100 • Fax. (919) 967-9001Email: wives@nc.rr.com
Nancy H. Canary, SecretaryDorchester, Apt 3 North, 200 North Ocean Blvd.Delray Beach FL 33483Tel. (561) 833-5900 • Email: ncanary@thf.com
D. Craig Horn, Treasurer8016 McKenstry Drive, Laurel MD 20723Tel. (888) WSC-1874 • Fax. (301) 483-6902Email: dcraighorn@email.msn.com
Charles D. Platt, Endowment Director14 Blue Heron Drive W., Greenwood Village CO 80121Tel. (303) 721-8550 • Fax. (303) 290-0097Email: cdp31@earthlink.net
BOARD OF TRUSTEESWinston S. Churchill • Laurence Geller " Hon. Jack KempGeorge A. Lewis • Christopher MatthewsAmb. Paul H. Robinson, Jr. • The Hon. Celia SandysThe Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger GBE
Richard M. Langworth CBE, Chairman181 Burrage Road, Hopkinton NH 03229Tel. (603) 746-4433 • Email: malakand@conknct.com
BUSINESS OFFICESLorraine C. Horn, AdministratorDebby Young, Membership Secretary8016 McKenstry Drive, Laurel MD 20723Tel. (888) WSC-1874 • Fax. (301) 483-6902Email: wsc 1874@msn.com
CHURCHILL STORES (Back Issues & Sales Dept.)Gail Greenly, PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229Tel. (603) 746-3452 • Fax (603) 746-6963Email: greengail@aol.com
CHURCHILL CENTER ASSOCIATESWinston Churchill Associates:
ICS United States • The Churchill CenterThe Annenberg Foundation • David & Diane BolerColin D. Clark • Fred FarrowMr. & Mrs. Parker H. Lee IIIMichael & Carol McMenamin • David & Carole NossRay L. & Patricia M. Orban • Wendy Russell RevesElizabeth Churchill Snell • Mr. & Mrs. Matthew B. WillsAlex M. Worth Jr.
Clementine Churchill AssociatesRonald D. Abramson • Winston S. ChurchillJeanette & Angelo Gabriel • D. Craig & Lorraine HornJames F. Lane • Barbara & Richard LangworthDrs. John H. & Susan H. Mather • Linda & Charles PlattAmbassador & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson Jr.James R. & Lucille I. Thomas
Mary Soam.es AssociatesSolveig & Randy Barber • Gary J. BonineSusan & Daniel Borinsky • Nancy Bowers • Lois BrownNancy H. Canary • Dona & Bob DalesJeffrey & Karen De Haan • Gary GarrisonRuth & Laurence Geller • Frederick & Martha HardmanGlenn Horowitz • Mr. & Mrs. William C. IvesJ. Willis Johnson • Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Drake KambestadElaine Kendall • Ruth J. Lavine • Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. LeahyCyril & Harriet Mazansky • Michael W. MichelsonMr. & Mrs. James W. Muller • Bond NicholsEarl & Charlotte Nicholson • Bob & Sandy OdellDr & Mrs. Malcolm Page • Ruth & John PlumptonHon. Douglas S. Russell • Suzanne & Daniel SigmanShanin Specter • Robert M. StephensonRichard & Jenny Streiff " Peter J. Travers * Gabriel UrwitzDamon Wells Jr. • Jacqueline & Malcolm Dean Witter
BOARD OF ACADEMIC ADVISERSProf. Paul K. Alkon, University of Southern CaliforniaSir Martin Gilbert CBE, D. Litt., Merton College, OxfordProf. Barry M. Gough, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityProf. Christopher C. Harmon, Marine Corps UniversityCol. David Jablonsky, US Army War CollegeProf. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers UniversityProf. Paul A. Rahe, University ofTulsaProf. John A. Ramsden,Queen Mary dr Westfield College, University of London
Prof. David T. Stafford, University of EdinburghDr. Jeffrey Wallin, President, The American AcademyProf. Manfred Weidhorn, Yeshiva University
Prof. James W, Muller, Chairman,University of Alaska Anchorage1518 Airport Hts. Dr., Anchorage AK 99508Tel. (907) 786-4740 • Fax. (907) 786-4647Email: af]wm@uaa.alaska.edu
www. winstonchurchill. orgWebmaster: savrola@winstonchurchill.orgListserv: winston@vm.marist.eduListserv host: jonah.triebwasser@marist.edu
AFFILIATEWashington Society for ChurchillCaroline Hartzler, PresidentPO Box 2456, Merrifield VA 22116Tel. (703) 503-9226
Members also meet regularly in Alaska, California,Chicago, New England, North Texas and Northern Ohio.
INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILLSOCIETY OF CANADAAmbassador Kenneth W Taylor, Hon. Chairman
Randy Barber, President14 Honeybourne Crescent, Markham, Ontario L3P 1P3Tel. (905)201-6687Email: randy.barber@cbs.gov.on.ca
Jeanette Webber, Membership Secretary3256 Rymal Road, Mississauga, Ontario L4Y 3C1Tel. (905) 279-5169 • Email: jcanette.webber@sympatico.ca
Charles Anderson, Treasurer489 Stanficld Drive, Oakville, Ontario L6L 3R2
The Other Club of OntarioNorman MacLeod, President16 Gleniaura Court, Ashburn, Ontario LOB 1A0Tel. (905)655-4051
Winston S. Churchill Society of Vancouver (Affiliated)Dr. Joe Siegenberg, President15-9079 Jones RoadRichmond, British Columbia V6Y 1C7Tel. (604) 231-0940
INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILLSOCIETY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM
Chairman:Nigel Knocker OBEPO Box 1257, Melksham, Wilts. SN12 6GQTel. & Fax. (01380) 828609Email: nigel@icsuksaf.demon.co.uk
TRUSTEESThe Hon. Celia Sandys, Chairman;The Duke of Marlborough JP DLThe Rt. Hon. Earl Jellicoe KBE DSO MC FRSDavid Boler • David Porter • Geoffrey Wheeler
COMMITTEENigel Knocker OBE, ChairmanWylma Wayne, Vice ChairmanPaul H. Courtenay, Hon. SecretaryAnthony Woodhead CBE FCA, Hon. TreasurerJohn Glanvill Smith, Editor ICS UK NewsletterEric Bingham • John Crookshank • Geoffrey FletcherDerek Greenwell • Michael Kelion • Fred Lockwood CBEErnie Money CBE • Elisabeth Sandys • Dominic Walters
NORTHERN CHAPTERDerek Greenwell, "Farriers Cottage," Station RoadGoldsborough, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG5 8NTTel. (01432) 863225
INTERNATIONAL COUNCILOF CHURCHILL ORGANIZATIONSAmbassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr., Chairman208 S. LaSalle St., Chicago IL 60604 USATel. (800) 621-1917Email: phr661944@aol.com
The staff of Finest Hour, journal ofThe Churchill Center, appears on page 4.
JOURNAL OF THE CUURCI-llLJ. CENTER
AUTUMN 2002 • NUMBER ].16
14 Englander: "An Abundantly Full Life." Churchill Through German Eyes. Part I: The Man • Rudolf Kircher
18 "This Demi-Paradise": Lullenden, Winston and Clementine Churchill's First Country Home • Roger Wilkes
20 Our Patron at Eighty: "Father Always Came First, Second and Third" • Graham Turner with Lady Soames
25 Manalapan Estates, Florida: The Churchill Connection and a New Painting Discovery • John Michael Kops
36 Churchilliana: Spode's Elegant Churchill Pitchers * Max Edward Hertwig
38 Leading Churchill Myths (5): "Churchill and Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance" • Ron Helgemo
41 Cruising Speed: A Fortnight in the Life of Finest Hour • Richard M. Langworth
45 The Finest Hour Reader Survey: In which we finally get what's coming to us • Our Readers
BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES28 Teaching Churchill: the Editor looks at four new books for young people ... Craig Horn says Secret Agent is "David Staffordas I had never read him before" ... Eliot Cohen and John Plumpton think "war is too important to be left to the generals."Michael Dobbs, who gave us fiendish Francis Urquhart MP, creates a realistically fiendish Neville Chamberlain and HoraceWilson in his new novel, Winston's War ... David Coombs revisits Hoe Farm and we remember Arthur Simon ... We review somerare Spode ... Ron Helgemo shows why Roosevelt and Churchill did not know about Pearl Harbor in advance ... Curt Zollerserves up more Churchill trivia (with answers in this very same issue!) ... Ampersand recounts sovereigns, prime ministers and peers.
Despatch Box 4 • Datelines 5 • Glimpses 8 • Calendar 9 • Local & National 9 • Around & About 10 •Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas 11 • Action This Day 12 • Eminent Churchillians 34 • Churchilltrivia 35 •Leading Churchill Myths 38 • Color Prints from this Issue 40 • Ampersand 40
Cover: "At Lnlletiden Manor, "painting by Winston S. Churchill, 1922 (Coombs 143), reproduced by kind courtesy ofChurchill Heritage Ltd, Story on page 18. Art prints of this painting and that in our centerspread are available in alimited edition for modest donations to The Churchill Center (USA) or Societies (UK and Canada). See page 40.
Left: Churchill watches the first American-built airplane arriving in Britain as part of the Lend-Lease programmeinstituted by President Roosevelt, which became law on 11 March 1941.
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Number 116 • Autumn 2002ISSN 0882-3715www.winstonchurchill.org
Barbara R Langworth, Publisher(b_Iangworth@conknet.com)
Richard M. Langworth, Editor(malakand@conknet.com)
PO Box 385, Contoocook,NH 03229 USATel. (603) 746-4433
Senior Editors:
James W. MullerJohn G. PlumptonRon Cynewulf Robbins
Associate Editor:
Paul H. Courtenay
News Editor: John FrostFeatures Editor: Douglas J. Hall
ContributorsGeorge Richard, Australia;Randy Barber, Chris Bell,Barry Gough, Canada;Inder Dan Ratnu, India;Paul Addison, Winston S. Churchill,Robert Courts, Sir Martin Gilbert,Allen Packwood, Phil Reed,United Kingdom;David Freeman, Chris Harmon,Warren F. Kimball,Michael McMenamin,Manfred Weidhorn, Curt Zoller,United States
• Address changes. USA, Australia,
Western Hemisphere and Pacific: send to
the The Churchill Center business office.
UK/Europe and Canada:
send to UK or Canada business offices.
All offices are listed on page 2.
Finest Hour is made possible in part throughthe generous support of members of TheChurchill Center and Societies, and with theassistance of an endowment created by TheChurchill Center Associates (listed on page 2).
Finest Hour is published quarterly by TheChurchill Center and Internationa! ChurchillSocieties, which offer various levels of supportin their respective currencies. Membershipapplications should be sent to the appropriateoffices on page 2. Permission to mail at non-profit rates in USA granted by the UnitedStates Postal Service, Concord, NH, permitno. 1524. Copyright 2002. All rights reserved.Designed and edited by Dragonwyck Publish-ing Inc. Production by New England FoilStamping Inc. Printed by Twin Press Inc.Made in U.S.A.
DESPATCH BOX
We Blush, But Just BrieflyI was pleased by John Plumpton's refer-
ence, in his excellent review last issue, to LordJenkins's vocabulary. I consider myself a well-educated man with a more than respectablevocabulary. I have a bachelor's degree in Latinand Greek and a master's in English, and havetaught English and Latin for thirty years. Iwas, however, stumped by any number ofwords in Jenkins's biography.
Every morning, after reading Jenkins thenight before, I would e-mail a group ofteacher friends asking them if they had heardof this or that word. Most of them hadn't, andthey are all well-educated. The reference toJenkins's vocabulary made me feel less of anidiot! I teach English literature, and everyweek I begin with a quotation fromChurchill. Actually, I begin the year with hisspeech after Dunkirk. Finest Hour gives memore than sufficient material. Keep up thegood work!
BR. JAMES M. KELLY, C.EX. (jkclly@admin.msjnct.edu)
What a great article, " The Atlantic Takesa Dive," FH 114. My sentiments exactly, butbeautifully written and as usual reflective ofyour broad grasp of the essential issues.
MICHAEL BARRINGTON, FREMONT, CALIF.
I have just returned from the ChaudharyCharan Singh committee meeting, chaired bymy friend Mr. Saran {FH 115:11). I informedthem of Finest Hours coverage of my"Churchill and Freedom" talk (issue 115) andyour publishing a footnote biography of for-mer Indian Prime Minister Singh. I notedthat Churchill made "defence of democracy"the main plank of the Second World War,which promoted the cause of the commonman worldwide.
Charan Singh certainly was a commonperson, not from a feudal background; yet herose to lead his country through the system ofdemocracy. Since Churchill was the architectof the war, the committee thought it quite fit-ting that you should cover the life of lateChaudhary Charan Singh and our celebrationof his birth centenary because in the processwe had remembered Churchill.
I am thus happy to report that for thefirst time in the committee meeting not onlyWinston Churchill and his work were men-tioned with honor, but also The ChurchillCenter, Finest Hour, and its editor.
INDER DAN RATNU, VAISHAU NAGAR, INDIA
Gift MembershipsIn addition to my own, have taken out a sub-scription to Finest Hour on behalf of my uni-versity library, St. Francis Xavier University inAntigonish, Nova Scotia. "X" boasts one ofthe strongest and most loyal alumni groups inCanada, and counts former PM Brian Mul-roney among its alumni. I'm not sure if this isdone by many other members, but it wouldseem to me to be a good tie-in with the othereducational efforts of the CC and ICS.
MIKE CAMPBELL, HALIFAX, N.S.
Gift memberships are available through themembership offices of The Churchill Center(USA), and Societies (Canada and UK), listedon the inside front cover. We will enclose a cardwith your greetings. If you want to be billedevery year for renewal, you should make arrange-ments with the membership office; otherwise therecipient will be billed. In the USA and UK, wealso offer half-price student and library member-ships at $20 and £20 respectively which are sub-sidized rates, since what we deliver costs muchmore than that. Some proof that the recipient isa student is required.
Bletchley Park KudosDouglas Hall's article on Bletchley Park
(FH 114) encouraged me to make a returnvisit there with my wife, after probably aneight year gap. We were astonished at thewonderful exhibition that Jack Darrah and hislate wife have put together: quite the bestthing of its kind I have ever seen. We weredoubly fortunate as Jack and his daughterwere there on the day of our visit, and we hada most interesting tour and conversation.
I had thought that I was an enthusiasticand knowledgeable admirer of Sir WinstonChurchill, but I felt like a novice compared toJack! He was particularly proud of a recent ac-quisition, a marble statuette of Sir Winstonstanding at his easel. It certainly enhanced thevery fine collection. We came away with therecipe for "Churchill's cake," provided byJack's daughter. My wife baked it for a recentgarden party at home, and it was a huge suc-cess (but a little expensive due to the brandycontent!). Through your pages may we thankJack and his daughter again for such an enjoy-able visit. I would strongly urge any of yourreaders who have not visited Bletchley, to findthe opportunity and do so post haste. It is avery rewarding experience.TONY FLEETWOOD, WHEATHAMPSTEAD, HERTS. $
F I N E S T H O U R H 6 / 4
DATELINESQUOTATION OF THE SEASON
"This idea or not irritating tne enemy did not commend itselr to me....Good, decent, civilised
people, it appeared, must never tnemselves strike till arter tney nave been struck dead.
Tkere were still montns ot pretended war. On tne one side endless discussions about
trivial points, no decisions taken, or ir taken rescinded, and tne rule
Don't be unkind to tne enemy; you will only make him angry.'
On tne otber, doom preparing.... '
—WSC, The Gathering Storm, 1948: English edition, page 454; American & Canadian editions, pages 574-75..
Dieppe: Day of RemembranceTORONTO, AUGUST 19TH— Sixty years agotoday, 4,963 Canadian soldiers werepart of an Allied force of 6,086 whotook part in an experimental mini-inva-sion of Europe to assess tactics, invasionprospects and equipment for the futureAllied invasion of Europe. It also was anattempt to placate Stalin, whose forceswere carrying the bulk of the fightingin Europe.
The Dieppe raid was a disaster,with 3,626 soldiers killed, wounded orcaptured, including 3,369 Canadians. Itis a major controversy of the war forCanadians although Churchill was notdirectly involved in the operation. Theofficial position at the time was that im-portant lessons were learned, GeneralMontgomery stating that for every lifelost at Dieppe, ten were saved at Nor-mandy. However, Montgomery also
later stated, "I believe we could havegotten the information and experiencewe needed without losing so manymagnificent Canadian soldiers."
Now is not the time to continuethe debate on this issue, but to remem-ber and be grateful for the sacrifices thatwere made. TERENCE REARDON
Howards Get Your GunLEWES, EAST SUSSEX, MAY 1ST— T h e six-shot
pinfire revolver carried by Churchill inhis escape from the Boers in 1899 wasback with the family of John Howardtoday, purchased at auction by ananonymous relative for £32,000. JohnHoward was the mine manager whohid Churchill in a mineshaft beforesmuggling him out of South Africa on agoods train bound for Mozambique. In1901, Churchill had returned the re-volver to Mr Howard in an inscribed
Escape revolver is housed in an inscribed ebony box with brandy flask and fitted silver cup.
ebony box with a glass brandy flask anda fitted silver cup. Evidently it got away;the Howard family now has it back.
Dept. of Utter NonsenseLONDON, JULY 13TH— After the UK airingof "The Gathering Storm," which de-buted in the United States in May, theBBC ran a silly poll: "Is the life ofChurchill still relevant to peopletoday?" We waited with bated breathfor the verdict: Yes, definitely, 83.8%;Maybe, to a degree, 10.4%; No, not atall, 5.8%. People who devise suchthings on state-supported media are awaste of the taxpayers' money If a pollasked, "Does it rain down—or up?"83.8% would be sure it was down,10.4% up, and the rest wouldn't know.Admittedly, we're not sure they stillteach gravity in the grammar schools,any more than Churchill.
"Gathering Storm" Sequel?LONDON, MAY 15TH—According to a cut-ting sent to us by news editor JohnFrost, there will be a sequel (of sorts) tothe BBC-HBO television production"The Gathering Storm" (reviewed FH115:32). Entitled "London 1940" andfinanced by Middle Fork Productionsand British Screen, it "will tell the storyof Churchill's transition from First Lordof the Admiralty to Prime Minister be-tween 1939 and 1941." All well andgood, but we're still missing the periodfrom 1936 to 1939: Munich and thecoming of war.
continut
F I N E S T H O U R n 6 / 5
"DancingGrace" is thefirst prize-winningpainting ofEmma Davis,who received acheque and cer-tificate fromCelia Sandys onJuly 2nd.
ICS UK Fine Art AwardsLONDON, JULY 2ND— A £5000 first prizein the second annual Churchill SocietyUK Fine Arts competition was pre-sented to 21-year-old Emma Davis ofthe Bournemouth Arts Institute, at aceremony today at the Cabinet WarRooms. The competition, open to artstudents at Colleges of Further Educa-tion, was generously sponsored by theTelegraph Group, BP, and Daler-Rowney. Fifty-nine initial entries weresubmitted.
Ms. Davis's work is primarily basedon paintings of the Dorset coastline anddemonstrates a continual progression inthe experimentation of techniques andprocesses; these progressions are ener-getic yet personal, a form of contempla-tive meditation. She sees her challengeas "to create with integrity meaningfuland conceptual expressions of thoselandscape forces which shape our emo-tional and intellectual selves."
Second prize (£2,500) was won byTimothy Wood of Solihull College; twothird prizes (each of £1,000) went toNatalie Bunce of Bournemouth Arts In-stitute and Michael Lock of Exeter Col-lege. The award presentations weremade by the Hon Celia Sandys.
DATELINES
Bill Deedes RemembersBERLIN, MAY 1ST— Honorary MemberLord Deedes accompanied our PatronLady Soames to Germany, whereBritish army senior officers and guestsheld a Churchill Memorial night. Thenext morning, Lord Deedes wrote inthe Daily Telegraph, he woke to realise"it was the first time I had slept in amilitary establishment in Germanysince November 1945....If anybody hadtold me then that half a century laterthe British Army would be occupyingin Germany the vast military establish-ment of which I found myself part, Icould not have believed it. And hadthey assured me that the Germanswould warmly welcome such a presence(as they do), I would have found it evenmore improbable.
"I thought also of that day inMarch 1936 when Hitler announcedthat he intended to reoccupy theRhineland and sent 35,000 Germantroops across the boundary to doit....The world still poses its threats, butEurope is incomparably a safer placetoday than it was then. I wonder howfar this generation is aware of it."
Outlived the Queen Mum, 'e Did
REIGATE, SURREY, APRIL
25TH— Reputed tobe Britain's oldestbird at 103, thisblue and yellowMacaw parrot,"Charlie," is goingstrong. Born 1899,when Churchillwas dodging Boerpatrols in theTransvaal, Charlielived in Croydon until 1936, when hewas acquired by Percy Drabner, father-in-law of present owner Peter Oram.
The following year he joined a hugemenagerie at Chartwell, along withblack swans, tropical fish, butterflies,dogs, cats and farm animals.
Charlie allegedly spent the war atChurchill's side, newspaper reportsstate. Minus most of his body feathers,which in his dotage he has plucked out,he now lives with Mr. Oram in a gar-den centre here. "He barely utters aword now, and is getting a bit naughty,"Oram says. "Occasionally he utters aswear word, which tradition has it wastaught to him by Sir Winston."
The Real DepressionLONDON, JULY 20TH— With the marketsinking, the London Stock Exchange isselling its shares in pension funds andbuying government bonds. Which re-minds us of what Churchill said in1945 about the Tory MP who hadswitched to the Liberals: "That's thefirst instance I've heard of a rat swim-ming to a sinking ship." The hypocrisyof politicians knows no bounds. Corpo-rate retirement plans offering no alter-native but devalued company stock arethe devil's own work, but Social Secu-rity built on a non-existent fund is a"sacred trust." Laws must be passed toguarantee better accounting among pri-vate firms by governments whose ownaccounting practices are worthy of anindictment. We need Churchillian lead-ers willing to stand on principle insteadof the latest group focus-hocus-pocus.
"Hole," "Burrow," "Paddock"NEASDEN, LONDON, APRIL 17TH—Not on ly
did Churchill have the Cabinet WarRooms ("The Hole") and the DownStreet Underground bunker ("The Bur-row"—see FH 115:41). Now The Mir-ror reports another secret war bunker inthe North London suburb of Neasden.Presently under a modern housing es-tate, this hidey-hole was codenamed"Paddock." It was protected by a five-foot-thick concrete roof and three-inchthick steel doors. Inside were sleepingquarters, offices and a broadcasting stu-dio. The Ministry of Defence sold"Paddock" in the 1970s but the originallight fittings, huge generator and venti-lation system are intact. >»
F I N E S T H O U R 116/6
DATELINES
Last redoubt of the Royal Family, "Paddock" has only this innocuous entrance, a plain doorwaybetween two suburban semi-detached homes. Churchill paid brief visits during the Blitz.
"Paddock" was to be the last refugeof the Royal Family before they wereevacuated to Canada in the event of asuccessful invasion, and Churchill vis-ited during the Blitz. The NetworkHousing Association has spent £15,000clearing flooded levels. Surveyor Rob-bin Williams said, "We understandChurchill only visited it two or threetimes because he found it damp."
New "Jennie" BiographyRICHMOND, SURREY, UK, AUGUST 4TH— A n n e
Sebba (anne@sebba.freeserve.co.uk) hasbeen commissioned to write a biogra-phy of Lady Randolph Churchill andher sisters, Clara and Leonie. Ms. Sebbais planning a North American researchtrip to visit anyone with Jerome mater-ial. We have put her in touch with theJerome Family Association and genealo-gist Elizabeth Snell. Anyone who canassist may contact her at 9 PembrokeVillas, The Green, Richmond, Surrey1W9 1QF, England, tel. (0208) 940-0500, fax. (0208) 948-7800.
Common Market NyetLONDON, MAY 2ND— Ephraim Hardcastleof the Daily Mail quotes EurophileChris Patten's Churchill Lecture to theEnglish Speaking Union: "I don't wantto engage in the argument aboutwhether or not Winston Churchillwould have favoured British member-ship of the EU." Just as well, Hardcastlesays: "Field Marshal Montgomeryrecords that in 1962 he found WSC
'sitting up in bed smoking his cigar,shouting for more brandy and protest-ing against Britain's proposed entry intothe Common Market.'"
