Working with Winston

by Working

  31 Gough, Churchill and Fisher, p. 507.

  32 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 1113.

  33 Sonia Purnell, First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill, p. 164.

  34 Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill: The Revised and Updated Biography, p. 331.

  35 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, pp. 8–9.

  36 The Annexe was ‘the set of rooms, above ground on the St James’s Park side of the old Board of Trade Building at Storeys Gate, which were used by Churchill as his main, sleeping, eating and working accommodations for the rest of the war. Whenever he could, he would hold meetings in Downing Street, but his main base of operation, including his Map Room under Captain Pim, was situated in this Annexe. There was also a bedroom, a small dining room, a study, and a room for the Private Secretaries. Immediately below were the underground Cabinet War Rooms.’ In Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: Never Surrender May 1940–December 1940, Vol. 15, p. 1107.

  37 Purnell, First Lady, p. 94.

  38 Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 332.

  39 Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 278.

  40 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 18.

  41 Kim Baldonado, ‘Queen Mary Celebrated on 80th Anniversary’, NBC Southern California, 25 May 2016.

  42 IWM Document 9858.

  43 Purnell, First Lady, p. 226.

  44 While maintaining her work for the YWCA, in February 1941 she became President of their Wartime Fund. See Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 359.

  45 Purnell, First Lady, p. 280.

  46 Grace in Russia 1945, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, HAMB 1/ 4, p. 3.

  47 Ibid., p. 4.

  48 Ibid., p. 5.

  49 Ibid., p. 6.

  50 Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 390.

  51 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible, p. 127.

  52 Colville, Footprints in Time, p. 207.

  53 Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 428.

  54 Ibid., p. 262.

  55 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 10.

  56 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 462.

  57 Soames (ed.), Speaking for Themselves, p. 580.

  58 Rosemary Hill, ‘Churchill’s Faces’, London Review of Books (30 March 2017). Vandalism is generally taken to mean ‘wilful and malicious’ destruction of property. Lady Churchill’s was certainly ‘wilful’ in the sense of ‘deliberate’. But an act to preserve the memory of her husband as he was during his greatest years rather than as a ‘senile old man who had not done up his fly buttons’, as Portal put it, hardly classifies as malicious.

  59 Christopher A. Long, ‘Chartwell Memories: A Neighbour Looks Back’, Finest Hour, No. 126, Spring 2005.

  60 Hamblin talk to Inner Wheel Club in Westerham, 1974, p. 8.

  Chapter 3: Kathleen Hill

  1 Martin Gilbert, Vol. V, p. 866.

  2 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 729.

  3 Obituary of Kathleen Hill, Daily Telegraph (18 November 1992).

  4 Ibid.

  5 Private communication to the author, with permission.

  6 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 162.

  7 Gilbert, Winston Churchill, The Wilderness Years: Speaking out against Hitler in the Prelude to the War, p. 254.

  8 Lough, No More Champagne, pp. 305 ff.

  9 Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge CHAR, 8/639 image 196.

  10 Lough, No More Champagne, pp. 302, 306, 308.

  11 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 343.

  12 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 866.

  13 Churchill Archives Centre, CHAR, 8/639/99.

  14 Max Arthur, Churchill: The Life: An Authorized Pictorial Biography, p. 105.

  15 Alexander Cadogan, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan O.M., 1938–1945, ed. David Dilks, p. 675.

  16 Conversation with the author, 18 February 2018.

  17 Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 198.

  18 Richard M. Langworth (ed.), The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill, p. 197. As early as aged fourteen, Churchill wrote to his mother asking her to send his Nanny down to Harrow to help him pack ‘so I should not have the anxiety about it’. See Randolph S. Churchill’s, Winston S. Churchill: Youth 1876–1896, Vol. 1, p. 170.

  19 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill has a slightly different version, p. 300.

  20 Vanda Salmon, unpublished memoir, p. 25.

  21 Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, pp. 609–10.

  22 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 26.

  23 Roberts, Churchill: Walking With Destiny, p. 610.

  24 Vanda Salmon, unpublished memoir, pp. 30–1.

  25 Peck, Dublin from Downing Street, p. 68.

  26 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 164.

  27 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War, 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 1372.

  28 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 161.

  29 Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, CHAR, 1/386.

  30 Sir John Martin, Downing Street: The War Years, p. 54.

  31 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour 1939–1941, Vol. VI, p. 1102.

  32 Purnell, First Lady, p. 238.

  33 Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 470.

  34 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Coming of War, 1936–1939, Vol. 13, p. 1346.

  35 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, p. 457.

  36 Peter Clarke, Mr Churchill’s Profession: Statesman, Orator, Writer, pp. 240–1.

  37 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 301.

  38 Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, CHAR 8/639/178.

  39 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth 1922–1939, Vol. V, p. 1113.

  40 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 164.

  41 Lord Beaverbrook, Politicians and the War 1914–1916, p. 127.

  42 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour 1939–1941, Vol. VI, p. 73.

  43 W. H. Thompson, Sixty Minutes with Winston Churchill, p. 42.

  44 Lough, No More Champagne, p. 282.

  45 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour 1939–1941, Vol. VI, p. 605.

