Working with Winston

by Working

  Here are Churchill’s letter to the boy and Andrew’s response.

  SOURCES

  A word about the source on which I have drawn heavily – the oral histories gathered by interviewers from many of the secretaries who worked for Churchill, deposited at the Churchill Archives. I realized that I was dealing with the recollections of events half a century ago, as told by women no longer young. And I was aware of the warning of Churchill biographer Roy Jenkins, ‘of the frailty of memory, without will to deceive, which renders unreliable so much personal reminiscence’.1 Sir Martin Gilbert has also warned us of the ‘hazards of oral history’.2

  Fortunately, the years covered in these interviews overlap substantially, enabling me to check the various recollections, one against the other. I was also able to verify these recollections against unimpeachable sources, such as Sir Martin’s biography and other writings, and the diaries of Jock Colville, Joan Bright (later Bright Astley), Elizabeth Layton (later Nel) and Lord Moran, and others; and against the published recollections of the few secretaries who did commit them to print. There were instances in which memories were not precise, others in which more than one secretary claimed to be the central figure in some event. But these were rare and of no consequence to the usefulness of the interviews for the purpose to which I have put them. Working with Winston created lasting and largely accurate memories for these women, for whom those were probably the best years of their lives – their glory days – and as such memorable. All quotes in the text without endnotes are from the oral histories.

  The only thing I have been unable to do to my complete satisfaction is convey to readers the full range of their emotions as they tell tales of Churchill’s kindnesses and demanding but forgiving nature, and the depth of their admiration for the man and his accomplishments. It is difficult to convey the accents, the intonation, the emphases, the chuckles that made listening and re-listening to the recorded interviews such a great pleasure. I have underlined words emphasized by these women when their histories were recorded.

  I am fortunate to have as a friend Jane Portal (later Lady Williams of Elvel), to whom I was introduced years ago by Gordon Brown. Lady Williams (Jane Portal at the time she worked for Churchill), her memory intact – as is her sense of humour – generously cleared up several ambiguities that the interviewers left unresolved, and supplemented the interviews with details the interviewers may not have had time to elicit.

  Given all these factors, I am comfortable relying on the oral histories, duly cross-checked one against the other and against other impeccable sources. All quotations except those identified in the text or endnotes are from the oral histories. Of course, any mistakes are solely my own. Those do not include leaving abbreviated words such as ‘cld’ where that is how they appear in the source being quoted.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  No one doing research on any aspect of Sir Winston Churchill’s life can comment on sources without giving Sir Martin Gilbert and the Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, pride of place. Thanks to Sir Martin, we have his eight-volume life of Churchill, the three volumes of The Churchill War Papers and now the twenty-one Documents volumes from Hilldale College’s Churchill Project. All supplemented by numerous books focusing on one or another aspect of that life. In short, researchers start with access to all that Churchill wrote and did. Sir Martin devoted a too-short lifetime to organizing the massive volume of materials generated by Churchill during a very active lifetime, one tenet of which was that everything – everything – must be written down.

  Thanks to the ever-helpful and virtually indispensable Allen Packwood, OBE, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, scholars have a place to come to gain access to the raw material underlying Sir Martin’s work, the memoirs and diaries of Churchill’s contemporaries – all now accessible online thanks to the generosity of Laurence Geller, CBE, Chairman of the International Churchill Society.

  Thanks, too, to the resourceful and first-rate staff at the Churchill College Archives, whose ability to discover unpublished treasures is legendary. Thanks to them, an ‘Aladdin’s cave’ of treasures, as Sir Martin described the Archives, is kept in perfect order and made easily accessible to historians by the Archives staff.

  Patricia Ackerman skilfully interviewed many of the personal secretaries whose oral histories are the basis of this book, asking trenchant questions and letting the women tell their own stories in their own words.

  Many people who worked for Churchill have shared their memories with me, and I thank Jane Portal (now Lady Williams) for her long friendship and for sharing her wonderful recall of what it was like to multitask for Churchill, while she ‘took down’, as he called dictation.

  Cecily ‘Chips’ Gemmell and Delia Morton (Drummond) also shared memories with me, as did Georgina Hill, Kathleen Hill’s granddaughter. Sadly, Hugh Lunghi, Anthony Montague Browne and Joan Bright Astley have passed away, but not before sharing with me their experiences of working with Churchill. Hugh was Churchill’s Russian interpreter at the major conferences; Anthony was Churchill’s Principal Private Secretary and aide during Churchill’s final decade; Joan was chief administrator in General Sir Hastings Ismay’s office.

  Randolph Churchill has generously provided the Foreword and his own recollections, and Andrew Roberts has unselfishly helped in more ways than I can list here.

  My researcher at the Churchill Archives, Sue Sutton, and my extremely talented picture editor Cecilia MacKay have added enormously to the value of this book. George Capel, my trusty agent, advised me well, as always.