Iraq: What Would Churchill Do?NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER ii TH— From politi-cians to pundits, scholars to buffs, peo-ple are speculating over what Churchillwould do abut Iraq, on which a few ob-servations—mindful of Patron's primedirective: never assume we know how hewould handle a modern problem.
1. The admirable John Keegan's ar-ticle in The Daily Telegraph, arguingthat the Churchill experience supports apreemptive strike, was secured for usein Finest Hour. We have not run it be-cause we do not want to convey onlyone side of the argument. If there is acogent counter-argument based onChurchill's experience, we would runboth viewpoints back to back in our"English-Speaking Peoples" series.
2. Like the Bible, one can useChurchill to support various sides of aquestion. Some have said WSC wouldhave attacked Hitler when he marchedinto the Rhineland. Not quite. He washoping for cabinet office and publiclyurged no such action. Occasionallythere were times when even Churchillput politics before principle.
3. A good book on whetherChurchill, given plenary power in the1930s, could have prevented war isChurchill and Appeasement, by R.A.C.Parker ($18 from the CC Book Club).
Though Parker thinks WSC couldhave prevented the war, neither pro-posed a preemptive strike. Churchill be-lieved that firmness by the West wouldstop Hitler, allowing him to be toppledfrom within. That theory is historicallycontentious, but there is not a shred ofevidence that Churchill ever favored apreemptive strike against Germany.
4. The two situations are notstrictly comparable. Hitler was simulta-neously a far greater threat than Hus-sein, yet more "reasonable" in the viewof appeasers. They argued that after all,Hitler was willing to let the westerndemocracies live in peace (convenientlyignoring the implications of a Europeruled by Nazis). Today's fanatics seemmainly interested in killing us.
5. The Iraq debate really poses aquestion on which Churchill's experi-ence can't help us: can Iraq answer thefanatics' call for the tools to finish thejob? If Churchill knew for certain thatsuch an enemy had such tools, it doesn'ttake a wizard to imagine what he or anyresponsible leader would do. But on thisquestion hinges today's Iraq argument.And the answer has nothing to do withChurchill, —EDITOR
Old Men ForgetTORONTO, AUGUST 24TH— Canadian PrimeMinister Jean Chretien sacked FinanceMinister, Paul Martin, who had ambi-tions for his job. The Liberal Party con-stitution requires a leadership review byFebruary and most think Martin wouldbeat Chretien—so Chretien cleverly an-nounced he will resign: in February2004. Chretien hopes that by thenMartin, at 65 1/2, will be too old to beelected. (And you thought Canadianpolitics are dull?) I wrote as follows:
To the Editor, The Globe and Mail:Jeffrey Simpson ("No, Prime Minister")suggests that with Paul Martin reachingan age of 65 1/2 in February 2004, hemay be too old to be elected the Liberalleader and prime minister. A certainBritish politician assumed the premier-ship of his country the month he be-came 65 1/2. He became Time maga-zine's Man of the Half Century.
TERENCE REARDON
continued overleaf
FINEST HOUR H6/7
DATELINES
Glimpses: Billy GrahamMatt Fabian (mattaggie@hotmail.com) sends us this glimpse of Winston Churchill
in the early 1950s, by evangelist Billy Graham in his autobiography:I received a call from Jock Colville, secretary to the Prime Minister. "Would
you be available to join Mr. Churchill for lunch tomorrow noon?" "I'm honored," Isaid, "but that is impossible. We are leaving this evening for Scotland." Turningdown an invitation from Winston Churchill—that showed how exhausted I was!
Half an hour later the phone rang again. "Would you be able to meet with Mr.Churchill at noon today?" asked Mr. Colville. "He has a lunch scheduled at 12:30with the Duke of Windsor, but he can see you before that." I hardly had time to getnervous! Much later I learned from Mr. Colville's writings that Mr. Churchill hadhimself been nervous about the meeting. Apparently, the Prime Minister had pacedthe room, asking, "What do you talk about to an evangelist?"
When I arrived at Downing Street, I was reminded discreetly that the PrimeMinister had precisely twenty minutes. I was shown into a large, dimly lit cabinetroom. Mr. Churchill rose from his chair and shook my hand. I had not realizedwhat a short man he was; I towered over him. He motioned with an unlit cigar forme to sit next to him. It would be just the two of us, apparently. I noticed thatthree London afternoon dailies were spread out on a table next to him.
"Well, first," he said, in the marvelous voice I had heard so many times on theradio and in newsreels, "I want to congratulate you for these huge crowds you'vebeen drawing." "Oh, well, it's God's doing, believe me," I said.
"That may be," he replied, squinting at me, "but I daresay that if I broughtMarilyn Monroe over here, and she and I together went to Wembley, we couldn'tfill it." I laughed, trying to imagine the spectacle.
"Tell me, Rev. Graham, what is it that filled Harringay night after night?" "Ithink it's the Gospel of Christ," I told him without hesitation. "People are hungry tohear a word straight from the Bible. Almost all the clergy of this country used topreach it faithfully, but I believe they have gotten away from it."
"Yes," he said, sighing. "Things have changed tremendously. Look at thesenewspapers—nothing but murder and war and what the Communists are up to.You know, the world may one day be taken over by the Communists." I agreedwith him, but I did not feel free to comment on world politics. I merely nodded,and he continued: "I'll tell you, I have no hope. I see no hope for the world."
"Things do look dark," I agreed. I hesitated, not wanting to repeat the gaffe Ihad committed with President Truman just a few years before by being too directabout religion. We talked at length about the world situation, and then, as if oncue, the Prime Minister looked me in the eye. "I am a man without hope," he saidsomberly. "Do you have any real hope?"
He might have been talking geopolitically, but to me this sounded like a per-sonal plea. In the notes I jotted after the meeting, I recalled he referred to hopeless-ness no fewer than nine times. His bouts with depression are now well docu-mented, although I was not aware of them at the time.
"Are you without hope for your own soul's salvation?" "Frankly, I think aboutthat a great deal," he replied. I had my New Testament with me. Knowing that wehad but a few minutes left, I explained the way of salvation. I watched carefully forsigns of irritation or offense, but he seemed receptive, if not enthusiastic. I talkedabout God's plan for the future. His eyes seemed to light up at the prospect.
At precisely 12:30, Mr. Colville knocked. "Sir Winston, the Duke of Windsoris here for your luncheon," he said. "Let him wait!" Mr. Churchill growled, wavingMr. Colville off and turning back to me. I went on for about another 15 minutes,then asked if I could pray. "Most certainly," he said, standing up. "I'd appreciate it."
I prayed for the difficult situations the Prime Minster faced every day and ac-knowledged that God was the only hope for the world and for us individually. Mr.Churchill thanked me and walked me out. As we shook hands he leaned towardme. "Our conversations are private, aren't they?"
Erratum: Finest Hour 115.A line was dropped from the top of
page 36 of Paul Courtenay's review:"Earlier she reveals that he crossed thefloor," etc.
YousufKarsh, R.I.P.BOSTON, JULY 6TH (AP)—Photographer
Yousuf Karsh, an honorary member ofthe Churchill Center and Societies,who gained international prominencewith his 1941 portrait of a defiant Win-ston Churchill, has died at the age of93. Karsh passed away at Brigham andWomen's Hospital, said hospital spokes-woman Jacqui Fowler. His Europeanagent, Roger Eldridge, said Karsh diedof complications following surgery.
He was catapulted to internationalfame with his 1941 photograph ofChurchill, taken after the PM's 1941"Some Chicken—Some Neck!" speechto the Canadian Parliament as theBritish Empire stood alone against NaziGermany. Actually three photos weretaken but the "Angry Lion," a defiantChurchill, "appealed to the wholeworld," Karsh said in an interview withThe Associated Press in 1989. "Itcaught all the bulldog determination ofthe British Empire It was done with-out premeditation but with great admi-ration and respect." (For Karsh's recol-lections of the experience, and pho-tographs of all three photos taken inOttawa on that occasion, see "The Por-trait That Changed My Life," FinestHour 94.) —Robert O'Neill
FlNHSTtlOUR 116/8
DATELINES
Local & NationalChicago, November 22nd
Chicago Friends join those in An-chorage and Boston in celebrating Win-ston Churchill's 128th birthday at thehistoric Union League Club of Chicago.Their guest was Her Majesty's ConsulGeneral Robert Culshaw. Churchillspoke at the club, in the same building,in 1932, while visiting Chicago on across-country lecture tour. Chicago'sBritannia Club and English- SpeakingUnion are being invited. This is a"must" event for Churchillians through-out the Midwest. Please contact Philand Susan Larson at parker-fox@msn.com or 708-352-6825.
Chartwell Bulletin ReturnsMILTON, MASS., AUGUST 21ST-— Suzanne Sig-
man, director of New EnglandChurchillians, has contacted all activeChurchill Center events organizers inthe United States and Canada in orderto share ideas and approaches.
Mrs. Sigman has compiled ad-dresses, including e-mail where applica-ble. She suggests exchanging newslettersand invitations between regions, andmeetings of regional heads at interna-tional conferences. The first of thesewas held at the Virginia conference.
To promote local activity and pro-vide CC news, the Chartwell Bulletin(our "irregular quarterly" which ap-peared last year") wll be issued morefrequently. The next Chartwell Bulletinwill accompany our annual HeritageFund appeal. Later editions will briefmembers on business before TheChurchill Center and its Board.
Herewith an updated list of NorthAmerican contacts; we urge you to getin touch with them. If there is no localgroup in your area, consider organizingone. Address labels for local mailingsare available from our membership of-fice (see inside front cover)
North American ContactsAlaska: Judith & Jim Muller(afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu), 1518 AirportHeights Drive, Anchorage AK 99508;days: (907) 786-4740, eves: 272-7846.
CHURCHILL CALENDARLocal events organizers: please send upcoming event notices to the editor for posting here.
If address and email is not stated below, look for it on inside front cover.
30 November: Sir Winston Churchill's 128th birthday will be celebratedwith black tie dinners in Boston, Chicago, and Anchorage, Alaska. Contacts:
Alaska, James Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu), tel. (907) 786-4740.Boston, Suzanne Sigman (ssigman@attbi.com), tel. (617) 696-1833.
Chicago, Sue & Phil Larson (parker-fox@msn.com), tel. (708) 352-6825.
November 2003: 20th International Churchill Conference, Hamilton,Bermuda, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Bermuda Conference.
Contacts: David Boler (david.boler@ukgateway.net), tel. (0207) 558-3522and Randy Barber (randy.barber@cbs.gov.on.ca), tel. (905) 881-8550.
Br. Columbia: Chris & Dorothy Hebb(cavell_capital@ telus.com),Suite 1700, 1111 W. Georgia Street,Vancouver, BC V6E 4M3;days: (604) 209-6400.
California North: Michael Barrington(Majb7016@aol.com),34263 Eucalyptus Terr., Fremont CA 94555;days: (925) 825-4700,eves: (510) 791-2305.
California South: Jerry Kambestad(GDKamb@aol.com), 1172CamberaLane, Santa Ana CA 92705;days/eves: (714) 838-4741.
Chicago: Phil & Susan Larson(parker-fox@msn.com),22 Scottdale Road, LaGrange IL 60526;days/eves: (708) 352-6825.
Detroit: Gary Bonine9000 E. Jefferson, Apt. 28-6, DetroitMI 48214; days/eves: (313) 823-2951.
Florida: Merlin Olson(molson@dc.com), 213 CelebrationRoad, Celebration FL 34747;days/eves: (407) 566-0422.
Georgia: Gary Garrison(ccsgary@bellsouth.com),2364 Beechwood Drive,Atlanta GA 30062;days: (770) 378-8389, eves: 509-5430.
New England: Suzanne Sigman(ssigman@attbi.com), 42 DudleyLane, Milton MA 02186;days/eves: (617) 696-1833.
New York: Rita & Yale Kramer(rbkramer@nyc.rr.com), 320 CentralPark West, New York NY 10025;days/eves: (212) 787-3741.
Ohio North: Michael McMenamin(mtm@walterhav.com), 1300 TerminalTower, Cleveland OH 44113-2253;days: (216) 781-1212.
Texas North: Paula Restrepo,4520 Lorraine Avenue, Dallas TX75205; days/eves: (214) 522-7201.
Toronto: Norm & Jean MacLeod(jeana@direct.com)16 Glenlaura Court, Ashburn ONLOB 1AO, Canada;days/eves: (905) 655-4051.
Washington Society for Churchill:Caroline Hartzler(Hartzlercr@aol.com),5956 Coopers Landing Court,Burke, VA 22015;days/eves: (703) 503-9226.
New EnglandQUINCY, MASS, MAY 16TH— Forty CC mem-bers and friends enjoyed a sumptuousbuffet supper in the wardroom of thehistoric Sixth Fleet flagship, USS Salem,followed by an address by Dr. Christo-pher Bell of the U.S. Naval War Col-lege in Newport, Rhode Island: "Win-ston Churchill and the Royal Navy."Chris, who recently published TheRoyal Navy: Seapower and Strategy Be-tween the Wars, traced Churchill's naval
continued overleaf
F I N E S T H O U R i i 6 / 9
DATELINES
Right: Chris Bellcareer, and engagedin a lively Q&Asession afterward.USS Salem (CA139) isaQuincy-built, Des Moinesclass heavy cruiser,launched in 1947.She had a distin-guished career with the Sixth Fleet inthe Mediterranean and the Second Fleetin the Atlantic. USS Salem was also the"star" of the movie, "Graf Spee."
BOSTON, AUGUST 30TH— Forty gathered tohear a team of scholars—MichaelMoses, Clifford Orwin and Mark Blitz—examine Churchill's The River War.The question before the house was:how relevant is this tale of war with fa-natical Muslims relevant to our presentpredicament? The moderator was theeditor of Finest Hour, who as usual triedto put the panelists on guard and getthem to argue with each other. Butmost of the arguing was by a seriousyoung man who inquired if World WarII had been worth fighting, since "weended up bombing innocent civiliansjust like the enemy." (This reminded usof Churchill's remark when asked thesame question in 1940: "If we left offfighting you'd soon find out!")
That evening at the Harvard Clubof Boston, CC members and friendsgathered to hear Professor Patrick Pow-ers of Magdalen College, New Hamp-shire, speak about Savrola, Churchill'sonly novel, which is also to be pub-lished next year in a fine new edition,through the efforts of The ChurchillCenter and St. Augustine Press.
Northern OhioCLEVFXAND, OCTOBER 1ST— Carol Breck-enridge, who has interviewed LadySoames on the subject, led a book dis-cussion of Winston and Clementine: ThePersonal Letters of the Churchills, at Ter-minal Tower this evening. The usual se-lection of sandwiches was on the menuand the wine was still free! For futureCleveland events, or if you want tostage one, call Alexis at Michael McMe-namin's office: (216) 928-2947. M>
The receiver runningChester Barrie, the
AROUND & ABOUTSavile Row tailor best known for designing Winston Churchill's "sirensuits," was given ten days to make a firm offer or the company would beclosed, The Times reported on June 8th. Fire sale, anyone?
• • •
On July 5th Janet Conant, granddaughter of the great Harvardpresident James Conant who hosted Churchill when he deliv-ered his famous 1943 speech on Anglo-American Unity, was inter-viewed on National Public Radio. She has a new book, Tuxedo Park,about Loomis and the development of radar. Ms. Conant did her credibility littlegood when she explained that in 1940, while Roosevelt was sending beleagueredBritain supplies, they were being destroyed by "U-2 submarines." Ewe too shouldknow that the U-2 was a postwar spy-aircraft.
• * •
Eliot Cohen's new book, Supreme Command (reviewed this issue) carries a curious ref-erence: "The existence of an International Churchill Society (complete with annualconferences, a glossy magazine, and a souvenir shop selling Action This Day' stickers)embodies the kind of hero worship that most historians instinctively reject—this is allthe more upsetting in view of Churchill's indubitably checkered career." We've beentold this refers to other historians, not Cohen. But Supreme Command winds up ex-tolling Churchill's "ability to touch the hearts of men and women...strengths as a warleader...skill at questioning and challenging professional subordinates...courage that isnothing less than magnificent...indomitable spirit...the greatest war statesman of thecentury." This is not hero-worship, mind you, just scholarly historical analysis.
• • *
Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, President-for-Life Robert Mugabe has scrubbed the Queenand Churchill from local institutions and replaced them with the name of Hitler andassorted henchmen. Winston Churchill High School in Harare (Salisbury) will nowbe named for Josiah Tongorare, Mugabe's 1970s guerrilla commander; and QueenElizabeth Girls' High will be Sally Mugabe Girl's High, named for the President'sfirst wife. Although former Southern Rhodesia prime minister Sir Gerald Todd (at 93still among the whites Mugabe hasn't expelled) is being honored with a school in hisname, Zimbabwe's most notorious thugs are feted. Another school is named for Chen-jerai Hitler Hunzvi, the klansman who led the invasion of white-owned farms.
• • •
On May 7th Christopher Hitchens observed on "Imus in the Morning" that KingGeorge and Queen Elizabeth supported Neville Chamberlain in 1939-40, and thatnone of the tributes to the late Queen Mum managed to mention that she and theKing threw a big reception for Chamberlain when he returned from Munich bearingPeace in Our Time (ours did; see FH 114:5); that she never had to open a door forherself; and that he too could manage a few smiles and waves if that were his lot inlife. Although she and the King did spend an afternoon visiting the blitzed East End,when the King said, "They bombed my house, too," the question Cockneys asked himwas, "Which one?" As in Hitchens's Atlantic Monthly piece on Churchill, there aregrains of truth scattered amongst the class envy.
• * •
The controversial 80th birthday portrait of Churchill by Graham Sutherland was sopainful to Sir Winston that Lady Churchill destroyed it after his death. But in 1954,according to a cutting sent by news editor John Frost, the problem bothering Britonswas that it had no feet! Churchill, said one London source, "seems to be thinking ofsomething and about to spring out of his chair to do something strenuous aboutit...but no feet." Sutherland told newsmen that the feet once were there, but hethought they destroyed the balance of head and hands so he painted them out, endingvaguely at the trouser cuffs. Lady Churchill took care of the rest in 1965. $
FINEST HOUR i i6 /10
RIDDLES,
MYSTERIES,
ENIGMASSend your questionsto the editor
Q^What did Churchill say about• those who trade honor for peace
having neither in the end?
A a Two quotations spring to mind.• "They that can give up essential
liberty to obtain a little temporary safetydeserve neither liberty nor safety" wastracked to Benjamin Franklin by twomembers of our Churchill Listserv (e-mail discussion group), Evan Quenonand Anthony Calabrese. Bartlett's(http://www.bartleby.eom/100/245.l.htm)says it was used during the AmericanRevolution, as early as 1755.The second likely quotation was truly byChurchill, originating in August 1938,before Munich: "I think we shall have tochoose in the next few weeks betweenwar and shame, and I have very littledoubt what the decision will be." (WSCto Lloyd George, 13Aug38. Gilbert,Winston S. Churchill, CompanionVolume V Part 3: 1117.)
A month later Churchill wrote toLord Moyne: "We seem to be very nearthe bleak choice between War andShame. My feeling is that we shallchoose Shame, and then have Warthrown in a little later on even moreadverse terms than at present."(1 lSep38, explaining why visitingMoyne in Antigua might be problem-atic, op. cit., page 1155.) It is oftenbelieved that Churchill addressed thisremark to Chamberlain directly afterMunich. It appears not so.
/'~"\ ^ I would be keenly interested inW • knowing the contents ofChurchill's library. Does Chartwell havean inventory? —Judy Dean
A Years ago I spent a day in the• Chartwell libraries with the late
Michael Wybrow, checking oddball for-eign language editions, but the books
present are not representative of books inChurchill's day. When WSC died his sonRandolph inherited the library and tookaway many books which he later soldwith a bookplate, "from the library of SirWinston Churchill." Some shelves atChartwell were filled with odds andends, packed tight to discourage tamper-ing: multiple copies of The Anglo-SaxonReview, for example. When we lastasked, Chartwell's staff were not keenabout returning the library to originalstandards, but there are some things tolook for when you visit. The glass case inthe study contains some very fine edi-tions and presentation copies. The"museum" section of the former kitchen-houses a representative collection ofChurchill's books donated by Governorsof The Churchill Center. WSC had col-lections of books on his father and theFirst Duke of Marlborough, which hedonated to the Library at 10 DowningStreet (see Trivia #1196, FH 112/113).Now at Churchill College is his collectionon Napoleon, whose biography he wantedto write but never found the time.
What books did Winston• Churchill read?
A lt depends on what period you• mean. Lord Moran discovered
Churchill in bed in 1949 readingOrwell's 1984, for what was already hissecond time. Anthony Montague Brownselected books for Churchill to read inretirement, including /, Claudius andClaudius the God by Robert Graves.Someone once got into a car with thePM during the Second War and foundhim with a copy of Huckleberry Finn. Ihave often wondered if it was from theinscribed "Complete Works" he wasgiven by Mark Twain himself at the turnof the century. —David Freeman
Violet Bonham Carter relates in herWinston Churchill As I Knew Him/AnIntimate Portrait (1965) that she quoted"Ode to a Nightingale" to WSC, whohad never heard of it; next time they met"he had learned not merely this but allthe odes of Keats by heart—and he recit-ed them quite mercilessly from start tofinish, not sparing me a syllable." At thesame time, of course, he had "brushedup his Shakespeare." —Evan Quenon
Churchill read Punch as a young-ster. He was captivated by the politicalcartoons, especially those depicting theAmerican Civil War. When he was near-ly 13, Winston asked his mother for acopy of General Grant's memoirs which,thanks to Mark Twain, were published.He certainly read G.F.R. Henderson'shistory on Stonewall Jackson, in 1898,and much else of that ilk. When Sen.Harry F. Byrd, Jr. of Virginia visitedChurchill in 1951, he was astonished byhow much the PM knew about our LateUnpleasantness.
—Richard H. Knight, Jr.
Qi-I am assisting Jon Meacham of
i Newsweek with a book aboutChurchill and Roosevelt, and we arewondering if there were any books theyboth read as schoolboys? —Mike Hill
A First, look in Churchill's autobiog-• raphy, My Early Life: A Roving
Commission, first published in 1930 butcurrently in print and widely available.Concentrate on the chapters up through"Education at Bangalore." Next, look inthe official biography, especially vol. 1and its companions. Third, you mightglean something from my essay,"Backward and Precocious,: WinstonChurchill at School," The World & I,vol. 12, no. 12 (December 1997), pp.290-317; reprinted as "WinstonChurchill at School" in Morton A.Kaplan, ed., Character and Identity:Sociological Foundations of Literary andHistorical Perspectives (St. Paul: ParagonHouse Publishers, 2000), pp. 83-111.
—James W Muller
It would certainly be interesting tolearn of any books which both Churchilland Roosevelt read in their youth. WhileFDR's boyhood books may very well beintact at Hyde Park, Churchill's are alasscattered to the winds. Unfortunately,Harrow's curriculum in 1888-1892 isnot the full picture: young Churchilltended to read what he liked—whichwas not always what was assigned to himat school. Certainly both must have reada lot of American Civil War literature(see above). Churchill as a boy was a fanof Henty and Rider Haggard novels;does anyone know if young FranklinRoosevelt was also? —RML H
FINEST HOUR 116/11
125-100-75-50 YEARS AGO
.-'wp H W ^ - '^^" Micnae; McMenamin
125 Years Ago:
Autumn 1877'Age 2
"Mad or Singularly Affected"
Winston's father, Lord Randolph,is most often quoted on matters
Irish with the words "Ulster will fightand Ulster will be right," predictingviolent resistance to Irish Home Rule.Yet in autumn 1877, Lord Randolphgave a speech on Ireland where, asWinston wrote in his biography of hisfather, he "expressed his opinion...withunguarded freedom, much to the aston-ishment and displeasure of his family."
