by Working
Only three months after the team’s return to London, the European phase of the Second World War ended. Sturdee remembers three things about VE Day, 8 May 1945. First, the tumultuous crowds outside Buckingham Palace applauding the king and queen. Second, the fact that Churchill’s modesty and respect for the monarchy caused him to stand slightly behind the royal couple. As Sturdee puts it, Churchill ‘never once acknowledged that applause which of course was partly for him’. Third, his duty to his sovereigns done, Churchill received the congratulations due him. He went from Buckingham Palace directly to his beloved House of Commons to announce the victory and was mobbed in the road. Characteristically, he continued working. Whenever he had a moment between celebrations, Churchill dictated telegrams and answered congratulatory messages from around the world. Then he went to the Ministry of Health (later named the Home Office), stood on the balcony and received his own thunderous applause. When going to the Ministry of Health he walked through the Number 10 garden along a line of his secretaries who ‘clapped and cheered like anything’.25 Sturdee recalls that Churchill missed Mrs Churchill, who was still in Russia, but telegraphed her several times during that day to suggest what she should broadcast to the Soviet people. At home, Sturdee says there was no ‘bubbly… no special celebration… we were all jolly thankful and so pleased for him’. But they had work to do.
A few months later, Churchill’s coalition government was defeated in the first general election since 1935. Sturdee was with him the entire day as the votes were counted and she recalls ‘A dire day… The ghastly realization that Churchill had not won the general election. It seemed unbelievable… [loss] never occurred to us… a tragedy… such gloom… shattering.’
The challenge facing Sturdee after the Conservative Party’s unexpected loss of the election was complex indeed. Not for the British the American system of allowing two months between the election of a president and his inauguration, with a well-funded transition period in which staff can be marshalled; the defeated incumbent packed up immediately and was sent on his way. In Britain, you lose, you so advise the queen, and you at once turn over the reins and your residence to the leader of the victorious party.
Sturdee’s problem was not made easier by four circumstances. First, the election came in the midst of a meeting of world leaders at Potsdam. Second, there had been little advance planning for the Tories’ defeat. Very few expected Churchill’s return to Britain for the election to be other than the first part of a round-trip back to Potsdam and a resumption of the conference. Third, Mrs Churchill, who would have to help organize the move from Number 10, was worn out from her war duties. Finally, Sturdee was moving not any prime minister, but one who had led a wartime government for five years, during which all the resources of that government were his to command.
Now Churchill was to become not a retired elder statesman, but a very active Leader of the Opposition, and one who was a prolific author, with war memoirs to research and write, and not one to let the little matter of a change of office, a change of residence and a sudden reduction in staff interfere with his demands on himself and, now, on a diminished staff. But Sturdee says that Churchill was knocked off ‘his perch’ by the election results: ‘he was shoved off bounds for the first week [but] brave like a solid war ship… mortally wounded… the whole nation had left him’. He initially took little consolation from the fact that he had won re-election in his own constituency and would now become leader of his now-minority party and therefore Leader of the Opposition. Churchill told the American diplomat Averell Harriman, who stopped in London on 8 August, en route from a meeting with Stalin, that as Leader of the Opposition ‘he only missed one thing being out of office. He had been accustomed, upon waking up in the morning, to press buttons and give directions which would set important matters in motion. He could not get used to not being able to do this.’26 The world around him might change, be thrown into chaos: he had no intention of changing a lifelong pattern of work, and his literary and political life. The problems of transition were Sturdee’s to solve, the adjustments hers to make, with the exception of the not insignificant problem of finding adequate housing for the Churchills and their personal staff, which was Mrs Churchill’s to solve.
