by Jim Wilson
Rothermere’s interest in air power and his unshakeable belief in the future of aircraft in war marked him out, alongside Churchill, as a leading advocate of building a strong, well-trained air force, and this remained true long after his spell as Secretary of State. In the latter part of the 1930s, when Germany was manufacturing warplanes at a remarkable pace, Rothermere’s view of the bomber as the 1930s’ equivalent of the weapon of mass destruction, and his conviction that there was no adequate defence against it, dominated the campaigns he ran in his newspapers to persuade Britain to rearm, build up her air power and address her defences against aerial bombardment. He had held strong views on the potential of flying for many years. In 1906 the Daily Mail had offered a prize of £1,000 for the first cross-Channel flight, and a prize ten times that amount for the first flight from London to Manchester. Rothermere’s energetic promotion of these challenges in his newspapers drew ridicule in some quarters. Punch magazine thought the idea preposterous, and lampooned it by offering its own prize for the first flight to Mars. But Rothermere had the last laugh. By 1920 both his prizes had been won.
Much of Rothermere’s extensive correspondence with his friend Winston Churchill is in the Churchill archives at Churchill College, Cambridge. One letter, written shortly after the start of the First World War, indicates that he lobbied Churchill as First Sea Lord, asking him to pull strings on behalf of Jack Kruse to gain him promotion to the rank of captain.2 Rothermere was granted this favour by Churchill and Kruse secured his promotion. But Rothermere’s intervention in no way guaranteed Jack Kruse an easy war. He was sent to Turkey to fight in the trenches in Churchill’s ill-inspired and costly Gallipoli Campaign. Kruse was among the last to be evacuated from that disastrous adventure in which so many British and Anzac troops lost their lives. On his way home he faced further danger when his ship was torpedoed. But his luck held. He was one of those pulled exhausted from the water and he survived. Eventually, he returned to England to be transferred into the Royal Marines. When the Armistice came he resumed civilian life, rejoining Rothermere at the newspapers, now known as Amalgamated Press.
Rothermere himself was devastated by the war, having lost his two favourite sons, Vere and Vyvyan. Lieutenant Vere Sidney Harmsworth RNVR, like Jack Kruse, endured the horrors of Gallipoli only to die on the Western Front, gallantly leading a charge of his troops from the Royal Naval Division at the Battle of Ancre on 16 November 1916. Captain Harold Alfred Vyvyan Harmsworth died two years later of wounds suffered in action at the second Battle of Cambrai. Rothermere never fully recovered from the loss of his two eldest sons, and he had a fraught relationship with his only surviving son, Esmond. His married life had been just as tragic. He had married Lilian when she was 18. She went on to have a fairly open love affair with his younger brother St John, who was then paralysed in a car accident. Unsurprisingly, it had left Rothermere lonely and depressed, searching for a purpose other than his business, and to an extent living life at the mercy of events rather than entirely in control of them. The sadness of his personal loss in the First World War never left him and was certainly a factor in his later support of Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement.
