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To
BILL SHIRER
who saw it from the other side
and saw it first
“Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden…”
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.
—Winston Churchill Speech in the House of Commons November 12, 1940
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?”
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome Memorized by Churchill at age thirteen
ILLUSTRATIONS
Chartwell: Churchill’s sanctuary, home, and great keep. (National Trust Chartwell/Michael Ross-Wills)
Churchill’s study at Chartwell. (National Trust Chartwell/Michael Ross-Wills)
Churchill in his study. (The Bettmann Archive)
The Churchill coat-of-arms.
The Churchills and friends entertain Charlie Chaplin at Chartwell. (Broadwater Collection)
Clementine bathing in Chartwell’s swimming pool. (Baroness Spencer Churchill Collection)
A life mask of Clementine, taken by Paul Hamann. (Mary Soames Collection)
Major (later Sir) Desmond Morton. (Howard Coster)
F. W. Lindemann, “the Prof.” (The Bettmann Archive)
Brendan Bracken. (The Keystone Collection)
A Chartwell guest: French socialist Léon Blum, former Premier of France. (Wide World Photos)
Albert Einstein in Chartwell’s rose garden. (Mary Soames Collection)
Jack Churchill and Clementine play bezique. (Peregrine Churchill)
Accompanied by her parents, Sarah Churchill is formally presented at Court in 1932. (The Press Association Limited)
Diana and her father leaving Morpeth Mansions in December 1932 for her first marriage. (The Keystone Collection)
Winston, Clementine, and Randolph hunting in Normandy, 1933. (Associated Press)
Winston, Mary, and Clementine en route to Westminster Hall, where Parliament celebrates the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary, May 9, 1935. (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
Diana’s second marriage, to Duncan Sandys, MP, September 16, 1935. (Baroness Spencer Churchill Collection)
After electing Churchill Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, students chair him through the city streets. (Associated Newspapers Ltd./Daily Mail)
A shooting party, representing the power elite confronted by the Führer of the Third Reich. (From John Evelyn Wrench, Geoffrey Dawson and Our Times, 1955)
Sir Horace Wilson, Chamberlain’s éminence grise. (Elliott & Fry)
David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in November 1934. (Wide World Photos)
Churchill votes in the General Election, November 14, 1935. (Planet News Ltd.)
King George V dies on January 20, 1936. (The Bettmann Archive)
The new king, Edward VIII, stands somberly at the Cenotaph, November 11, 1936. (The Bettmann Archive)
Edward VIII insists upon marrying an American woman. Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express tells the story. (Daily Express, December 12, 1936)
Sir Nevile Henderson and Hermann Göring. (The Keystone Collection/Fox Photos)
Sir John Simon, Anthony Eden, and Sir Robert Vansittart follow the coffin of Leopold von Hüsch, German ambassador to Britain. (The Keystone Collection)
Churchill and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax walk to Parliament, March 29, 1938. (The Bettmann Archive)
Alfred Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty, resigns from Chamberlain’s cabinet in disgust over Munich. (The Bettmann Archive)
At the peak of the Munich crisis, Winston Churchill gloomily leaves No. 10 Downing Street. (The Bettmann Archive)
At Chartwell in early 1939 Winston nails tiles to the roof of Orchard Cottage. (The Bettmann Archive)
Clementine in 1939 with one of Chartwell’s two fox cubs. (Baroness Spencer Churchill Collection)
As Honorary RAF Commodore, Winston flies as copilot at Kenley, April 16, 1939. (Fox Photos/Photo Source Ltd.)