Mrs Churchill immediately moved the family and personal staff out of Number 10 and into suites at Claridge’s. Sturdee, Hill and Layton – the ‘serfs club’ as she calls herself and her colleagues – had to squeeze into a tiny vestibule outside the sitting room, along with the detectives who remained on twenty-four-hour security detail. ‘No longer civil-service private secretaries, black boxes, official switchboard, office car,’ but Churchill’s work continued at almost the same pace. Layton was engaged to be married soon and move to South Africa; Hill had been asked to take over the Chequers Trust; and Hamblin was by then working for Mrs Churchill, putting Sturdee in a senior position, but with no civil service backing. Sturdee was unsure whether the Churchills would keep her on – ‘would have to put up with her’ was her wry assessment of her new circumstance. Because of the high cost of a penthouse suite at Claridge’s, the Churchills then moved briefly into Westminster Gardens (on loan from Duncan and Diana Sandys), which was ‘madly uncomfortable’ even though the staff was smaller, but the ‘sacksful of letters had to be opened, sorted and answered’ as they and other papers requiring attention continued to arrive, some addressed to Claridge’s, some to Westminster Gardens, and some still coming into Number 10 and the Annexe. Churchill’s personal effects had to be removed from Number 10 and sent down to Chartwell. Lena, Mrs Churchill’s maid, and Sawyers took care of these, but the serfs had to pack up the ‘stuff’ from the personal office. Collegiality was so great – and the smooth change in government paramount – that there did not have to be one boss directing this complicated move. Civil servants’ secretaries helped: ‘they didn’t want us to feel we were being pushed out’. The Private Secretaries and Churchill’s personal staff rallied ‘round, with one goal: an orderly transition from a wartime coalition government to a Labour government’ – there had not been a Labour government since the 1920s.
Churchill decided to take what we now call ‘a break’ before assuming his new duties. Not a rest, but a change of scene. ‘I don’t need rest, but change is a great refreshment,’ he once said.27 Field Marshal Harold Alexander made his plane available to Churchill and served as his host during Churchill’s stay in Moltrasio, Italy, in the Villa delle Rose on the shore of Lake Como, owned by an Italian industrialist who had apparently disappeared. Alexander also arranged for a detachment of the 4th Hussars – Churchill’s old regiment of which he was still colonel – to guard and honour him during his stay in Italy.28 His new Detective Evan Davies (known to one and all as ‘Bish’) joined the party.
Accompanied by Layton, Lord Moran, his valet Sawyers and daughter Sarah, Churchill worked on his books and his painting. But a period of all play and no work was not possible for Churchill. He interrupted his vacation to dine with a variety of military men with stories to tell about various battles and the conditions in Soviet-occupied Europe, and to review memoranda about the reasons for the Conservatives’ electoral defeat. As for Layton, this was perhaps her last trip before her marriage and move to South Africa. She returned to London while Churchill was finding new scenes to paint,29 leaving the secretarial chores to others who would follow her.
Churchill as Leader of the Opposition needed a London base, so Mrs Churchill bought 28 Hyde Park Gate and with Hamblin’s help renovated the house. Sawyers, Mrs Churchill’s maid and the cook Mrs Landemare had to share rooms on the top floor, ‘which left only one small room for the office up there’. Sturdee quickly realized they could not work in such cramped quarters, so the family bought the house next door at 27 Hyde Park Gate and installed the office there – with space both for the personal office and the official work that Churchill had as Leader of the Opposition. The office took up the main ground-floor room and the basement, which included the kitchen and a bathroom. In ord
er to generate a bit of income, Mrs Churchill, who always worried about finances and was married to a man with extravagant tastes,30 leased the top two floors to a man whom Sturdee describes as ‘a frightfully dishy actor’.
With Hamblin working for Mrs Churchill and renovating Chartwell, Hill beginning her transition to run Chequers, and Layton in South Africa, Sturdee found herself in a key administrative position, as well as trying to manage the numerous building works that Numbers 27 and 28 required, renovations that Mrs Churchill suggested be carried out. The two houses had to function both for family living as well as offices and meeting rooms.
