The Churchills

by Mary S. Lovell

  It had already been agreed some years earlier to accord Winston a state funeral, and the codename for this operation was ‘Hope Not’. Immediately the news was out, the great panoply of state swung into motion under the direction of the Duke of Norfolk, who as the Earl Marshal of England† was responsible for organising such national occasions. The plans for this funeral had been laid twelve years earlier.

  Churchill’s body lay in state at Westminster Hall for three days, the coffin draped in the Union flag upon which lay his Garter decoration.

  Four Guardsmen took up their stations at the corners of the catafalque, heads bowed in symbolic grief, hands clasped on the hilts of their drawn swords. Every twenty minutes the guard changed, silently; no commands were issued. Clementine and the family were able to gain access whenever they wished through a side door, and stood watching the surreal scene as the line of people, who had queued for hours in the freezing weather day and night to pay their last respects, silently and respectfully filed past the coffin. A carpet had been laid there, so no sound disturbed the quiet of the great candlelit hall. The line snaked back over two miles throughout the three days; the family were later told that 320,000 people had passed through.

  On 30 January the coffin was loaded on to a naval gun-carriage and, drawn by ratings, set out from Westminster for St Paul’s Cathedral. It was an intensely cold day as Winston made his final journey, through hushed streets. The men of the family, led by Randolph, Christopher and young Winston, marched behind the gun-carriage. Knowing there was an hour’s walk ahead of them in the biting wind young Winston worried about his father, who was not fully recovered from his lung surgery some months earlier. The ladies and other family mourners rode in five carriages from the royal mews, equipped with lap rugs and hot-water bottles; they could only faintly hear the band and the ninety-gun salute at St James’s Park.

  Heralds in colourful medieval tabards, carrying Churchill’s Garter emblems draped in black, accompanied the coffin to the bier in front of the altar. The Queen set aside the order of precedence* in favour of Clementine and the family, and after the solemn service the coffin was borne to Tower Hill for another cannon salute and a parade of the Yeomen of the Guard, whose Elizabethan uniforms provided a colourful contrast to the sombre black bearskins and dark winter greatcoats of the Guards. At Tower Pier the coffin was placed on a motor launch, with Winston’s pennant as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports flying at the mast. The coffin was ferried to Festival Pier, to be placed aboard a special train waiting at Waterloo. The short voyage upriver was rendered even more poignant when the booms of all the dockside cranes were lowered as the launch passed by. Lightning Jets of Fighter Command dipped their wings as they roared overhead, offering a reminder of how far aviation had advanced since those early days when Winston had learned to fly in aeroplanes made of wood, string and canvas.

  The train that bore Winston’s body home was pulled by a Battle of Britain-class steam engine bearing the name Sir Winston Churchill. From the country railway station and all along the Oxfordshire lanes to the village of Bladon which lies within sight of Blenheim Palace, silent crowds stood four or five deep as the coffin, now guarded by Winston’s old regiment the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, proceeded on the last miles of its journey. Men removed their hats: not a sound was heard in the thin, cold air. At Clementine’s request no press were present at the church.

  Only his beloved family was with him, as Winston Spencer Churchill was buried close to his parents and his brother in Bladon churchyard. His grave bore the simplest of headstones. That night as she went up to bed Clementine told Mary that it had been not a funeral, but a triumph.

  There is a small, little known footnote to history about that day. At Bladon churchyard Captain Barry de Morgan was the officer in charge of the bearer party. He recalled: ‘The coffin was very heavy and the strain on the bearer party was considerable; so much so that in order to keep a grip on the straps each of the bearers had to dampen their gloves to avoid the risk of a runaway…’ During the measured lowering of the coffin, the strain on the clothing of the bearers was so intense that in the case of one – Sergeant Webb – the pin holding his medals beneath his greatcoat gave way and dropped into the grave. Captain de Morgan heard a ‘clunk’ but with his mind on the important task in hand he ignored it. As they were about to board the train to return to London the sergeant told him that his medals were missing, and the clunk was explained. Captain de Morgan immediately notified the officer in charge of the railway station for the day, Major Ronnie Ferguson,* who rapidly despatched a guardsman to recover the medals before the grave was filled in.