  In my office, Gayle Damiano and Leyre Gonzalez have helped in so many ways, as has Jeff Raben, who defended me when my computer wilfully escalated attacks on my manuscript, and thanks to Diana Obbard for her assistance in sorting out some of the classical references herein.

  Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Denver, Dr Myra Rich, called to my attention the literature on the uses of oral histories and I thank her, too, for that, and for her friendship.

  With thanks to Edouard Manset for sending me the important special edition of Paris Match dedicated entirely to Churchill: le stratège.

  And I cannot thank Bea Kristol – known also as Gertrude Himmelfarb – enough for her encouragement, advice and long friendship.

  Sadly, the death of my beloved friend, Dr Charles Krauthammer, means I lost the opportunity and pleasure of discussing with him his conclusion that Winston Churchill is ‘the indispensable man’.

  NOTES

  References to Winston S. Churchill (Heinemann, 1966–88), the eight-volume official biography, written by Randolph Churchill (Vols I and II) and Sir Martin Gilbert (Vols III to VIII), are shown by volume and page number.

  References to the Documents volumes appear as Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, followed by volume and page numbers.

  References to Churchill’s papers in the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, are shown as either CHAR (for Chartwell Papers, dated up to July 1945) or CHUR (for the Churchill Papers from July 1945 onwards), followed by their series, file and folio numbers: e.g., CHUR 1/25/123.

  Epigraphs

  1 Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey, p. 173.

  2 Ibid., p. 171.

  3 Charles Krauthammer, ‘Winston Churchill: The Indispensable Man’, in Things that Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics, p. 22.

  4 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, Vol. VIII, p. 1299.

  5 Barry Gough, Churchill and Fisher: Titans at the Admiralty, p. 509.

  Preface

  1 ‘Churchill used his minutes the way an octopus uses its tentacles – to reach everywhere, to be many places at once.’ Barbara Leaming, Churchill Defiant: Fighting On, 1945–1955, p. 37.

  2 Private communication with the author, with permission.

  3 Celia Sandys, Chasing Churchill: The Travels of Winston Churchill by His Granddaughter, pp. 240–1.

  4 Th
is is not the place to enter the debate about the use of oral histories. Suffice it to say that ‘combining them with other historical sources [helps us] to find out what happened in the past’, Alistair Thomson, ‘Four Paradigm Transformations’, The Oral History Review, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (2007), p. 54.

  5 Virginia Cowles, Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man, p. 245.

  Chapter 1: Violet Pearman

  1 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 362.

  2 Letter from Pearman to Miss Neal in search of alternative employment (2 April 1934). Churchill Archives Centre, WCHL 1/23. One of Pearman’s predecessors, Lettice Fisher, who worked for Churchill when he was chancellor of the exchequer, left her post for what Sir Martin Gilbert describes as a ‘rest cure’. Churchill arranged for medical care for her.

  3 John Colville, Footprints in Time, p. 77.

  4 John Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 77.

  5 Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, pp. 444–5.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Joan Bright Astley, The Inner Circle: A View of War at the Top, p. 7.

  8 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 160–1.

  9 Roy Jenkins, Churchill, pp. 431, 487.

  10 Winston Churchill, ‘My New York Misadventure’, Daily Mail (4/5 January 1932), reprinted Finest Hour, No. 136, Autumn, 2007, p. 24.

  11 ‘… a large apartment, No. 11, which spread across the top of two floors’ Stefan Buczacki, Churchill & Chartwell, p. 175.

  12 Samuel H. Howes, ‘Recollections’, letter dated 20 December 1936 sent to Martin Gilbert (19 November 1981) in Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 503.

  13 David Lough, No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, p. 185.

  14 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Wilderness Years 1929–1935, Vol. 12, p. 46.

  15 Lough, No More Champagne, p. 250.

  16 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p, 157.

  17 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 78.

  18 Ibid., pp. 77–8, 84.

  19 Pearman was not the only beneficiary of Churchill’s generosity. When in Canada for the First Quebec Conference, Layton’s mother flew from Vancouver to see her daughter in Quebec and Churchill offered to pay half her airfare. Layton writes: ‘The fact that while pressed upon by matters of international importance, he [Churchill] still never forgot those who worked for him, inspired feelings of real devotion in his staff which will be readily understood.’ Elizabeth Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 76.

  20 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 117. The following narrative is set forth in more detail on pp. 115–17.

  21 Ibid., p. 115.

  22 Ibid., p. 117.

  23 Ibid., p. 124.

  24 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 874.

  25 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 422.

  26 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 125.

  27 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 883.

  28 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 126.

  29 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 632.

  30 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 300.

  31 David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War, p. 152.

  32 Mary Soames (ed.), Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, p. 351.

  33 Ibid., p. xiv.

  34 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 411.