The Daily Mail runs an article about Churchill in reaction to Hitler’s seizure of the Rhineland. (Daily Mail, May 11, 1936)
“Bring Him Back—It’s Your Last Chance.” (Sunday Pictorial, April 23, 1939)
Churchill appeals for Territorial Army recruits, April 24, 1939. (The Bettmann Archive)
“Calling Mr. Churchill.” (Daily Express, July 6, 1939)
“The Old Sea-Dog.” (Punch, July 12; Reproduced by permission of Punch)
In the turmoil of the 1930s Churchill often found sanctuary in painting. (The Keystone Collection)
On July 24, 1939, a huge sign appears on the Strand. (Daily Mirror)
Churchill and Anthony Eden walk down Whitehall in late August 1939. (The Illustrated London News Picture Library)
Churchill is appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, September 1939. (United Press International)
In the first month of the war Randolph marries Pamela Digby. (Mary Soames Collection)
New York Times, May 11, 1940. (Copyright © 1940 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission)
Winston Spencer Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain. (Cecil Beaton Photograph, courtesy of Sotheby’s, London)
MAPS
London’s Square Mile
Berlin’s Zitadelle
Europe between the Wars
Scandinavia: Cold War, 1940
Blitzkrieg, 1940
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS WORK is a biography, not a history. The two are often confused, and understandably so, for both recount the past. But there is a distinction. History is a chronological account of prior events. Biography focuses on one figure, exploring the significance of his life by examining “the earthly pilgrimage of a man,” in Thomas Carlyle’s words, or, in Sir Edmund Gosse’s, by presenting “the faithful portrait of a soul in adventure by life.”
In the view of this writer, there can be no enlightening life which does not include an account of the man’s times. This need for context is even greater when the central figure is a towering statesman. It is impossible to understand Churchill and his adversaries in the 1930s, for example, without grasping the British revulsion against the horrors of World War I. If a man casts a long shadow, as Churchill did, extensive research leads to lengthy books. I propose to cover the life of Churchill in three volumes. Three volumes is a lot. But he deserves at least a triptych if one is to meet the exacting standard set down by Paul M. Kendall of the University of Kansas. The biographer, he writes in Encyclopaedia Britannica,
seeks to elicit from facts, by selection and design, the illusion of a life actually lived. Within the bounds of given data, the biographer seeks to transform plain information into illumination…. His achievement as a biographer will be measured, in great part, by his ability to suggest the sweep of chronology and yet to highlight the major pa
tterns of behavior that give a life its shape and meaning.
My personal encounters with Sir Winston Churchill were confined to a five-day Atlantic crossing aboard the Queen Mary in January 1953, when he was in his last premiership. Subsequently, I visited No. 10 Downing Street. But when I undertook my present task I was remembered by members of his family and entourage. Their hospitality, when I set about the ten-year job of researching and writing The Last Lion, honored me and moved me. Thus began the most ambitious literary venture of my life, which included taped interviews of such diversity and length that their transcription required a full year. Those are essential to The Last Lion’s scholarly foundation.
I am particularly grateful to Martin Gilbert, MA, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, for his time, his generosity, his kindness in guiding me toward sources, and for his invaluable narrative and document volumes.
My debt to Lady Soames, DBE, née Mary Churchill, is immense, for her recollections of her father, her patience in answering my inquiries, and her role as my tour guide through the rooms, the grounds, and the outer buildings of Chartwell, in one of which, her father’s studio, I saw—perhaps gaped at would be more accurate—nearly five hundred of her father’s paintings. They are stunning, and serve to confirm Sir Isaiah Berlin’s conclusion that Churchill was “the largest human being of our times.”
The late Sir John Colville, CB, CVO, Honorary Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, retired RAF fighter pilot, author, and private secretary to three prime ministers—chiefly Churchill—was cooperative, forthcoming, and encouraging throughout. To assist me he devoted hours he could have spent in more urgent causes, and did so with that understated charm which is the mark of an English gentleman, almost convincing me that there was nothing he would rather do.
Among others who were most helpful to me were surviving “Churchillians,” as Sir John called them: Sir William Deakin, DSO, MA; Sir Fitzroy Maclean, CBE, MP (C); the late Lord Boothby, KBE; Sir David Pitblado, KCB, CVO; Sir John Martin, KCMG, CB, CVO; the late Lord Soames, PC, GCMG, GCVO, CH, CBE; Lieutenant General Sir Ian Jacob, GBE, KBE, CB, DL; Anita Leslie; Sir David Hunt, CBE, OBE, DFC; Lord Bonham-Carter; young Winston Churchill, MP, grandson of his namesake; the late Oscar Nemon; the late, gallant Viscount Head, PC, GCMG, KCMG, CBE; the late Lord Duncan-Sandys, who was Churchill’s son-in-law; and five of Churchill’s secretaries—Grace Hamblin, OBE, Jane Williams, Kathleen Hill, Vanda Salmon, and Cecily (“Chips”) Gemmell. I should also express my appreciation to Wing Commander R. M. Sparkes, RAF, who took me through the Annexe—Churchill’s wartime bunker and the site of the Cabinet War Room as it had been in 1945—long before it was opened to the public.
