Roy Jenkins

by John Campbell

  He was slightly worried that Mary Soames, Churchill’s surviving daughter, might not approve; on the contrary, she jumped at the idea of ‘another Liberal study of my father’, following too many that portrayed him as a reactionary Conservative.202 He was also encouraged by Andrew Adonis – the young ex-SDP academic-turned-journalist now working in the Downing Street Policy Unit, who had become his latest confidant/adviser (in the mould of David Dowler, John Harris, Matthew Oakeshott and Hayden Phillips – he always needed one) while providing a useful link to Blair. He had no doubt of the magnitude of the challenge he was taking on. ‘Yes,’ he wrote to Raymond Bonham Carter, ‘I am rashly attempting Mount Churchill. I envisage it very much as a companion volume to Gladstone – full life, same length. I have few no [sic] new sources – mainly an attempt at a new interpretation.’203, fn21 But he reckoned there was ‘at least ten times’ more existing literature about Churchill than about Gladstone. Another difference was that he had known Churchill, if only slightly, having been introduced to him by his father in 1941 and having overlapped with him in the House of Commons for sixteen years; as a young man he heard two of Churchill’s wartime speeches from the public gallery. More important there were, in a modest way, several parallels between his own career and Churchill’s. Not only had he held two of the same great offices, as Home Secretary and Chancellor, but he too was a writer/politician who had supported his family all his life by his books and journalism as Churchill did. Jenkins too had switched parties – though in his case only once. The Times even pointed out that they both suffered from mild speech impediments.204 And there was another similarity. ‘I was . . . increasingly struck by Churchill’s extraordinary combination of an almost puritan work ethic with a great capacity for pleasure, even for self-indulgence. I found that combination rather attractive’205 – for the obvious reason that it mirrored his own ‘hedonistic calculus’. ‘I understand Churchill better than I did Gladstone,’ he confessed in one of the dozens of lectures and interviews he gave after the book came out;206 so that having previously pronounced Gladstone to be ‘the most remarkable specimen of humanity’ ever to have been Prime Minister, he ended up revising his opinion:

  I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street.207

  After five months’ preliminary reading, starting in the autumn of 1998, Jenkins wrote the whole book – in his tiny longhand – in a little over two years. By contrast with Churchill’s small army of researchers, he had no assistance apart from one student who checked references for him. Once started, his method was to read up his sources a chapter or two ahead of where he was in the writing (‘I am in front of the troops but not too far in front’), meticulously recording his progress as he went along.208 Over Easter 1999 he wrote 15,800 words in 69¼ hours over twelve days, a rate of 229 words an hour; over Christmas/New Year 1999 into 2000 another 34,000 words in twenty-three days. That summer he broke the habit of a lifetime by staying at East Hendred through August, ‘writing hard’, and going to Italy – where he still wrote every day – only in early September (missing the Lib Dem conference). ‘After nearly 7 decades,’ he apologised to Tom McNally, he and Jennifer felt that they had ‘discharged our conference obligations, and this year we shall be in Italy’.209 By now he was up to 1944, but he had just got to the Normandy landings when he fell ill; he had to spend three weeks in hospital (10 October to 1 November) having a heart bypass operation, complicated by a lung infection, which was nearly fatal, followed by another three weeks of ‘rather difficult convalescence’.210, fn22 He appointed Adonis to finish the book for him if he were unable to complete it. In fact he recovered to write another 80,000 words – the last eight chapters – in two months between December and February 2001, working five to seven hours a day, including 1,076 words on Christmas Day. By any standards this was a remarkable work rate. For a man just turning eighty it was phenomenal.

