Today she is a successful and highly regarded writer in the Churchill genre, and is noted especially for her affectionate but frank biography of her mother (Clementine Churchill, published in 1979). She has also published a book of the letters between her parents, Speaking for Themselves, which has been a source of invaluable information to many Churchill researchers. When I interviewed her for this book in her London house, she was eighty-nine and busy writing her memoirs. A friend who accompanied me on this occasion and was introduced to Lady Soames for the first time, was startled into blurting: ‘My goodness! You are so like your father’ (my friend may not thank me for revealing this). Lady Soames was simply amused.
Of Mary’s five children the best-known is Nicholas Soames, former Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. He has been an MP since 1983 and has held a number of high positions. He is also a former equerry to the Prince of Wales and has worked in a number of roles in the City.
Sarah Churchill In the years following her mother’s death, Sarah was in poor health. She died in her sleep, aged sixty-seven, in 1982. Cause of death was given as renal failure. She is buried at Bladon in the Churchill plot.
Albert (‘Bert’), 10th Duke of Marlborough Only six weeks before his death in 1972, Bert married, as his second wife, Laura Charteris (1915–90), by then the widow of the American publishing heir Michael Temple Canfield and sister-in-law of the novelist Ian Fleming. She had been the lodestar of Randolph Churchill’s adult life – the unattainable woman he always wanted. It is ironic that she should have eventually married into the Churchill family. Laura also fended Bert off for a long time because she had no wish to live in ‘gloomy’ Blenheim, stared at by tourists from behind a cordon whenever she ventured outside to play croquet. But he wore her down by singing romantic old love songs to her. Harsh things have been said about Bert: he was described by some as ‘a bore’ and as ‘stupid’, but he saved Blenheim for the nation and protected the inheritance of the Marlboroughs from the Inland Revenue.1 He thereby fulfilled the primary duty of a Duke of Marlborough. He was interred in the chapel vault in Blenheim.
John (‘Sunny’), 11th Duke of Marlborough Bert was succeeded in 1972 by his son John (inevitably called ‘Sunny’) who had married, first, Susan Hornby from whom he was divorced in 1961. His second wife was Tina Onassis; they divorced in 1971. He married a third time, to Dagmar Rosita Douglas Stjemorp, daughter of Count Carl Ludwig Douglas, a Swedish nobleman and diplomat who was the Swedish Ambassador to Brazil. When his father Bert died, John and Rosita became the 11th Duke and Duchess.
Although, according to his friend, Cynthia Gladwin, Bert bullied Sunny ‘all the time’, Sunny had shared the running of Blenheim with his father for many years and so the change-over was a smooth one. The death duties were dealt with by donating an archive of over 30,000 documents, of inestimable value, to the nation; these, the Blenheim Papers, are now at the British Library where scholars, academics, historians and visitors from all over the world have open access. Blenheim itself is a World Heritage site and is now run as a business, a popular tourist destination, especially for overseas visitors. Sunny and Rosita were divorced in 2008 and the Duke is now married to the former Lily Mahtani.
Clarissa and Anthony Eden In early January 1977 the Edens were in Florida when Sir Anthony was given two weeks to live. Clarissa was unable to get him home because of a strike by British Airways. The Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, having been asked to provide RAF transport, at first demurred because of the cost, but his aides pointed out that it would reflect badly on him if he refused to ‘help and honour’ a former Prime Minister who was still popular with the public. A jet was duly sent and Eden came home to England, to die on 14 January, in his eightieth year. Clarissa (Lady Avon) still lives in London and published her autobiography in 2009.
Emery and Wendy Reves After their rift in 1960, contact between Churchill and Emery was restricted to literary matters. Sarah remained in contact with the couple, though, and after Winston’s death Clementine wrote twice to them in response to their letters of condolence. Emery died in 1981, and Mary wrote to Wendy to tell her of Sarah’s death a year later. Wendy devoted the remainder of her life to philanthropy, making extensive charitable endowments in the fields of education, medical research and the arts. She died at the age of ninety in March 2007 at a hospital near La Pausa.
Winston S. Churchill (young Winston) Churchill adored his namesake grandchild, who, some might say, had the misfortune to have two extremely strong and self-centred parents. If one recalls Lord Randolph and Jennie Jerome, it seems almost a case of history repeating itself. Sir Winston was as close to the boy as his own demanding career and his grandson’s schooling allowed, and he was thrilled when young Winston married his childhood sweetheart Minnie d’Erlanger in 1964. This marriage produced two daughters and two sons, the elder of whom was born two days before Sir Winston’s death and was predictably christened Randolph. The marriage ended in 1997, to his mother Pam’s disapproval, for like everyone in the family she adored Minnie. Winston married Luce Engelen soon afterwards.