Lord Randolph sided with a smallnumber of Irish MPs were using much-criticized tactics to obstruct business inthe House of Commons: "I have nohesitation in saying that it is inattentionto Irish legislation that has producedobstruction. There are great and cryingIrish questions which the Governmenthave not attended to, do not seem to beinclined to attend to and perhaps donot intend to attend to." Winston thenparaphrases his father: "Truths, he said,were always unpalatable, and he whospoke them very seldom got muchthanks; but that did not render themless true. England had years of wrong,years of crime, years of tyranny, years ofoppression, years of general misgovern-ment to make amends for inIreland....It was for these reasons thathe should propose no extreme measuresagainst Irish members, believing as hedid that the cure for obstruction lay notin threats, not in hard words, but inconciliatory legislation."
Lord Randolph's father, the Dukeof Marlborough (Lord-Lieutenant ofIreland, where Randolph served as hisprivate secretary) was astonished. In aletter to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, hewrote, "The only excuse I can find forRandolph is that he must either be mador have been singularly affected withlocal Champagne or claret. I can onlysay that the sentiments he has indulgedin are purely his own; and, more thanthis, I was as much amazed as you inreading them, and had no conceptionthat he entertained such opinions."
But Lord Randolph, his sonwrites, "by no means withdrew or mod-ified what he had said" in the face ofcriticism. In a letter to the MorningPost, he wrote: "You remark, further,that what I called 'unpalatable plaintruths' were certainly unpalatable, butwere not true. Yet the misgovernmentof Ireland before the Act of Union, andthe methods used to pass that Act, arenow matters of history. These were twoof my 'plain truths'; and the third, thatthe great questions on which Irish feel-ing is most deeply interested have beenneglected during the last four years, isin my opinion equally undeniable."
100 Years Ago:
Autumn 1902-Age 27
"Mind you gush to him"
From Balmoral Castle, where he wason holiday with the King, Churchill
wrote to his mother with helpful sug-gestions on how she should communi-
cate to the King, when next they met,Churchill's feelings about his visit withthe King: "You will see the King onWeds when he comes to Invercauld;mind you gush to him about my havingwritten to you saying how much etc etcI had enjoyed myself here."
Later that autumn, Churchillwrote to a constituent elaborating uponhis views on Free Trade, the issue overwhich he would leave the ConservativeParty for the Liberal Party two yearslater: "[I]t would seem to me a fantasticpolicy to endeavour to shut the BritishEmpire up in a ringed fence. It is verylarge, and there are a good many thingswhich can be produced in it, but theworld is larger & produces some betterthings than can be found in the BritishEmpire. Why should we deny ourselvesthe good and varied merchandise whichthe traffic of the world offers, moreespecially since the more we trade withothers, the more they must trade withus; for it is quite clear that we give themsomething else back for everything theygive to us. Our planet is not a very bigone compared with the other celestialbodies, and I see no particular reasonwhy we should endeavour to makeinside our planet a smaller planet calledthe British Empire, cut off by impass-able space from everything else."
75 Years Ago:
Autumn 1902 • Age
"The Finest Entertainment
the House can Offer"
27
Churchill continued to push in theCabinet for a massive tax cut as the
centerpiece of his 1928 budget — "avast reduction of rates upon producers."He was aided in his endeavors by hispopularity both at large and in theHouse of Commons. This was acknowl-edged by a Cabinet colleague, NevilleChamberlain, the Minister of Health,who opposed the tax cut, and wrote in aletter to Lord Irwin:
"Winston remains the figure mostinteresting to the general public. I thinkhe has materially improved his position
FINJ-STHOUR 116/12
125-100-75-50 YEARS AGO
in the party, and it is admitted on allsides that he has no equal in the House.His manner with the opposition is sogood-humoured that although theyoften interrupt him, they look forwardto his speeches as the finest entertain-ment the House can offer."
In September, Clementine wentto Venice for six weeks on doctor'sorders to recuperate from an accidentthat summer where she had been hit bya bus while shopping. She wantedWinston to come with her; he jour-neyed first to Scotland in lateSeptember for four days of stag huntingand fishing before joining her in Veniceon 6 October where, Martin Gilberttells us, "For ten days he swam, paintedand wrote more of his autobiography."
Five days after his return fromVenice, Churchill wrote to his wifeabout his problems persuading hisCabinet colleagues to accept the reduc-tions in expenditures his tax cut wouldrequire. "I am almost certain that theCabinet Committee and the Cabinetwill endorse my views. There may be avery stiff tension before it is settled, andreally I think I am bound to fight thispretty hard. It looks as if I am going toget through all right but this must notbe proclaimed. I have to talk beggaryand bankruptcy for the next fewmonths. I have had some awful blowsin expense, now from this quarter, nowfrom that. Luckily however there arewindfalls and what we lose on theswings we shall perhaps more thanrecover on the roundabouts." Churchillthen added, in what was undoubtedlyan unnecessary comparison, givenClementine's oft-expressed concern forthe state of their household exchequer:"It is really very like our private affairsthough on a larger scale...."
A strong opponent of Churchill'stax cut was the Admiralty, owing to hisproposed moratorium on building newships until 1929. In November, hewrote to the Attorney General, SirDouglas Hogg, opposing the immedi-ate construction of a six-inch-gun cruis-er when eight-inch-gun cruisers werebecoming the new international stan-dard. "Judged by the test of navalstrength, it seems a very great pity to
order a vessel definitely weaker than thecontemporary type of other Powers'....It may be wrong to make weapons ofwar, but it is certainly stupid deliberate-ly to make weapons which will be out-matched."
Meanwhile, Churchill continuedto attack the Socialists in public speech-es. In Nottingham on 21 October, hesaid: "Freedom as we know it is incom-patible with a Socialist State. I loathethe canting insincerity of the Socialistsand their pretensions of superiority.They make out that they are a kind ofbeautiful, visionary, noble school ofdreamers all living a life so much high-er than any to which the ordinary manand woman can aspire, preaching fra-ternity and hating each other like poi-son [laughter], talking to us onemoment in the terms of the Sermon onthe Mount and the next in the terms ofthe disgusting blasphemies used in theSocialist Sunday Schools."
50 Years Ago:Autumn 1952-Age 77"I think this makes warmuch more probable"
"VV7"7hen General Eisenhower was^ t y elected President in November,
Churchill sent a warm cable of congrat-ulations to his wartime colleague. "Ilook forward to a renewal of our com-radeship and of our work together forthe same causes of peace and freedom asin the past." Privately, however,Churchill was concerned, telling hissecretary, John Colville: "For your pri-vate ear, I am greatly disturbed. I thinkthis makes war much more probable."
In a live, televised speech at theLord Mayor's Banquet at the Guildhallon 10 November, Churchill spoke ofwhat was needed to preserve the peace:"NATO embraces all active, livingmovements toward the unity of the freenations of Europe, in which I havealways felt the hopes of a lasting peacereside... Any man in Germany orFrance or Britain who tries to hamper
or delay that healing process is guilty ofundermining the foundations uponwhich the salvation of all mankindfrom war and tyranny depends. Everyaddition to the strength of NATOincreases the deterrents against aggres-sion on which our hopes and convic-tions stand."
Churchill had tried to make upfor his distant relationship with hisfather by being close to his own son,Randolph. But after the war their rela-tionship had deteriorated, as evidencedby a long letter Randolph sent his father50 years ago: "...it has been a growingsource of grief to me that ever since youfirst became Prime Minister you haverepeatedly made it clear to me-& toothers —that you no longer have thatsame desire for my company in privateor in public which between 1923 &1940 was the chief delight & pivot ofmy existence....I realize too that youregard me as a failure & that you can-not disguise this view entirely success-fully from other people. Failure is ofcourse a relative term & I should havethought that if you ever had time tocast an eye over the children of yourpolitical contemporaries you couldscarcely regard my failure as absolute.....Can't you understand the maladjust-ment, the frustration, yes even (recent-ly) the jealously that urges the bile ofresentment when one's love is scornedas worthless & the person one lovesscarcely troubles to hide from friend orfoe the indifference or hostility whichhe feels? All this permeates the fabric ofour relationship. Usually a father & songet on well; (it is an easier relationshipthan marriage) &, if their interests hap-pen to lie in the same direction, therelationship is that of partners. (Beforethe war this was virtually achieved.)Now all is changed to a horribledegree....Except for money, over whichyou have always been supremely gener-ous, I don't think I have ever asked youfor anything. I ask something now: thatyou should try to understand me as Iam (and not as you imagine I am orthink I ought to be): that you shouldtry once more to show me the love &trust which you brought me up toexpect value above all else...." $5
F I N E S T H O U R I 16 / 1 3
AS OTHERS SAW HIM
ENGLANDER"An Abundantly Full Life":
Churchill Through German Eyes
Part I: The Man
RUDOLF KIRCHER
For some reason it is difficult not to smile when Win-ston Churchill is mentioned. Not because he cannotbe taken seriously, nor because during the Great
War he talked of the "rat holes" in which the GermanFleet was hiding, nor because many people in England saythat he has made himself ridiculous more often than otherpoliticians and statesmen; nor is it because he has a likingfor monstrous collars and a tendency to embonpoint. Oh,no! All that is to some extent untrue, and to some extentunimportant.
There are people who smile just as automaticallywhen they speak of a funeral as when they hear beautifulmusic. Evidently, direct contact with a bit of genuine lifeis what sometimes compels us to smile involuntarily. It iscertainly so in the case of Winston Churchill. He is adiplomat, but in spite of that, we see him more clearly ashe really is than any other Englishman of importance.Churchill typifies real life in England. A good deal abouthim is sham, but it may also be said that nothing abouthim is false.
He is thoroughly English in appearance, like thepictures of John Bull on the posters of a whisky firm:broad-shouldered, very massive and not at all "smart." Heis not made up in any way, everything about him is nat-ural. That, as one knows, is un-English nowadays—butwhat is English about him stands out all the more clearly.
Winston Churchill has been called an eternal boy.There are many such in England. He is a great lover ofgames, particularly polo, which he understands the least.His failing, so people say, is that he tries to do things hedoes not understand, particularly as a statesman. But whois to do things, if they are always to be kept for those whoknow something about them? Churchill has one qualitywhich matters more than anything else: he is capable oflearning the things he does not know.
Englilnder, first published in German, was translated with revisionsand additions by Constance Vessey and published by Collins in newYork in 1928. The illustrations opposite, from the time the book waspublished, appeared in The Graphic, 15 March 1924.
He is as versatile as a journalist; he sees the essen-tial. He really is equal to his posts, and there are few Eng-lishmen who have filled more posts, just as there are fewEnglish soldiers who have taken active part in more cam-paigns and wars than this child of nature, who, inciden-tally, is already over fifty years of age. The Colonial Office,Board of Trade, Admiralty, Home Office, War Ministry,Treasury, Cuba, the Punjab, Bajaur, the Sudan, SouthAfrica, Antwerp, the House of Commons, and innumer-able constituencies—all these have been his battlefields asa soldier, a statesman, an official, and a politician.
Against the many possibilities open to the son ofLord Randolph Churchill, a descendant of the Dukes ofMarlborough, is the fact that he had to struggle for yearsagainst a defect of speech, and nervousness when speakingin public. Yet with the number of books and articles hehas written, his speeches, and the enormous amount ofwork such a life involves—to say nothing of the socialcommitments and the occasional accidents to which hissporting tastes expose him—it may be said with sometruth that his is an abundantly full life. Over and above itall, Winston is a painter. Courtesy, however, forbids fur-ther comment on this.
His courage and indifference to danger is his moststriking quality. He is a living illustration of Dean Inge'stheory that man is "a splendid fighting animal, holy," andat the same time "satanic." Churchill's courage is not onlythe courage of a man who goes into battle with his fellowmen; he is equally brave when he is single-handed, even ifhe has to swim against the current.
We need only recall how he defended the cause ofthe Boers, against whom he had fought on the field ofbattle (and who had taken him prisoner); how he attackedKitchener for desecrating the dead Mahdi's tomb after theBattle of Omdurman; how he defied public opinion inspite of the menacing attitude of the excited crowd.
That was at Birmingham, in the stormy days ofthe "People's Budget," years before the war. Churchill andLord Robert Cecil were to speak in the Town Hall. A furi-ous crowd had assembled outside. Lord Robert got intothe hall by the back door under police protection, whileChurchill drove up in an open carriage, quite alone,through the crowd, showing no sign of fear or anxiety. Itwas "a challenge that might have ended in his beinglynched," A. G. Gardiner says. The people were speechlessfor a moment, then they broke into loud cheers. The Eng-lish spirit!
It is said of him that wherever he goes, "it smellsof powder." Every country in which he sets foot becomesa battleground, full of adventure, full of daring, full ofsurprises: action, activity, ambition to do great deeds!"Don't reflect, but act! That is the new gospel." So saysGardiner with a disapproving frown.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson was thepreacher of this new doctrine, Churchill his obedient dis-
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FINEST HOUR I 16 /15
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ciple. It is not the author's business to defend Bergson,but to say that Churchill acts without reflecting wouldnot be altogether correct. It may be a description that ap-plies to the English Diehards—the Tories who, whether itbe due to port and whisky, or to patriotic emotion, alwayssee red—and perhaps occasionally to Winston in hisyounger days, but not to the riper man of whom Side-botham says, with some justification, that his political ar-teries are becoming calcified.
The truth is rather that he throws himself with ex-traordinary energy into everything that he does. Socialpolicy in his Radical days as a friend and fellow worker ofLloyd George's, Antwerp and Gallipoli during the war, orhis Finance Bill of 1925, in fact everything, is a matter oflife and death to him. In a country where the art of livingis so thoroughly understood, such a nature must alwayscome to the front again, no matter how often it may bedriven back by fate. And what he does is never without re-flection. Antwerp and Gallipoli were terribly costly mis-takes, but the fundamental idea was good, namely, tostrike where the German flank was exposed, and upset theCentral Powers' oriental policy.
Churchill is particularly keen and quick-witted indebate, but, unlike the greatest of all extemporary speak-ers, Lloyd George, he would never dream of making aspeech without the most careful preparation and thought,even if it meant writing it out half a dozen times. He hassuch a natural gift for expressing himself vigorously, and atthe same time with literary distinction, that the passageshe has studied the most carefully always give the impres-sion of beng uttered under the influence of a momentaryinspiration.
He is not cultivated in the sense of being an ac-complished scholar. After he left Harrow he had no fur-ther need for Attic culture, and he turned to Sparta, toSandhurst. The classic answer he gave, when he was askedat Harrow what profession he had in mind, was "Thearmy, of course, as long as there is any fighting going on."After that, "I shall have a shot at politics." Westminster re-echoes with this "shot" today.
But when it is not actually a question of the So-cialists, whom Churchill hates like a pestilence, he shootspleasantly enough, better than any of the others, becauseof his delightfully mischievous irony, which often disarms,and forces even his adversaries to smile. Witty sallies ofthis kind are amongst the daily refreshments provided inParliament—no one enjoys them more than Labourshadow chancellor Philip Snowden—and Churchill is aspecially liberal contributor to this form of politicalrestorative and stimulant.
Churchill is more Radical than dogmatic by na-ture, consequently not a man born to belong to any oneparticular Party. He began as a Conservative, like his fa-ther, and forsook that path, probably feeling that the nat-ural place for a man of his ambition and activity was
amongst those ruling the country. From 1906 the Liberalswere in office, and they would probably still be in power ifthe war had not broken the backbone of the Party.
He was not satisfied with a humble place on theright wing of the Liberals, amongst the Whigs and Impe-rialists like Sir Edward Grey, Haldane, and McKenna; hisimpulsive temperament led him to join the most Radicalof them, Lloyd George, and those who were trying to pre-vent Labour from drifting towards Socialism by a wise so-cial policy. This political foundation broke down, andChurchill was one of those most eager to find a fresh par-liamentary point d'appui, a Party with which somethingworth doing might be attempted, and which would findsufficient favour with the masses to be a serious rival tothe young Labour Party.
Hence the idea of a Centre Party—Birkenhead,Home, Churchill, and Lloyd George. It was an ingeniousidea, but too self-centred. Feeling in the English con-stituencies was strongly against the idea of creating a newParty, for the benefit of a clique, which would have de-stroyed the classic English Party system, for the sake of anorganisation with an uncertain future. The natural result
FINHST HOUR 116/16
"Where is the great moralpurpose, the higher spiritual aimwhich ought surely to be somehowand somewhere apparent in the
life of a really great man?..."What is it all for? Why
this constant readiness to fight?What are the aims for which
this immense power is exerted?Are they holy or satanic,
spiritual or worldly, noble orselfish, or merely a matter of
chance, of indifference?It is on the answer to thisthat his future depends.It is slow in coming."
was that Churchill went back to those who had a prospectof holding office in the near future, the ConservativeParty. He is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is saidto be the future Conservative Premier.
All this looks worse than it really is. Party is toChurchill only an unavoidable, and, as far as he is con-cerned, undesirable means to an end; he himself always re-mains Winston Churchill, so he thinks. The gradual lossof his Radicalism and bold independence of mind may beput down either to the political calcification already men-tioned, or be regarded as the natural consequence of hischange of Party. The choice is between the two.
He is becoming more and more the Englishman ofthe class to which he belongs. Does this meanthat he is getting slack? Or will he be a powerful
driving force in his new Party? Is it possible that a timemay come when the indomitable energy of a Churchillwill achieve the rejuvenation of Conservatism that Bald-win is trying to effect, but without the same strength?
His great difficulty will be to avoid being spoilt byhis success, and gradually becoming indifferent. That
would be a loss to England, for she has not too many menof genius. Lloyd George succumbed to the war-fanatics.Will the passion for money making, which threatens to bethe ruin of English Conservatism, bring about Churchill'sdownfall?
There is much room for doubt, for with all his re-markable gifts, with all his force of character and practicalability, Winston Churchill's personality is unfathomable.Try as one may to grasp it, it is always a case of groping inempty space. Where is the great moral purpose? Where isthe higher spiritual aim which ought surely to be some-how and somewhere apparent in the life of a really greatman? He seems to have more power of assimilating ideasthan of originating them, to be more a man who graspsthe ideas suggested to him with unusual rapidity, than onewho inspires them.
That would be a limitation, but he might still be aman of considerable importance. The real question is:what is it all for? Why this constant readiness to fight?What are the aims for which this immense power is ex-erted? Are they holy or satanic, spiritual or worldly, nobleor selfish, or merely a matter of chance, of indifference? Itis on the answer to this that his future depends. It is slow
in comingW i n s t o n may still be a boy, in spite of his fifty
years, bu t history will have to pass sentence on h im beforelong. He has reached the real turning point , which will de-cide whether he is a statesman or merely a shrewd politi-cian. In the case of Baldwin the question hardly arises; asregards Lloyd George the answer threatens to be tragical.But Churchil l has a chance of climbing to great heights.His past is no t against h im. T h e talk of his being an incor-rigible militarist trying to bring about war is exaggerated.
Margot Asquith tells us that on the 14th of August1914, she saw h i m going to a Cabine t meet ing "with ahappy face." More than one face was happy on that day,for, now that the die had been cast, m e n of energy,courage, and strength were needed. To Wins ton Churchil li t meant more than that: to unders tand wha t he felt, wemus t tu rn to his book, The World Crisis. It is a notablework, certainly the best wri t ten of all the books on thewar. Anyth ing more heart-rending than the pre-war his-tory, in to which he gives us an insight in the first twohundred pages, can hardly be imagined. Churchi l l is no tby any means one of those w h o abuse Germany, or at-tr ibute the sole responsibility for the war to her. Hemerely describes the events which took place dur ing theyears preceding the war, in the light in which they ap-peared to a p r o m i n e n t m e m b e r of the British Cabinet ,and relates how a friend of Germany and of peace was dri-ven, as he believed, into a posit ion in which he felt b o u n dto do his u tmost to strengthen Britain's a rmaments , unti lthe terrible collision occurred.
Next issue: Kircher on The World Crisis. $5
FINEST HOUR 116/17
COVER STORY
uThis Demi-Paradise": LullendenWinston and. Clementine Cnurcnili s First Country Home
ROGER WILKES
Lullenden is a heart-of-oak house with all the yeo-man qualities of its most celebrated owner, WinstonChurchill, who lived there from the spring of 1917
until November 1919. Unlike Chartwell, which Churchillbought in 1924, it is neither great nor particularly grand.But it is old, warm and welcoming.
When Churchill bought Lullenden, a Tudormanor set in 77 acres of south-east Surrey, with the helpof his mother, he was 42 and fighting in the First WorldWar. No longer ruler of The King's Navy—he had re-signed as First Lord of the Admiralty over the Gallipoli fi-asco and the Dardanelles—he stormed off to command abattalion at the front. Chastened and widely vilified, "theescaped scapegoat" had no wish to stay in the cabinet, and
Mr. Wilkes's article appeared in The Daily Telegraph of 20 October2001, and is reprinted by kind permission of The Telegraph GroupLtd. Other articles on Lullenden appear in FH48, 93, 103, and 110.
hoped to find glory in uniform instead.But having installed his wife and family in the
country, by July 1917 he was back in government as Min-ister of Munitions—something of an irony as the point ofbuying Lullenden was to move his children away from thebombing raids on London.
Churchill's wife Clementine helped entertain hisimportant visitors at Lullenden. War or no war, she lovedthe gardens that enclosed the house and gave the familyprivacy. "On Saturday, I want you to take me to Crawleyin the motor," she instructed Churchill in July 1918, "tosee Cheal's Nursery Gardens. I want to buy some littlerock plants to put in the chinks everywhere."
Their children, Diana, eight, Randolph, six, andthree-year-old Sarah, were joined at Lullenden by theircousins, Johnnie and Peregrine, aged eight and three, thesons of Churchill's brother, Jack, and his wife Goonie(known in the family as "the Jagoons"). Apparently, the
FINEST HOUR 116/18
five of them made such a noise that Churchill installedthem in the barn—now a four-bedroom house—alongwith the family's Scottish nanny, Isabelle, so that at week-ends, when he returned from his ministerial duties, hecould think great thoughts in the main house undisturbed.
To relax, he painted (at least three of his picturesof Lullenden have survived) and planted. In the woodedgrounds, Churchill's wild white cherry trees, white mag-nolias, crimson Japanese azaleas and blood-red Britanniarhododendrons (one of Clementine's favourites) still giveblazes of colour in season.
"Any weekends he was not in France, Winstonspent at Lullenden, which was conveniently situated nearthe airfields of Penshurst and Godstone," his daughterMary Soames, born in 1922, recalled. Churchill clearlyenjoyed them. "Dearest & best beloved," he wrote toClementine from Paris towards the end of the war, "let meknow what plans you make for Lullenden next Sunday."
The children went to school in the nearby villageof Dormansland in a pony and trap. Here, at the age offive, Randolph discovered that his father was differentfrom other fathers. "Will you be my chum?" Randolphasked another little boy. The child refused, explaining:"Your father murdered my father."
"What do you mean?""At the Dardanelles."But not all Randolph's memories of Lullenden
were so dark. He recalled playing a variant of hide-and-seek with his father in the wooded grounds, and remem-bered returning from school one day to find the gardenerup a ladder nailing a Union Flag to a flagpole to celebratethe Armistice.
The heart of the nine-bedroom house is the greathall. A soaring, double-height room with a vaultedceiling, it is lit by a wrought-iron electrolier sus-
pended from a great oak tie-beam and warmed by a roar-ing fire set in the inglenook that, at eight feet wide, wouldroast half an ox. The date 1624 is cut into the massive oakbressummer, while the iron fire-back is dated 1582, furtherevidence of Lullenden's Elizabethan origins.
Up the oak staircase is the 27-foot master bedroomwhere the Great Man slept. Double-aspect win-dows give views across the countryside, and to
one side of the massive bed, a tiny Judas-window allows aglimpse down into the great hall.
In the postwar Government, Churchill was ap-pointed Secretary of State for War and Air, dealing with,among other things, the demobilisation of nearly three anda half million soldiers. But in the midst of his turbulentpublic life, he suffered a great domestic blow. Isabelle, whohad been the Churchills' nanny for years, died suddenly inthe flu epidemic of 1919. Later that year Winston andClementine decided reluctantly to sell Lullenden.
"I feel very anxious about our private affairs,"wrote Clementine to her husband. "It's clear we are fartoo much extended." But it seems not to have been sim-ply a question of money. Perhaps because of the chaoticlife they led, between London and the country, Franceand England, Lullenden had become run down.