  46 Which ‘was really an ice-bucket from the Savoy Hotel’. Ibid., p. 605, n 3.

  47 Charles Richardson, From Churchill’s Secret Circle to the BBC: The Biography of Lieutenant General Sir Ian Jacob GBE CB DL, pp. 97–9.

  48 Glueckstein, ‘ “Cats Look Down on You”’, p. 51.

  49 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour 1939–1941, Vol. VI, p. 121.

  50 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 169.

  51 Walter Graebner, My Dear Mr Churchill, p. 32.

  52 Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 285.

  53 Winston Churchill, The Second World War: The Grand Alliance, Vol. 3, p. 551.

  54 Richard Holmes, Churchill’s Bunker: The Secret Headquarters at the Heart of Britain’s Victory, p. 177.

  55 Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, p. 169.

  56 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 785.

  Chapter 4: Patrick Kinna

  1 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 18.

  2 Virginia Nicholson, Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War and Peace, 1939–1949, pp. 114, 117.

  3 Anne de Courcy, Debs at War: 1939–1945: How Wartime Changed Their Lives, pp. 60, 211.

  4 Robert Meiklejohn, unpublished diary, Harriman Papers, Library of Congress, p. 312.

  5 Churchill Archives Centre, CHAR 20/232/10, image 1. Cabinet Papers, 5 July 1945.

  6 Meiklejohn, unpublished diary, p. 352.

  7 Jean-Paul Flintoff, ‘Obituary of Patrick Kinna: Confidential Secretary to Winston Churchill’, Guardian (6 April
2009).

  8 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 58.

  9 Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: Testing Times 1942, Vol. 17, p. 802, fn 1.

  10 Jean-Paul Flintoff, ‘Obituary of Patrick Kinna’.

  11 Vanda Salmon unpublished memoir, p. 56. She estimated that to be 90 to 100 words per minute.

  12 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 18.

  13 Bright Astley, The Inner Circle, p. 75.

  14 https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/churchills-favorite-spy.html and Clare Mulley, The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville.

  15 Joanna Moody, From Churchill’s War Rooms: Letters of a Secretary 1943–1945, p. 63.

  16 Ibid., pp. 73–4.

  17 Randolph S. Churchill, The Churchill Documents: Youth 1876–1896, Vol. 1, p. 192.

  18 Brian Lavery, Churchill Goes to War: Winston’s Wartime Journeys, pp. 22, 24.

  19 Peck, Dublin from Downing Street, p. 68.

  20 Portal in conversation with the author.

  21 Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Ever-Widening War 1941, Vol. 16, p. 1654.

  22 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 7. Quoting from Charles Mott-Radclyffe, a long-serving and successful Conservative Party politician.

  23 Meiklejohn, unpublished diary, p. 320.

  24 Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 633.

  25 Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 197.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Gilbert, The Churchill Documents: The Ever-Widening War 1941, Vol. 16, p. 1327, fn 1.

  28 Meredith Hindley, Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II, p. 350.

  29 Richardson, From Churchill’s Secret Circle to the BBC, p. 174.

  30 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour 1939–1941, Vol. VII, p. 308.

  31 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 28.

  32 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, pp. 65, 69.

  33 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, pp. 408–9.

  34 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate, Vol. IV, p. 429.

  35 Andrew Roberts, Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership, p. 54.

  36 Ben Macintyre, Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, p. 167.

  37 Soames, Clementine Churchill, pp. 516, 544.

  38 The sword is now gathering dust in the Battle of Stalingrad Museum in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad). See Independent (7 November 1993). It is not likely that any of the female shorthand typists would have been entrusted with this honour or of carrying the TA files – in a canoe or elsewhere.

  39 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 602.

  40 ‘A little gun-boat patrols up and down in front of the house in case a German submarine should pop up its nose and shoot up the Villa.’ In Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 615.

  41 J. A. Vale and J. W. Scadding, ‘In Carthage Ruins: The Illness of Sir Winston Churchill at Carthage, December 1943’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians, no page number.

  42 Ibid., Abstract 2017.

  43 Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 762.

  44 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 88.

  45 When in Rome with Churchill, in August 1944, both Kinna and Sawyers were received by Pope Pius XII. In Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 313.

  46 Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 380.

  47 Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 459.

  48 Moody, From Churchill’s War Rooms, p. 89.

  49 Jason Woodward, ‘Eminent Churchillians – Patrick Kinna MBE – “He was sure we would win all along”’, Finest Hour, No. 115, Summer 2002, p. 38.

  50 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 1260.

  51 Jean-Paul Flintoff, ‘Obituary of Patrick Kinna’, Guardian (6 April 2009).

  52 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 1227.

  53 Churchill’s tendency to cry at films and emotional events is analysed in Andrew Roberts’s article ‘Winston Wept: The Extraordinary Lachrymosity and Romantic Imagination of Winston Churchill’, Finest Hour, Autumn 2016, p. 174.