The younger Winston was a competent MP for over twenty-six years, but he lived in the shadow of his famous grandfather whose shoes were impossible to fill (which had caused him to be bullied at school). Although he would never admit it, he too suffered from the fallout of his father’s reputation because Randolph had offended so many people. Young Winston was unfailingly robust in defence of both his grandfather and his father whenever pejorative comments were made in the House or in the press about either. Several people interviewed for this book described young Winston as bumptious and suffering from Churchill arrogance, but when I met him in aviation circles many years ago I found a man with a charming – boyish – eagerness about him. After his father died in 1968, he hoped that he might be allowed to take over as official biographer of Sir Winston, but the trustees decided to ask Martin Gilbert, who had worked as Randolph’s research assistant from the start, to continue the work. Young Winston might well have obtained a ministry under Margaret Thatcher, but after he voted against sanctions on Rhodesia she felt she could no longer wholly rely on his support. She may have been right in her assessment, for he would later attack her in the House, claiming she had done less for defence than Harold Wilson.
He made newspaper headlines several times in later years, notably after the tabloid press discovered his two-year love affair with Soraya Khashoggi, former wife of a Saudi Arabian arms dealer, and later when he sold his grandfather’s papers to the nation. Many people felt that because these papers were part of the nation’s history they should have been gifted, not sold. However, it could also be argued that they were the product of Sir Winston’s pen just as his published writings were. The Churchills have never been a rich family, and the papers were a realisable asset. This issue coincided with a change of constituency boundaries as a result of which the constituency that Winston represented disappeared. He did not seek re-election.
In spring 2009, the day before I was due to meet him over lunch to ask him some questions for this book, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We communicated by email briefly during the early stages of this illness, and he fought hard for his life for a year, supported lovingly to the end by Luce. He died on 2 March 2010.
Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman At the time of Churchill’s death Pam had been married for three years to the Hollywood and Broadway impresario and producer Leland Hayward, whose greatest hit was The Sound of Music. Until Leland’s death in 1970 they lived in luxury at his country estate Haywire in Westchester County, New York. It was a happy marriage and Pam ensured that everything revolved around her husband, even to the detriment of his children. During Leland’s lifetime Pam’s relationship with her stepchildren was cordial enough, but after his death it became extremely acrimonious and Pam’s stepdaughter wrote a bitter memoir entitled Haywire, which in essence accused Pam of robbing Leland’s children of items left by their father.
By 1971 Pam had met up again wi
th her first real love, Averell Harriman, now seventy-nine and also recently widowed. Pam and Averell resumed their old relationship soon after Leland’s death, and were married six months later when she became a citizen of the United States. It was during this marriage that she became active in Washington society and in particular within the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. This was another happy marriage, but again there were stepchildren problems when the children of Averell’s previous marriage felt ousted by Pam, which created deep antagonism. Following Averell’s death in 1986 Pam became embroiled for years in legal arguments over his will. She had been left $65 million and Harriman’s children accused her of ‘wasting’ $30m of their trust fund in ill-advised investments, leaving them only $3 million.
But in her own right Pam was a mover and shaker, running successful fund-raising campaigns and a political action committee, Democrats for the 80s (and later, Democrats for the 90s). She was named Woman of the Year in 1980; in 1993, for her help in his presidential campaign (it was said he would never have succeeded without Pam’s stamp of approval), President Clinton sent her to Paris as United States Ambassador. She was a stunning success.
On 5 February 1997, while swimming in the pool at the Ritz in Paris, she suffered a brain haemorrhage and died some days later. I had met her briefly a few weeks earlier to interview her about a book I was working on at the time. She was bright, vital, full of laughter and looked twenty years younger than her age.
President Clinton sent Air Force One to collect Pam’s body from Paris and return it to Washington, where it was received with full military honours before being given a state funeral. No previous American Ambassador had ever been so honoured.
It was Pam’s misfortune to have two biographers who appear to have disliked her a good deal. The first biography had begun as a cooperative venture: Pam would supply the information and documentary materials and the professional biographer was to do the writing. Some months into the work Pam’s brother Eddie and one of her sisters persuaded her to pull out of the project as they believed it would reflect unfavourably on her position as American Ambassador. The biographer went on to write an unauthorised biography of Pam anyway. The context could not be described as sympathetic. The second biography, perhaps taking its cue from the first, was also an unflattering portrait, concentrating on Pam’s numerous love affairs and the evidence of her disaffected stepchildren – the equivalent of writing a biography of Kennedy or Clinton via their bedroom conquests as told by the lovers’ husbands and children.
Men were indeed important milestones in Pam’s life, and she learned much from most of them about art, wine and music – all this she regarded as part of her education. But apart from her indisputable abilities as a courtesan – and I do not use this word in any pejorative sense – she was a success above the ordinary in her own right. Ask any Parisian about Pam’s achievements as American Ambassador to France and you will more often than not receive a glowing commendation. In Washington she was revered as a political hostess by Democrats and highly respected, albeit grudgingly, by Republicans. Her former lovers remained on good terms and were still welcomed by her family as friends years after the affairs had ended.
APPENDIX 2
Lord Randolph Churchill and the Diagnosis of Syphilis
It has long been accepted by historians and biographers that Lord Randolph Churchill died of syphilis. This was accepted at the time by the patient himself and his closest family, including Winston Churchill, who discussed the matter with his father’s doctor and had access to his medical file. Winston’s son Randolph, who also had access to the file, also believed the diagnosis was correct. However, many years later another grandson, Peregrine (son of Jack Churchill), who was born long after Lord Randolph’s death, contested it.