Rothermere’s brother, Northcliffe, fell out with Churchill over the disaster of the Gallipoli landings. In his newspapers Northcliffe directed much of the blame for what had happened at Churchill, who under severe criticism went on to lose his seat in the Cabinet, and, temporarily breaking from politics, took himself off to the Western Front. Despite his brother’s newspaper campaign, Rothermere remained friendly with Churchill. But the war had taken its toll on him. Later in life, Churchill would recall an emotional moment while dining with Rothermere, when a weary Vyvyan was home on leave from the front line. Rothermere invited Churchill to tiptoe into the boy’s bedroom where he proudly showed Winston the young officer fast asleep. As Churchill noted fondly, Rothermere was ‘eaten up with love of this boy’.3
Possibly the tragic loss of his two sons explains Rothermere’s kindness towards Jack Kruse. On his return home from war, Kruse was immediately welcomed back to employment with Amalgamated Press on a handsome salary, and it was not long before Kruse was one of Rothermere’s closest, most trusted associates. Shortly before Jack’s marriage to Annabel Wilson, Lord Northcliffe died, leaving a generous legacy in his will of a bonus equal to three months’ pay to all 6,000 of his employees. Rothermere inherited the Amalgamated Press empire, becoming not only one of the most influential men in Britain, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, but also one of the wealthiest. He was owner not only of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, two of the highest circulation newspapers in the country, but also the Sunday Pictorial, Sunday Dispatch and the London Evening News, together with a number of magazines. In conjunction with Lord Beaverbrook he also bought the Hulton Press, becoming, at the time, the largest newspaper owner in the world.4
3
THE GOLDEN COUPLE
When she met and married Jack Kruse, Annabel was not alone in being a divorcee. In July 1918, almost as soon as Jack had returned from war service, he had first married Lilian Kathleen Gilbert. Their marriage certificate describes Jack as an officer in the Royal Marines.1 Just out of military service, he wanted for little. He was living in London at an expensive address, 41 Pall Mall, and he gave his occupation as ‘of independent means’. Lilian was only 21 and came from Hastings on the south coast. A son, John, was born the following January while the couple were living at Tunbridge Wells. Jack had by then rejoined Rothermere at Amalgamated Press, and while he was described as private secretary to the newspaper owner, his responsibilities were increasingly demanding. They entailed constant travel, both in Britain and on the Continent. A second son, Anthony, was born in July 1920, but it seems Lilian rebelled at the demands Jack’s job was making on their marriage and she began to see another man, George Ernest Took from Folkestone. Jack petitioned for divorce in 1921, citing Took as the co-respondent and claiming custody of the two children. By the following year, when he met Annabel in New York, Jack, father of two sons, was free to pursue her favours. Both were released from unsatisfactory marriages, seeking happiness in their new relationship.
Lilian soon remarried. Not to George Took, but to an army officer named Jennings with whom she moved away from the mainland to live on the Channel island of Jersey. Although Jack had won custody of the children, it would have been difficult for a single man, engrossed in a responsible and demanding job, to provide a suitable home for two young children. An amicable agreement was made that Lilian and her new husband would take the two boys with them to Jersey. Sadly, Annabel was unable to have children herself, so Kruse and his new wife later struck a deal with Lilian, whereby John, then aged 4, left his mother to live permanently with his father. As it turned out, the little boy would have no further contact with his natural mother for the next sixty years. Not surprisingly, he came to regard Annabel as his true mother.
Jack seems to have been spurred on to greater business activity following his marriage to Annabel, both on behalf of Amalgamated Press and on his own account. With the help of Rothermere’s celebrated financial and business advice he set up a number of businesses in Amsterdam, London and later in Hartlepool. They all seem to have prospered. When business allowed, Jack and Annabel were enjoying a high-society life in London. They took up residence at 25 Park Street, Mayfair, one of the capital’s most exclusive addresses. The two made an attractive and glamorous couple, and it was not long before they were being welcomed into some of London’s most glittering society circles. The London scene in the climate of the 1920s was lively and carefree. The war had emancipated many women, irrevocably changing their place in society. Those who could afford to go to the best restaurants, to theatre premieres and be seen at society events enjoyed the freedom and the gaiety of the new era that peace had brought. There was a feeling, following the misery of war and its horrific human toll, that life was for living; a spirit reflected in the music, the dances, the fashion and the generally light
hearted attitude of the time. Jack and Annabel revelled in the newfound freedoms in the dance clubs and the revue bars. Smart venues, like the Embassy Club in Bond Street, were favourite haunts of glamorous ‘couples around town’. In the overcrowded cellar room that was the Embassy, members of London’s high society, all in evening dress, clustered at packed tables around the tiny dance area, the genial host Luigi in attendance, and Ambrose’s band playing the latest quicksteps and foxtrots for the couples who squeezed onto the club’s crowded dance floor. It was here in the early 1930s that the Prince of Wales and the still married Wallis Simpson would engage in raucous and lively conversation, while the long-suffering Ernest Simpson sat patiently in a thick fog of cigarette smoke on the periphery of the royal group. It was a place to be seen, and the Kruses were among the patrons who frequently danced the night away there.