Their new head gardener had insisted on a majoroverhaul of the grounds, ploughing up some of the fieldsto sow corn and employing labourers for the heavy work.This energetic man moved the greenhouse with his ownhands, telling Clementine that, without these changes,"the place will always be a dead weight of expense," butthat "afterwards it will certainly pay."
With Churchill so busy elsewhere, Clementinehad taken the gardener on without her husband seeinghim first. While she admired the gardener's "great decisionand apparent knowledge," she felt browbeaten. "If we sellLullenden," she told her husband, "we can pass this tyranton with the place!" In the end, it came to a hard choice."It's no use going on in this moribund condition." So, atthe end of 1919, the Churchills sold Lullenden to theirold friends, General Sir Ian and Lady Hamilton.
Today, Lullenden, one of the few small countryestates to have survived intact, is for sale again. "Thehouse is manageable," says Gavin Selbie, a partner atKnight Frank's Tunbridge Wells office, "but it's also gotthe space. It offers an idyllic rural lifestyle, and for a fam-ily, Lullenden is magic." Mi
FINEST HOUR 116/19
OUR PATRON AT EIGHTY
"FATHER ALWAYS
CAME FIRST,
SECOND AND THIRD77
As Churchill's daughter, Mary Soames
had the run of 10 Downing Street
and helped arrange dinner with Stalin.
She talks to Graham Turner about
eighty rich and varied years.
"Ii"don't think I was necessarily intended," said MarySoames, Winston and Clementine Churchill's
.youngest daughter, "but I suppose I was the child ofconsolation. My parents were shattered when their thirddaughter, Marigold—who was only two and a half yearsold—died in 1921. It's clear from letters my father wrote tomy mother that, when I arrived the following year, he wasdelighted that the nursery had started again."
The way in which Marigold died was to have a decisiveinfluence on Lady Soames's own life. "Mummy had left her inthe charge of a French nursery governess, Mademoiselle Rose,while she went to stay with the Duke and Duchess of West-minster at their home in Cheshire. Marigold, who was knownas "Duckadilly" in the family, developed a very sore throatbut, even when she became really ill, the governess still waiteda day or two before sending for my mother. By that time,there was nothing even a specialist could do for her.
"Mummy didn't blame the governess in any way but, ofcourse, the whole thing shook her deeply. It wasn't only griefand loss. She knew she was going to have to be away a lot be-cause of Father's involvement in politics. So she decided shehad to have someone of more stature to look after the re-maining children—Diana, who was 12; Randolph, who was10; and Sarah, who was almost eight.
"She asked her first cousin, Madeline Whyte, an impov-erished gentlewoman who'd trained as a Norland nurse, totake over. Nana, as we called her, was in charge when I wasborn, and she dominated my whole life when I was a child."
Graham Turner is a journalist whom we knew years ago when hecovered the motor industry and wrote a penetrating, oft-quoted book,The Leyland Papers. He has since moved to weightier subjects for TheDaily Telegraph, by whose kind permission this article is reprinted.
Lady Soames points to a portrait of a thoroughly grumpy-looking little girl on the other side of the room. "That's mewhen I was four," she says, as she pours the coffee. "As you cansee, I was in a temper, I didn't want to be painted, I'd beenmade to sit on Nana's lap, and I was very cross!"
There are Churchills all around us as we talk in thedrawing room of her Holland Park home: busts, photos,paintings of them, paintings by them. The most striking is asuperb picture of the goldfish pool at Chartwell, painted byher father and left to her by her mother.
Soon, Lady Soames will start to write her own memoirs.She won't, she admits, find it easy to write about herself, butshe has kept her diaries and, in her characteristically unself-important way, she will be looking back over 80 astonishingrich and varied years.
She has lived at Chequers and in both Number 10 andNumber 11 Downing Street. She saw Churchill's wildernessyears from the viewpoint of an intensely aware teenager whohad always been treated as an intelligent adult by her father.In 1945, she was at Potsdam with him and helped to arrangehis dinner with Stalin—whom she remembers as "small, dap-per and rather twinkly"—and Harry Truman.
She spent four years in Paris when her husband,Christopher, was ambassador, and knew not only de Gaulleand Pompidou but also the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.She was with Christopher again when, in 1979, as governorof Rhodesia, he handed over that last great remnant of the
FlNHSTHOUR 116 /20
Empire to an apparently benign Robert Mugabe.She is also the only one of Churchill's children whose
life has not ended in major tragedy or sadness, and she sus-pects that Nana had a great deal to do with it.
"She was very upright, very Scottish, very religious," saidLady Soames, "and it was she who gave me my faith. It wasreal to her and she made it real to me. She gave me fright-fully good religious books which I don't remember now. Wegot on our knees for prayer-time every night; and she foundme a very good children's service, not far from Chartwell, ina parish with a very magnetic priest.
"I think I became a pretty good little prig, quite judg-mental—which is not very attractive in the young—butchurch never seemed dull and the church year became partof my life. Nana inspired me, inculcated in me a sense of thediscipline of it, and I'm very grateful to her.
"My own parents, you see, were not religious; theyweren't churchgoers, though my father supported the wholeidea and my mother was certainly a believer. As a matter offact, she did become a churchgoer in the last years of herlife. She loved going with all of us every week when shestayed with us after Papa died.
"When it came to holidays—with local friends who in-vited me to Scotland or Brittany—it was always Nana whotook me. Holidays are a great part of childhood, and that iswhere Mummy lost out because of the intensity of her lifewith Father. He always came first, second and third.
"I remember after I was married and had three or fourchildren, we'd had a hilarious afternoon together and, after-wards, when the children went off, she said a very sad thingto me: 'I see you having such fun with your children and Imissed out on that with all of mine.' I felt so sorry for her.
"Mummy never came to school dos, either—I was sentto two private day schools in Limpsfield—and it was Nana,again, who held the fort at Chartwell while she was awaywith Papa. She read aloud to me for hours—Kipling, TheCuckoo Clock and, of course, Black Beauty.
"I was always in awe of Mummy, really quite frightenedof her. To me, she was a goddess figure, though she was al-ways accessible. She organised things very well, she justdidn't participate much in my early life. I could never con-fide in her. The grown-ups always referred to Nana asCousin Moppett, but she was my confidante.
"Yet, although my mother was so involved in father's po-litical life, I honestly never resented it or felt neglected. I al-ways understood that there were more important things tobe done." Mary was clearly a child who saw things throughgrown-up eyes.
"Mummy was particularly severe on manners. I wastaught to play the part, to go and tell Aunt Goonie[Churchill's brother Jack's wife] that lunch was ready; I hadto be in the front hall to say goodbye to visitors; I was madeto be very polite and shut up. At lunch with the grown-ups—we never had a separate Pig's Table for the children asthe Salisburys did at Hatfield—I definitely had to sit it out. Iwas never allowed to get down before the pudding was fin-ished and I was expected to talk to whomever was there.
"Mummy could be very freezing and cutting if she was
angry. Yet she wasn't at all a cold figure. Underneath, she wasreally boiling with passion. She once threw a dish of spinachat my father, though she wasn't a bad-tempered woman andrecovered very quickly. Father, on the other hand, was fright-fully noisy when he lost his temper.
"I don't remember long periods of chill at Chartwell.There were blow-ups and boo-hoo and banging doors andthen it was over and they were reconciled. Summer storms!
"i:"was effectively brought up as an only child. In thoseearly years, Randolph and Diana were quite beyond
. my ken. Diana seemed quite middle-aged to me, alot higher up the slopes of Olympus, while Randolph couldbe quite alarming, very noisy and quarrelsome. If he was inthe right mood, he'd pick a quarrel with a chair.
"With Sarah, on the other hand, there was a definite pe-riod of overlap. When I was four, she was 11 and she wasvery sweet to me. We used to ride for hours on the sofa arms.She was always Lady Helen, who wore a top hat and veil androde side-saddle, and I was always Lady Podgy. I only had abowler hat and always acted as the dogsbody to open gatesand pick up her riding crop if she dropped it.
"When she went away to school, I missed her terriblybut, when she came home for holidays, it was wonderful.Then, of course, she started having boyfriends and that wasvery exciting, though she did slightly tyrannise over me. Ihad to be the ball-boy when she played tennis with them. Ifell in love with a series of them and felt that Sarah didn't ap-preciate any of them enough!"
Suddenly, when Mary was 12 or 13, her mother startedto become much closer to her. "There was a struggle of willsbetween Mummy and Nana because she thought Nana's in-fluence had become too strong. As I say, I'd become a prettygood prig by that time and it drove my mother mad. Shedidn't say anything but had obviously decided to put Nanain her place and, from that time on, gave me more of herself.
"She started taking me skiing in Austria and Switzer-land. She also, for several years, hired a tennis coach whocame to the house twice every week during the summer hol-idays—and then we'd all have a game together."
As the years went by, Mary began to understand howmuch her mother had been affected by what she calls "theuncertainties of her early life."
Uncertainties is putting it mildly. Clementine's mother,Lady Blanche Hozier, daughter of the Earl of Airlie, was alifelong gambler who was said to have had nine lovers. "Shewas thought to have overstepped the mark a bit," said LadySoames drily. "Dear oh dear, the Edwardians didn't half goit!" She pointed to another portrait. "That's Blanche as a girl,looking as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She obvi-ously had a way with her."
There was, inevitably, speculation about who Clemen-tine's father really was, and a general belief that it was mostunlikely to have been Blanche's husband, Henry. "I wasnever asked at what point Mama realised Hozier was not herfather," says Lady Soames. "I don't think it dawned on heruntil well into middle age, but it would have been very both-ering to her." continued overleaf...
FiNliST HOUR 116 /21
Clementine's parents separated when she was five, withthe result that she and her mother "were perennially badlyoff and constantly lived in rented rooms." They were sostrapped for cash, and Blanche was thought so disreputable,that she did not feel able to bring out her daughter in thestandard upper-class style.
She turned, in desperation, to an aunt by marriage, LadySt. Helier—"a frightful snob," said Lady Soames—to do itfor her. "There was no question of my mother having a ballof her own and she was always short of clothes in a periodwhen people dressed up tremendously. It was Mary St. He-lier who bought her first ballgowns and took her to otherpeople's balls. Her mother played no part in her debut."
So, although Clementine was much admired when shecame out, she was both nervous and lacking in confidenceafter such a strange, unhappy childhood. "She almost cameout by proxy, and she would have felt it keenly, though shenever mentioned it. That, perhaps, is one of the reasons whyshe was never easy to get to know."
Clementine's insecure, fatherless childhood also helps toexplain the fact that she suffered from both hysteria and deepdepressions throughout her life.
"Mama never really liked Chartwell," Lady Soames wenton. "It was very expensive to run, with eight or nine servantsin the house and three gardeners, as well as father's secretaries,and the fragility of my parents' economic raft worried her ter-ribly. They lived from one of Papa's books to the next. Therewould be great harouches where you'd be shouted at for notturning the lights off. The house was a great burden to her.
"I, on the other hand, adored the freedom of Chartwell.I hardly remember 11 Downing Street—I was only threewhen Papa became Chancellor—and I don't think I spent anight out of my own bed at Chartwell, apart from holidays,until I was seven or eight. I loved the things Papa did there.When he was bricklaying, I pretended to help. In those earlyyears, I had no perception of him as a great man but, in myteens, I started reading newspapers and realised that he wasin something called 'public life.'
"D: I his wilderness years in the 1930s, I| slowly became aware of the great issues inwhich my parents were involved. When ap-
peasement reared its head, there was an awful, unreasoninghatred of the government. Chamberlain was a word of op-probrium. In those years, there were plenty of enemies, notall of them abroad.
"Lots of people came—Bob Boothby, the Cranbornes,the Duff Coopers. I remember Duff getting into tremendousrages, which he called 'veiners' because he had a vein in hisface which throbbed alarmingly when he was in one. He andPapa would shout at each other and have frightful politicalding-dongs, though they were on the same side.
"Then there were artists such as Sickert and people suchas Lawrence of Arabia, who I thought was wonderful. Butthe name which crops up more than almost everyone else's inthe visitors' book at Chartwell is that of Lord Cherwell—Professor Lindemann, the brilliant Oxford scientist. You
Above: Mary aged two with WSC atChartwell. Left: "Diana being veryprotective to 'baby Mary.'" From
Lady Soames's Family Album (1982).
couldn't get close to the Prof, but he was a presence. His foodwas always a great mystery to us. He was a vegetarian, soMummy took tremendous trouble cooking him egg dishes,and Sarah and I would sit and watch him picking the yolksout and eating just the whites!
"My parents weren't social. Their world was a tradeworld. One lived one's life by the sitting and rising of theHouse of Commons. They weren't part of society—theirfriends came mainly from politics. Ascot, Goodwood, theLondon season meant nothing at all to them. And they de-spised cafe society."
But surely, I said, the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII,of whom your father was fond, was very much part of thatsociety? "True," Lady Soames replied, "but Papa had knownhim from his youth. There's a letter he wrote from Balmoralwhen Edward was only 16 and Papa was First Lord of theAdmiralty. He says he asked the prince to come into hisstudy while he was going through his boxes because he feltthe young man needed bringing along. He liked him butdidn't participate in his social life."
The Churchills were soon having family dramas of theirown. "The first time I saw my mother cry," said LadySoames, "I was absolutely overwhelmed. It had a very painfuleffect on me. I was 13 and she broke down in floods of tearsbecause Sarah had run off to America to marry Vic Oliver[an Austrian stand-up comedian]. I realised then how muchSarah had hurt them. I'm afraid I didn't do anything aboutit. I was just shocked."
That was only the first of a series of shattering familydisappointments and tragedies. Lady Soames was 17 whenthe war broke out. With Chartwell virtually shut, she foundherself living first in Admiralty House, then in DowningStreet, and finally at Chequers to which, blazing with indig-nation, she was "siphoned off during the Blitz." Still undermilitary age, she worked as a billeting officer for the
FINEST HOUR H6/22
Women's Volunteer Services in Aylesbury. "We used to go tohouses and ask whether they'd like to have six people fromthe East End living with them." She found that terrifying.
Then came one of those brief, evanescent interludeswhich seemed to blossom during the war. For eight shortweeks, she was engaged to Eric, Lord Duncannon, son of theEarl and Countess of Bessborough. "It all happened in therush of the war," she recalled. "It looked all right on paper, ifyou see what I mean—you couldn't fault it from that pointof view."
Her parents, however, most emphatically did. Clemen-tine said little at first but then persuaded Winston—"whowasn't actually paying much attention"—to enter the listsagainst the idea. "They told me I was too young, hadn't seenenough people and so on." Although news of the engage-ment "got around," it was never actually published.
Then, still only 18, Mary joined up and spent the nextfive years in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women'sarmy. "It was," she says, "the biggest experience of my life. Iwas catapulted out of my narrow class background and I wasindependent."
Her father believed that anti-aircraft batteries were tak-ing up too many men and that women could easily do a lotof the work, so Mary joined a mixed-sex AA unit in Enfield.She became, first, a sergeant and then a junior officer; andwas eventually posted to a battery in Hyde Park, "on the spotwhere all the pop concerts are held now," before being sentto Hastings.
"There, we were shooting at flying bombs, which were arelatively easy target. We had two teams and, when you wereoff duty, you were meant to be getting some sleep. But youcouldn't, the bloody guns were going off all the time, so weused to sit on the cliffs and watch. I was billeted in a house onthe front, quite exposed and, on Saturdays, the people next
Below: Mary aged 13 with her parents en route Westminster Hall forthe Loyal Addresses on King George V's Silver Jubilee, 9 May 1935.At left is Maryott Whyte, "Cousin Moppett." (From Family Album.)
door used to ask if we'd like to have a bath and a fish tea."She loved it. "Uniform is a tremendous leveller," she
said. "We all looked the same, lovely girls from Liverpooland country bumpkins like me. If you were an officer, youwere a real part of the gun team, not just in charge of thegirls' shoes and ticking them off."
The only thing she hated was being sent to a new unit."I knew they'd be saying: 'Here's Churchill's daughter—shewon't be scrubbing any floors!' You had to start all over againand make the point that you weren't just there to polish yournails. It was much easier when I was in the ranks. Once youwere an officer, it was far more of a struggle to be accepted. Iremember my terror whenever I was sent to a new unit.
"On the evenings off, there were always parties anddances, and one had a lot of fun. When I was in the ranks, Ihad to be back by midnight—23.59 was the magic num-ber—but, when I became an officer, I quite often arrivedback at four in the morning, and was back on duty again bynine. There was a very jolly atmosphere."
When the war ended and Mary was demobbed,civilian life seemed desperately dull by compari-son. Her job, "which gave me responsibilities far
beyond my years," had gone. So had her freedom. "Motherdidn't exactly put me back in the schoolroom, there was nocurfew as such and I don't think there were boring rulesabout night clubs, but she did want to know what I wasdoing. Like hundreds of thousands of others, I was thor-oughly disoriented."
She did not stay disoriented for long. Within six monthsof being demobbed, she had become engaged to ChristopherSoames, then a young Guards officer. Again, it was not quitewhat her parents had in mind. Soames came from a family ofbrewers and had no profession other than the Army. Becausehis parents had been divorced when he was 11—"whichcaused quite a commotion in those days"—he had had suchan unhappy childhood that, in later years, he did not men-tion his parents in his Who's Who entry.
"It was all a bit sudden," admitted LadySoames. "I don't suppose we'd seen each othersix times before we got engaged, and we hadn'teven met each other's families. Papa took it onthe chin, but my mother was more picky. Itcaused her great worry. She was anxious thatwe didn't know each other, that we weren'tgoing to be happy." Clementine's anxieties can-not have been lessened by the fact that, in thatsame year, two of her children— Randolph andSarah—had been divorced.
As it turned out, she need not have wor-ried about Mary. "Christopher became very illsoon after we married and had to leave theArmy, but Papa told him to come and run thefarm at Chartwell. We were so happy there. Wecalled it Honeymoon Farm. Children soonstarted coming—Nicholas in 1948 and thenEmma, Jeremy, Charlotte and finally Rupert in1959—and, of course, Christopher went into
FINEST HOUR H6/23
Above: On 9 August 1943 Churchill arrived by sea for a conference atQuebec with Roosevelt and the Allied Chiefs of Staff, at which thecross-channel invasion ("Overlord") was planned for May 1944 (inthe event it began June 6th). Here, during a journey to Niagara Fallsbefore the Quebec Conference, Churchill and Mary stand on a train'sobservation platform with the ubiquitous Inspector Thompson.
politics as MP for Bedford and then parliamentary privatesecretary to Papa.
"He did very well with my parents, you know. He wasvery companionable, unlike my father, who was very self-centred and lived life on his own terms. He used to play bez-ique and backgammon with Mummy for hours. She wasnever left high and dry by him, as she was when she andPapa went together to the south of France. He'd write allmorning, paint all afternoon and gamble all evening, so shetook to coming home again once she'd spent a few days thereso as not to hurt their hostesses."
Having seen the devastation wrought by her parents'total absorption in politics, Mary decided to giveher family higher priority. "I worked like anything
in the constituency during term time," she said, "but in theholidays, I hardly went there at all. Christopher would grum-ble at times—'Your mother would never have left me alonein Bedford like this,' he'd say—but he didn't pressurise me asPapa did Mother. Because of his parents' divorce, he was verypro our children having a cosy, integrated life.
"After Christopher became ambassador in Paris—com-pletely unexpected because he wasn't a diplomat—we hadfour marvellous years in France. I felt I was in the shop,which was very nice, and we got to know both de Gaulle andPompidou. I'd already met de Gaulle at Chequers but was al-ways alarmed by him because he was rather unbending.
"I got very flustered when I sat next to him once fordinner at the Elysee. He asked what I did in Paris, and Ireplied that I walked my dog, which was quite a silly remarkto have made. But, instead of brushing me off, he bent hisgreat mind to thinking where I should walk my dog. He wasvery charming. He liked women, you know. That was thefirst conversation I had with him that could be called cosy.
"We also saw something of the Duke and Duchess ofWindsor. There was a tradition that they dined at the em-bassy once every year and that the ambassador should paythem a return visit. He was charming to sit next to, he onlywanted to talk about England and what was going on there.It was courteous but quite well marked out, if you see what Imean. I'm sure he never regretted what he'd done. The thingshe regretted were the things he lost out on."
Brussels, where her husband was vice-president of theEuropean Commission, was not such fun, "partly because Iwasn't in the shop." Instead, she worked like a beaver writingher mother's life, which duly became a bestseller. Then it wasRhodesia, happy at the time "but not such a bright scenenow. What's happening there is all so unnecessary."
Lady Soames comforts herself with the thought that"none of our friends there have said: 'I foresaw Mugabe be-coming like this.'" After Christopher died in 1987, she hadsix happy years as chairman of the board of the NationalTheater—"the rummest appointment that was ever made."
Meanwhile, she watched sadly as her brother's and sis-ters' lives fell apart. Diana committed suicide in 1963, Sarahand Randolph both died young (in 1968 and 1982). "I don'tknow why I turned out like this while the others had suchproblems," she said, "and comparisons are always odious,aren't they? But I do think Nana made a great difference.
"When Diana, Randolph and Sarah were in the nurserystage, governesses came and went, and then, with Mama soengaged, they were sent away to boarding school. Rightthrough my childhood and adolescent life, I had the contin-uous influence of Nana and, because I was at home all thetime, there were chinks when I could be with Mama.
"Randolph was bolshie from the year dot and Diana wasvery self-willed. Mama and Randolph never got on, whichwas partly because my beloved papa spoiled him somethingrotten. That was really a reaction from the cold way his fa-ther had treated him, so he over-indulged Randolph dread-fully. It was very unwise and threw Mama into being the'No' factor. She became unstuck with Diana, too. Her closestrelationship was with Sarah before she ran off to Vic, buteven then there were escapades.
"The only other thing I can think of is that I livedthrough sterner times in my teenage years, whereas the oth-ers didn't have that. The war had a sobering effect on a lot ofpeople." $5
F I N E S T H O U R U 6 / 2 4
QynMMJzlaAarti
JOHN MICHAEL KOPS
\ SnS note *^ - ^ U about "Churchill Way" at Man-alapan Estates, near Palm Beach, Florida,mentioned its relationship to Churchill. Mr.William Benjamin, Mayor of Manalapan,who owns the property, provided us with thefollowing information.
The Manalapan land originally sur-rounded "Casa Alva," an estate built in 1936by Consuelo Balsan, the former ConsueloVanderbilt, first married Winston Churchill'scousin, the Ninth Duke of Marlborough.They were divorced in 1921, after which she
Mr. Kops is an attorney living in Manalapan, Florida.
Above: Under his wife's eye, Churchill finishes "The Swimming PoolatMme. Balsans House." This and a few other photos taken that dayare the only ones known showing both of them with one of his paint-ings on an easel. Churchill was known for his eclectic taste in dressinggowns; here he wears a "coat of many colors," which must have ap-pealed to the artist who favored the brightest colors on his palette.(Photo by kind courtesy of Blenheim Palace with the assistance ofCelia Sandys.) Below: Churchill Way, "Manalapan Estates.
FINEST HOUR 116/25
Left: "The Swimming Pool at Mme. Balsan's house,"Coombs 126, previously believed to have been painted at St.George's Motel, Dreux, France in the 1930s, is now clearlyknown to have been painted in Florida. A limited editionof prints on heavy paper, shipped rolled by airmail, areavailable for donations to The Churchill Center ($40), ICSUK (£28) or ICS Canada ($65). Send to the editor.
married Jacques Balsan CMG. Shemaintained ties with favorite Churchillrelatives, prominently including Win-ston. He was a frequent visitor to herchateau, St. George's Motel, near Dreuxabout fifty miles from Paris, in the1920s and 1930s. Here WSC completedhis last painting before the war.
Casa Alva was the Balsans' Floridaretreat, and the Churchills visited themthere in 1946, coming over from thenearby Miami Beach estate of Col.Frank Clarke. Here they were restingwhile WSC worked on his "Iron Cur-tain" speech, parts of which, Mr. Ben-jamn believes, were drafted at what lo-cals called the "Vanderbilt estate."