  35 Ibid., p. 319. Churchill was repeatedly distracted by other money-making opportunities.

  36 The Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, Word Counts (5 September 2015), https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/word-counts-2/.

  37 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 559.

  38 Mary S. Lovell, The Riviera Set 1920–1960: The Golden Years of Glamour and Excess, p. 1. For a video of the Chateau and its famous water slide into the sea, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8GgTCMEU. Also in A&E Home Video’s Biography Series Biography: The Complete Churchill (VHS), which shows him sliding into the sea head first!

  39 Frank Sawyers (1909–72) worked for Churchill throughout the war years and flew to his funeral in Eisenhower’s aircraft at the invitation of the American general and former president. In the 1945 Resignation Honours List, he received the new Defence Medal, established in May 1945. ‘A little baldish-Cumbrian with a round florid face, piercing blue eyes, and a pronounced lisp… He worshipped [Churchill].’ In Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 166.

  40 Leaming, Churchill Defiant, p. 40.

  41 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 559.

  42 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 34.

  43 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 696.

  44 Soames (ed.), Winston and Clementine, p. 417.

  45 Cyril Bainbridge and Roy Stockdill, The News of the World Story, pp. 14, 105.

  46 Fred Glueckstein, ‘Churchill’s Sovereigns: King George V (1910–1936)’, The Churchill Project, Hillsdale College, 11 December 2017.

  47 Jenkins, Churchill, p. 487.

  48 Bainbridge and Stockdill, The News of the World Story, p. 107.

  49 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 784.

  50 Soames (ed.), Winston and Clementine, p. 432.

  51 Ibid. On 8 January he dined with the Windsors and Lloyd George at the Chateau.

  52 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 894.

  53 Ibid., p. 896.

  54 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 885.

  55 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. 5, p. 897.

  56 Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. 1, p. 820.

  57 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 158. It is not clear whether she was first ordered to rest because of her abnormally high blood pressure, or whether the stroke itself forced her to stay at home.

  58 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 1123.

  59 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 159.

  60 Ibid.

  61 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 1033.

  62 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 163.

  Chapter 2: Grace Hamblin

  1 A. L. Rowse, ‘ “There Was Once a Man”: A Visit to Chartwell, 1995’, The Churchill Project: Hillsdale College, 29 February 2016.

  2 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, HAMB 1/1, p. 2.

  3 Obituary of Grace Hamblin, Los Angeles Times (19 October 2002), http://articles.latimes.com/2002/oct/19/local/me-hamblin19.

  4 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935, Vol. 12, p. 477.

  5 John Peck, Dublin from Downing Street, p. 68. A fuller description of the members of the ‘Secret Circle’ appears in Allen Packwood’s How Churchill Waged War, pp. 18–19.

  6 Elizabeth Layton Nel, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. xix.

  7 Vanda Salmon, unpublished memoir, Churchill College Archives, SALM 2/1, p. 53 ff.

  8 Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day: Working with Churchill, p. 17.

  9 Cowles, Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man, p. 214.

  10 Lough, No More Champagne, passim.

  11 Ibid., p. 238.

  12 Ibid., p. 202.

  13 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 14.

  14 Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him, p. 151.

  1
5 Roy Howells, Churchill’s Last Years, p. 87.

  16 Churchill Archives Centre, CHUR 2/375, image 35.

  17 Chartwell Bulletin No. 12, CHAR 1/273/139–45 image 1.

  18 The Churchill Documents: The Ever-Widening War, Vol. 16, p. 749 and Colville Diary, p. 394.

  19 Fred Glueckstein, ‘ “Cats Look Down on You”: Churchill’s Feline Menagerie’, Finest Hour, No. 139, Summer 2008, p. 50. A wonderful article on all of Churchill’s cats, including especially the favourite, Tango.

  20 In the spring of 1959, when Churchill visited President Eisenhower’s farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he complained that he had not been allowed to see the pigs, although all the other animals had been shown to him. Gilbert, Vol. VIII, p. 1296.

  21 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 20.

  22 Grace Hamblin, ‘Frabjous Days: Chartwell Memories’, talk given at the 5th International Churchill Conference, The Adolphus, Dallas, printed in Finest Hour, No. 117, Winter 2002–3, p. 24.

  23 From DVD: War Stories with Oliver North: The Life and Times of Winston Churchill, Fox News Channel (2007).

  24 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 11.

  25 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 309.

  26 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 19.

  27 In 1930 Churchill had estimated his earnings from his writings in the Strand Magazine at £3,000 (about £200,000 in today’s money).

  28 Lough, No More Champagne, p. 225.

  29 Vanda Salmon, unpublished memoir, p. 14. Salmon reports that Churchill carried the plant up and down from Chartwell, and that ‘during the time it bloomed so he did not miss a day of it’.

  30 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Gathering Storm, Vol. 1, p. 365.