With the exception of one member of the Royal Family, no one refused to be interviewed and taped. The late Harold Macmillan (Lord Stockton) set an entire day aside for me; so did the late Lord Butler of Saffron Walden (“Rab”); so did the ineffable Malcolm Muggeridge. All questions I posed (including some which were clearly impertinent) were answered by Lady Avon, the widow of Anthony Eden; the late Lady Diana Cooper, widow of Alfred Duff Cooper, Viscount Norwich; the historian A. J. P. Taylor; Lord Strauss; Lord Hailsham; the Rt. Hon. Malcolm MacDonald, OM, PC, MP, son of Ramsay and a cabinet minister in Churchill’s wartime national government; Lord Geoffrey Lloyd; R. L. James, the retired headmaster of Harrow; Lord Selkirk; Noel Mander; George Malcolm Thompson; Denis Kelly; Alan MacLean; Elizabeth Gilliatt; John Grigg; Sir Charles Martin; Richard Hill; Lord Southbridge; Graham Norton; and certain Americans who enjoyed a special relationship with Churchill: the late Virginia Cowles, Kay Halle, and the late Averell Harriman. Mrs. Harriman provided immense help and encouragement, though classifying Pamela Harriman as American or British presents difficulties. As Averell was, she is very active in the U.S. Democratic party. However, she was born Pamela Digby, the daughter of the eleventh Lord Digby, KG, DSO, MC, TD, and her first husband was Randolph Churchill. As Winston’s daughter-in-law and the widow of one of the greatest statesmen in American history, she is, so to speak, an English-speaking Union unto herself.
In addition to taped interviews, the primary biographical sources for this book are specified in the back of the work. Material is cited from, among others, the 300 collections of private papers in the Churchill College Archives Centre at Cambridge University; Hansard’s record of parliamentary debates; the private papers of prime ministers and the minutes of cabinet meetings now stored in the Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey; and over a hundred collections of personal papers which remain in private hands. Historical sources include British, French, German, and U.S. foreign policy documents and—in translation—those of the Polish, Italian, and Russian governments.
William L. Shirer was an indispensable source for the background of events in Germany and France during these troubled years.
On my own behalf, and that of my archival research assistants in England, I should like to express my gratitude for the assistance and advice of Correlli Barnett and Dr. Michael Hoskin (Keepers of the Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge), Sir William Hawthorne (Master of Churchill College at the time of our research), Captain Stephen Roskill, RN (Fellow of the College), and archivists Pat Bradford and particularly Marion Stewart, who seemed to have even the most elusive document at her fingertips; G. H. Martin (Keeper of the Public Record Office in Kew) and his colleagues Mrs. P. Piper, N. A. M. Rodger, and Dr. M. J. Subb; H. S. Cobb and F. Johnson (Record Office, House of Lords); Christine Kennedy (Nuffield College Library, Oxford); D. G. Vaisey (Department of Western Manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library—“Bodley”); Dr. B. S. Benedikz (Special Collections, University of Birmingham); D. A. Clarke and G. E. A. Raspin (British Public Library—formerly the British Museum Library—and British Library of Political and Economic Science, University of York); Gordon Phillips (Times Archive); Colin Watson (Obituary Department of The Times); A. E. Cormack and R. F. Barker (Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon); D. M. Smith and C. C. Webb (Borthwick Institute of Historical Research); F. Bailey (Naval Historical Society, Ministry of Defence); E. C. Blayney (Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Philip A. H. Brown, A. N. E. D. Schofield, and D. H. Bourke (British Library); Mrs. K. F. Campbell (Library and Records Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Eric Ceadel (Librarian, Cambridge University Library); Jacqueline Kavanagh (Written Archives Officer, BBC Written Archives Centre); L. H. Miller (Librarian, Ministry of Defence); Margaret Townsend (Editor’s Secretary, News of the World); Judith A. Woods (Archivist, the Labour Party Library); V. E. Knight (Librarian, University of Liverpool); L. R. Day (Science Museum Library, University of Liverpool); Kay Chapman and R. J. B. Knight (National Maritime Museum); Peter McNiven (University of Manchester); Diana Grimwood Jones and Gillian Grant (St. Anthony’s College, Oxford); Patricia Methven (Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, University of London); R. A. W. Suddaby (Imperial War Museum); and John Spencer-Churchill, eleventh Duke of Marlborough, who gave me the freedom of Blenheim Palace.