In 1925 Jack and Annabel moved further upmarket to Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, where their next-door neighbours could hardly be higher up the social scale. Lord and Lady Mountbatten were not only cousins of royalty, they were influential in many areas of national life. Lord Louis was destined to become the last Viceroy of India, and later Chief of the Defence Staff. He and his new wife lived and entertained lavishly. It was said Edwina Mountbatten never understood the idea of living within one’s means, the cash simply flowed.2 A friendship with the Mountbattens was an entry to the top rung of society. Edwina and Dickie Mountbatten had married in the same year as Jack and Annabel. She was the granddaughter of the hugely wealthy Sir Ernest Cassel; he the son of the former Prince Louis of Battenberg. At Brook House the Mountbattens employed twenty-seven indoor staff and two outdoor staff when they were in residence, and fourteen indoor and three outdoor when they were away. This was the neighbourhood, and the aristocratic surroundings, in which the Kruses lived. And they kept up appearances themselves. In the summer they moved temporarily out of the city, renting houses in Sunningdale or Sunninghill near Windsor where they could escape from the bustle of central London and enjoy the ‘season’ of society events that inevitably included racing at Epsom and Ascot, polo, Wimbledon and the Henley regatta. It also meant that they were close to Fort Belvedere where the Prince of Wales had his residence, a magnet for all who aspired to the peak of society, and where Prince Edward entertained and pursued the favours of his mistresses.
In 1927 Annabel and Jack bought Sunning House at Sunningdale, a huge mansion standing at the heart of Sunningdale golf course. Together they virtually rebuilt the house, employing Spanish and Italian craftsmen to give it a distinctive ‘Mission style’ look. Inside, Annabel furnished the rooms with expensive antiques, collecting many of the pieces through her visits to the major London sales houses. The couple lived at Sunning House in conspicuous luxury and they employed servants on a scale more appropriate to times before the First World War than after, rivalling the aristocratic Mountbattens. Fifteen servants ran the domestic side of their lives, while a further seven were employed to tend the gardens and look after Jack’s growing stable of sporting and touring cars. Of the seven outside staff, four were gardeners and no fewer than three were chauffeurs. In the grounds of their mansion they built a tennis court and a luxurious swimming pool. An extensive garage wing was added to the main mansion to accommodate Jack’s cars – his fleet generally consisted of seven vehicles at any one time and most were iconic models of that most elegant era of motoring. During the years 1924 to 1937, records now in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu show that Jack purchased no fewer than forty-seven cars.3 Twenty of them were Rolls-Royce in a range of different models and styles – broughams, cabriolets, drop-head coupes, saloons, and sports tourers. The rest were mainly Bentley, and latterly Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Lancia and Mercedes-Benz, with a Buick, a Lincoln Zephyr, an Invicta and a Ford as ‘also rans’. Side by side with Jack’s cars in the garage at Sunning House were Annabel’s vehicles, most of which displayed her personal crest and monogram emblazoned on their polished coachwork.
Jack had a voracious appetite for the fastest and most elegant models, and from the early 1920s he developed a well-recognised love for the finest hand-built cars the Rolls-Royce factory could produce. He was widely recognised as one of that famous manufacturer’s leading and most discriminating customers, always in search of the optimum model for competitive events, sometimes changing cars so rapidly that he would keep a car for only a few weeks before swapping it for a new model. In the eyes of many experts, he represents the ultimate motoring sportsman of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. In the correspondence columns of the motoring press he sparred with the Bentley Boys, that famous group of sporting characters led by Tim Birkin, who so captured the imagination of the public at the time. Several of Jack’s cars still survive in different parts of the world, now hugely valuable because of their provenance and carefully tended by discerning collectors. Some have remained in England and are listed in the register of famous classic vehicles; others have passed to collectors abroad. The cachet of owning a vehicle that had once been in Kruse’s ownership is enough to add thousands of pounds to its value today.
Although having chosen Sunning House as their main home, the Kruses had not entirely abandoned life in the city. Annabel maintained an apartment at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and a permanent suite at Claridge’s. She was a major supporter of charities, as is clear from some of the entries in the court circular published in pages of The Times. For instance, in 1930 Annabel is mentioned as one of a handful of people sponsoring boxes, at a cost of 250 guineas a time, at a Midnight Revue organised by the impresario Charles Cochran at the London Pavilion, in aid of the Prince of Wales’ personal fund in support of the British Legion. It reflects her friendship with Edwina Lady Mountbatten, who was chair of the organising committee.4 Annabel and Edwina were both free spirits.