  In the weeks that followed, one of Clementine’s first acts was to hand Chartwell over to the National Trust. Although under the terms of the Chartwell trust it was hers for her lifetime, it had always been Winston’s house and she knew she would never be happy living there alone. She also put the two adjoining houses at Hyde Park Gate on the market, and would later buy a flat at nearby Prince’s Gate. In February, with Mary and Christopher she sailed on the Queen Mary to Barbados, where old friends Ronald and Marietta Tree† had invited them to come and stay at their West Coast mansion, Heron Bay. Ten days later, they flew on to Jamaica to stay with the widowed Bert Marlborough and several members of his family near Montego Bay. The kindness of friends, the peace, the light and the colour, and the balmy Caribbean air, all helped Clementine through those days.

  Randolph had the biography of his father to work on, and he applied all his considerable literary ability to the task. Family and friends have said that his work on this project after his father’s death, his poor health notwithstanding, provided him with a hitherto unknown contentment. Another factor was Clementine’s regular visits to Stour House. All his life he had craved his mother’s attention and demonstrations of her love for him, but while Winston was alive Randolph had always taken a back seat. Now Randolph was enchanted to be consulted by Clementine for his opinions and advice. He was still incorrigible, still steam-rollering his way to something he wanted, or wanted done. Rules were not made for Randolph Churchill, and there would still be the occasional explosion when everything did not go his way. But far more often now the charm of the man came to the fore.

  Less than eighteen months after Winston’s death Lord Moran published Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival. It is a large book and had clearly been started a considerable time before Winston’s death. Moran had raised the matter of his writing a book in 1964, during the last summer of Winston’s life, when it was no longer possible to involve Winston in discussion about it for fear he would be upset. At the time Clementine made it quite clear to Moran, in writing, that she could not approve the project. ‘I always supposed that the relationship between a doctor and his patient was one of complete confidence,’ she wrote. ‘Had you been writing your own biography with passing reference to Winston, it would have been understandable, though I would have hoped you would tell us what you intended to say.’ She pointed out politely that Lord Moran’s career had already been considerably enhanced by his association with Winston, implying that this should perhaps have been sufficient for him. There was no reply to this letter, and Clementine assumed he had dropped the matter.

  One year to the day after Winston’s death, Lord Moran wrote Clementine a long letter saying that few authors would allow others to see their manuscripts, that he had finished the book (to be published that summer), and he requested permission to use a specific portrait of Winston in it. Permission was withheld.

  In April 1966 the Sunday Times ran the first of a six-part serialisation of the book, for which Lord Moran received £30,000. There is no doubt that this book caused huge distress to Clementine, and members of the family were outraged. Apart from the breach of confidentiality, Moran’s harrowing descriptions of Winston in extreme old age were not how Clementine wished Winston to be remembered – any more than the Sutherland painting had been. A storm of controversy broke, involving many eminent public figures who ha
d known and worked closely with Churchill, and leading physicians who questioned the morality of Moran’s exposing his patient’s illness to the world without gaining the permission of the family. The question most asked was, ‘How can it be ethical of Dr Moran to contravene his Hippocratic oath?’

  Moran claimed that the information was taken from his own diaries. Yet friends who had been closest to Churchill in his last decade, such as Colville and Montague Browne, pointed out that the book contained many factual errors indicating that parts of it were at best the result of retrospective editing after many years, rather than contemporary diary entries. Moran referred, for example, to a journey to New York with Winston on the Queen Elizabeth. The voyage was actually taken on the Queen Mary – an error which, at a distance of years, would be easy to make – whereas had Moran been keeping a daily diary, as he claimed, he would hardly have mistaken the name of the ship on which he was sailing. Moreover, conversations were quoted and events referred to at which the doctor claimed to have been present, whereas from diaries kept by others it was evident that he had merely joined the company afterwards, when Churchill had mentioned the matters in passing. There were also demonstrable misquotations as well as quotations taken out of context.