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin purchasedCasa Alva and the surrounding propertyin 1957. During the ensuing years, theydeveloped a friendship with Sarah,granddaughter of the Ninth Duke andConsuelo. Appreciative of the Marlbor-ough connections, they hope to invitethe current Duke to the opening of theproperty.
The main street of the new subdivi-sion, Manalapan Estates, will be named"Churchill Way." Lined by royal palms,it will be constructed of hand laid bricksand will circle large Banyan trees on theproperty. Mr. Benjamin intends to in-stall a plaque near the entrance in honorof the Churchills' visit. $
FINEST HOUR 116/26
ZtooKS, ARTS
& CURIOSITIES
Churchill Center Book ClubTo order: lisr titles/prices add for
shipping ($6 first book, $1 each ad-ditional in USA; $10 minimum else-where) send check to Churchill Cen-ter , PO Box 385, Contoocook NH03229 USA. Visa or Mastercard wel-come; state name, numbers and expi-ration date and sign order.
Teac ChurchillLeading Lives: Winston Churchill, by Fiona Richardson, Heinemann Library, 64 pages, $27.86, member price $23
Churchill: A Beginners Guide, by Nigel Rodgers, Hodder & Stoughton, 90 pages, paperback, £5.99, member price $10
Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman, Artist, by John Severance, Houghton Mifflin, 144 pages, $17.95, member price $12
Winston S Churchill: Man of the Twentieth Century, by Craig Read, Minerva, 290 pp.,pbk., $19.50, member price $17
RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
/\ recent survey disclosed that oney \ i n six British schoolchildren
could not identify Churchill asBritain's wartime leader; an astonishing4% thought it was Adolf Hitler. Similarshocking results obtain on the otherside of the Atlantic, so it is superfluousto elaborate an argument in support ofeven the humblest attempt to "teachChurchill." Unfortunately, most ofthese efforts are humble indeed.
The first Churchill "juveniles" werepublished in the late Fifties and withfew exceptions were hagiographic pot-boilers. Some appeared after WSC'sdeath in 1965, another round duringthe 1974 centenary of his birth, but thepickings have been fairly slim since.
Now, however, comes a change:two new juveniles from Heinemann Li-brary and Hodder & Stoughton; a newprinting of an outstanding HoughtonMifflin production, and a book on whyChurchill was the "Man of the 20thCentury." We should be glad. Two ofthe four are great, one is good, and theother is...well.
Fiona Reynoldson'sWinston Churchill,
for ages 8-15 in theAmerican HeinemannLibrary's "LeadingLives" series, is far andaway the best juvenileever published, any-
where, by anybody. It is part of a seriesthat mixes Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini andArafat (!) with Roosevelt, Kennedy andGandhi. I don't know a thing about theother titles, but Reynoldson's Churchillis a masterpiece—so good it deserves aChurchill Center award. This is in factmy nominating argument.
One wouldn't expect so much wis-dom to be so attractively wedged into64 pages: a quality sewn binding with adurable laminated photographic cover;color throughout, including some of theexcellent photographs, cartoons, andposters. Churchill is discussed in 20brief chapters, including a summary on"Churchill's Legacy." There is an eventstimeline, a list of key people fromChurchill's time, a page showing howBritish government works, sources forfurther research, a glossary and an index.
The glossary is one of this book'sgreat features. Every time a word orphrase crops up that might be unfamil-iar to young eyes—Nobel Prize, allies,Boer, abdicate, Home Secretary, Nazi,VC, DSO, Bolshevik, peer, civil war,Gold Standard, Home Rule, etc.—it isbold faced and referenced in a three-page glossary. This is not haphazard:there are over 60 such items, and everyexplanation is simple and accurate. Thisis a fine technique. I wonder why morebooks don't deploy it—and not justchildren's books.
Reynoldson, who has written over
60 history and information books foryoung people, shares with Churchilland his official biographer a demand forgood maps. All these are high quality—not too detailed but perfect for readersthis age—and sprinkled at key junc-tures throughout.
The very best aspect of Reynold-son's work is the collection of little side-bars that pace her story. They are gems.Carefully, precisely, in plain English,she explains exactly why Churchill didsuch and such a thing, or how he feltabout it, and why it matters. And she isnever wrong.
Take his speech impediment—al-most always misrepresented by haphaz-ard writers. Reynoldson's sidebar reads:"Churchill came home on leave in 1897and went to see a doctor in Londonabout his lisp. He pronounced V as 'sh.'Nothing was found to be wrong, butthe lisp never went away. Despite this,he made his first political speech duringhis leave and later became a great orator[glossary word] in the House of Com-mons." Perfect.
Some sidebars deliver profoundfacts about Churchill's character thatare rarely found even in adult biogra-phies. Take page 48, excerpted fromWinston's letter to Clementine in Feb-ruary 1945: "...my heart is saddened bythe tales of the masses of Germanwomen and children flying along theroads...before the advancing armies....
FINEST HOUR H6/28
The misery of the whole world appallsme, and I fear increasingly that newstruggles may arise out of those we aresuccessfully ending."
How much more satisfying andtrue is this little insight than the popu-lar slander about how Churchill insti-tuted and even enjoyed the fire bomb-ing of civilians.
Throughout, the author deliversunadulterated information. As with anygood journalist, you have no idea howshe feels personally about an issue. Shedeals in facts: entertainingly, even elo-quently. I could find only one mistake:she says Churchill won the Nobel Prizefor The Second World War (it was for thetotality of his work).
Writing a compact book on a com-plicated subject is hard work. You mustknow what to highlight, what to jetti-son, what to gloss over. To choose theright subjects, to represent them deftly,is a great achievement. Fiona Reynold-son's young readers will over time de-velop their own perceptions of WinstonChurchill—thoroughly grounded inthe education she has provided them.
We all need to buy five copies ofthis book and get them into the handsof schools, libraries and young peopleof promise.
• • *
M:any are fa-.miliar with
the growing lineof yellow andblack paperbacksin the famous"Dummies," se-ries: Football forDummies.. .Chess,Computers, Reli-gion, etc. Like
those excellent books, Nigel Rodgers'sChurchill: A Beginner's Guide attemptsto acquaint people, mainly teenagers,with the subject. Churchill For Dum-mies is sorely needed. But this isn't it.
Rodgers seems determined to makeall the usual errors: Winston is a schooldunce, ignored by his parents, LordRandolph died of syphilis, etc., etc.Page 46 commits a half dozen clangersall by itself, and the next page tells usthat Churchill's novel was entitled Ro-mola. Some of the gaffes are almost hi-
larious. Stalin's suggestion, at Teheranin 1943, that 50,000 German officersshould be shot (at which pointChurchill walked out of the room) issaid here to have been Stalin's claim tohave killed 50,000 Poles in the KatynMassacre (which the Russians actuallytried to cover up).
As such books should, the Begin-ner's Guide provides suggestions for fur-ther reading, but the recommendedbooks by Churchill "on his own life andcareer" are limited to only four (includ-ing A History of the English SpeakingPeoples...T). The eight books about himinclude authors named "Martin Gilber"and "Rhodes James." Roger Lewis's andLord Blake's excellent Churchill: AMajor New Assessment seems to havebeen published in 1933, when the onlyassessors of Churchill were writing himoff as history. Which, sadly, is what wemust do with this book.
• • •
The first weheard of John
Severance waswhen Lady Soamesremarked thatsomeone had fi-nally done her fa-ther justice in abook for teenagers.
Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman,Artist was, she said, "intelligently writ-ten and beautifully printed." Certainlythe public must agree, for it has been inprint now for nearly eight years, andwas first reviewed in FH90:33.
The target audience is 12-18, a bitolder than Fiona Reynoldson's. As inher book, there are no revelations. Sev-erance sets out to explain Churchill andhis times to young people who have notheard much about them in school.Again like Reynoldson, he takes painsto acquaint non-British readers with theworking of British institutions. Tidyprose describes "great contemporaries"—Lloyd George, Stalin, Roosevelt,Gandhi, Hitler—and what they did.
Good writing is accompanied byMrs. Severance's elegant book design:fine type, artwork and photos that arenot old chestnuts. Admirably there is anindex, a bibliography and an appendix
sampling of "Winston's Wit."There are a few technical errors,
mainly based on too literal an interpre-tation of Churchill's exaggerations inMy Early Life; but they are not engen-dered by malice, ignorance, or conspir-acy theories. The book is too short togive much attention to episodic excite-ments like the Charge at Omdurman,the escape from the Boers, ArmisticeDay, or 10 May 1940. Severance has adifferent tactic in mind.
What he does extremely well is tofocus on and demolish numerousmyths floated by more pretentious bi-ographies. For example, he notes thatChurchill sent policemen, not troops,to pacify the strikers in Tonypandy; thatWSC inspired but did not invent thetank; that the Dardanelles campaignwas conceptually sound but ruined byincompetent execution; that whileChurchill fought against the India Act,he sent Gandhi encouragement when itpassed; that WSC clung to office in theFifties only because he thought hemight be able to save the peace.
On the wartime "spheres of influ-ence" agreement with Stalin, overwhich Churchill's detractors consis-tently fulminate, Severance has a pointthat is worth considering, and not onlyby young people: "Perhaps Churchillthought this was the only sort of planStalin would understand and accept."Exactly.
Some day we may have a PrimeMinister or a President who as a youthwas inspired by Fiona Reynoldson orJohn Severance. They have done historyas well as Winston Churchill a favor,and everyone who appreciates the greatman is in their debt.
• * •
c'raig Read's Win-iston S Churchill:
Man of the TwentiethCentury, while notspecifically for theyoung, is includedhere because it is auseful educationaltext. By no means as
brief as the above books, it castsChurchill's life against the history of the
continued overleaf
FINEST HOUR H6/29
Man of the Twentieth Century...20th century, and suggests whyChurchill's example points the way toprogress in the 21st.
Read is an optimist, believing that"the world is on the verge of a liberalis-ing order." We need only leaders withChurchillian qualities to produce "acadre of leading men and women, andall society will benefit from the reduc-tion of intrigue and pettiness."
This is not only a tall order but anargumentative position. Books havebeen written suggesting that Churchill'swhole career was one of political in-trigue and pettiness. But as MartinGilbert and others have proved,Churchill was indeed a noble spirit,ever placing principle above party andself, and Mr. Read is on the right side.
Preliminary chapters discuss 20thcentury history and its leaders, startingwith the two Roosevelts, Lenin, Hitler,Stalin and Mao. I never understandwhy writers on leadership feel obligedto include mass murderers, and some ofthese accounts are a little wide-eyed.
Stalin, "paranoid and threatened,"who killed more people than Hitler,somehow "galvanised the nation" to re-sist German aggression. Did he? Whenthe Wehrmacht marched into Riga,Latvians threw flowers in its path. Rus-sians may have fought bravely for theregime, after they had seen their villagesrazed and their families slain or en-slaved; but the initial progress of theGerman assault was breathtaking.
Mr. Read also mentions social lead-ers (Gandhi, Mandela, King, Schwiet-zer, Mother Teresa) and "Innovatorsand Inventors" (the Wrights, Freud,Ford, Keynes, the Watsons of IBM,Einstein, Fleming, Watson and Crick(isolators of DNA) and (ready for it?)Bill Gates. What do they have in com-mon? Each contributed to the "dynam-ics of change," to the "democratisationof information, and, in essence, the de-mocratisation of living."
This book should set young andmaybe older minds thinking. Churchillcalled the "century of the commonman" the century that saw "more com-mon men killing each other than all theothers"; yet its inventions led to morepeople commanding their own destinythan ever before. Why? Great leaders,
28 September 1940: The essence of lead-ership, then as now, is connecting with every-day people, an ability the Prime Minister fre-quently demonstrated. Here he is visitingdock labourers who are having their lunch."Are you managing to get plenty of food?" heasked. They replied, "Aye sir, we are doinggrand, thank you." This was the photo thateluded us when making up Finest Hour 115;see page 42, middle column. It is number280 in Harrity and Martin's Man of the Cen-tury (New York: Duell, Sloan, Pearce, 1962).
starting with Churchill.Craig Read's account of Churchill's
life is well summarized: "His extremeambition, bordering at times on fool-hardiness but always driven by an ab-normal energy, galvanised all aroundhim. Churchill was always a contrarianthinker...but he was not a Machiavel-lian posturer. His success rested on en-ergy, innovation and positive think-ing..." But some myths are perpetuated:Lord Randolph dies of syphilis (again);Lady Randolph is "affair-ridden" (if shehad as many affairs as writers claim shewould not have had time to eat); theydo not provide a "stable home life" forWinston and Jack. In fact it was therock of stability, thanks to Nanny Ever-est and Jennie's unrecorded attentions.
Despite these early errors the storypicks up and moves along well, thoughthere are odd patches. Lend-Lease, bywhich Churchill got 50 old destroyersto preserve Britain's lifelines, is deploredbecause the British "could not sell anyparts" and this "contributed directly toBritish economic decline." I venture tosay Lend-Lease had nothing to do with
it, but Mr. Read might have made hispoint by examining the effects of Amer-ican monetary policy, specifically the1944 Bretton Woods conference.
Read dates Churchill's "Iron Cur-tain" speech as 1948 instead of 1946and precedes it with a strange assertion:"Churchill told American officials thatnow [1948] was the time to tell the So-viets promptly that if they did not retirefrom Berlin and abandon Eastern Ger-many, withdrawing to the Polish fron-tier, 'we will raze their cities.'" His foot-note to this is Gilbert's Churchill: ALife, pp. 865-66, but that referencecontains nothing of the kind.
Mr. Read is entitled to a few mis-takes when he can zero in on such im-portant references to Churchill as T. E.Lawrence's: "The man is as brave as six,as good-humoured, shrewd, self-confi-dent and considerate as a statesman canbe and several times I've seen himchuck the statesmanship course and dothe honest thing instead"; or Churchill'sown remark in 1951, so relevant at thisvery moment:
"All the time the two great partymachines are grinding up against eachother with the utmost energy, dividingevery village, every street, every townand city....Each party argues that it isthe fault of the other. What is certain isthat to prolong the process indefinitelyis the loss of all...."
What was needed then is whatRead says we need now: seasoned lead-ers willing to trade a little temporarypopularity by sticking to what they be-lieve, who have thought long enough tomake their beliefs worth considering.
Read's summary of "Churchill'strajectory to statesmanship" is apposite:"First, accumulate a reputation for out-spoken, principled action. Second, ac-cumulate power via alliances, learningand public positioning. Then state a vi-sion resplendent with clear principles,meanings and images....Lastly [devise]solutions in a national and internationalcontext. [Embed all this in] character,skills (verbal and technical), vision andpower accumulation and recognition[and] a clear and clean sense of dutyand morality...."
Surely there are leaders of this na-ture among the great democracies,today. reviews continued >>>
FINEST HOUR I 16/30
"We listen round the clock ror a code called peacetime'Secret Agent, by David Stafford, Overlook Press, 254 pages, $29.95, member price $22
D. CRAIG HORN
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DAVID STAFFORDUTVH m lumena M» CnMomu Mn « Smmi
David Staffordwrote Secret
Agent to accompa-ny a televisionseries of the samename shown onBBC2 in the sum-mer of 2000. Thisis the true story ofSOE (SpecialOperations Execu-
tive) agents, told through a series of riv-eting interviews with the agents andsupport people themselves.
"In the darkness of Nazi occupa-tion, SOE fanned the flames of hopeand kept alive the flag of freedom."This is David Stafford as I had neverread him before, combining his talentsfor thorough research with the prose ofa Kipling. His book, which will satisfyhistory buffs as well as fans of Ludlum,Fleming and Clancy, is a poignant andarresting tale that concentrates on SOEactivities beginning in gloomy flats atBerkeley Court—a floor below somedepartment of the Japanese Embassy: ahighly undesirable location.
Stafford recounts much of thepolitical infighting that accompaniedSOE's evolution from what was expect-ed to be a group of harmless backroomlunatics to a professional and effectiveintelligence organization that left amark on history. He names both thosewho helped and those hindered itsdevelopment, and describes the rivalries
Mr. Horn is Treasurer of The ChurchillCenrer and, with his intelligence background,a chief organizer of the 2002 InternationalChurchill Conference, whose theme was"Churchill and the Intelligence World."
among the various agencies, depart-ments and allies. He gives us a plentifulsupply of footnotes and referencesdeserving further study.
But it is the agents themselveswho draw the reader. This is a story ofthe tricks of the trade: the humorousanecdotes and painful losses of thosewho risked everything for liberty.Churchill's charge to "Set EuropeAblaze" using sabotage and subversionwas their mission; anonymity at homeor death abroad was their reward.David Stafford brings us the personalstory of these brave men and women.
SOE was unique among wartimeorganizations in allowing women tojoin the front line as equals with men.One of the latter said: "We could never,never understand that they could be asbrave as they were. They were incredi-bly contained and distant. Somehowyou felt that there was something veryspecial about them."
Although the primary focus is onthe agents, Stafford takes particular carealso to tell the story of those behind thescenes who trained these people, sawthem off in the darkness and listenedfor their reports from occupied Europe.
Included is an extraordinaryaccount of a handful of SOE-trainedNorwegians who destroyed the Germanheavy water plant in Norway, describedby Sir Colin Gubbins as "an enthrallingstory of high adventure." Stafford tellsof SOE's role in the D-Day plans and inthe Balkans, where more agents werecommitted than anywhere else saveFrance.
Failures are not omitted. "Everyagent parachuted into Holland haddropped directly into German hands,"
Stafford writes. And the Germans rantheir own highly-successful deceptioncampaign against SOE for severalmonths. Nor is the infamous spy KimPhilby ignored in all his ignominy.
The average survival time of anSOE radio operator was three months.Operating behind enemy lines, theywere the most vulnerable; fear and lone-liness were their daily lot. For theGestapo, capturing a radio operator waslike discovering the keys to a kingdom.For these brave souls, the First AidNursing Yeomanry (FANYs) were theirlink to home and to sanity; they pro-vided a great resource for thousands ofagents, code clerks, and wireless opera-tors. The pressure on them was tremen-dous: "The war was a dreadful business,don't let anybody suppose for amoment it was anything but horri-ble the only thing was to fight it andmake certain it didn't happen again."
SOE was abolished in 1945 bythe Attlee government, its missionamalgamated into the Secret Intel-ligence Service from whence it came.SOE was out of business, but specialoperations lived on into the Cold War:another story challenge that I am sureProfessor Stafford will meet.
Inevitably, SOE lost a lot ofagents, and there remained a powerfulobligation to discover what had hap-pened to those who had fallen intoGestapo hands. This story is not yetended, but Stafford brings closure to hiswonderful book with a quote from LeoMarks, SOE's cryptographic geniuswho worked tirelessly to ensure com-munications security for his agents."We listen round the clock for a codecalled peacetime...." reviews continue >
FINEST HOUR H6/31
War is too important to be left to the generalsSupreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot Cohen,
Free Press, 288 pages, $25, member price $18
77
JOHN G. PLIMPTON
David Stafford begins his Churchilland Roosevelt with a fanciful
appreciation of a statue of the two menon a bench in London's Bond Street.Similar consideration might be given tothe statues of Field Marshals Alan-brooke and Montgomery in Whitehall,looking toward Downing Street. Thereis ample evidence in Alanbrooke'srecently published diaries (see FH110:42, 112:34) to support the viewthat he is looking disdainfully away,expressing contempt for the politicianswho live at Number 10. Montgomery,however, is staring directly down thestreet in such a manner to give credenceto the story that when Churchillremarked that Monty wanted his job,King George VI replied, "I rather thinkthat he also wants mine."
The tensions between military andcivil leadership that have bedevilednations over the centuries are the sub-ject of Supreme Command. EliotCohen, who first presented his theoriesto the International ChurchillConference in Washington in 1993,uses four case studies to "uncover thenature of strategy-making in war"-Lincoln, Clemenceau, Ben-Gurion,and Churchill. While they are all illu-minating in different ways, only the lastconcerns us in this review.
Before considering each leader,Cohen evaluates theories of civil-military relations. He invites those whowish to plunge more deeply into theissue to consult an appendix on "TheTheory of Civilian Control." My ownplunge was a little too deep to includehere, but those so inclined will be well-rewarded for their efforts.
Cohen is an unabashed admirer ofChurchill—not an easy position to takein modern academic circles. "Few his-torical figures escape revisions of theirworth as statesmen," he writes. "This is
Mr. Plumpton is a FH senior editor.
PAINTING BY JAMES F. LANE
particularly true of wartime leaders andespecially true of Winston Churchill."
Churchill revisionism began whileWSC was still centre-stage, as seen inthe diaries of Alanbrooke, Churchill'sChief of Imperial General Staff. Cohenquotes the 10 September 1944 entry:
[Churchill] has only got half the pic-ture in his mind, talks absurdities andmakes my blood boil to listen to hisnonsense. I find it hard to remaincivil.... It is far better that the worldshould never know and never suspectthe feet of clay on that otherwise super-human being. Without him Englandwas lost for a certainty, with himEngland has been on the verge of disas-ter time and again...Never have Iadmired and despised a man simultane-ously to the same extent.
Cohen does not use another diaryentry, 29 November 1943, which hecited at our 1993 ChurchillConference, that is even more illumi-nating about Alanbrooke's views:
After listening to the arguments put for-ward during the last two days I feel
more like entering a lunatic asylum ornursing home than continuing with mypresent job. I am absolutely disgustedwith politicians [sic] methods of wagingwar! Why do they imagine they areexperts at a job they know nothingabout! It is lamentable to listen to them!
Alanbrooke was not alone in hisviews. General Ismay recalled a victorycelebration which Churchill hosted forthe chiefs of staff. The Prime Minister"handed out extravagant praise to thethree chiefs of staff as having been thearchitects of victory. Not one of themresponded by saying that Winston hadalso had a little to do with it."
After the war the weight of opin-ion supported Churchill's version ofevents, but it was natural that the acad-emic world would eventually join thechorus of Churchill criticism. They dis-count the Churchillians (led by SirJohn Colville) as "an exclusive close-knit troglodyte group" and considerthose who appreciate the great man'sachievement (like The ChurchillCenter) as mere hero worshippers.
Cohen gives us the full litany ofcriticisms: instability, reactionism,meddlesomeness, irrationality, etc., butpoints out how the critics have empha-sized the problems and ignored theachievements. (To this reader it is likedwelling on the fact that Babe Ruthstruck out over 1,000 times, ignoringhis 714 home runs.)
Cohen then presents his principalthesis: "In fact, the above impression,common though it be, is false to thecore, for Churchill was a man of sys-tem—unorthodox and exuberant sys-tem, but system nonetheless." He alsoreminds us of a comment made byRoyal Navy Captain Percy Scott in1899: "I feel certain that I shall some-day shake hands with you as PrimeMinister of England. You possess thetwo necessary qualifications: genius andplod." Cohen makes a strong case that
FlNHSTlIOIJR 116/32
the plod also had a system to it and thatthere was far more order and disciplineto his work habits and the zigs and zagsof his policy-making.
Churchill attributed much of thecriticism to people's inability to under-stand his dichotomous approach toissues. In Thoughts and Adventures hewrote that Great Britain
ought to have conquered the Irish andthen given them Home Rule; that weought to have starved out the Germans,and then revictualled their country;and that after smashing the GeneralStrike we should have met the griev-ances of the miners. I always get intotrouble because so few people take thisline. It is all the fault of the humanbrain being made in two lobes, onlyone of which does any thinking, so thatwe are all right-handed or left-handed,whereas if we were properly construct-ed we should use our right and lefthands with equal force and skill accord-ing to circumstances.
This was written long before recentbrain research that fully supports hisviews.
Many people did not haveChurchill's historical perspective.Professor Lindemann's remark toGeneral Marshall, who was pressing foran early invasion of Europe ("It's nouse. You are arguing against the casual-ties of the Somme") was true. But agreater lesson from the Great War forChurchill was the limitations of seniorcommanders. "Their whole habit ofmind," he wrote of military staff, "isbased on subordination of opinion."
That characteristic never appliedto Churchill, nor to those around him.Cohen suggests that one reason for themilitary's constant carping was thatChurchill picked commanders who dis-agreed with him, "even violently." Ismayagreed. "The one thing that was neces-sary and indeed that Winston preferred,was someone to stand up to him."