I am indebted to T. Chadbourne Dunham, professor emeritus of German at Wesleyan University, who checked my translations from the German, and to the graceful and bilingual Kathryn I. Briggs, who performed the same service with translations from the French.
I am grateful to Peter Day, Nigel Viney, and Richard Langworth, the International Churchill Society’s keeper of the flame, for their meticulous review of the final manuscript in the interests of historical accuracy, and to Perry Knowlton, Adam Deixel, and I. Gonzalez at the Curtis Brown literary agency, who provided access to Churchill’s American royalty statements.
My assistant, Margaret Kennedy Rider, has been loyal and tireless, as always. As my chief researcher in England, Deborah Baker once more proved imaginative and perceptive. Betsy Pitha assisted nobly in the annotation, as did Virginia Creeden, who was also invaluable in securing permission to quote from letters, diaries, documents, and published works. The staff of the Firestone Library at Princeton University was especially he
lpful. I am again grateful for the support and assistance provided by the staff of Wesleyan University’s Olin Memorial Library, led by J. Robert Adams, Caleb T. Winchester Librarian. Particularly helpful were Joan Jurale, head reference librarian; Edmund A. Rubacha and Suzanne Javorski, reference librarians; Margaret Halstead, reference secretary; Erhard F. Konerding, documents librarian; and Steven Lebergott, chief of interlibrary loans. Other members of the staff who were especially helpful were Alan Nathanson, bibliographer, and Ann Frances Wakefield and Dale Lee.
Finally, I once more acknowledge my gratitude to Don Congdon, my literary agent of forty years; Roger Donald, vice president and publisher of Trade Adult Books, Little, Brown and Company; and, last but foremost in the final stages of text revision, Peggy Leith Anderson, whose manuscript editing skills are unmatched in my long experience.
W. M.
Wesleyan University
December 1987
THE STORY THUS FAR
A Synopsis of
THE LAST LION: WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL;
Visions of Glory: 1874–1932
THE GRANDSON of a duke, Winston Churchill was born in splendrous Blenheim Palace during the autumn of 1874, when the British Empire was the world’s mightiest power. Almost immediately the infant was entrusted to his plump nanny, “Woom,” who became his only source of childhood happiness. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, a brilliant if erratic member of Parliament—he was, briefly, chancellor of the Exchequer—actually loathed Winston. The boy’s breathtakingly beautiful American mother, Jennie, devoted most of her time to sexual intrigue, slipping between the sheets with handsome, powerful men in Britain, in the United States, and on the Continent. Her husband was in no position to object. He was an incurable syphilitic.
Winston rebelled against school authority, first becoming a disciplinary problem and then, at Harrow, the lowest-ranked scholar in the lower form. His dismal academic record ruled out Oxford or Cambridge, so he went to Sandhurst, England’s West Point. On February 20, 1895, less than a month after his father’s death from paresis, young Churchill was commissioned a second lieutenant and gazetted to the Fourth Hussars, preparing to embark for India. In Bangalore Churchill succeeded where his schoolmasters failed. During the long, sweltering siestas, he educated himself, reading Plato, Aristotle, Gibbon, Macaulay, Schopenhauer, and poring over thousands of pages of parliamentary debates. Developing a flair for the language, he found he could earn money writing newspaper and magazine articles and books. At the same time he felt strong stirrings of ambition. He would, he decided, seek a seat in Parliament. But first he must become famous. Ruthlessly manipulating his mother’s lovers (who included the Prince of Wales), he managed to appear wherever the fighting was fiercest. By 1899 he was in South Africa. Taken prisoner in the Boer War by the Boers, he managed a sensational escape from a POW stockade, making his way across three hundred miles of enemy territory to freedom. His breakout made him a national figure. Returning home, he was elected to Parliament while Victoria still reigned.