  It was claimed by the Sunday Times and the publishers that Moran and Winston were intimate friends, and Moran quotes him as thanking him for keeping him alive for so long. More contentiously, he claimed that Winston had known of his intention to write the book and had approved, and that Brendan Bracken had actively encouraged it. The family and his really intimate friends denied these assertions. Winston had regarded Lord Moran as a friend, though not as an intimate. He had trusted him utterly as his doctor and allowed him to see him in a totally relaxed state – sometimes, necessarily, when he was ill and vulnerable. Had he suspected that his words were being recorded, Clementine believed, Winston would never have done so. Furthermore, Winston, who had no secrets from Clementine and few from Mary, Christopher and the others, had never mentioned to anyone the major matter of Moran’s proposed book. Indeed, he took the issue of his historical legacy so seriously that he had agonised for years over whether to allow his own son to write about him – so was it likely that he would ever have sanctioned an unedited version by his doctor so soon after his death? But of course, neither Winston nor Bracken could be called as a witness, and Moran defended himself by stating that any study of Winston’s last twenty-five years would be inaccurate without knowing the state of his health and the ‘exhaustion of mind and body that accounted for much that is otherwise inexplicable’.8

  There is no question that the book was and remains a fascinating document. Nor is there any doubt that a good deal of what Moran placed in the public domain was accurate. However, the image conveyed of Churchill, from as early as 1943, was of a man in almost constantly failing health. This, clearly, is not wholly correct, though it could be explained by the fact that Moran only ever saw his patient when he needed a doctor. In the end Moran was censured by the Medical Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association, but the fact remained that considerable hurt was caused to Winston’s family and the genie could not be put back in the bottle.

  The rumpus sent sales sky-high. Diana Mosley – who had known Winston all her life but had fallen out with him over her imprisonment during the war years – was fascinated by the book. She wrote to her sister Nancy Mitford (who had given away many family secrets under the guise of fiction):

  I’m deep in Lord Moran, it has made my eyes ache because one can’t stop reading. I can’t imagine what the fuss is about (it seems people come to blows over it). Imagine if he really had been gossipy & spilled the beans – Wendy at Monte Carlo, Randolph vile & making him cry, Diana getting electric shocks for her hysteria, Sarah in & out of the cells etc. The doctor must have known all, with knobs on, yet there is never a hint (he does say once there was ‘an uplift’ in Winston’s spirits when he visited the Reveses…It reminds me of old Beaverbrook saying to me once: ‘Why can’t they leave him with Wendy where he’s happy?).’9

  In May 1965 while the Moran row was still raging, Clementine was made a life peer. She assumed the title Baroness Spencer Churchill of Chartwell, which gave her a seat in the Upper House. Although she never spoke in the Lords she often attended and voted.

  Randolph’s health was poor after the operation in 1964 to remove part of his lung, but he devoted all his energy to his book, and by the summer of 1968, three years after Winston’s death, two hefty volumes had been completed as well as half a dozen companion volumes containing the transcripts of hundreds of letters and papers (for which he has earned the hearty gratitude of hundreds of subsequent Churchill researchers). The project had taken eight years at that point. Randolph had originally said that ‘the Life’ would consist of five volumes, each of 200,000 to 300,000 words (plus the companion volumes), but he could not work alone on this mammoth undertaking. He had a team of brilliant young historians as research assistants, plus secretaries and typists. One of the ‘young gentlemen’ researchers, as he referred to them, was Martin Gilbert,* who was told that it would be his job to call at the various great houses around the country, explain his credentials and seek out any papers on Churchill that might be of interest.