Ismay also pointed out that,despite Churchill's immense powers asboth Prime Minister and Minister ofDefence, he took the advice of his mil-itary advisers on critical military mat-ters. They ranged from his many dis-agreements with the CIGS, from anattack on northern Norway to the strat-
egy against Japan after the fall ofGermany (a little-considered issue thatalmost led to the resignation of theentire Chiefs of Staff), to acceptingCunningham's position regarding anattack on the French fleet in Alexan-dria, to Eisenhower's view that captur-ing Berlin would waste resources on anobjective with little military value.
Churchill was said to have "mobi-lized the English language and sent itinto battle." Cohen presents a strongcase that Churchill's art of interrogationwas almost as masterful as his art ofrhetoric. He controlled events by"incessant, close questioning of thestaffs" even about the minutest details.But Cohen's challenge to revisionist his-torians is mere swatting of flies com-pared to his challenge to that giant ofpolitical and military leadership,Samuel Huntington, "arguably thegreatest political scientist of our time."
In The Soldier and the StateHuntington created the "normal" theo-
ry of civil-military relations: "thehealthiest and most effective form ofcivilian control of the military is thatwhich maximizes professionalism byisolating soldiers from politics, and giv-ing them as free a hand as possible inmilitary matters." Cohen resides in thetheoretical camp of Prussian GeneralCarl von Clausewitz in his belief that"war in merely the continuation of pol-itics by other means," and GeorgesClemenceau, who held that "war is tooimportant to be left to the generals."
Most interpretations of Churchillare not presented within a theoreticalframework, although it has been saidthat there is nothing so practical as agood theory. Cohen has presented uswith a very good theory related to civil-military relations that should be consid-ered when reading The War Diaries ofLord Alanbrooke, John Keegan'sChurchill's Generals, Barrie Pitt'sChurchill and the Generals or StephenRoskill's Churchill and the Admirals.
Winston's War: A PrecisA Churchillan novel to be published by HarperCollins in November
MICHAEL DOBBS
Let me take youback to Satur-
day, 1st October,1938. Mr. NevilleChamberlain hasjust returned fromMunich promis-ing "peace for ourtime." He is uni-versally acclaimedas a saviour.
Meanwhile, Winston Churchillis alone at Charrwell. Abandoned. Anoutcast.
It's not difficult to imagine howChurchill must have felt. He had beenlost in the wilderness for a decade andhis political career was all but over. Hewas an old man who had outlived bothhis usefulness and his welcome. And
A member of ICS (UK), Mr. Dobbs is authorof the Francis Urquhart trilogy House ofCards, To Play the King and The Final Cut.
everything he had ever held dear in pol-itics had just been betrayed, handedover to the dictators.
What would have added to hissense of humiliation was that Chamber-lain had flown back from Munich to ahero's welcome. His rival had becomethe Messiah, while Churchill was apariah.
Alone in Chartwell, the BlackDog would have been howling at himwith extraordinary ferocity. Saturday,1st October, 1938, was arguably theworst day of Churchill's life.
The old man was joined on thatday by a young BBC radio producer.Churchill was laying bricks and not inthe mood for visitors but, as usual,couldn't resist an audience. So they dis-cussed and disputed, and the youngman's obvious defiance and resolutionhelped revive Churchill's spirits. Whensome time later the visitor left, Churchill
continued overleaf
FINEST HOUR 116/33
Winston's War...presented him with an inscribed copy ofhis latest book, Arms and the Covenant,with the words: "Young man, if ever youshould need me in the future, send methis book, and I shall remember ourconversation."
Not so remarkable, no more thana passing pleasantry, perhaps. Exceptthat young BBC producer was the 27-year-old Guy Burgess, later to be one ofStalin's most notorious spies.
It was an extraordinary en-counter, set down in some detail in aslim volume written in 1956 by aLabour MP, Tom Driberg. Twentymonths after the meeting and againstferocious odds, Churchill was asked tobecome Prime Minister during Britain'sbleakest hour. The entire British Estab-lishment was set against him, yet it wasto prove one of the most crucial turningpoints in our world. History books tellus how it came to pass: Edward Halifaxgot a stomach ache and decided not totake on the job. Yet, for me, that some-how wasn't explanation enough.
I set out to try to understand theevents of those twenty months. And atthis point I must beg your indulgence,for I am not an historian but a novelistand I set about my task by extrapolat-ing, embellishing, taking all the neces-sary license required by fiction whiletrying to stick as closely as possible tomost of the facts. Such an approachmight cause offence to those who be-lieve that the facts are too fragile to playwith, but sometimes by turning historyaround, looking at it from fresh angles,it's possible to see even more. Churchillhimself was never averse to toying withthe facts, even in his own histories.
I was fascinated by this meeting atChartwell. I wanted to know whatBurgess did with this offer of help fromthe statesman. The man from the BBCwas undeniably brilliant and supremelywell-connected in an era when Westmin-ster was a small village and the countrywas run by a relative handful of decisionmakers. Burgess was in the thick of it.He knew them all. And his views afterMunich would have been remarkablyclose to Churchill's—appeasement wasbound to fail, war was inevitable, andone of the keys to the outcome of thatwar would be Soviet Russia.
It's all too easy to dismiss Burgessas an outrageous homosexual adven-turer who thought nothing about be-traying his country. My own conclusionwas that he was as patriotic as most, butfound a different and more difficultroute to pursue his love of country anddeal with the fears he held for it.Burgess died in Moscow wearing hisMCC tie and with the wish that his re-mains be buried back in England. Pa-triotism, as Churchill would well haveunderstood, isn't always best served bydoing what is expected of you.
Whatever the truth of Driberg'saccount of that meeting betweenChurchill and Burgess, I strongly sus-pect the pair would have got on outra-geously well. They would have argued,drunk, then argued and drunk somemore before finally agreeing about thechallenges of October 1938 and whatwas required to resolve them.
When, after the war, Churchillreturned to power and had to deal withthe fall-out of Burgess's spectacular de-fection to Moscow, he displayed re-markably little interest in the whole af-fair. Jock Colville commented as muchin his diary. Yet should we be surprised?Everyone in the British Establishmenthad reason to forget his personal linkswith a traitor—and Churchill's own
discomfort could only have been in-creased by the fact that Burgess, inorder to establish his cover, had oncetried to woo and wed Churchill's ownniece, Clarissa.
History can be as extraordinaryas any novel, yet this is not an exercisein unraveling history. The challengesfaced by Churchill in 1938 continue toecho through our own age. Most press-ing of these challenges, perhaps, iswhether we confront or try to appeasethe forces of terror.
But there is so much more. Is thepress a defender of our freedoms, or aninstitution that is more typically cor-rupt and self-serving? Do politiciansowe their prime loyalty to the party, orto their consciences? What attitudeshould Britain take to "Johnny For-eigner" and the rest of Europe? Open anewspaper and it becomes clear thatChurchill's views would have illumi-nated our debates today almost asvividly as they did sixty years ago.
Winston's War is not a history. Itis unashamedly a work of fiction. Yetmy hope is that it will inspire its readersto dig ever more deeply and to decidefor themselves not only what happenedbut why things happened. If I succeedin that, then both the truth and Mr.Churchill will have been well served. $5
Update: Hoe Farm, Surrey;Arthur Simon, Eminent Cnurcnillian
This update is provided by DavidCoombs, author of Churchill: His
Paintings, who lives in Godalming, whereChurchill took up painting at Hoe Farm,in the nearby village of Hascombe.
In 1915 Hoe Farm was part of thePark Hatch Estate, a large agriculturalproperty with associated houses andwoodlands. The owner, Joseph Godman,lived with his family at Park Hatch, alarge house outside the village somedistance from Hoe Farm, which he letted.
One of his tenants, for the summer of 1915, was Winston Churchill,who letted the house for summer holidays following the lowest point in hislife—dismissal from the Admiralty following Fisher's resignation as First SeaLord over the Dardanelles operation. It was here that Churchill took upoils, as he charmingly relates in Painting as a Pastime. continued opposite >>
FINEST HOUR U6/34
CHURCHILLTRIVIA
by Curt Zoller (zcurt@earthlink.net)
ANSWERS ON PAGE 40!In large numbers, readers have
requested that we provide Triviaanswers with each column (but noton the same page, preserving theoption to test your knowledge).Herewith last issue's questions, withthe answers on page 40.
' I luenty-four questions appear each issue,-L answers are on page 40. Categories are
Contemporaries (C), Literary (L), Miscella-neous (M), Personal (P), Statesmanship (S)and War (W).
1255. Whom did Churchill replace asFirst Lord of the Admiralty in 1911? (C)
1256. What was Churchill referring towhen he wrote in My Early Life, "Onemust not yield too easily to the weak-ness of audiences....They had asked forit and they must have it." (L)
1257. What was WSC's code name onthe return journey from the CasablancaConference in February 1943? (M)
1258. What was ClementineChurchill's maiden name? (P)
1259. On 13Augll, Churchill sent theCommittee of Imperial Defence a pre-scient strategic memo: about what? (S)
1260. Who was Director of the Indus-trial Intelligence Centre, informingChurchill of Germany's economics andrearmament in the 1930s? (W)
1261. Who was the first head of"Combined Operations"? (C)
1262. What did Lady Soames entitleher book containing her parents' corre-spondence with each other? (L)
1263. The 18th century House ofCommons snuffbox was destroyed inan air raid on 10 May 1941. What wasChurchill's replacement? (M)
1264. How many Prime Ministers heldoffice during the time Churchill wasout of office from 1929 to 1939? (P)
1265. In September 1940, Churchillasked Admiral Sir Roger Keyes to pre-pare Operation "Workshop"—withwhat objective? (S)
1266. In 1920, the Treaty of Sevres es-tablished a neutral zone around the Seaof Marmora. What was Churchill'sopinion on retaining the GallipoliPeninsula? (W)
1267. Who replaced Roger Keyes as headof "Combined Operations" in 1941? (C)
1268. What are the two rarestChurchill books? (L)
1269. In December 1901, Churchillsaid he would forego his mother's an-nual allowance. How much was it? (M)
1270. In 1897 Churchill "surveyed thisprospect with the eye of an urchinlooking through a pastry cook's win-dow." To what did he refer? (P)
1271. When did Churchill say, andwhat was the result of his saying, "NoSocialist system can be established with-out political police.... They would haveto fall back on some form of Gestapo—no doubt very humanely directed in thefirst instance." (S)
1272. At the Admiralty in WW2Churchill proposed blocking ship-ments of iron ore to Germany fromSweden and Norway from which twoports? (W)
1273. Of whom did WSC say in 1951,"He takes his place among the greatForeign Secretaries of our country"? (C)
1274. How early did Winston considerwriting a biography of his father? (L)
1275. To whom did WSC refer to whenhe said, "If you wanted nothing done,[he] was the best man for the task."? (M)
1276. When did Churchill first enterParliament? (P)
1277. To deceive the Germans theBritish enlisted Michael Howard, aBritish double agent codenamed "Snow"by the British and "Johnny" by the Ger-mans. What reason did he give the Ger-mans for working with them? (S)
1278. After many disappointments,what was the first successful effort by"Combined Operations"? (W)
ANSWERS ON PAGE 40...
Mr. Coombs writes: "It has been thought that Churchill letted the property from hisfriend the Duke of Westminster, but the Duke's ownership dates only from sometime in the1960s. He in turn sold it in 1972 to Mr. Ian Anstruther, the current owner. Mr Anstruther ispresently refurbishing Hoe Farm for his son to live there: which will, I guess, bring to an end itslong years as a tenanted property." Mr. Coombs has interviewed a Hascome resident, Mrs.Briggs, who came to the village when "there were still people who remembered the Churchills.One of her friends recalled being pushed in a pram that was said to have been left behind by the
Churchill families in 1915 •"Arthur Simon (left, with Barbara Langworth) was Hoe Farms longtime tenant in resi-
dence. He twice welcomed our Churchill Tours, including Lady Soames. We in turn had thepleasure of hosting Arthur at a memorable dinner for Robert Hardy at the Reform Club in Lon-don {Churchill Proceedings 1987). Mr. Simon, who died in July 1994, was always the soul of hos-pitality, knowledgeable of Hoe Farm's importance in the saga. He is greatly missed, g
FINEST HOUR 116/35
Cnurcniiliana: Spode'slledant Churchill Pitchers
MAX EDWARD HERTWIG
One of the most admired andsought after pieces ofChurchilliana is the famous
Spode pitcher, first produced in 1941and reissued in its original and a newshape in 1965. A recent spate of theSpode jugs on eBay has revealed the ex-istence of several permutations of thisfamous piece of which we were notpreviously aware.
The most memorable feature ofthese pitchers, common to each, is thesuperb transfer decal on the front orobverse: a cameo of Churchill, flankedwith a warship, tank and fighter air-craft, under the May 1940 speech ex-cerpt (slightly misquoted), ALL I CAN
Our thanks for kind assistance in research toJill Wolliscroft, curator, the Spode MuseumTrust, Ronald Smith, Devoy White, RalphFava, and Fred Hardman.
OFFER IS BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS ANDSWEAT above a ribbon bearingChurchill's remark about the RAF fromAugust 1940: NEVER IN THE FIELD OFHUMAN CONFLICT WAS SO MUCHOWED BY SO MANY TO SO FEW. Thereare variations in colour, and two differ-ent types of decal for the reverse side;but this elegant piece of artistry is com-mon to the front of all pitchers.
The pitcher was likely created bythe company's own designers, since noparticular artist is credited with it inSpode's records. Since it was not a lim-ited edition, Spode has no record ofhow many were made. There were,however, two distinct runs: in 1941and again in 1965, when a new shapewas produced alongside the original.
The following information wasgleaned from the Spode Museum andobservations of the pitchers shown here.
Stated sizes are vague becauseSpode's records are confusing. PamelaWooliscraft, curator of the Spode Mu-seum Trust, notes: "Sometimes the jugsare categorised in the old way—36s,24s 18s etc.—the bigger the numberthe smaller the pieces. Some are givennumbers such as "No. 1 size" and someare just labelled small, medium andlarge. Some catalogues give a capacity. Idon't have much information on itemsspecifically for the U.S. market andhave not managed to work out the sizeof this piece! Although we have a largearchive, the information was often insomebody's head and not recorded."
SHAPE K744:THE ORIGINAL ISSUE, 1941
The 1941 original is known in fivedifferent varieties, all with theChurchill, battleship, aircraft and tankon the front, but in different colour-ways, two different rear designs, andtwo sizes.
UK Market: 7 1/4" high with a 41/4" diameter opening:
Patterns F445 and F446. The bot-tom bears the maker's mark (COPE-LAND...SPODE...ENGLAND) and the
FINEST HOUR I 16 / 36
registration number: Rd No. 838714.The rear design seems always to havebeen the same, in three variations:
Pattern F445: Rear has crossedUnion and American flags, with afighter aircraft between them and a rib-bon bearing the motto WE STAND FORDEMOCRACY. Printed in brown.
Pattern F446: Same as F445 butprinted in black.
Note: The Spode Museum says theregistration number is for a toby orcharacter jug—so this is a puzzle.
USA Market: Distinctly smallerthan above, 6 1/2" high with a 4" di-ameter opening. The bottom bears themaker's mark (COPELAND...SPODE...ENGLAND) and the words, "U.S.A. DE-SIGN...PATENT PENDING." The reardesign is, however, entirely unique.
• • • • • • • • ; • • • • m * 2 * .
\ • •$£<• ' • • • ' ' • • . • ' \ ' & *
•<:.',fr-:•:<.:•;:... 'Mess
Pattern F448: A bulldog on aUnion Flag bestriding a globe with theBritish Empire shown in dark color.Over and under the design is the Feb-ruary 1941 exchange of quotes be-tween President Roosevelt, quotingLongfellow (SAIL ON, O SHIP OFSTATE, etc.) and Churchill, replyingover the radio (GIVE US THE TOOLSAND WE WILL FINISH THE JOB!)Printed in black.
Pattern F449: Same as F448 butprinted in brown.
Pattern F475: Same as F449 butprinted in brown and handcolored onglaze. Band etc. in rose leaf green.
Note: A third transfer pattern (sin-gle Union Flag on the reverse) has beenmentioned by a collector, but is notknown to the Spode Museum. Wewould appreciate any data knownabout this undocumented design.
The smaller, lighter American ver-sion was probably made to facilitate ex-port shipments, but why the differentrear designs? Most likely it had to dowith the flags: The original crossed flagdesign conforms to conventional flagetiquette, with the home country's onthe left; but American usage would re-quire the Stars and Stripes at left.
The Spode Museum believes thisconsideration caused the bulldog de-sign to be substituted, though Spodemight have done better to keep theoriginal. That globe showing the Em-pire served nicely to remind Americanshow much of the world belonged toGreat Britain—not exactly the bestway to influence die-hard isolationists!And, although the quotations comprisea memorable exchange between Roo-sevelt and Churchill, when the latterwas proposing the destroyers-for-basesswap, there is no attribution of eitherquotation on the pitchers.
THE 1965 REISSUE(Large Galloway and Melba shapes)
Although the Churchill jug doesn'tappear in Spode's 1965 catalogue, itwas definitely reissued, in both thelarge Galloway (indistinguishable from1941) and a new, rather elegant shapecalled "Melba": very distinctive and el-egant with a flared "foot" and no deco-ration to the spout.
Spode records disclose that theMelba shape was only issued in pattern¥446: black printed with the originalBritish market crossed flags on the re-verse. An annotated note in the patternbooks, dated February 1965, states:"No. 1 Melba Jug and No. 1 GallowayJug." Since the Melba and large Gal-loway are very different shapes, "No.1" may refer to the crossed flags decalon the back. The reissue was probablymade to commemorate Churchill afterhis death in January.
UK Market: The Melba style hasboth the greatest height and narrowestopening of the three shapes known: 73/4" high with an opening diameter of3 1/2." It is more elegant, thanks to alovely curved 'foot' flaring out at thebase, though its spout is plain, lackingthe decorative moulding of the Gal-loway. On the bottom is COPELAND...SPODE...ENGLAND Rd No. 838714.Note: the "4" here appears in super-script, distinctly different from theoriginal UK market Galloway shape.
POSTCRIPT:THE SPODEMUG
This fa-mous designalso made itsway onto awhite handledmug, shownhere from thecollection of William Ives.
VALUESInternet auction prices run
$150/300 or £90-180 for U.S. marketGalloway pitchers, depending on con-dition. Prices are running about doublethat for the UK market large Gallowaywith crossed flags and, because of itsscarcity, the "Melba" flared bottomshape from 1965. $
FINEST HOUR I 16 / 37
"KEEPING THE MEMORY GREEN AND THE RECORD ACCURATE"
LEADING CHURCHILL MYTHS(5) "Churchill and Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harhor in advance"
RON HELGEMO
On a recent anniversary of PearlHarbor, the History Channel,whose programs sometimes
produce opium for the people, ran aBBC documentary claiming that Presi-dent Franklin Roosevelt knew allabout the surprise attack and allowedit to happen to get the United Statesinto the war. The program, as ArthurBalfour might have said, containedmuch that is trite and much that istrue, but what was true was trite, andwhat was not trite was not true.
Let us begin with the interviewof Robert Ogg, which approaches dis-honesty. The producers fail to informthe audience that Mr. Ogg is the infamous "Seaman Z" im-mortalized by John Toland, an early conspiracy theorist whowrote that Pearl Harbor was plotted by Roosevelt.
"Seaman Z," whose story has had a nasty habit ofchanging over the years, claimed he heard "queer signals"which could have been the oncoming Japanese aircraft carri-ers. But he could only have been hearing the carriers if thecarriers were broadcasting....
The Japanese themselves claim their fleet (Kido Butai)never sent a single message. They dismantled the telegraphsending devices so a message could not be sent. After thewar, the Strategic Bombing Survey found the Japanese mili-tary's own after-action report, which credits the success ofthe attack to the fact that secrecy was maintained.
Among the reasons why secrecy was maintained, radiosilence comes first. How could it be, for example, that Sea-man Z in San Francisco picked up signals from the Japanesefleet—but Hawaii, much closer and lying between Califor-nia and the fleet, never heard it?
"Betrayal" also interviewed Eric Nave, a British cryptol-ogist who worked on the Japanese JN-25 naval code. Naveco-authored Betrayal at Pearl Harbor, claiming that Churchillhid what he knew about the attack from Roosevelt. The pro-ducers might have mentioned that Nave left Singapore inFebruary 1940, had no further involvement with JN-25, andcould not have known of the change to the JN-25B code inDecember 1940—and the resulting lack of anyone's ability toread the code after that date.
Mr. Helgemo's career was spent in part with the Central IntelligenceAgency. His article first ran in Finest Hour 101, Winter 1998-99.
There are a couple of scenes withPacific Fleet cryptologist JoeRochefort, the hero of Midway, whois said to have read JN-25B inter-cepts. But they fail to mentionRochefort's claims that he was read-ing only five to 20 percent of anymessage in JN-25B prior to Midwayand could not have been readingmore before then.
Then there is the "Winds Code,"supposedly an attack signal disguisedin a Japanese weather report. I haveyet to hear how the "Winds Code"told anybody anything about PearlHarbor. Once again Ralph Briggs is
dragged out as evidence that the Americans intercepted thismessage. How Briggs, in Cheltenham, Maryland, heard thecoded weather report and no one else did has never been ex-plained; it was supposed to be, after all, a regular mid-day,Japanese time, radio broadcast. Nor does the History Chan-nel explain why the Japanese sent it, since the communica-tions failure that would have prompted its use did not occur.
Tucked into the "Betrayal" piece is Mr. Joe Lieb's claimthat Secretary of State Hull told him of the coming attackand named Pearl Harbor as the target. The trouble here isthat Mr. Lieb and Mr. Hull were the only ones present attheir alleged conversation, and Mr. Lieb did not see fit to tellanyone of this conversation until after Mr. Hull died. Thusthere is no way independently to verify his claim.
An even more preposterous notion presented by thefilm is that General Marshall (he of course was also in onthe plot) went horseback riding on a Sunday morning inorder to be "unavailable" for questioners concerned aboutJapan's next move, thus assuring the success of the Japaneseair raid. Really! The case against General Marshall hinges onthis, and the fact that he sent an alert warning to Pearl Har-bor without sufficient priority. Surely it is easier to considerthe latter act one of bureaucratic incompetence rather thana purposeful plot to delay an attack warning? If Pearl wasbeing set up, why send a warning at all? To cover himself?But the warning was kept secret for 50 years!
Geostrategy and codebreaking take up a great deal ofthe film, which uses them to document accusations of priorknowledge of the coming attack by American authorities.The producers begin by alleging that the United Statesknew the Japanese attack force was in the Kurile Islands. If
FINEST HOUR H6/38
"The reason why this kind of garbage passesfor history is that standards forevidence have virtually disappeared....Our inability to be skeptical, to thinkcritically, to compare and contrast, leads tothe perpetuation of one urban legend afteranother....Isometimes despair. Vent off."
it did, then the U.S. had to expect an attack either in Alaska,Hawaii, the west coast or Panama. Of these possible targets,the film says, the only one that made any sense was Hawaii.
But the documentary oversimplifies: having its fleet inthe Kuriles did not reduce Japan's choices of where to attack.Admiral Yamamoto needed to bring the fleet together for anattack in the most secure place possible, regardless of direc-tion. The "southern strategy," which eventually won out, re-quired the Japanese Navy to neutralize the Philippines (thena U. S. territory), which crossed its sea lanes. This requiredYamamoto to go after the U. S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.That the Japanese had trouble making up their minds(Japanese Army-Navy politics was at work here too) servedthem, in the sense that it helped disguise their eventualchoice. The "northern strategy" (attacking Alaska) was alsoseen as a distinct possibility to Westerners. As late as 15 Oc-tober 1941 Roosevelt wrote Churchill, "I think they [theJapanese] are headed north." (See Kimball's Churchill andRoosevelt: The Complete Correspondence).