  The book turned out to be little shorter than Gilbert’s (the same number of pages, though the print is bigger), but much more readable – even though some of the writing is as baroque, the penchant for French phrases as pretentious and the metaphors, if anything, still more extended than in Gladstone: by this stage in his life Jenkins really needed a firmer editor than Macmillan provided. It was not, as he acknowledged, in any way original, except in one respect: the space he gave to Churchill’s always precarious finances and the incessant journalism he needed to take on to maintain Chartwell and his extravagant lifestyle. But it was a magisterial work of synthesis in which, having absorbed all the existing literature, Jenkins used his own experience – both of high politics and of living by his pen – to weigh judiciously all the controversies of Churchill’s career. After his criticism of the Charmley/Roberts school of revisionism it was no surprise that he broadly defended Churchill’s conduct in most of them. This was his first venture into military history (if one discounts the 1914–16 chapters of Asquith). He sought advice in this area from Max Hastings, who told him, for instance, that he was too generous to Churchill over the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign of 1915: it was the almost unanimous view of military historians that the objective could never have been achieved with the forces made available, and Churchill should have realised this.212 Jenkins half-accepted this, and added a grudging sentence to that effect; but generally he was reluctant to change what he had written. He once told Hastings that if he wanted a different sort of book he should write it himself.213, fn23

  Churchill was published in October 2001, with a lavish launch party at the National Portrait Gallery, and was the publishing hit of the year, selling 100,000 copies in hardback before Christmas.215 Jenkins carefully noted the reviews – more historians and fewer friends this time, though the latter still included John Grigg in The Times – and graded them for favourability: in the eleven major papers he classified six as three-star and four as two-star, giving a score of twenty-six out of a possible thirty-three. The young revisionists were as laudatory as his old friends. ‘Macaulay himself could not have done a better job,’ John Charmley wrote in the Guardian;216 and Andrew Roberts in the Sunday Telegraph hailed ‘a first-class, well-sustained work of history and a masterpiece of biography – by far the best of Jenkins’ 19 books . . . as much a work of literature as of history . . . To have written this splendid book at the age of 80 in only a little over two years is a simply astonishing achievement.’217 ‘Do we really need another life of Winston Churchill?’ Robert McCrum asked in the Observer, and answered: ‘Yes, if it’s as magnificent as this study by Roy Jenkins.’218 There was only one bad review, by the always acerbic Frank McLynn in the Independent on Sunday, who found it ‘a grave disappointment’ for lacking a point of view, ducking all the controversies and simply assuming Churchill’s greatness. ‘Aiming for balance,’ he concluded, ‘Jenkins achieves blandness.’219 But his was a lone voice.

  Before publication Jenkins wrote to the publicity director of Pan Macmillan: ‘You will, I am sure, bear in mind that although not seriously diminished I like to think, I may not be up to quite such a strenuous schedule as we did for Gladstone six years ago.’220, fn24 But he still promoted his book at most of the major literary festivals – Cheltenham that October, Richmond in November, Charleston in May (preceded by lunch with Jim Callaghan) and Buxton in July (staying with Roy Hattersley) – and gave numerous other talks up and down the country. Since his operation, however, he was not allowed to travel alone, so Jennifer (or sometimes Leslie Bonham Carter) now always accompanied him. He also did a promotional tour in the United States, which included an event at the United Nations in New York and a dinner at the British Embassy in Washington hosted by the ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer, and attended by Hillary Clinton, Robert McNamara and Karl Rove, among others. By the time of his death, not much more than a year later, sales in Br
itain and America had reached half a million; the American edition alone earned him $300,000. Churchill failed to win any prizes – it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, but lost out to Margaret Macmillan’s account of the Treaty of Versailles – but nevertheless it made an amazing climax to Jenkins’ literary career (and there were still two short books to come).