  While working on his magnum opus Randolph had taken to spending part of his winters in Marrakech and sometimes made trips to Switzerland. In the summer he enjoyed visits to Monte Carlo, when Natalie invariably accompanied him as his muse. He seldom drank any more, and though he still behaved with the arrogance of Louis XIV he was less explosive. It was the long years of abuse to his digestive system, especially his kidneys, that destroyed him in the end. He ate like a bird now and was emaciated, his skin hanging in folds. Anita Leslie, who visited him at that time, said that she could hardly bear to look at him when she recalled what he had once been: ‘He would suddenly raise his head and catch me turning away and he knew why I [had] turned.’ But, she said, ‘perhaps the most striking thing was his sense of wonder. He never lost it. He lived in a magic world where every day amazed and excited him.’10 Natalie spent most days with him and usually saw him into bed before returning each night to her own house.

  Randolph was alone when he died during the night of 7 June 1968 aged fifty-seven. His doctor said later that he had worn out every organ in his body. One of his researchers found him the next morning when he took him a cup of tea. Mary noticed that at Randolph’s funeral Clementine was wrapped in the remote silence she always adopted in sorrow; of her five children – the ‘puppy-kittens’, as she and Winston had always called them – only Mary and Sarah now remained.

  Clementine’s life during the years after Winston’s death was busy and fulfilled, and thanks to good friends and staff she was never alone, even though her daughters were seldom able to be with her. Sarah had returned to the United States and was working there. Christopher was made Ambassador to France soon after Randolph’s death, so the Soameses moved to Paris. Clementine was able to visit them several times a year, always travelling by boat-train. She had known and loved Paris all her life, so this was a treat. It came to an end only when, four years later, Christopher was recalled and appointed one of the two first Commissioners to the European Economic Community. Released from the onerous duties of an Ambassador’s wife, Mary was now able to spend more time with her mother.

  When she was able to read Randolph’s published volumes Clementine was delighted with them. Once, near the end, she told Mary that she missed Winston more now than in the days immediately after his death. On the centenary of his birth, 30 November 1974, she was taken in a wheelchair to his grave by young Winston. She laid some flowers and whispered: ‘I hope I shall not be long now.’11

  As time passed Mary worried increasingly that her mother might have to face pain or a further major trial at the end of her life, but she need not have been concerned. Her death came on 12 December 1977. Clementine had lunched in her flat at Prince’s Gate with her trusted friend and secretary, Nonie Chapman
. She enjoyed the meal, but afterwards there was a sudden change in her breathing. Her two Filipino maids were summoned and they all helped her into her bedroom to lie down. There was no panic, or pain, and within a few minutes Clementine’s life eased gently away, as though on an ebb tide. She was interred quietly with Winston, in the churchyard of St Martin’s at Bladon.

  At the service of thanksgiving for her life, held on 24 January 1978, the thirteenth anniversary of Winston’s death, extracts were read from the marriage service of Winston and Clementine held almost seventy years earlier. It ended with the words: ‘May your lives prove a blessing each to the other and both to the world, and may you pass in the Divine mercy from strength to strength and from joy to joy.’ Seldom can a more apposite blessing have been given to any bride and groom.

  In the opening chapter of this book I wrote of the first Duchess of Marlborough: ‘Sarah never regretted the marriage, for theirs was that enviable partnership, a genuine love match, though Sarah’s fiery temperament ensured that their years together were never humdrum.’ Winston Spencer Churchill not only matched and bettered his illustrious ancestor’s record in battle, he also matched John Churchill’s good fortune in finding the perfect life partner.

  APPENDIX 1

  Family and Friends

  Mary and Christopher Soames Having enjoyed an impressive career in government during which he achieved Cabinet rank and was admitted to the Privy Council, Christopher was created a life peer in 1978 as Baron Soames. From 1979 to 1981, under Margaret Thatcher, he was Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords, in tandem with his duties as the last Governor of Southern Rhodesia (originally a Harold Wilson appointment). Christopher died in 1987 of pancreatitis at the age of sixty-six and was buried in the Churchill plot at Bladon. Mary, who had helped him throughout his career, was honoured for her public services, notably in Southern Rhodesia, and was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2005 she was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter, the honour which her father regarded as one of the greatest of the many tributes heaped upon him.