Sturdee’s doubts about whether she would be kept on ended after three weeks when Churchill, ‘prompted by Mrs Hill’, asked her to stay. He told her ‘Now you do realize, don’t you, that you are head of my private office? I want there to be no misunderstanding. Is that all right? If you have any complaints will you come to me?’ ‘But certainly I knew I could always go to him if there were any troubles,’ Sturdee says that Churchill continued: ‘You know what I want and… I expect to have it… I will expect the service that I have had up to now from my private office, full stop.’ This is a rare instance in which Churchill involved himself in the staffing and organization of his private office; a necessity, since he had no one else to do this for him.
Sturdee was then asked if there were someone remaining at Number 10 that she would like to work with and that would be willing to leave the civil service. Elizabeth Gilliatt, Sturdee’s first choice, accepted the offer and listened carefully to Sturdee’s stern warning against disclosure of anything about her work or the Churchill family. Even when he was out of office, confidentiality was of the utmost importance – he was writing about the war and there was much still to keep secret. In addition, the worldwide press was desperate for news – any news – about Churchill and his family. Gilliatt joined the team at the beginning of 1946. Her first chore was to shape the Secret Session speeches¶ into book format. (For more about Gilliatt, see Chapter 7.)
But even the addition of Gilliatt did not bring the staff up to adequate levels. Because Churchill was organizing documents and considering how to write his history of the Second World War, while also resuming work on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, it became clear that more shorthand typists/personal secretaries would be needed. Sturdee was in America with Churchill on his visit to meet the new American president, Harry S. Truman, so Hill asked General Ismay, who ‘was close to all’, whether there was anyone he thought fit and suitable. He suggested Lettice Marston; Hill interviewed her and, when Churchill returned from America, received final approval to take her on. At which point the staff was set: Sturdee, Lettice Marston and Gilliatt.
But this was small compared with his staffing when he had been prime minister: six Private Secretaries and ‘lots of Garden Room Girls’, who, according to Gilliatt, did not take dictation directly from him, but nevertheless were helpful and on call when needed. Plus he had all the services that Number 10 provided, such as mailings, messengers, chauffeurs, twelve girls on the switchboard twenty-four hours a day. Now Sturdee and her staff had to take on all these chores.
True, Churchill no longer bore the burdens of a prime minister, but his work expanded to fill his working hours. In addition to his considerable duties as Leader of the Opposition, a post that most holders have viewed and still view as full-time work, he planned to write A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and his war memoirs – famously stating, ‘I will leave judgments of this matter to history – but I will be one of the historians.’ That inevitably affected his narrative: Arthur Balfour described one of Churchill’s histories, The World Crisis, as ‘Winston’s brilliant autobiography, disguised as a history of the universe’.31
The workload inevitably required still more staff, with Churchill resisting every such request due to worries about expenses. Sacks of letters continued to come in – sometimes as many as eighty letters a day, Sturdee guesses. She was able to convince Churchill that extra help was needed to handle that flood of correspondence, and, when it was his birthday, the flowers, cakes, gifts and mementos added to the incoming deliveries. Someone had sent him a giant cheese, which was to be cut into pieces and those pieces sent off as gifts – with attached cards – all arranged by the personal secretary.32 Taking charge, she recalls: ‘So I had to say, look, we can’t do this, to Mr Churchill but would you agree – may I ask on your behalf please the Conservative Central Office, may I ring up and say that you wonder whether [they] might… Yes, he said, do it.’ Like all skilful administrators, Sturdee won the day by presenting her boss not only with a problem, but with a solution – and a costless one at that. She would not find such costless solutions to understaffing in the future.
But even with the help of Central Office, she knew ‘we weren’t doing justice to the [ongoing] volume of work in the office’, as well as the beginning of the organization for the massive job of research for the war memoirs. ‘So I had to measure up [again] and said, sorry, [Mr Churchill] we need somebody else. Wasn’t an easy battle to win, either. He could not believe it. [He said] “I don’t see what you are complaining [about]”… “We’re not complaining, Mr Churchill. We’re just saying we can’t go on doing it.” “Oh, all right, if you say so” [he agreed].’ So Cecily ‘Chips’ Gemmell was added to the staff in the summer of 1946# and began working with Denis Kelly, classifying and categorizing the documents in the Chartwell muniment room – the documents on which Churchill would rely when writing the six volumes of his history of the Second World War.