Clearly the Japanese had a variety of strategic choicesprior to Pearl Harbor. The key to their Greater EastAsian Co-Prosperity Sphere was China, and that was
their major concern throughout. Indeed, while the West mayhave focused primarily on the Japanese during the Pacificwar, the Japanese continued to focus more on China. Even atthe war's end the Japanese had 1.9 million men and nearly10,000 aircraft there. It made little sense to Japan to defeatthe U. S. if that meant giving up China.
"Betrayal at Pearl Harbor" is very wise after the fact.The imminence of war, it tells us, should have been clear toAmerican planners. Japan's JN-25B code had been broken.The orders to sail the Japanese Fleet from the Kuriles to arendezvous point in mid-Pacific were transmitted. TheDutch claimed to have intercepted them, so presumably theBritish and the Americans should have done the same.
Certainly the imminence of war in the Pacific was obvi-ous to any reasonably intelligent person at the time, but thePacific did not get the attention it deserved. To understandwhy, we must put ourselves in the shoes of leaders at thattime—not laboratory analysts of the present. And at thattime, the British were up to their eyeballs with Germans andthe Americans were fighting an undeclared war with the Ger-man Navy in the North Atlantic. Hindsight, of course, is al-ways 20-20. But whatever the British and Americans "should
have been able to do," let me quote a direct source. DuaneWhitlock, unlike Mr. Nave, was there, on Corregidor, work-ing on the Japanese codes. "I can attest from first-hand expe-rience that as of 1 December 1941 the recovery of JN-25Bhad not progressed to the point that it was productive of anyappreciable intelligence," stated Whitlock—"not evenenough to be pieced together by traffic analysis....It simplywas not within the realm of our combined cryptologic capa-bility to produce a usable decrypt at that particular juncture."
In the early 1990s the United States Navy transferred allits cryptologic archives from Crane, Indiana to the Na-tional Archives in Washington. This includes 26,581 JN-
25 intercepts from 1 September to 7 December. All of theseare available for public review. Frederick Parker, who studied2,413 of these intercepts, argues in the film that had theybeen read at the time, they would have provided clear evi-dence of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. Rusbridgerand Nave, in their book, claim they were read, but offer noevidence.
Well, here is the evidence: the 2,413 pre-Pearl Harborintercepts which had been decrypted by Navy cryptologistsafter the war while they were waiting to be mustered out ofthe service. While Parker makes a strong circumstantial casethat the attack would have been discovered had these mes-sages been read, cryptologists at that time would not havebeen looking just at the 2,413 intercepts; they would havebeen looking at all 26,581. Would they have been able todiscern the relevant information from all that noise?
I could go on: the "bomb plot," the Popov question-naire, Hull's "ultimatum" to Japan, etc., all old news, mis-leadingly presented. Readers may recall that Nave and Rus-bridger tried to turn all this around a few years back (just intime to cash in on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, ac-tually) by claiming it wasn't Roosevelt after all, it was Win-ston Churchill who hid the knowledge of the attack in orderto draw the United States into the war. As Professor Kimballwrote: "It seems to me that to brand Winston Churchilland/or Franklin Roosevelt as conspirators requires that theybe seen as evil geniuses. But for them to allow the U.S. Fleetto be clobbered means they were stupid. And that doesn'tcompute."
Allow me to vent for a moment. The reason why thiskind of garbage passes for history is that standards for evi-dence have virtually disappeared. Not all evidence is equaland there is an obligation to weigh evidence against somereasonable standard. The standard is not exactly rocket sci-ence; remnant evidence is better than tradition-creating evi-dence; corroborated testimony is better than uncorroboratedtestimony; forensic evidence is better than hearsay. Our in-ability to be skeptical, to think critically, to ask questions, tocompare and contrast, leads to the perpetuation of one urbanlegend after another be it Churchill and Coventry, Churchilland the Lusitania, Churchill (or Roosevelt) and Pearl Har-bor, etc., etc., etc. Hard thinking, critical analysis, and skep-ticism are the only ways to challenge this rubbish. I some-times despair. Vent off. $
FINEST HOUR H6/39
CHURCHILLTRIVIA ANSWERSfrom page 35
(1255) Reginald McKenna, who hadserved as First Lord of the Admiraltyfrom 1908. (1256) Churchill wastold to speak about 15 minutes at hisfirst public speech, but his talk wasbound to last over 20 minutes.(1257) "Mr. Bullfinch." (1258)Clementine Ogilvy-Hozier. (1259)WSC's 1911 memorandum forecastalmost to the day the militarytimetable of the 1914 German inva-sion of Belgium and France. (1260)Major Desmond Morton.
(1261) Lt. Gen. Sir A. Burnes wasappointed to head the forerunner of"Combined Operations." (1262)Speaking for Themselves. (1263) Asnuffbox from the Marlborough col-lection at Blenheim Palace. (1264)Three: Ramsay MacDonald 1929-1935, Stanley Baldwin 1935-1937,and Neville Chamberlain, 1937-1939. (1265) Operation "Workshop"was a plan to seize the Italian islandof Pantelleria. (1266) "In no circum-stances could we allow the GallipoliPeninsula to be held by the Turks."
(1267) Lord Louis Mountbatten.(1268) Mr. Brodrick's Army and ForFree Trade. (1269) £500. (1270)Churchill was considering where togive his first public (political) speech.(1271) Election broadcast of 4 June1945. Many people said it cost himthe election. (1272) Lulea, Swedenand Narvik, in Norway.
(1273) Ernest Bevin, in a broadcaston 17 March 1951. (1274) In 1899Churchill wrote to his mother, "Iam interested in the cutting aboutPapa's biography." (1275) ArthurBalfour. (1276) Churchill enteredParliament as Tory MP for Oldhamon 14 February 1901. (1277)According to British Intelligence inthe Second World War, Howardexplained to the Germans that hewas a fanatical Welsh nationalist.(1278) Admiral Keyes's successsfullanding on the Norwegian LofotenIslands, which destroyed a fish-pro-cessing plant. $!
"Send for Churchill":1951 Campaign Pin
The WashingtonSociety for Churchilloffers this finely enameledreplica of the pin Churchill'ssupporters wore in the 1951 GeneralElection—also highly relevant today.The craftsmanship is a majorimprovement on the original—crisp,clear and bright. US $10 or theequivalent postpaid.Checks to WSC, c/o Dan Borinsky,2080 Old Bridge Road #203, LakeRidge VA 22192 USA
A compendium offacts eventuallyto appear as a
COLOR PRINTS OF PAINTINGSIN THIS ISSUE: $40 each.
By kind courtesy of Minnie Churchilland Churchill Heritage, we offer
limited editions of 25 each of"Lullenden Manor" (1922, Coombs
143, cover) and "The Swimming Pool atMme. Balsan's House" (1946, Coombs
126, pp 26-27). Printed on heavierpaper, reverse blank, white borders,
shipped rolled by airmail. Make yourcheque payable to The Churchill
Center ($40 ea.), ICS UK (£28 ea.)or ICS Canada ($65 ea.). Your per-sonal cheque will be forwarded to
your organization. Send to the editor.
AMPERSANDCHURCHILL'S SOVEREIGNSQueen Victoria, 1837-1901King Edward VII, 1901-1910King George V, 1910-1936King Edward VIII, 1936King George VI, 1936-1952Queen Elizabeth II, 1952-date
PRIME MINISTERS 1874-1965William Gladstone, Lib., 1868-74Benjamin Disraeli, Cons., 1874-80William Gladstone, Lib., 1880-85Marquess of Salisbury, Cons., 1885-86William Gladstone, Lib., 1886Marquess of Salisbury, Cons., 1886-92William Gladstone, Lib., 1892-94Earl of Rosebery, Lib., 1894-95Marquess of Salisbury, Cons., 1895-02Arthur Balfour, Cons., 1902-05Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Lib., 1905-08Herbert H. Asquith, Lib., 1908-16David Lloyd George, Lib., 1916-22Andrew Bonar Law, Cons., 1922-23Stanley Baldwin, Cons., 1923-24James Ramsay MacDonald, Lab. 1924Stanley Baldwin, Cons., 1924-29James Ramsay MacDonald, Lab., 1929-31James Ramsay Macdonald, Nat., 1931-35Stanley Baldwin, Cons., 1935-37Neville Chamberlain, Cons., 1937-40Winston S. Chuchill, Nat., 1940-45Winston S. Churchill, Cons., 1945
Clement Attlee, Lab., 1945-51Winston S. Churchill, Cons., 1951-55Sir Anthony Eden, Cons., 1955-57Harold Macmillan, Cons., 1957-63Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Cons., 1963-64Harold Wilson, Lab., 1964-70
PEER OF THE REALMholds one or more of five possible titlesof nobility bestowed upon them or theirancestors by the monarch. In descendingorder of precedence they are:
Duke/DuchessMarquess/MarchionessEarl/CountessViscount/ViscountessBaron/Baroness
A Duke/Duchess can never be known byany other title. A Baron/Baroness isalways referred to as "Lord/Lady" exceptin the most legalistic circumstances. Theother three degrees use their official titlesin formal situations but are "Lord/Lady"informally. The eldest son of a Duke,Marquess or Earl is known by his father'stitle until he himself succeeds. Youngersons have the courtesy title "Lord" (e.g.,Randolph Churchill) but are not peers.Since 1958, with only five exceptions,peerages have been conferred only forlife (in the degree Baron/Baroness).Baronets and Knights are not peers. $
FINEST HOUR IK>/4()
CRUISING SPEED:
A FORTNIGHT IN THE
LIFE OF FINEST HOURRICHARD M. LANGWORTH
People sometimes ask us, thoughno one really knows the answer:
what does it take to put an issuetogether? So just once I kept notes.This might be of passing interest.It was to me. I don't think our pub-lisher will like it. But she knows.
For months prior to the start ofwork, FH 115 has germinated, somearticles for years. How many hoursthat involved I have no idea. A lot.Three weeks before handover to theprinter, the makings are on hand,but disorganized. The "departments"always come in on time from ourfaithful contributors. Articles havebeen evaluated, discussed withauthors, revised accordingly, andfiled for the likely issue: 115, 116,on through 120. There is always 50percent more than any issue canhold. The raw material glares at us.
DAYS 1-4Gather ye chickens. We assemble
the contents of the issue, construct-ing a page by page "road map" as arough guide, shuffling things thatwon't fit into next issue's file. Muchhas come in by e-mail, tossed intoraw computer files, awaiting atten-tion. Every word has to be editedand turned into uniform type.Garamond is the current favorite, set11 point for features and 10 1/2point for departments (after longexperimentation, the ideal compro-mise between space-saving and eye-saving). My own material has beenperiodically revised for weeks afterthe first draft, some of it sent out tofor others to critique.
As usual, we have a mixed bag.
Some people are born writers, serv-ing exactly the right word count,beautifully written. An editor's dutyis to make everyone look good. "Abore is someone who tells every-thing," my best editor once told me.We have only one criterion: "It mustbe Churchill-related." If it is, and ifit's fresh, we make it work.
The editing of the departments—Datelines, Around and About,Action This Day, Trivia, QuestionTime, Riddles Mysteries Enigmas,Inside the Journals, most of the let-ters—allowing for interruptions—takes four days.
DAYS 5-7Now for the material that arrived
in hard copy, which Barbara hasbeen scanning into WordPerfect (Ihate MS Word; it keeps interferingwith dumb suggestions, like your oldnanny) and doing a preliminary edit.A has sent a charming story fromIndia, about a Gandhi disciple whohated Churchill but is coming roundafter As dogged ministrations. Ashome tongue is Hindi. His English isgood but he's sent 2000 words.There's room for 500. Edit it down:three hours. I'm not sending him aproof because he will come backwith more copy, bless him. Ohwell...sent it to him anyway.
We are interrupted by B, who isunhappy that we passed up his piecebut published one by C, whom hedislikes. We patiently write that whathe sent we'd already covered. He isnot mollified. Two hours wasted.
A tough nut: D has written aChurchill book in Finnish\ E hasfound a Finn who translates theFinnish review—3000 words! FH
cannot really devote more than 750to a book however good that is notin English. We spend the better partof a night after supper cutting itdown, and e-mail it to E to have alook. E comes back with deftimprovements.
F has sent us a great piece aboutChurchill's American mentor, BourkeCockran. F is over 80 but writes like40, takes little editing. His piece is3500 words, but he sent only twophotos. This is a worry: FH is too"grey," in my opinion—not enoughphotos. Inevitable with all the schol-arly material, but we want to enter-tain, too. The editing is easy, we findonly 500 superfluous words. Layoutwill be tricky with two illustrations.
At our request, G in Floridacontacted the owner of a Palm Beachestate once owned by ConsueloVanderbilt Balsan, frequented byChurchill. Barbara has scanned hisreport, sent last December. Now, inher scanned text, tossed aside whenreceived, I find that last December G1) located the owner; 2) invited us tovisit him on our way to Eleuthera(ulp); and 3) has seen the owner'sgreat photo, sent from the Duke ofMarlborough, showing WSC andClemmie at this place. But his photois stuck to the glass of its frame, socan we get another? I didn't realizewe had a.photo\ Too good to runwithout it, so file the article for FH116 while e-mailing H to ring upBlenheim and try to pry loose a copyof the photograph (see page 25).
Last August, J sent us a news-paper article about Patrick Kinna, last
FINEST HOUR n6/4l
surviving member of Churchill'swartime secretariat: a lovely man withgood memories. We are determined toget it in. Barbara scans the newspaperarticle, which J has obtained permissionto reprint: they're in newspaper style,one sentence paragraphs. We put it intodecent prose and pace. It raises pointsthat need checking in the library. Takesthree hours, right at dinner time. Thepublisher-cook is furious.
DAYS 8-10It is the 4th of July, like a blast fur-
nace outside so I spend the day indoorswith FH and Quark Express (desktoppublishing program). If I get this to theprinter by the 8th we can sail on the9th but have to be in DC on the 10thfor a CC meeting. The ready file is nowfull of edited manuscripts. All we needdo is turn this heap into an issue.
Open Quark and bung in the coverphoto: a Hailstone painting sent by aLondon dealer who wants to sell it. Weget one-time rights for the publicity—athing we do to keep color coming.Finding good color is constant worry.This portrait is not great (later I will bebawled out for it). It was scanned witha Macintosh, so it should be all right.Reminder: give the printer the originalCD and pray it is not a "jpg," becausejpgs are Internet scans and can lose def-inition when translated into print files.It's a print file, thank God. Drop thetitles out white so they pop, reduce sothey don't overpower. Page 1 done—only 47 to go!
The inside front cover is no prob-lem; all the updates were entered asthey came in. But two new CCAssociates change the column lengthsand some tweaking is needed to makethem fit. Bypass the contents page: wealways do that last.
Page 4 is the letters column and asusual spills way over. I used to continueletters on a back page but noticed thatjournals I respect rigidly stick to a page.Tight editing reduces ours to one spill-over column, leaving two-thirds of page5 for the start of "Datelines," requiringthe same layout as FH 113. We importthe layout from the back files and away
we go on Datelines.Finding photos is a painful busi-
ness. Two early Datelines mentionChurchill's demand for beer for theforces; and his bodyguard, Walter H.Thompson. We hit the "morgue," a fileof pix torn out of books, glossiesbought or bartered over the years, butstill not computer-indexed. (I keeppromising myself, but....) A good shotof Thompson falls out in two minutes—but we want the one of Churchillwith the dock workers, asking, "are yougetting enough to eat [and drink] ?" Wecan't find it, not even in photo books.We are sure it's in one! I give up after ahalf hour. (We found it weeks later andjust for the record, it is shown on page30 of this issue!)
What to do about Ruth Ive? She isthe wartime secretary who had the jobof cutting off Churchill if he strayedinto classified material on his transat-lantic phone calls. History Today andThe Times have run lengthy accounts ofher stories, so we excerpt their account,quoting the most amusing episodes.Later we find Ruth Ive is speaking to usat the Virginia Churchill Conference.She was a good catch!
As piece is a problem, since itinvolves his pro-Gandhi friend, butthere is no photo of A and his pal.Instead there is a great photo of A shak-ing hands with the headmaster of hisold school after a lecture. We use it,sure the casual reader will think it's hisfriend. Well, readers should read.
Incredibly, "Riddles, Mysteries,Enigmas" fits into one page after a bigriddle is cut and postponed to FH 116.An equally good two-page fit is K's fine"Action This Day" column, after wereluctantly trim a nice reflection byChurchill on a one-time Irish revolu-tionary who sacrificed his ardor for apeaceful Ireland. We run it at pages14/15 but later move it to 26/27 so thatsomething else runs on the naturalspread (24-25, center of the book).
Ready for the lead article. There aretwo contenders: Bourke Cockran andwhat we suddenly realize are three arti-cles with one theme—interpretingWSC to young people. Tough choice.
FINEST HOUR H6/42
y
___ _ J
Titosn REALISTIC HOIJDGEAPH LETTERSii ' U U I I it t. ! ' P !
BOOKS ARTS
& QJRIOMTILS
Cockran is finely written, really ourbest this issue, so we go with Bourke.
Because of the lack of photos, westart big, a full-bleed Cockran photo onthe first page, the titles dropped outwhite. This leaves only one other photo,so the rest of the piece will go all greyunless we lighten it up with blurbs—quotes from the text set in large italics.
Two hours later: worked. An amus-ing blurb with the second photo keptpages 18-19 from looking grey. Note tothe printer: "shoot this in line becausethe background is dark as a cave."Cockran spills over by half a columnonto page 21, so we tweak and edit thestory to end clean on 20. This leaves arighthand page for "Wit and Wisdom"—a humor break from the heavyhistory. Another two hours go by.
Of the three "youth" articles, onlyL's was actually written for young peo-ple. It's the longest, so it leads. But theother two are natural fits with a fewchanges to the lead paragraphs, and thetriptych fills two spreads. How to illus-trate these words of philosophy? We hitupon Churchill in subaltern's dress uni-form (haven't used it for 25 issues),placed in an oval to render it fresh, anda caption: "He stepped up—what aboutyou?" Uncle Sam Wants You...
On the second spread there are nophotos at all, until we come up with apiece of artwork used before. We sil-houette it so the type flows around it,then hit the wrong button and lose allour work! (Half an hour.) We bring itback in a box and it comes in croppedtight around the face. It looks prettydifferent that way, so we use it as-is! Wethink we are very clever.
The second article is three lines toolong; we tweak it to fit, but have toblow up the third piece by three lines totake up the slack. Works. Half-waythrough, five days to deadline.
DAYS 11-13The next piece is full of illustra-
tions, though the "pictures" are samplesof facsimile thank-yous Churchill's staffwould send to well-wishers on his birth-day or other occasions. M has foundnine variations. Easy layout, nice after
two grey spreads. The graphics arestark, black-on-white so we run themon a light grey background. Putting thison the centerspread means the back-ground flows across the spread and theprinter won't get upset trying to matchanything across the gutter. This is myarticle, but I keep a firewall betweenFH and the rare book and autographbusiness, so I use a pen name.
Which reminds me of the rule Ilearned from my best editor: nobodygets more than one byline per issue.Book review bylines don't count (every-body must sign their opinions). But ifyou have two feature articles, you mustchoose a pen name for one of them.
Our third "serious feature" is athoughtful piece on Churchill and warcrimes, a heavy story to follow the auto-graph stuff. It falls neatly into twospreads. Merrill Lynch sent a niceChurchill ad whose theme fits.
"Books, Arts and Curiosities" is our"back of the book" section where weshovel in book and film reviews,Churchilliana, people, stamps andcoins, recipes and trivia, articleabstracts, bibliography.
N's review is 2 1/2 pages; we have 11/2. Condensing takes two hours.Other reviewers are briefer: they all fitinto five pages, leaving a space on thelast page where we slot a "Moment inTime" photo from the filler file.
Interrupted by A, who emails: "Inanswer to your question, it is perfectlyall right to refer to Chaudhary DaulatRamji Saran as 'Mr. Saran.' The suffix'ji' is like the English 'Esq.' after a nameas a form of respect. 'Chaudhary' means'leader,' like 'Fuehrer' in Germany...well, perhaps 'Don' in Italy could beequivalent. But again not of the samenature (violence)." Where else couldyou learn this?
At this point we usually startcounting. We still have the Kinna storyand eight departments. Should we go to52 pages? (Everything must be multi-ples of four.) But there's a cash-flowproblem at the moment and eventhough FH is running under budget,four pages costs $600 extra. Try toshoehorn it into 48.
FINEST HOUR 116/43
EMI\TNTC The Kinna piece gobbles two pages,but we get the idea to call him an"Eminent Churchillian," like the twoCC members we are covering, whichsaves a separate title and lets us cram allthree into three pages.
DAYS 14-15Eight departments left, seven pages
plus the back cover to go. "Inside theJournals" (abstracts of articles), "WoodsCorner" (announcements of forthcom-ing new books) and O's "QuestionTime" each take a page by tradition.Barbaras "Recipes from No. Ten"usually takes half a page but this timeneeds a whole one—ouch.
Page 45 is a catch-all for whatdidn't fit anywhere else: our quarterlyappeal for more Churchill CenterAssociates; the 1951 Churchill cam-paign pin sold by our Washington affili-ate; and a series of commemorative cov-ers which ICS (UK) wants us to pro-mote on their behalf. So much for 45.
Two pages plus back cover left—arrgh. Page 46 holds both "LeadingChurchill Myths" and "Ampersand," forwe selected the shortest available myth("Alexander Fleming saved WSC's lifetwice") and the shortest "Ampersand"(pound-dollar values and buying, powersince 1874). The latter takes up onlythree column inches but requires threehours' research on the Internet. Thatleaves 47 for "Churchilltrivia," where itusually goes, and always takes up apage—after laborious editing.
Home free: instead of "ImmortalWords" on the back cover we opt for agreat photo of Roosevelt and Churchillat Quebec (it was the cover of FH 35,but nobody will remember, and it's asplendid photo of the two magnificoes.
People ask why Barbara is listed aspublisher and what publishers do. Inmy house they cover for the editor:handle bills and accounting, registerissues for copyright protection, scanmaterial sent in hard copy, proofread,ship complimentary copies, deal withUPS and the post office. No white shirtpublishers here.
This is not the end, and not eventhe beginning of the end, but it is per-
haps the end of the beginning. Aheadlie hours of proofreading, and half a daypacking up the UK and Canada ship-ments and mailing out the Australianand complimentary copies.
Monday noon: we enter a multi-tude of corrections from preliminaryproofing and rush to the printer withthe artwork, a print-out, and a Zip diskcontaining the computer files. Theprinter promises final proofs in a week.That gives us a reprieve to do some-thing else for seven days—we duly go toLake Winnipesaukee on Tuesday, butthere's no wind!
POSTSCRIPTWhile trying to "do something
else," Finest Hour continues to intrude.(A day never goes by when it doesn't.) Along call Thursday from P, who wantsto interview an outspoken, pro-Churchill professor (a tentative yes); aletter from Q, who wants to write adocumentary examining Sir Winston'swill (no thanks); a promoter with awidget he wants to sell for $125 andwill give the Center $5 for every one hesells (such a deal, when he knocks themoff wholesale for $40.) Our "no-com-mercialism" rule saves us again. Also,the photo of Churchill painting inFlorida has arrived...
H kindly had Blenheim send us acopy of the photo of Churchill at hiseasel, wearing a bathrobe of many col-ors with Clementine intently observingover his shoulder. Now that it's here wespend all morning narrowing down thedate, which we fix at 1946. The photoshows the painting well enough to iden-tify it as #126 in David Coombs's 1967catalogue—but Coombs has it atBalsan's house in France in the 1930s!So we lay out the article in a new filefor FH 116, ship a copy to G in Floridato check; e-mail the photo and text toDavid Coombs and Minnie Churchill,who are working on a new edition ofthe paintings catalogue; and to R at theChurchill Archives Centre. We ask allto confirm the 1946 date and the factsas we state them.
I look at my watch and it's 12:30.Another day half shot...but such fun! M>
"INHST HOUR ii6/44
THE FINEST HOUR READER SURVEYAn Appreciation by the Editor
Thanks! —to the nearly 200 of you who took the trouble to respond to our survey, and Barbara Lang-worth for many weeks' work keylining and compiling the results. So many of you asked that the
whole thing be published that we do so herewith. Please know that your thoughts and suggestions areall being carefully considered by our leadership.