Kruse has been described by some commentators writing of that era as a cross between a character from Jeeves & Wooster and James Bond.5 Whether he himself would have recognised that caricature is debatable, but what was probably his most famous car does in an indirect way link him to Ian Fleming, Bond’s creator. In 1925 Kruse bought one of the first ever Rolls-Royce Phantoms, registration number 31HC, and in his quest to acquire the ultimate grand tourer he commissioned a talented engineer, Charles Amherst Villiers, to extensively modify it and fit it with a supercharger. Such modification of a Rolls-Royce was unheard of then and since. The purpose of the supercharger was to force more air/fuel mixture into the engine and increase the car’s potential speed. The result was described in the motoring press at the time as ‘The Stately Super-car’. It was an elegant car, a one-off and a classic example of the early days of supercharging. Jack himself referred to it as ‘the first and last supercharged Rolls-Royce’.
Villiers was an engineering genius. He had built up a considerable reputation tuning cars for the celebrated racing driver Raymond Mays, increasing the power of his Brescia Bugatti, and successfully modifying his 1.5 litre AC sports car. Villiers later supercharged a 1922 Tourist Trophy Vauxhall. His most famous accomplishment was designing Malcolm Campbell’s land speed record-breaking Bluebird. These achievements had been noted by Kruse, and he gave Villiers virtual carte blanche to rework his Phantom. Villiers was in fact a close friend of Ian Fleming. Indeed, when he wrote his Bond books, Fleming cast his master spy as a fast-car enthusiast who owned a supercharged 4.5 litre Bentley, which was his passion. As Bond enthusiasts will recall, he drove it with almost sensual pleasure. Fleming would have known that in 1929 Amherst Villiers, with the agreement of the Bentley company, had modified a number of 4.5 litre production Bentleys, fitting them with superchargers so that a team of these special ‘Blower Bentleys’ could be raced in 1930 at Le Mans. He would also have known that the forerunner of the supercharged Bentley was Kruse’s ‘Stately Super-car’, fondly christened ‘Sheila’.
As well as being an engineer, Villiers, who was a cousin of Winston Churchill, was also an accomplished portrait painter. His portrait of Fleming hangs today in the National Portrai
t Gallery. As a young journalist Fleming, as his Bond novels confirm, was devoted to cars, and in 1930 he reported the Le Mans 24-hour race for the press agency Reuters. The following year he participated in the Alpine Rally with Donald Healey as his co-driver. They won their class in a 4.5 litre Invicta. Kruse and Fleming were certainly known to each other, since Alpine rallying and touring was Kruse’s first love and both he and Fleming participated in the same rally in 1931. As the two were acquainted, it is not entirely fanciful that Kruse’s flamboyance, love of powerful, elegant motor cars, and his considerable wealth and charm may well have made him, at least in part, a role model for the famous character Fleming later invented.
It took Villiers two years to supercharge Kruse’s Phantom, working on it at premises he acquired at a disused mill at Staines in Berkshire. To ensure he was not deprived of his favourite Rolls while work progressed, Kruse obtained a second Phantom. Villiers decided that the supercharger should not be driven by the Phantom’s engine, because to do so would rob the car of its main unit of power, reducing the output the modification was aimed at achieving. Instead, he designed a separate unit to drive the blower. This extra engine, which had its own ignition and starter, produced an additional 10hp. It was mounted beside the nearside front wing, where the spare wheel would normally have been housed. Two spare wheels were mounted on the other side of the car to provide the necessary balance for the 200lb engine/blower unit. The Phantom’s dashboard was equipped with some fourteen instruments, which included an altimeter for use during Kruse’s Alpine trips. There were also additional controls to prime and start the blower engine. The interior seats of the Rolls were pneumatic. However, the considerable additional weight, the whining of the blower, and the roar of the exhaust must have all made for an exhilarating, memorable, if queasy and ear-splitting, ride for those on board.