The Churchills

by Mary S. Lovell

  On 12 December 1943 he flew on to Tunis to stay in Eisenhower’s villa, the White House, near the ruins of ancient Carthage. There his condition worsened and within days he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Winston was so ill at this point that Lord Moran thought there was a chance he would not survive, and Winston himself evidently thought it was possible that he would lay his bones in Carthage. He told Sarah that she was not to worry about him. ‘It doesn’t matter if I die now, the plans of victory have been laid,’ he told her. ‘It is only a matter of time.’9 But thanks to the new ‘wonder drug’ M&B, a precursor of antibiotics, administered by Lord Moran, Churchill slowly regained his health, and Clementine was flown out to join him in time for Christmas along with her confidential secretary Grace Hamblin.

  On medical advice Churchill did not return to England for the worst month of the English winter. He and his retinue repaired to Marrakech to spend some weeks there while he regained his strength in the sun as the guest of the American Ambassador at Villa Taylor, a Moroccan palace set in its own superb gardens.* He had visited Marrakech previously with President Roosevelt, and had liked it. Not only was the climate generally mild, but the scenery immediately appealed to him as a subject for painting. He made a rapid recovery in the dry air, and the city was to become one of his favourite places for the rest of his life. An old friend, Diana, the beautiful wife of Duff Cooper† who had been posted to North Africa as Churchill’s special representative, spent time with him there, and as Winston adored the company of beautiful and witty women he was kept gently amused until Max Beaverbrook unexpectedly joined the party. Winston rested for a good part of the day, reading Jane Austen novels almost exclusively, until he felt able to paint. The convalescent routine, which included hours of painting each day, relaxed him so much that he apparently made no objection when Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean* invited Randolph to join him in an active-service mission in Yugoslavia, behind the German lines. Winston had to be consulted because of the extraordinary situation that would arise should Randolph be captured. His reaction was to warn his son to take care not to be captured: ‘The Gestapo would only try to blackmail me by sending me your fingers one by one,’ he said. ‘A situation I would have to bear with fortitude.’10

  Thrilled to be actively involved again, Major Randolph Churchill flew off with his father’s approval and, he thought, his open admiration. He wrote to tell Laura, now Countess of Dudley, about it. He told her too that his father had been ‘a very unusual patient’ who had spent Christmas presiding over an important military conference of the Supreme Military Commanders – namely, General Maitland Wilson, General Eisenhower, General Alexander and Admiral Cunningham. His father’s energy, he wrote, was ‘fantastic’. He signed off: ‘My sweetest darling, I love you.’11

  Duff Cooper visited Churchill from Algiers on 10 January 1944, flying in the specially fitted-out York that was the PM’s private transport:

  As soon as we went on board the steward offered us champagne cocktails, which were not refused. It was really a delightful journey. Perfect weather…and wonderful views of the Mediterranean and the Atlas Mountains…Clemmie and Sarah met us and took us straight to the villa where they are all living – a beautiful place…There we found Winston in his siren suit and his enormous Californian hat. When it got cooler he completed this get-up with a silk dressing gown…He has a huge staff here, including half-a-dozen cypher girls and a map room, with a naval officer permanently on duty…we were fourteen at dinner. Max Beaverbrook is here and Lord Moran and his son. The rest are staff…we sat talking until after one. I have never known Winston in better form or more cheerful. Max on the other hand was very silent. He is never quite at ease except in his own house…Clemmie said she had given Winston a…lecture this morning on the importance of not quarrelling with de Gaulle. He had grumbled at the time, but she thought it would bear fruit.12

  The Churchills returned to London on 18 January, Winston completely reinvigorated and ready to face what would be a momentous year ahead. That spring the Germans threw everything they had left into a bombing campaign on London. War-weary by now, Londoners found this battering hard to bear, while at the same time nurturing hope that very soon the Allies would begin an assault on the European mainland and drive the enemy back once and for all. Winston was everywhere: supervising, managing, organising, checking every minute detail. Almost nothing was too small to require his personal attention. Nothing must be allowed to go wrong. When the day arrived for the Allies to invade Europe and take it back from the Nazis, the British forces must not be found wanting. This long-awaited day, code-named D-Day, was set for 5 June, and right up to the first week in June Winston did the rounds of the encampments and ports of embarkation. His appearance was always a huge morale booster. He could not join in the planned Normandy landings as he wished, but he intended to watch the attack from the bridge of a warship in the Channel. Almost everyone was against this idea, even the King. And when the King’s polite request turned into an order, Winston could not overrule it.

