by David Lough
With High Hat sold, Christopher Soames made a second attempt to address the future of his Churchill’s racing interests, which he was keen to take on, if he could afford them. They had enjoyed two wonderful seasons in 1960 and 1961, winning almost £40,000, largely thanks to High Hat and Vienna, he told his father-in-law; but £8,000 a year would be a more normal figure for the eight horses they had left in training.
Together, the costs of the stud and training expenses would amount to £25,000 a year; and only four or possibly five of the mares at his stud met the grade needed to make it a success. Soames suspected that the cost of replacing the other three or four with mares of the right quality would prove too high to be acceptable. The alternative was to reduce the stud’s size, by selling the Newchapel site and the poorest mares for a combined £20,000 to £30,000; and then to transfer the good mares, with their foals and fillies, to Soames’s new home at Hamsell Manor, where he would keep an eye on them at weekends and Carey Foster could still ‘manage the set-up’. By this means, they could halve the stud’s running costs, but Churchill would still be able to enjoy his racing for several more years.34
In fact, Carey Foster opposed the idea, rather than supporting it as Soames had assumed, and neither Montague Browne nor Moir thought that there was any hurry to break up the stud, which gave Churchill genuine pleasure.35 Exercising his diplomatic talents, Montague Browne asked Carey Foster to report on the ground at Hamsell Manor, which the vet declared to be exposed, too much on a slope and requiring at least £10,000 spent on stabling and fencing. Moir finally killed off the idea by pointing out that relief from death duty on the Newchapel site would be lost if Churchill’s stud moved to Hamsell Manor,36 at which point Soames gracefully withdrew. Far from being wound down, the stud expanded and its losses increased, reaching almost £10,000 in 1962.37
Increasingly frail, the eighty-seven-year-old Churchill missed most of the 1962 racing season.38 He was in London’s Middlesex Hospital for six weeks after breaking his hip in Monaco. While he was convalescing, Montague Browne and Moir won an extra $30,000 guarantee from Le Vien for a new, full-length film of The Second World War.39 The screenplay of My Early Life, however, remained stuck with Paramount.
In June 1962 the job of writing it passed from Ernest Gann, a protégé of Noël Coward, to Bryan Forbes, a Briton of whom Montague Browne approved as ‘a rather unusual animal in the film world, holding agreeably right-wing views’.40 Churchill’s private secretary liked the result when Forbes finished it in March 1963, but Paramount did not. Exasperated, Hugh French spent the summer negotiating yet another switch of studio, this time to Columbia Pictures and to its producer Carl Foreman, who came to Churchill’s story fresh from his triumphs with The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone. Foreman insisted that Churchill’s share of profits should not be triggered until Columbia had made money on the film, but he increased Churchill’s guarantee to £100,000, all paid in cash on signature. Montague Browne resisted the temptation to ask whether Foreman had not meant dollars and immediately accepted.41
His powers clearly fading, Churchill returned to Monte Carlo for his eighth and last cruise on Christina at the end of 1963’s summer. Montague Browne’s bulletins to Lord Beaverbrook became sadder and sadder that autumn as Sarah’s third husband died suddenly and Diana took her own life at the age of fifty-four. ‘Sir Winston is depressed; Lady Churchill very depressed,’ he wrote during October.42
At least there was some good news on the film front: Foreman had finally found a cinematic angle on My Early Life, as he concentrated on the strained relationship between father and son, which he described as a story ‘of classical stature and almost biblical flavour’.43 Negotiations on the film moved quickly when Montague Browne travelled to New York to settle a separate copyright action against Colepix, a record company. It turned out to be a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, allowing the company’s president to ease the settlement of the copyright dispute by increasing Churchill’s profit share on their film from 5 to 6 per cent. Another nine years were to pass before Young Winston (1972) reached the silver screen, but Montague Browne returned from a second visit to New York in December 1963 clutching the largest single cheque that Churchill had ever earned, an occasion he recalled in his memoir, Long Sunset:
I returned to London by air, went directly to Hyde Park Gate and found WSC dining with Violet Bonham Carter. I produced the cheque for £100,000 with the pride of a retriever emerging from a turbulent river with a particularly fine duck. WSC sent for his chequebook and said that he was going to give me £25,000. My mouth watered but this was totally impossible.44
A secretary relayed Churchill’s final instructions to his bank: £30,000 was to go into his current account, £65,000 into his investment account, and £5,000 for Montague Browne.45
Le Vien’s full-length film of The Second World War had also found a strong backer in Twentieth Century-Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck, who paid Churchill an extra $35,000 for the rights.46 Montague Browne struggled to keep the peace between Twentieth Century-Fox and Columbia Pictures as Foreman demanded late cuts in The Finest Hours, which he claimed had strayed on to the territory of My Early Life. Next Le Vien caused problems by releasing a recording of his film’s soundtrack, just as Moir and Montague Browne were on the point of landing a new deal with Decca Records. The company was poised to pay £20,000 to release new recordings found of Churchill’s wartime speeches to mark his ninetieth birthday. ‘Good business,’ Churchill noted to Moir and Montague Browne when they retrieved the situation.47
Churchill’s ninetieth birthday also provided the pretext for Le Vien to propose making another documentary, this one based on Churchill’s book Painting as a Pastime. Joyce Hall, who had used reproductions of Churchill’s paintings on his company’s greetings cards for more than a decade, paid $150,000 to buy the American rights for his company’s own television channel.48 Throughout, Moir and Montague Browne continued to defend Churchill’s interests: Moir warned that they should limit the number of paintings used to prevent a final attempt by the Inland Revenue to brand Churchill as a professional artist, while Montague Browne removed a reference to Churchill’s bodyguard allegedly signing his own paintings with Churchill’s initials.
By the autumn of 1964 Churchill was too unwell to take any further interest in his business affairs. They were left to Clementine, guided by Moir and Montague Browne. She considered exiling a herd of Belted Galloways from Chartwell’s fields ‘in the interests of economy’, but the cattle were reprieved when she was told that replacement mowers would probably cost more.49 Clementine agreed that Christopher Soames should take over responsibility for her husband’s racehorses in 1965, paying Churchill a sliding scale of any winnings.50 Montague Browne issued a press statement explaining that the stud would carry on, but that Churchill was bringing his career as a racehorse owner to a close.51 His racing account at Weatherby & Sons was closed at the end of October, before Sun Hat recorded a last victory in Paris early in December. The winner’s purse brought Churchill’s career winnings up to £90,000 and he had sold bloodstock worth £120,000.52
Churchill’s final battle was fought with that most constant enemy of his long life: the taxman. This time he was American. The US Internal Revenue Service claimed in 1963 that for at least the four previous years (and possibly longer) Churchill should have been paying US tax on any earnings with an American connection.53
Moir had always assumed that the double tax treaty between Britain and America meant that no American tax had to be paid if none was owed in Britain. However, a successful tax avoidance scheme in one country does not automatically apply in another. In a letter running to twenty-two pages, Churchill’s American lawyers at Davis Polk Wardwell & Co. estimated that Churchill owed at least $23,000 in US tax on Le Vien’s film The Valiant Years and advised complete disclosure of all Churchill’s past and future earnings that carried any American link.
Late in 1963, while still fit enough to do so, Churchill sent his own l
etter to the US authorities in the hope that they might be persuaded to desist in their claims, but all he achieved was additional time for his staff to reply in greater detail. They had still not managed to do so by the autumn of 1964, when Davis Polk Wardwell suggested sending a partner over to London to help expedite matters. Appalled at the likely cost, Moir suggested that Churchill’s American lawyers should instead meet his private secretary while he was in New York on other business. Three Davis Polk Wardwell partners confronted Montague Browne to tell him that Churchill ought to disclose all his US-related earnings since 1941, including the £100,000 that he had just been paid by Columbia Pictures.