  In these final years the pace of Jenkins’ social life barely slackened. He kept up assiduously with old friends and contemporaries, going out of his way to mend relationships where they had been broken, and still making new friends in a constant round of lunches, dinners and weekends. ‘How much more agreeable it is,’ Jim Callaghan wrote to him in 1998, ‘now that we can write to each other to express our genuine feelings now that the passions and frustrations of ambition have not only died down but have been broadly satisfied – in both our lives.’222 ‘After twenty years,’ Roy Hattersley wrote, ‘it seems that we are friends again, and that gives me real pleasure.’223 He had become estranged from Woodrow Wyatt in the years when Wyatt had been an ardent confidant of Mrs Thatcher; but now Wyatt wrote recalling their ‘jolly days’ in the 1950s playing tennis with Tony Crosland and issuing ‘our dramatic ultimatums to dear Hugh . . . You have always had a very special place in the furniture of my mind. Though sometimes we seem to disagree on politics I think we don’t really do so very much au fond.’224 When he knew he was dying, Wyatt asked for Jenkins to deliver the address at his memorial service, which he was delighted to do. Jenkins was also one of the few people to visit Harold Wilson in his sadly confused last days and wrote generously, even affectionately, about him in reviews of both the Ben Pimlott and Philip Ziegler biographies and in newspaper tributes on his death in 1995, greatly softening his often harsh criticism in the past.fn25

  In his role as wise old cross-party elder he wrote equally generous letters of sympathy to former opponents when they were down: to Michael Heseltine after his heart attack in 1993; to Kenneth Clarke on losing the Tory leadership to William Hague in 1997; and to David Mellor on the loss of his seat in the same year. ‘I received many charming letters following my demise,’ Mellor wrote back, ‘none as pithy and perfectly delivered as yours. You said it all in thirty words. I am really touched that you should write to me and in these terms.’227 He even had John and Norma Major to lunch at East Hendred. When Neil Kinnock – that once-militant anti-Marketeer and scourge of the SDP – was appointed a European Commissioner in 1995, Jenkins invited him with Glenys to lunch at East Hendred to advise them about life in Brussels;228 and when William Hague, after resigning the Tory leadership, was planning his biography of Pitt the Younger, Jenkins gave him ‘valuable advice . . . in the highly appropriate surroundings of Brooks’s Club’.229 He took a similar interest in other young authors writing their first books – for instance, Adam Sisman, then writing a biography of A.J.P. Taylor, and Ruth Longford, who was writing the life of her grandmother, Lloyd George’s secretary/mistress Frances Stevenson. To these and many others who wrote to him for advice he showed extraordinary kindness. He turned down most requests for interviews, often PhD students asking about the 1960s, Europe or Bletchley, but he made a lot of exceptions for one reason or another, and always replied courteously and often interestingly even when he refused, scribbling his reply on the letter for his secretary to type up. He took extraordinary trouble to reply to every query, unless they were abusive; but always refused to fill in questionnaires, often sending correspondents a copy of one of his books instead.

  His diary was increasingly punctuated by birthday celebrations and memorial services as his friends passed successive milestones or passed away: Isaiah Berlin’s eightieth, Mark Bonham Carter’s seventieth, Madron Seligman’s seventy-fifth, Frank Longford’s ninetieth, Nicko Henderson’s seventy-fifth, Ludovic Kennedy’s eightieth, Ted Heath’s eightieth, J.K. Galbraith’s ninetieth. This last was at Harvard, but most of the rest Jenkins hosted at either Brooks’s or Balliol. Among those at whose memorial services he delivered an invariably felicitous address were Mark Bonham Carter (‘my closest all-round friend’),230 Solly Zuckerman, Laura Grimond, Gladwyn Jebb, Christopher Mayhew, Leo Pliatzky, Edwin Plowden, John Harris and Madron Seligman. Before Harris’ service at St Margaret’s, Westminster, he told the vicar that he would not need a rehearsal because he knew the pulpit all too well.231 His encomium of Zuckerman was typical to the point of self-parody:

  Everything to do with Solly was of the highest quality . . . Only he could produce Château Cheval Blanc 1961 and the Queen for a small country dinner party at his Norfolk flintstone house with his collection of early Sheffield plate upon the table and his conversational style which combined omniscient reminiscence with an optimistic interest in the future.232, fn26