  Given his critical role in the war that summer, he did not see a great deal of his grandson. But on one visit, the younger Winston recalled him down on his hands and knees playing with the secondhand train set that he and Clemmie had scoured London to find – no such thing being on sale in the shops during the war. Winston always tried to keep Randolph advised of his son’s progress: ‘Baby Winston is extremely well…Naturally, as he gets older he develops more personality, which takes the form of naughtiness. But his mother takes infinite pains with him…he is very handsome with a noble air.’ Then, ‘Baby Winston, as you will no doubt have been told by Pamela, has developed German Measles. I am ashamed to say I told him it was the fault of the Germans.’13 As her son recovered, Pam contracted scarlet fever, a dangerous illness in an adult. She was quarantined, so little Winston went to live with the Churchills for over a month which, somewhat surprisingly, Clementine loved.

  The battles in France were soon being consistently won by the Allies, but the enemy refused to give in. From mid-June through September, they launched in constant waves upon London the last weapons in their armoury – the top-secret V1 unmanned flying bombs, which the Londoners called ‘doodlebugs’, and the even more fearsome V2. But despite the fear that these weapons engendered there was a dogged sense that the war was all but over. Although diagnosed with a spot on the lung, Churchill insisted on sailing for Canada to attend the second Quebec Conference with Roosevelt, where he was welcomed as a hero.

  In July Randolph had a serious accident. After leaving his parents in Morocco early in the year he had returned to England for training, later to be dropped secretly into Yugoslavia along with Evelyn Waugh and other friends such as Tom Mitford. There they helped to organise supplies to Marshal Tito’s Partisans. Randolph was a passenger in a Dakota transport plane flying into Croatia to the rearguard HQ of his Commando unit, to take up his position as head of mission, when the plane crashed on landing and burst into flames. Ten people, including Randolph and Waugh, got out of the wreck alive. Waugh suffered concussion and Randolph had spinal and knee injuries, which, though not considered life-threatening, were largely to immobilise him throughout the summer. Waugh described how Randolph cried when he learned that his servant had been killed; and how, even as an invalid, he had dominated proceedings, roaring for morphine when in pain, calling for medical conferences about his condition, noisily demanding everyone else’s medicine and ‘attacking’ the night nurse.14 Eventually he was sent to convalesce in Algiers with Duff and Diana Cooper, where in August Winston briefly called to see him while en route to Italy. Recalling their last explosive encounters when they had quarrelled about Pam and little Winston, Churchill trod carefully, deciding not to give his son a letter from Clementine: ‘No reference was made by either of us to family matters,’ he explained to her. ‘He is a lonely figure, by no means recovered as far as walking is concerned. Our talk was about politics, French and English, about which there was much friendly badinage & argumen
t.’15

  Clementine replied that she understood, though she thought her son would assume she was sulking. ‘I agree that “where words are useless, silence is best”,’ she wrote. ‘But I hoped that my few very mild & moderate words might turn out to be not quite useless. You see one shrinks from saying anything to Randolph because one wishes to avoid a scene. Consequently, he is not acquainted with one’s point of view…I do think he ought to know this. Because then there is just the chance that he may be a little more considerate in future.’16 What Clementine wanted him to know was that she was upset because little Winston had been removed from Chequers, where he had been staying while Pam was quarantined. As soon as Pam recovered she had wanted her son home with her.

  Towards the end of that year Winston paid a visit to Russia, where he stayed with the US Ambassador Averell Harriman and his daughter Kathy. Again he was fêted with rapturous ovations wherever he went, but he was back in London for his seventieth birthday at the end of November. Here he solemnly toasted his beloved family and closest friends, telling them that he had been supported and comforted throughout the travails of war by their love.