On his return to London, Montague Browne urged Moir to resist their advice, explaining that he had told the American lawyers that: ‘Sir Winston’s fortune was not on the scale that many people imagined. I felt that they might trim their sails appropriately if they were aware that they were not dealing with a millionaire.’54
Moir wrote before Christmas 1964 to tell his American colleagues that Churchill would not be disclosing the Columbia Pictures payment. He invited them to provide ‘chapter and verse’ if they disagreed with the decision.55 Before they could do so, the ninety-year-old Churchill suffered a serious stroke at the beginning of 1965 and slipped into a coma from which he never awoke. He died on 24 January 1965, seventy years to the day after his father.
TIME-LIFE honoured its most famous contributor by sending a team of forty journalists and photographers to cover his state funeral, which took place six days later beneath the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. While Churchill was laid to rest in Bladon churchyard, just outside the walls of Blenheim Palace, the magazine’s staff was already on the way home, preparing their story in a plane especially fitted out as a flying newsroom and photographic studio. As they did so, Madame Odette Pol-Roger in France instructed that a black band of mourning be placed around the label of her family’s champagne.
*1 The 180-ton Aronia was owned by Jack Billmeir, who had built up his shipping business the Stanhope Line by blockade-running during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9). Aronia ran ball bearings from Sweden to Britain during the Second World War.
*2 The name reflects its two shareholders, the Chartwell Literary Trust and The Daily Telegraph.
Epilogue
Exchange rates: 1971 $2.40 = £1
1995 $1.60 = £1
Inflation multiples: 1971 US x 6, UK x 13
1995 US x 1.5, UK x 1.7
CHURCHILL HAD SIGNED the most recent version of his will in 1961, adding two short codicils before he died. It formed only a portion of the financial legacy which he left to his family since the Chartwell Literary Trust had already funnelled the major part of the income from The Second World War to his children and grandchildren and was contracted to do the same again with most of the revenue from the rights to his official biography.
The will itself left all Churchill’s literary works and recordings to Clementine, together with his ‘State and private’ papers, which he hoped she would give on her death to the trust that owned his pre-war papers, if she had not ‘disposed’ of them beforehand. However, he was at pains to state that she should not ‘feel in any way hindered or discouraged’ from making up her own mind about their final destination.
He also gave her all of his many paintings at Chartwell, enjoining her once more ‘to feel no reluctance or hesitation’ about selling them. In contrast, he did not want his ‘heirlooms’ sold: on Clementine’s death the medals, trophies and souvenirs were to pass to each successive generation’s male heir ‘according to seniority in tail male’. The remainder of the estate, after cash gifts for employees (including £10,000 for Anthony Montague Browne and £2,000 for Anthony Moir) was to be divided into two parts: one-third for Clementine and two-thirds for his children in equal shares, without any larger portion now for Randolph.1
Within a month of his death the provisional value of Churchill’s estate was published as £304,044 before tax.2 During the four years that it took to settle all its affairs, the value must have risen appreciably, because even after all Churchill’s papers and most of his paintings had been exempted from estate duty, the final amount of tax paid at a rate of 65 per cent reached £260,000.3
Churchill’s late difficulty with the United States’ Inland Revenue Service (IRS) fell to his executors – Clementine, her daughter Mary and the former private secretary Jock Colville – to resolve. Led by Colville, they tried to enlist the support of the British government, but were politely rebuffed and had to settle with the IRS. They used the more liquid funds in his estate to pay what was owed and to meet the first instalment of estate duty in Britain. However, they needed to find another £150,000 to pay the remaining duty owed.4