The response was equally good from the USA, UK, Canada, and elsewhere, and a number of fre-quent suggestions have already been implemented: Churchilltrivia answers will now appear in the sameissue with the questions; Recipes from No. 10 will be reduced to a half page every other issue; and otherfeatures will be emphasized or deemphasized according to demand. Meanwhile, a few observations...
1. Average age is alarming, even in the USA, where we proclaim an average age of 48 (basedmainly on new members who tell us). Maybe older folk have more time to fill out forms, but we need toconsider how we can recruit more new, young members.
2. "How did you hear of us?" shows that a remarkable one-third of you heard of us not by adver-tising but via a friend. USA members will shortly receive new membership brochures and will be askedto make them count—or order gift memberships, remembering our subsidized student rate is only $20.
3. Interests: it seems revealing that as many people checked "leadership" (only third on the list ofchoices) as "writings" or "statesmanship."
4. Conferences: virtually everybody said "speakers" is the most crucial conference factor by far,which "speaks" for itself.
5. Website: We were not surprised to see 45% of a group with an average age of 60 disinterestedin the website. I do not think this should deter us from improving the website, especially promotionalaspects, since it is so important in helping lower our average age through younger members.
6. Overall Performance: Only 27% are "bugged" by something, while 47% listed things they like.On the whole, we feel we can be modestly cheered that most of you believe we are on the right track. So,"we just K.B.O.," with gratitude for your considerate advice and encouragement. —RML
mrvey Results, compililed bv Barbara L,answortk
About 2500 magazines were mailed with theReader Survey. Total responses were 196 or about 8%. A10% return is considered excellent, so we had a goodinput from our readership.
The breakdown was: USA 143, Canada 34, UK 12,Denmark 3, Australia 1, Finland 1, Norway 1, SouthAfrica 1.
Respondents numbered 181 (93%) male, 15 (7%)female.
Average age: 60 (18-89). Average age of the threelargest areas: USA 58 (18-87), Canada 65 (38-89), UK:65 (31-89).
How long have you been a member?0-2 years 44 23%3-5 years 38 19%5-10 years 44 23%10+ years 69 35%How did you hear about us?Friend 62 34%Website (winstonchurchill.org) 27 15%Churchillbooks.com 27 15%National Review 19 11 %
British HeritageBook blurbInternet/emailLocal events
171175
9%6%4%3%
Other: newspaper 7, stamps 5, Cabinet War Rooms2, Chartwell 2.
What interests you most about Churchill?Leadership 173 89%Writings 172 88%Statesmanship 170 88%Humor 126 65%Paintings 64 33%Family 64 33%
Other: World War II, integrity, contemporaries,medical issues, political philosophy, Churchill's era inEngland, diplomacy, anecdotes, relevance to today,courage in adversity, British heritage, quotations, mili-tary, personality, support and appreciation of Parlia-mentary Democracy, genius, character, history, relation-ship to Jews, WW2 speeches, inspiration, biography.
FINHSTHOUR H6/45
Which Churchill items do you collect?BooksVideo/DVDRecordingsChurchillianaStampsPaintingsNothing
156715841272515
86%39%32%23%15%14%
8%Other: busts, medals and coins (3), autographs, let-
ters, military miniatures, family pictures, WW2 items.
Interest in Publications (Res. = % responding)Publish:
Finest HourBook ClubProceedingsC'well BulletinChurchill StoresWebsite
High9 1 %5445444023
Mod.9%
3038563542
Slight0%9
150
1720
Nill0%7208
15
vlore1025545
Less020011
Res.96%7875408872
FINEST HOUR MAGAZINE
Interest in ArticlesHigh Mod. Slight Nil More Less Res.
by ChurchillWorld War 2WritingWorld War 1
91% 8% 1% 0% 10 1898564
101531
Youth/family 57 32WSC& America 57 37
10596
WSC& Europe 57 36 7Cold War 54 38 7
0101001
9 010 1
5 15 06 05 16 0
86%89838277817779
Interest in Departments:High Mod.
Book reviewsnew 84% 15%old 74 22
Immortal Words 77 23Wit & Wisdom 68 27Action This Day 63 31Leading Myths 61 32Editorials 59 39Inside Journals 52 38Datelines 51 38Ampersand 49 39Riddles 47 31Calendar 44 37Churchilltrivia 43 37Despatch Box 42 43Local News 40 46Question Time 39 48Conferences 33 40Recipes 14 19
Publish:Slight Nil More Less Res.
1% 0% 831555
43101091916161314132434
101120104344210334
06548441223321231
002200321101100105
79%7674827678756570707271746969616970
NOTE: The following are direct quotes, edited only forgrammar and deleting only items we've actually done.
What new features/departments would you suggest?
Churchill's views relative to current events based onsimilar circumstances at time of his leadership, i.e. Israel,terrorism, etc. ... Churchill in current press ....Occasional reprint of Churchill's art—maybe one cover ayear .... The reminiscences of the last few who knewChurchill .... Explain what we are doing with students.... Publish minutes of Board meetings .... Churchill'sprinciples of statesmanship or politics/oratory ....Interpreting WSC views on the European Union .... TheChurchill family relationships, profiles of family ....
More articles on statecraft .... List pubs related toWSC; list all monuments, etc. in cities all over theworld; list all known official & personal/private estab-lished sites on the Internet .... A series of Mrs. Everest'scomments to young Winston which helped form hischaracter e.g. "keep regular, you know" — she was avery great woman in my opinion. [This is partly dealtwith in FH 114] .... More from Langworth, he's a greatwriter .... A book or map listing every day of Churchill'slife, where he was and when & who he met with ....
Churchill statues .... People around Churchill ....More illustrations, e.g. Chartwell interiors— placesChurchill visited, the Presidential train at the GoldCoast railroad museum, Florida (WSC and Truman—the Fulton speech), revisit Placentia Bay (AtlanticCharter) .... Churchill and Conservatism .... Fold outposter once a year for kids — snappy color posters (forclassroom use) with or without quotes are very attractive.... High interest in "Woods Corner" .... Churchill com-memorative coins and medals .... New stamp editions ....
Humor .... I enjoy Listserv Winston most, but Istudy all else .... A return to articles about Churchilliana.You seem to have almost completely stopped. Many newitems are being offered, I would like to hear about them.... Any personal recollections from members or otherswho actually met Mr. Churchill .... More on book col-lecting .... Illustrate articles more richly with maps,paintings, facsimiles, etc. (when you can afford it afteryou receive the $100 million from Rupert Murdoch) ....More articles by Jim Muller and Chris Bell ....
More Woods Corner .... Stick to history ...."Churchill Contemporaries" section. For each issue ofFH, perhaps a brief one page profile or article of a lead-ing, eminent personality during WSC's lifetime that hasan impact on his Parliamentary career, family, etc. (i.e.Hitler, Chamberlain, FDR) .... FH is excellent. I worry
FINEST HOUR U6 / 46
about it continuing without RML .... This is one of themost brilliant magazines I have ever read—the presenta-tion, articles, editorials, reviews .... A study of Churchill'scritical decisions .... New issue stamp reviews ....Broaden the subject matter. Examples: Europe Today,the difference between a U.S. president and a BritishPrime Minister, etc Information on popular web-sites, research material, archives.
Suggestions for other Finest Hour articles:Need a better index on web .... His constituency
relationships .... Military .... By people who knewChurchill .... Churchill as a man. What he was really liketo those in contact with him .... Intelligence ....Moreabout other members of his family and his friends ....Quotes .... Constitutionalism and political thought.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES
What is most important at conferences? (77 responses)SpeakersLocationScholarshipSocialYoung PeopleOther: Truth, Cost
743520167
96%45%26%21%
9%
What locations would you suggest for Conferences?United States 71 (East 33, Mid 17, West 21)Canada 22UK 15Other 15
General CommentsConferences are doing just fine .... Alternate among
the USA, Canada, and UK .... Difficult to pickChurchill-related locations and still keep costs reason-able, but this would be a good objective now and then.
Desired LocationsEach had one vote unless indicated by parentheses.
United States (East to West)East Coast: New England, NH-Mount Washington
Hotel, North of Boston, Boston, New York (4), HydePark (2), New York City (3), Gettysburg, Philadelphia(3), Washington DC (3), Charlottesville, Richmond,Charleston (2), Atlanta, Savannah (2), Florida (avoidMiami), Miami (2), Orlando, visit places linked to WSCin Florida including the train and the places he stayedetc.
Midwest: Universities and colleges, Chicago (10),Milwaukee, Fulton, Dallas, San Antonio (2)
West Coast: at least every five years (1), Seattle,
Portland, California, Los Angeles (2), Newport Beach,Palm Springs, Palo Alto, San Francisco (4), Long Beach/Queen Mary, Arizona, Santa Fe, Colorado, Hawaii (2)
CanadaQuebec Province, Quebec City (3), Mont
Tremblant, Ottawa (3), Toronto (2), London, Banff,Vancouver (6), Victoria (4)
United Kingdom"Has more direct connection with Churchill
history," London (5), Chartwell (2), Blenheim Palace,Dundee, Scapa Flow
Other LocationsIceland, Scandinavia, Copenhagen, Berlin, France,
[Normandy, Paris, Pol Roger Champagne, Cap d'Antibe,South of France], Dardanelles, Gallipoli, Crete,Marrakesh, Pretoria
Rate the International Conferences
San Diego 2001: 20 responsespercentages: excellent goodOrganizationSpeakersLocationHotelProgramsCost
70%8560506030
25%1025303535
Anchorage 2000: 5 responsespercentages: excellent goodOrganization 100%Speakers 100Location 80 20Hotel 80 20Programs 100Cost 80 20
Bath 1999: 9 responsespercentages: excellent goodOrganization 67% 33%Speakers 78 22Location 89 11Hotel 33 56Programs 56 44Cost 33 56
Williamsburg 1998: 14 responsespercentages: excellent good
93%OrganizationSpeakersLocationHotelProgramsCost
7993717164
7%147
141824
fair
1010
30
fair
poor5%55
1055
fair poor
11%
11%
fair poor
7%
71111
8%
FINEST HOUR U6/47
Rate the International Conferences...
Toronto 1997:percentages:OrganizationSpeakersLocationHotelProgramsCost
Ashdown Parkpercentages:OrganizationSpeakersLocationHotelProgramsCost
Boston 1995:percentages:OrganizationSpeakersLocationHotelProgramsCost
: 11 responsesexcellent
73%7364556445
good27%2727232736
1996: 10 responsesexcellent
70%8070558060
17 responsesexcellent
88%7682827659
good30%2010302030
good122418182441
fair
9%2299
fair
20%15
fair
INTEREST IN LOCAL MEETINGS
Eighty respondents attend local events, 101 do not,and 15 did not respond.
Ninety respondents would like to attend localevents and 17 would not.
Sixty-eight don't attend local events but would liketo and the following locations were mentioned:
USA: New England, Boston, Connecticut, NewYork- Buffalo & New York City, New Jersey,Pennsylvania- Philadelphia & Pittsburgh, WashingtonDC, Virginia-northern & Richmond, North Carolina,South Carolina- Myrtle Beach, Georgia- Savannah &Atlanta, Alabama, Florida -southwest & Fort Myers &Orlando & NOT Miami, Illinois- Chicago, Minnesota-Twin Cities, Wisconsin- Milwaukee, Kansas, Texas-central & Dallas, Arizona, Colorado- Denver, WestCoast, California-north, south & peninsula & NewportBeach & Riverside & San Bernardino
Canada: Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver
Other: Durban, Finland, Copenhagen, Sweden,United Kingdom.
WEBSITE www.winstonchurchill.org
How often do you use it? 155 responses (79%)Daily 3 2%Weekly 10 6%Monthly 72 46%Seldom 12 8%Never 58 37%
Website improvements you'd like to see:No [improvements] .... None ....Site is excellent....
The website is wonderful! .... The website is in dire needof a complete overhaul, making individual suggestionsdifficult.... Home page must emphasize The ChurchillCenter, not Winston Churchill's Home Page ....Complete new home page, comprehensive with a broadrange of choices and links described as you go in pop-upblurbs before you click. Get rid of the present endlesschain of link lines .... A whole new look: Something likeThe National Trust/UK ....
Very important that it looks professional. Morephotos and graphics .... Photo section .... Up-to-datecalendar of events .... More timely news, events .... Moreinformation re: events .... More frequent updates. Itseems rarely to change .... A summary of what is new tothe website .... Finest Hour should be presented not byissue but by main subject right on the home page:Churchill as War Leader, Churchill as Statesman,Painter, Writer, Orator, etc. This will take work andrequire cross references, but it will get visitors immedi-ately to the area they wish to go ....
Articles from earlier issues of Finest Hour .... A lotcould be done, a more professional look and feel ....More archived FH material if possible; more lively ....Membership can be better promoted .... show typicalpages of Finest Hour. Membership invitation should bemore pronounced .... Frequent and regular appeals tothe browser to join, a subsidized low subscription ratefor students and teachers, .... a secure server forVisa/Mastercard .... Articles on WSC's thought on reli-gion, Napoleon and his apparent Francophilia ....
More accessible links to other sites .... Expansion ofthe on-line shop .... More quotations .... List regardingpubs related to WSC; list with all the monuments, etc.in cities all over the world; list with all known official &personal/private established sites on the Internet ....Better search engine, more book reviews and an annotat-ed bibliography of works about Churchill. Example: inthe bibliography, have links to online reviewsNavigation could be improved with frames .... Perhapsupdated more frequently .... More changes .... I alsoenjoy the Listserv .... I tend to forget it exists.
FINI-ST HOUR I 16 / 48
GENERAL COMMENTS
It's always bugged me that... 52 responses (27%)Nothing this outfit does bugs me .... There are not
more younger members ....There is not a more activelocal chapter in the SF Bay Area of California .... Anevent such as the Gettysburg meeting was not repeated.... Why don't we [UK] get the book and stores catalogs?....We can't establish a full-time H.Q. in WashingtonDC with a physical place for visitors, etc The mis-sion of the CC is not clearly articulated; the website isdated—looks like a 1995 version in its presentations; somuch is done but PR to the general world isn't there ....
Organization still not widely known in England. Itneeds a good public relations person to get it on themap .... Even almost 40 years after his death there is somuch controversy, for instance drinking—how muchwas he accused (a la Alanbrooke's diary)? .... FH receivedat end of quarter .... You don't have a list of Churchillrecords or tapes available for the public .... So fewEnglish people are members; America "carries the torch"— you can do little to change this .... New York City asa venue was abandoned .... Another stamp auction ....
Framable prints of WSC are not offered throughStores ....Please leave the current world of politics out ofFinest Hour. The journal is wonderful on history, but theeditorials are occasionally offensive and almost alwaysout of place .... So few photographs are full page (so thatI can use them for the classroom) .... Comment: wouldlike to see interaction between members so that memo-rabilia can be exchanged .... Too much editorializing onnon-Churchill related matters. Organization is for his-torical purposes and should remain apolitical ....
All the biographies on Sir Winston except two(Lewis Broad and William Manchester) were one volumeworks—a solid three volume bio would have been wel-come and easier to handle too .... We cannot purchasesome of the prints used for covers or inside Finest Hour.... We [USA] are no longer called the InternationalChurchill Society .... I receive no more calendars ....Wedidn't consummate the formal relationship and site withGWU — I favor a closer link with a prestigious(American) University ....
Would like to obtain binders for Finest Hour andback issues .... Encourage young people to appreciatehow Churchill contributed .... Sometimes scholars argueover opinions ....Your administration could use somebolstering. In the past I ordered and paid for somethingwhich was never received .... Canada does not havemany memorials saluting the great man. Not counting afew schools named after him, all we have that I am
aware of is a sculpture in downtown Toronto, a bust inthe New Brunswick legislature building and a publicsquare named after him in Edmonton .... I think ReaderSurvey results should be commented on in summaryform in FH ....The English do not properly respect whatChurchill did for their country .... More people do notappreciate the Churchill legacy and contribute to theCC/ICS .... He lost the election in 1945 .... Sharing mytime between UK and Canada, I have to join two orga-nizations. One organization: one membership! .... FinestHour is always late. Look forward to getting them. Iknow it's hard to get it out, but....
It has always bugged me... (Conferences/Meetings):I can never attend your conferences because they all
require business and/or formal attire. Can't you occa-sionally have one that is for us "casual dressing" folks? Irefuse to attend events which require a tie [No one hasever been ejected from any meeting for not wearing a tie!—Ed.] .... The conferences are always so expensivewhich is why I have never attended. They impress me aselitist, in other words only the affluent can attend ....Conferences are expensive - any chance for supporting afew smaller events in Northern California? We've reallyenjoyed Mr. Barrington's wonderful meetings here ....
The conferences/meetings are so far away! .... Toomany "formal" occasions .... Conferences are too expen-sive .... Dinners, conferences are so expensive but Iunderstand why .... Suggestion: be careful not to pricemembers out of the conferences. The 2002 "inclusive"fee leaves no room for per diem, for commuters .... Thelast day of San Diego at the Queen Mary was much toolong. The singers should have sung at cocktails so wecould have headed back to San Diego right after dinner.I predict that September in Virginia will be very hot....
After attending the '96 conference, I told a fellowChurchill enthusiast when I returned to London that Ihad expected to see him at the conference. He repliedthat he didn't attend because the Society had become tooelitist. I agree completely .... The books available at the2001 conference were poorly organized .... I planned toattend a meeting (in Toronto) in response to a requestfor volunteers and never heard from anyone. This is nobig deal just a comment .... I hope to attend conferencesand meetings in the future when the demands of chil-dren are less.
The things CC/ICS does best... 92 responses (47%)Most frequently mentioned were:
Finest Hour and publications 38Conferences 15Keeping Churchill's memory and legacy 11Inviting and working with young people 6
FINEST HOUR H6/49
Things done best. Finest Hour:A lively, interesting publication, put out on time
with quality and class .... excellent journal that just keepsgetting better .... outstanding quarterly communication—very helpful reviews of current books, except for theslang the quality of writing is high! .... quality editing,always interesting, cover is always beautifully done, art-work, photos, pictures, feature stories, Churchilltriviaand witticisms, inside information about Churchill's lifeand times .... good source of new information on WSC.
Things done best. Memory and Legacy:"Keeping the memory green and the record
accurate," in Lady Soames's words .... refuting the manycanards about Churchill ....acting as a source of truthon all items touching Sir Winston.
Things done best. Young People:Work with young people will ultimately be most
important .... informing young people about Churchill.... recent efforts to reach youngsters .... providing schol-arships .... outreach to college/high school students,involving young people.
Things done best. Other:Great and factual information, a source you can
depend on; fund academic research, reprint books, niceto new members .... Presenting different aspects ofChurchill's life and writing, and in a very readable for-mat .... Bringing like-minded Churchill admirerstogether, either at conferences or via publications ....Providing a continuous educational experience aboutChurchill's life and times .... Researching all articles theypublish to provide truthful and balanced information ....Promoting books, ideas and discussions as well as theimmortal memory .... Explaining how Churchill and hisideas are as relevant in today's chaotic world, as theywere in his lifetime .... Dispelling myths that are widelycirculated in popular media and featuring seriousscholarship .... Bringing us together with scholars andpersons acquainted or associated with Churchill ....
Promoting interest in Churchill and publishingscholarly papers (e.g., Muller's Churchill as Peacemaker,and Iron Curtain books) for those unable to attend sym-posiums .... Making publications, memorabilia, historicunderstanding with balance available to members ....Steadily educating the truth of Churchill's life and impor-tance .... Promoting Churchill as the benchmark forleadership .... Promoting WSC's greatness as an orator,parliamentarian, war leader and servant of the Crown ....Bringing interesting, informed people together, repub-lishing Churchill's writings .... Maintaining interest inChurchill or/and creating interest where none existed ....Making me feel welcome in the organization.
Individual comments:I'm very impressed and grateful for the hard work
of a relatively small group of people.
The "Person of the Century" effort was superb.Even some avid Roosevelt lovers have given in toChurchill on this score.
First of all I'm happy that The Churchill Centerexists. To be a member and to meet others with theinterest in Churchill are the things CC does best.
You do the whole bag very, very well. You deservegreat commendations! Keep up the good work!
Everything seems to be fulfilled with great skillsand efforts.
"YOU CAN QUOTE ME"
Just when you thought you had heard it all, alongcomes FH with another quote, angle or reminder thatthe great man was even greater. —Brian Singleton
When interest rates and return of investment onfinancial vehicles run in the very low digits the C.C.gives intellectual rates of return in the triple digit range.
—Dr. Cyril Mazansky
The importance of Churchill is my realizing how Ican apply his never-say-die spirit to my own problemsand opportunities. — Jon T. Wells
Finest Hour is a very valuable resource for me inteaching courses on Churchill in The Academy forLifelong Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, whereI am a volunteer instructor. —Alex J. Kramer
Finest Hour seems to arrive just when I (or a friendor family member or colleague) most need a word ofcourage, humor and/or wisdom! Having just returnedfrom NYC's "ground zero," #114 was waiting withexactly the right content. —Carol Russell
I like the CC because it gives me a lens throughwhich to focus my interest in 20th century history —especially the search for freedom and liberty, both per-sonal and economic. —Suzanne Sigman
You cannot put price on the knowledge and inspi-ration I have gained. —Ted W Schwartz
Churchill is an inspiration to me. I always try toapply what he said and did to today's problems.
—James W. Bohlander
FINEST HOUR M6/50
There are few purchases in life where you feel likeyou get more value than the dollars invested. TheChurchill Center consistently delivers on its mission,and does so with excellence. —William C. Roeder
ICS has been a good investment not only for myenjoyment but perhaps more importantly because mychildren, ages 11 and 9, are very conscious ofChurchilliana throughout the house. With luck, some-day they may become members. —Margaret Younts
I feel I am doing something good for future genera-tions. —Tom Brinkman, Jr.
Reinforces the lessons once learned that, sadly, needto be (often) relearned. —Paul Robison
As the Chairman of the Churchill Society for theAdvancement of Parliamentary Democracy I think FinestHour is always the finest reading of the year.
—Peter H. Russell
At age 87, my travels are often limited in spite ofintent; have made no meetings. We have signed up forLansdowne. I'm not yet familiar with your offerings.
—Mrs. Roland Caneker
As a young member (18) of The Churchill Center,I feel that the outreach of Churchill knowledge, leader-ship, and literature is an extremely valuable asset to com-munities everywhere. Keep up the good work.
—Scott R. Merrell
In these dark times when leadership is so dull, TheChurchill Center casts the bright light of WSC's courageto help illuminate our way. —Scott Funk
Finest Hour is magnificent, a treasure. —Chris Powell
Your work keeps history alive with its celebration ofChurchill's life, work, and times, and "the farther backwe look the farther forward we see."
—A. Theodore Kachel
Your articles about building a Churchill book col-lection on a budget saved me time and money. Based onyour information I knew what to look for and what topay for it. More importantly, it let me know that it waspossible without spending a fortune.
—Hugh B. McCreery
Try as some may to slam shut the door upon thegreatness of Churchill, you are always there to insist thatit be held open. It is an honor to support your work.
—Mark H. Helprin $3
REMEMBER WINSTON CHURCHILL
Will futuregenerationsremember?
Will the ideas youcherish now besustained theriiWill someonearticulate your
principles?Who will guide
your grandchildren,and your country?There is an answer.
And now is the time!In 2003—at last—The Churchill Center
establishes its permanent office in Washington,D.C., with a salaried executive director, who will
integrate everything we do in the most logicalplace to do it: the nation's capital. Now we have avital permanent infrastructure, heretofore main-tained by devoted but widely-spread volunteers.
Four people in particular—about whom you willhear shortly—have made much of this possible.
Will you give us the tools,so that we can finish the job?
Eighty-eight Churchill Center Associates(named on page 2) have committed $10,000 or
more, over five years, all tax-deductible, toChurchill Center and Society Endowment fundsearning interest in the United States and Canada.
Those earnings guarantee that The ChurchillCenter will endure as a powerful voice,
sustaining beliefs Sir Winston and we held dear.Now. And for future generations.
If you are an Associate, can you give more?If you would like to join us as an Associate,
please contactRichard M. Langworth,
Chairman, Board of Trustees(888) 454-2275 • malakand@conknet.com
FINEST HOUR U6/51
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