  During the last two years of the war Clementine somehow overcame her sense of inadequacy. She headed several fund-raising organisations, for which work she would eventually be honoured in England and Russia, but she found that her public morale-boosting appearances were almost as popular as Winston’s. She had made it her life’s work to be always there for Winston, watching over his health, ensuring that everything was just right to enable him to continue his work, and just as carefully supervising what we would these days call his public image. Churchill’s daily routine included working lunches and dinners with Cabinet ministers, military leaders and overseas heads of state, all of which took a great deal of organisation. Their daughter Mary recorded that, family occasions apart, between January and September 1944 they gave seventy-five luncheon parties and nineteen dinners, and that Clementine’s diary noted on only four occasions that year: ‘dinner alone with Winston’.17 Given this heavy workload, there were occasions when the stress became too great and she would give vent to her feelings. ‘My mother always appeared calm and serene, as if she were coping with everything,’ Mary explained. ‘But she was a bomb waiting to go off and could just explode – as she once exploded with Cecil Beaton. She was highly combustible.’18 Winston was invariably patient with these outbursts, always aware that his precious Kat, while loving him deeply, sometimes simply needed a rest from him. On one occasion after a disagreement she had flounced off angrily, witnessed by Jock Colville. Winston looked at Colville and announced dramatically, ‘I am the unhappiest of men.’ Colville wrote that this was so obviously the opposite of the truth that he burst out laughing.

  Randolph was back in Yugoslavia by September 1944. His companion Evelyn Waugh recorded in his diaries that Randolph was drunk most days – and badly behaved every day, drunk or sober. In fact, his drunken ranting becomes a feature of virtually every diary kept by people who knew Randolph, such as Duff Cooper, and also in the biography of him by his cousin Anita Leslie – ‘That was the trouble with Randolph, he didn’t mean to rant and make people dislike him, but he did exactly that’. Waugh wrote that he found it irritating to have to tell Randolph everything twice: the first time, and then again when he sobered up. There were constant rows after which Randolph was sometimes apologetic. Once when he asked Waugh to be kinder to him, ‘It left me unmoved,’ Waugh wrote,

  for…he is simply a flabby bully who rejoices in blustering and shouting down anyone weaker than himself and starts squealing as soon as he meets anyone as strong. In words he understands, he can dish it out, but he can’t take it. I have felt less inclination to hide my scorn since his loss of self-control during the air-raid on Sunday. The facts are that he is a bore – with no intellectual invention or agility. He has a childlike retentive memory, and repetition takes the place of thought. He has set himself very low aims and has not the self control to pursue them steadfastly. He has no independence of character and his engaging affection comes from this. He is not a good companion for a long period, but the conclusion is always the same – that no one else would have chosen me, nor would anyone else have accepted him.19

  Why did people tolerate Randolph? The main reason was his father, of course, but it seems that despite his many faults and his boorishness, at the best of times he could be brilliant and stimulating company. And he had some friends who were able to overlook his bad behaviour, among them Tom Mitford, who had been a close friend at Eton. It was one of the saddest events in Randolph’s life when Tom was killed by a sniper in Burma in March 1945, just when most people considered the war was over.

  Christmas 1944 was special in Britain. It was the sixth wartime Christmas and people believed they had weathered the worst. Although most families could name loved ones who were still away fighting, it was being called ‘the last Christmas of the war’ and much anticipation and preparation went into celebrating it in homes from the poorest to the wealthiest. The Churchills were no exception, and Clementine had made a special effort to make it a ‘glowing’ event, in her words, inviting all the family and close friends who could make it to Chequers for the holiday. Jack and his daughter Clarissa were there, with Nellie Romilly – often a sad figure now, since Esmond’s death, and his brother Giles, as far as she knew, still a prisoner of war at Colditz. Diana and Duncan and their three children were there, along with two great friends of Winston who were almost family now, Prof Lindemann and Brendan Bracken. Jock Colville spent most of the holiday there, as did Gil Winant, who was still in love with Sarah and had recently become one of Clementine’s close confidants.