Rather than stay in Chartwell, Clementine chose to hand over the house to the National Trust straight after her husband’s death. She was keen for it to be open to the public as soon as possible, with the appearance of the family home it had been during the 1930s. The paintings and furniture that had made it so had never formed part of Churchill’s gift to the National Trust, so Clementine decided with her fellow executors to offer to sell these now to the National Land Fund. The Fund was a government body established to accept items of historic interest in lieu of estate duty, before it passed them to bodies such as the National Trust for public display. It operated by negotiating a market value with the executors of estates; it then deducted the estate duty theoretically due from the price it would pay, but added a douceur, or inducement, equivalent to one-quarter of the tax.5 In Churchill’s case, the Fund easily accepted the valuation of the executors’ expert, just over £100,000, not least because the paintings included a work by Claude Monet, Pont de Londres. The Fund employed its usual formula to pay £56,000 of Churchill’s estate duty bill, leaving the executors to find a final £95,000.6
To raise this sum, they decided to offer the same National Land Fund scheme thirty-three of Churchill’s own paintings – which Clementine and the National Trust were keen to hang also at Chartwell. The expert employed by the executors proposed a valuation of £229,000, basing his case on the prices which the few Churchill canvasses coming on the art market were achieving at auction; if his figure had been accepted, the estate would have not only have met all its estate duty bill, but would have been due a small refund. However, Ronald Alley, the Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery and the expert employed by the National Land Fund, took a very different line. He recommended that only half the number of paintings should be hung in the space available and advised a discount of 60 per cent against the executors’ valuation of each picture, because prices for Churchill’s paintings were already falling as more found their way on to the art market.
As a result, the National Land Fund offered to pay only £35,000.7 The executors were so taken aback that Jock Colville took their case directly to Roy Jenkins, the Labour chancellor of the exchequer, calling the sum ‘derisory’. Although the Fund’s officials revised their sums, they would not offer more than £44,000. Jenkins guessed correctly that the executors were unlikely to accept a sum far below their remaining estate duty bill and ordered a rethink. Eight Churchill paintings were added to the list and the valuation discount was narrowed to 40 per cent, to produce an offer of £90,000, just £5,000 short of the tax bill remaining.8 Colville and his co-executors readily accepted the new offer. Filled with furniture and paintings, Chartwell duly opened to the public in the middle of 1966. It attracted 150,000 visitors during its first five months and, almost fifty years later, continues to draw more than 200,000 visitors each year.9
Clementine sold both houses at Hyde Park Gate and bought herself a flat half a mile away in Kensington. She seemed financially secure until 1977, when her increased need for nursing care and the severe inflation of the 1970s prompted her to auction five of the paintings that her husband had left her, including two of his own. The auction house Christie’s forecast that they would raise £12,000: Churchill’s own paintings led the wa
y as the sale raised £52,000.10
Clementine died later in the year aged ninety-three, but instead of leaving her husband’s post-war papers to his direct male heirs, as he wished, she donated them directly to Churchill College, Cambridge, which built a special archive centre to house the papers with money Colville raised from American donors. Churchill’s pre-war papers were eventually to reach the same destination, but by a more protracted and controversial route.
In 1952, when the Cabinet Office had discovered some 500 extra files of Churchill’s wartime papers in its basement, Sir Norman Brook, the cabinet secretary, suggested to Jock Colville, Churchill’s principal private secretary, that a single, permanent collection of all Churchill’s papers should be established. In the discussions which followed, Sir Norman surprised Churchill’s solicitor Anthony Moir by suggesting that on Churchill’s death the government could reclaim its ‘state’ papers. Sir Norman then offered a deal: the government would not press for the return of these papers, provided Churchill’s trustees made it impossible for his heirs to sell them without the consent of the government of the day.11 The trustees gave the necessary assurances, which they renewed in 1964.
In 1968, Randolph’s son Winston, a twenty-eight-year-old MP, became the main beneficiary of the trust, now called the Archive Trust, on Randolph’s death. Once again the government exempted Churchill’s papers from estate duty in return for the standard conditions that they should remain permanently in the United Kingdom, properly preserved and open to research by those ‘authorized by the Treasury’. This last condition was suspended until the completion of Churchill’s biography, as a concession to its publishers.