In the pre-antibiotic days of the nineteenth century, syphilis was such a common affliction that every doctor in general practice knew its symptoms extremely well. Lord Randolph consulted Dr Thomas Buzzard, the renowned specialist in venereal disease. Other opinions were also sought so that several physicians were involved in the diagnosis and treatment of Lord Randolph’s condition, and there appears to have been a concurrence of expert medical opinion.
This does not prove that the illness was syphilis, of course. An article by a doctor published in the United States and used as a thesis in a recently published book1 claims that the same symptoms could have been caused by an undiagnosed brain tumour. Peregrine Churchill preferred to accept this alternative diagnosis as the cause of his grandfather’s death.
The acceptance of the original diagnosis by those most concerned at the time seems to make that one more likely to be right, especially given that Lord Randolph was known to have had an affair in Paris, before the onset of his illness, with a professional courtesan, and that he himself did not query the diagnosis. He clearly had some grounds for accepting the possibility that he was suffering from venereal disease.
Winston was not the only family member to suspect there was more to his father’s illness than they were being told at the time. Leonie Leslie and Clara Frewen, Jennie’s sisters, found out about it from Jennie. Randolph’s sister Cornelia (Lady Wimborne) wrote to Dr George Keith, who had accompanied Randolph and Jennie on their trip around the world, and asked him to describe his symptoms and the prognosis. Dr Keith initially replied that it ‘would only cause you a great deal of grief if I told you what Lord Randolph does and says as it is too painful for words to see a man like Lord Randolph in the progress of this disease. I have had a doctor to see him here and he has confirmed me in every detail. We have no doubt what is the matter with Lord Randolph and none as to the inevitable end.’2 After conferring with the family doctor Robson Roose, Dr Keith wired Lady Wimborne in November 1894 to the effect that her brother would not live longer than six months. Even the Prince of Wales had heard rumours, and wishing to learn the facts, he contacted Dr Buzzard a few weeks before Randolph’s death. Buzzard obligingly confided Randolph’s condition and symptoms to him.
Dr Buzzard’s case notes show that he had first been consulted by Randolph in October 1885 (four years after the Marlboroughs left Ireland) at the request of Dr Roose, but later stated that he could not be sure whether this was the first time he had seen Randolph or not. Drs Buzzard and Roose clearly anticipated, from the start, what would inevitably happen to Lord Randolph as the disease progressed. Dr Buzzard had noted:
It was in the early summer of 1893…if not before that I came to the conclusion that there was in all probability commencing G.P. [General Paralysis]. His articulation became slurred, and his tongue tremulous…Beginning of September symptoms were slowly changing, becoming apathetic, occasionally a loss of co-ordination, slight delusions. Appetite good, sleeping well. On September 23rd left hand became numb, and there was a decided loss of power in the arm. He became sleepy and confused. In that evening left hand became almost useless. Next morning seemed much as usual. October 3rd: nearly assaulted one of his valets; violent dislike of him. October 11th: another attack, speech became very bad, loss of coordination very marked. Followed by unusually good temper…Nov 4th: Has been violent and apathetic by turns; Lower lip and chin seem to be paralysed. Gait staggering and uncertain. November 16: Speech slow and uncertain…voice weak. Takes little interest in things. Face losing its expression. Altogether he is well into the 2nd stage of G.P.3
Most of these symptoms (although not the haemorrhaging reported by Dr Keith) could have been caused by a brain tumour. However, they are also all typical of the final stages of syphilis. The patient would have presented at the first stage with a rash or ulceration of the genitals. The tertiary symptoms in isolation would not have automatically suggested syphilis, but could easily have been what doctors then termed ‘an inflammation of the brain’. But the fact that Randolph suddenly ceased all sexual relations with his young wife sometime after Jack’s birth in 1880 would appear to be not unconnected.
Having consulted several doctors and compared symptoms, and taken i
nto account the surviving letters and documentation of the time, I lean towards Winston Churchill’s belief that his father died of syphilis. However, it is too long ago to be entirely sure; only DNA could now provide incontrovertible evidence. The story of the nature of Lord Randolph’s illness was resurrected in the 1920s with the publication by the notorious Frank Harris of his scurrilous bestselling memoirs, My Life and Loves. This book was banned in Britain because of its sexual content, but it was freely available in the United States and France. There is little doubt that its publication harmed Winston’s career at a critical time for him.
NOTES
Full details of all publications cited in the text are provided in the Bibliography.
Abbreviations used in the notes
AL – Anita Leslie
BL – British Library
CA – Churchill Archives, Churchill College, Cambridge
CB – Consuelo Balsan (formerly Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough)
CHAR – Chartwell Papers, Churchill College Library, Cambridge
CHUR – Churchill Papers, Churchill College, Cambridge
CSC – Clementine Spencer Churchill
JC – Jennie Churchill
CV – Companion volumes to the official biography of Sir Winston Churchill
The Churchills Page 63