  Sarah and Mary were on duty on Christmas Day but planned to join the party on Boxing Day. Mary was now one of the officers with the Hyde Park Battery, an anti-aircraft gun site consisting of 230 women – ‘Not so bad at 21!’ Churchill had commented to Randolph. ‘The Battery is to go to the front almost immediately, and will be under a somewhat stiffer rocket fire than we endure with composure here. Mary is very elated at the honour…when Mary sounded her girls out as to whether they wished to go overseas, the almost universal reply was, “Not ’arf!”’20

  When Nellie arrived at Chequers on 23 December she had found the house unexpectedly silent, Winston sitting disconsolately alone in the Hall. He welcomed her, then confided that it had suddenly become necessary for him to fly the following day to Athens where there had been a Communist uprising. When Clementine had been told, he explained, she had got very upset and had fled upstairs to her room. Nellie found her sister in tears: ‘It was so rare for Clementine to give way,’ Mary wrote. ‘She was accustomed to sudden changes of plan, and had, in these last years especially, developed a strict sense of priorities.’21 But the sudden news that Winston would not be there (for the second Christmas running) at this happily anticipated family gathering was more than Clementine could take. She had recovered by the time Winston and Jock flew off late on Christmas Eve, but it was an indication of how tightly she was stretched.

  Randolph, who was still operating out of Yugoslavia, was given leave to join his father in Athens for a day or two,22 and it was from there on 29 December that Winston cabled Clementine: DELIGHTED TO RECEIVE YOUR MESSAGE. I WAS FEELING LONELY. HOPE TO BE WITH YOU AT DINNER TOMORROW. TENDER LOVE.

  When, later the following year, the family gathered to celebrate the peace, they assessed the cost of the war years on the family, though the eventual outcome was yet to occur in several cases.

  Churchill’s favourite daughter Sarah, as mentioned earlier, was quietly divorced from Vic Oliver in 1945. She had spent the later war years in Intelligence work as well as acting occasionally as an ADC to her father. Her affair with Gil Winant had come to an end when her love for him waned. Gil often visited Chequers, and after her divorce in 1945 he would remain in London hoping to win Sarah back, but she sought acting jobs in Italy and the United States so as to avoid having to face him. In October 1947 he co
mmitted suicide, which was a great shock to Winston and Clementine, who had come to regard Gil as a valued friend.

  Randolph and Pam would also be divorced (in December 1945). Days after the court hearing, Pam took young Winston down to stay with his Digby grandparents at Minterne in Dorset, before flying to New York, where – she told friends – Ed Murrow proposed to her and she accepted. Janet Murrow was still in London where she had given birth to a child, Casey, in early November. Murrow flew back to London, ostensibly to tell Janet that he wanted a divorce, and Pam flew to Palm Beach to stay with the Kennedys, whom she knew well from her debutante season when Joseph Kennedy had been American Ambassador to England. The Ambassador was not popular, but his good-looking, sociable children had made a great impression on the social scene and Pam became good friends with Kathleen, always called ‘Kick’, who was the same age.

  Kick had recently suffered a tragedy. During her time in England before the war, when she was eighteen, she had fallen in love with twenty-year-old Billy Cavendish (Lord Hartington, heir of the Duke of Devonshire), but when war was imminent, in 1939, her father insisted Kick return with him and the rest of the family to the USA. She had little alternative but to obey. The couple still loved each other, and they wrote constantly for two years. The war, and Kick’s parents’ insistence that she must not marry out of the Catholic Church (the Cavendishes were staunch Church of England), seemed to put marriage out of the question. When in June 1943 Kick heard that Billy had become engaged to a niece of Lord Mountbatten’s, she was convinced he was still in love with her. So she took matters into her own hands, joined a Red Cross war programme and sailed for England. Kick’s hunch was correct; Billy still loved her and the pair became secretly engaged. At this point the Cavendishes, realising how much the couple still cared for each other after five years apart, withdrew their opposition. And without committing himself, Joseph Kennedy (who was in the middle of an adulterous affair) made a generous settlement on his daughter so that she need never be dependent on the Cavendish family. Kick’s mother Rose, however, remained implacably against the proposed marriage on religious grounds.