To keep the staffing as lean as possible, given the workload, Sturdee adopted advanced techniques and an efficient division of labour. Before she left with Churchill on the trip to America, she had a switchboard installed ‘with two lines into Number 28 and Number 27, with twelve or thirteen extensions’.
She had Churchill sign his name, had it ‘Photostatted’ on Chartwell as well as Hyde Park Gate stationery and used it so that thank-you letters could be sent to thousands of correspondents. She explains that in the 1940s the signature looked very real indeed. For efficiency, Sturdee, now in full command, decided that ‘we all must be responsible for a subject. There were many different aspects of Mr Churchill’s life… let’s all make ourselves responsible for one, two or three… aspects.’ Gilliatt took over politics, and Marston was in charge of engagements. Sturdee had a broad remit, retaining responsibility for personal, financial, legal and family matters. The remit was sufficiently broad, and by 1949 Sturdee’s confidence that her advice might matter was sufficiently high, that when Churchill decided to follow his father into the world of racing, she did not hesitate to send him a memo warning of ‘the risk of damage to his great reputation’ and to his standing with the electorate.33 Beaverbrook echoed her concerns, pointing out the risk of alienating the voters: ‘The public will back it [your horse], and it won’t win.’34 He worried, too, that staff might bet on a Churchill horse and lose their money. In the event, Churchill ignored that advice. Sturdee put ‘a bob or two’ on his horses and the venture did not prove a financial disaster as Mrs Churchill feared it would. Churchill enjoyed himself hugely, and his racing activities brought him closer to Queen Elizabeth II and to the average punter, as well as to his son-in-law Christopher Soames.35 In addition, it provided Churchill with an opportunity to chide the deputy editor of the Telegraph (who then became the long-serving editor) for referring to his first racehorse Colonist II as a gelding. Churchill replied, ‘He is, of course, entire, and will eventually go to stud.’ Churchill delighted in recounting ‘in a whimsical way, how the animal responded to promises of a first-class harem if he won’.36
He might have ignored advice about going into racing, but in other matters Churchill relied on advisors. There were tax, banking and legal considerations, and, Sturdee says, Churchill sought advice from Brendan Bracken, Emery Reves, Lord Camrose (Sturdee calls him ‘a darling’), Mr Moir, his solicitor, and Leslie Graham-Dixon, a barrister and Churchill’s t
ax expert. Sturdee interacted with all of these advisors. Such government documents as Churchill was receiving were placed in government black boxes he had taken with him (with government permission) and, as before, the secretaries placed the most important documents in the top box for him to see first.
Throughout his life, Churchill’s work habits remained surprisingly the same. He was a man who expected the surrounding world to adjust to him regardless of changing circumstances. And his personal staff did the adjusting, with Sturdee often devising the means of making that adjustment; a job made easier by the cooperation of the other women who worked for Winston. The young ladies arranged the working rota among themselves for his benefit; for example, staggering their lunch hours so that the telephone was never unmanned. Sandwiches would be brought in at lunchtime and, if they were working through dinner, the valet Sawyers or the domestic staff would bring them meals on a tray. Work done, they could call a taxi to take them home, paid for by the Churchills.
When working at Chartwell, the women lived in different cottages on the grounds and had somewhat different arrangements for meals than when they were in London. They ‘used to get their own breakfast which was toast and coffee or tea… For lunch or dinner, we went out every day to a local thing [sic] at the Churchills’ expense.’ From the descriptions of the vast amount of work it seems unlikely they would have had the time. Sturdee’s memory as to meal arrangements differs a bit from those of her co-workers, which might be due to the fact that they were describing meals at different places and at different times.