  54 Cowles, Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man, pp. 135–6.

  55 Emily Russell (ed.), A Constant Heart: The War Diaries of Maud Russell, 1938–1945, p. 268.

  56 Michael Wardell, ‘Churchill’s Dagger: A Memoir of Capponcina’, Finest Hour, No. 87, Summer 1995, p. 4.

  57 ‘Patrick Kinna: Churchill’s Wartime Secretary’, obituary, Independent (17 June 2009).

  58 Randolph Churchill, ‘Sir Winston Churchill Would Make Mincemeat of Paxman’, Telegraph (21 January 2015).

  59 Woodward, ‘Eminent Churchillians – Patrick Kinna MBE’, p. 38.

  Chapter 5: Jo Sturdee

  1 Private communication between the author and Georgina Hill, Kathleen’s granddaughter, with permission.

  2 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 53.

  3 Vanda Salmon, unpublished memoir, p. 9.

  4 Bright Astley, The Inner Circle, p. 181.

  5 Her book is essential reading for all Churchillians. She has been described as ‘the organizing genius of the War Cabinet Secretariat’. From Captain Harry Grattidge, Captain of the Queens: The Autobiography of Captain Harry Grattidge, Former Commodore of the Cunard Line, as told to Richard Collier, p. 180.

  6 Richard Buckle (ed.), Self Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton, 1926–1974, pp. 170–1.

  7 Nicholas Shakespeare, Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister, p. 168.

  8 Richardson, From Churchill’s Secret Circle to the BBC, pp. 179–80.

  9 Ian Kikuchi, ‘The Churchill War Room’s Remington “Noiseless” Typewriter’, IWM website, 18 January 2018.

  10 In the Annexe, there was ‘a little cubby hole and a machine like a typewriter… called a telex. Anything from the prime minister to the President went in there… you had to lock yourself in or somebody locked you in, and you typed whatever it was, then it went direct to the President. It didn’t have to be coded and uncoded. … It went straight there’. Sturdee’s oral history.

  11 Justin Reash, ‘Let It Roll: Churchill’s Chartwell Cinema’, Finest Hour, No. 179, Winter 2018.

  12 Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 509.

  13 S. M. Plokhy, Yalta: The Price of Peace, p. 36.

  14 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 1167.

  15 Ibid., p. 1167.

  16 Marian Holmes, unpublished diary, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, 2 February 1945.

  17 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 1223.

  18 Bright Astley, The Inner Circle, p. 187.

  19 David B. Woolner, The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and Peace, p. 66.

  20 Bright Astley, The Inner Circle, p. 192.

  21 Martin, Downing Street: The War Years, p. 180.

  22 Lavery, Churchill Goes to War, p. 336.

  23 Bright Astley, The Inner Circle, p. 192.

  24 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, pp. 1210–11.

  25 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 1345, quoting Layton.

  26 Memorandum of ‘Conversation on the Far Eastern War and General Situation’ between W. A. Harriman and Stalin, 8 August 1945, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

  27 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 384.

  28 Ibid., pp. 132, 185.

  29 Ibid., p. 147.

  30 Lough, No More Champagne, passim.

  31 Max Egremont
, Balfour: A Biography, p. 321.

  32 See also Layton, who describes the cheese as ‘a whopper’. In Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 127.

  33 Lough, No More Champagne, p. 357. Despite the warning, Churchill, ‘within two months had re-registered his father’s racing colours (pink with chocolate sleeves and cap) and assembled a stable of seven fully-fledged racehorses’.

  34 Wardell, ‘Churchill’s Dagger’, p. 16.

  35 Fred Glueckstein, Churchill and Colonist II, p. 17.

  36 Colin R. Coote, Editorial: The Memoirs of Colin R. Coote, p. 273.

  37 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 130.

  38 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 8.

  39 Philip White, Our Supreme Task, pp. 115, 119.

  40 Sandys, Chasing Churchill, p. 189.

  41 White, Our Supreme Task, p. 92.

  42 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 1012.

  43 Sturdee, letter home (8 March 1946), WSC Archives.

  44 Ibid.

  45 Ibid.

  46 Ibid.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Ibid.

  50 Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax, p. 373.

  51 Speech in the House of Commons, 17 April 1945, ‘The Greatest Champion of Freedom’.

  52 Robert H. Pilpel, Churchill in America 1895–1961, p. 225.

  53 Sturdee, letter home (8 January 1950), WSC Archives.

  54 Ibid.

  55 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 177.

  56 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair 1945–1965, Vol. VIII, p. 631.

  57 Ibid., p. 1362.

  58 What Andrew Roberts calls ‘Churchill’s love for unusual words’ in Commentary (June 2018), p. 55. Unusual and invented ones.

  59 Delia Morton in private communications to the author.

  Chapter 6: Marian Holmes

  1 ‘Glimpses: Marian Holmes Spicer’, Finest Hour, No. 118, Spring 2003, p. 20.

  2 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941–1945, Vol. VII, p. 1296.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Shakespeare, Six Minutes in May, p. 41.

  5 Colville, Footprints in Time, p. 75.

  6 Ibid., p. 3.

  7 Layton, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 12.

  8 Sir Ian Jacob in Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day, p. 162.

  9 Martin, Downing Street: The War Years, p. 4.