  But he had made many younger friends too, among them the journalist-turned-bestselling-novelist Robert Harris. They met in 1995 when Jenkins reviewed Harris’s thriller Enigma, set in wartime at Bletchley Park – positively, despite some quibbles – and the publishers invited him to the launch party. Jenkins was then seventy-five, Harris thirty-eight, but they formed an immediate bond: Harris lived near Hungerford, just the other side of the M4 from East Hendred, and over the last seven and a half years of Jenkins’ life they lunched together around 100 times at various favourite pubs between their two homes – lovingly listed in Harris’ memoir of their friendship: ‘the Blue Boar at Chieveley, the Harrow at West Ilsley, the Royal Oak at Yattendon, the Red House at Marsh Benham, the Fish at Sutton Courtenay, the White Hart at Hamstead Marshall and a large number of other congenial establishments spread around Oxfordshire and West Berkshire’.234 Harris loved Jenkins’ conversation and his positive attitude to life:

  He practised conversation . . . as an art form from a golden age, in the way that Evelyn Waugh once defined it: the apt joke, the shared confidence, the mutual building of a privately shared fantasy. His memory was prodigious, and he was generous in sharing it . . . But, for all his stories, and despite his age, he never passed into anecdotage . . . He would talk about the past, but he refused to live in it: he was always eager for the latest gossip, or to discuss the latest book or film . . . We would exchange news about publishing, publicity, sales figures, translations. Comparisons of daily output was a more contentious matter, since his was always so much greater than mine. He would return from a week’s holiday and announce that he had added another 10,000 words: he produced three books to my one. And yet I do not think I had a friend who took a livelier interest in what I was writing.235

  ‘I admire almost more than anything else about him this capacity . . . to get on with people thirty or forty years his junior,’ Harris wrote in 1998. ‘He is 78 next week, appears in good health, has phenomenal energy and mental stamina, but so many of his contemporaries are dead and dying: he must sense the gathering shadows . . . I guess this is why he likes to see me.’236 At one of their last lunches, four years later, Harris found him in unusually low spirits. ‘I’ve suffered rather a blow today,’ Jenkins confided. He had heard that morning that Caroline Gilmour had cancer. ‘Caroline is clearly the great love of his life, after Jennifer,’ Harris realised. ‘She was the one,’ Jenkins told him. ‘I didn’t pursue it. There wasn’t much I could say.’237 Caroline actually outlived Roy, but only by a year.

  Another new friend, slightly older but also conveniently within driving distance, was Max Hastings. As a young Tory journalist in the 1980s Hastings had covered the Hillhead by-election and taken a fairly satirical view of Jenkins; but when he got to know him a decade later he changed his mind and became devoted to him. Whereas Harris and Jenkins would usually lunch together in a pub, Hastings and his wife became friendly with Roy and Jennifer as a couple and they would lunch more often in each other’s houses. In 2001 it was Hastings who hosted a dinner at Somerset House for Jennifer’s eightieth birthday, attended by all the leading figures of the heritage industry, who lauded her work with the Historic Buildings Council and the National Trust;fn27 and since Roy’s death Max and Penny Hastings
have continued to look after Jennifer, taking her to the theatre and twice on safari to Kenya. During Roy’s lifetime there was some rivalry between Hastings and Harris about which was his favourite. But in 2000 they planned together to take Roy and Jennifer to Paris by Eurostar for his eightieth birthday, offering him a choice of two restaurants, which he found ‘excruciating’:

  The Palais Royal plush elegance of the Grand Véfour I know but have not been to for nearly twenty years. A return visit would be very attractive. On the other hand L’Ambroisie is unknown and tempting and its three stars and Place des Vosges location very enticing. So I end up by weakly leaving it to you.239

  In the event his illness intervened, but they went in April instead, staying at the British Embassy and dining at L’Ambroisie, where Harris reckoned that the food and six bottles of wine cost not far short of £2,000.240