Glow Worm Q1 2013

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Glow-Worm #17 — First Quarter 2013 “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm”

Winston to the young Violet Asquith at a dinner in the early summer of 1906, as recounted in her book Winston Churchill As I Knew Him. Winston was thirty-one at the time, Violet was nineteen.

Violet Asquith when she first met Winston

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Churchilliana

Why was Winston christened Winston? One of the birth notices in The Times on December 1, 1874: ‘On 30th November at Blenheim Palace, the Lady Randolph Churchill, of a son.’ Genealogists and historians have sometimes claimed that Winston was named after the first Sir Winston Churchill (1620-88), the father of the First Duke of Marlborough, the famous victor of the Battle of Blenheim in 1704:

The first Sir Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill, father of the first Duke of Marlborough.

He was christened Winston after his father-in-law, Sir Henry Winston.

Anita Leslie in her book The Fabulous Leonard Jerome claimed incorrectly that Winston was named after Sir Winston Churchill (above) the father of the First Duke of Marlborough, and ‘Leonard’ after Leonard Jerome, Winston’s maternal grandfather. However, Winston was named after his paternal grandfather, John Winston Spencer-Churchill, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. He was christened Leonard after his maternal grandfather Leonard Jerome. It was common practice in the Victorian era to name children after their grandparents.

The detailed family tree can be consulted in the first section of A. L. Rowse’s excellent book The Early Churchills. Here is a simplified version:

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill —a simplified family tree

Sir Henry Winston (born 1560)

Sarah = John Churchill

Elizabeth Drake = Sir Winston Churchill (Randolph and Jennie’s son Winston was NOT named after the first Sir Winston)

Winston (died at birth in 1649) John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (born 1650) + 3 younger brothers

(seven generations later) John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough (1822-1883)

Leonard Jerome of New York

George, 8th Duke Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill = Jennie

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874-1965)

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was named after his two grandfathers: On the father’s side: John Winston Spencer Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough (1822-1883), father of Lord Randolph Churchill On the mother’s side: Leonard Walter Jerome (1817-1891), father of Jennie Jerome.

John Winston Spencer-Churchill, Leonard Jerome of New York 7th Duke of Marlborough

The Robert Rhodes James book Lord Randolph Churchill includes the comment made by one of Leonard’s racing friends: “Interesting breeding, stamina goes through the dam, and pace through the sire.”

The Society of the Cincinnati When Churchill visited Washington in December 1941 he was accorded the rare honour of addressing a joint session of Congress. His address on December 26th was broadcast to the world. His opening remarks:

I feel greatly honoured that you should have invited me to enter the United States Senate Chamber and address the representatives of both branches of Congress. The fact that my American forebears have for so many generations played their part in the life of the United States, and that here I am, an Englishman, welcomed in your midst, makes this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long and has not been entirely uneventful. I wish indeed that my mother, whose memory I cherish across the vale of years, could have been here to see. By the way, I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.

Some years later, in the third volume of his memoirs The Second World War, he wrote:

It was with heart-stirrings that I fulfilled the invitation to address the Congress of the United States. The occasion was important for what I was sure was the all-conquering alliance of the English-speaking peoples. I had never addressed a foreign parliament before. Yet to me, who could trace unbroken male descent on my mother’s side through five generations from a lieutenant who served in George Washington’s army, it was possible to feel a blood-right to speak to the representatives of the great Republic in our common cause.

Churchill might also have mentioned how proud he was to be a hereditary member of the Society of the Cincinnati, established in 1783.

Editorial note: The Society of the Cincinnati is an historical, hereditary lineage organization with branches in the United States and France,

founded in 1783 to preserve the ideals and fellowship of the American Revolutionary War officers. The city of Cincinnati, Ohio, then a small village, was named after the Society. Now in its third century, the Society promotes public interest in the American Revolution through its library and museum collections, exhibitions, programs, publications, and other activities. The Society’s website: www.societyofthecincinnati.org/

To use the words of the current President-General of the Society:

The Society of the Cincinnati is a vibrant community of fellowship and high purpose, dedicated to the memory of the heroes who secured the independence of the United States.

Established in 1783, as the American War for Independence drew to a close, the Society of the Cincinnati is the oldest private patriotic organization in the United States. The Society is also our nation’s first hereditary organization. The founders of the Society assigned their descendants the task of preserving the memory of the patriotic sacrifices that made American liberty a reality.

The name ‘United Nations’ During their meeting in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941,

Franklin Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on a document called the Atlantic Charter — a statement of allied plans for peace once Germany had been defeated. The Atlantic Charter never got beyond a final draft; it was not debated in the House of Commons, nor in Congress. The draft referred to the allies as the ‘Associated Powers’, a term which had first been used by President Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

As Winston recalled in his war memoirs about the dinner in the White House on New Year’s Day, 1942:

After a spate of telegrams had flowed about the world for a week, agreement was reached throughout the Grand Alliance (of Associated Powers). The title of ‘United Nations’ was substituted by the President for that of ‘Associated Powers’. I thought this a great improvement. I showed my friend [FDR] the lines from Byron’s Childe Harold:

Here, where the sword United Nations drew, Our countrymen were warring on that day! And this is much — and all — which will not pass away.

The third Canto, verse XXXV, of Byron’s Childe Harold:

The Psalmist numbered out the years of man: They are enough: and if thy tale be TRUE, Thou, who didst grudge him e’en that fleeting span, More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo! Millions of tongues record thee, and anew Their children’s lips shall echo them, and say, “Here, where the sword united nations drew, Our countrymen were warring on that day!” And this is much, and all which will not pass away. The mention of Waterloo is interesting. Byron wrote these lines after he had

visited Brussels and Waterloo in 1818. Byron’s ‘united nations’ were the allies which formed The Seventh Coalition — the English, the Dutch and Prussians fought at Waterloo, while the Austrians and the Russians were also members of The Seventh Coalition.

Bookworm’s Corner

Der Bücherwurm (The Bookworm) circa 1850/60 Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885)

Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg

Profile of Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s Faithful Chela (‘chela’ is the Hindustani word for ‘disciple’. Churchill was told about the word ‘chela’ by Stanley Baldwin, whose cousin Rudyard Kipling spoke fluent Hindi.)

The following article by Charles Lysaght, one of Brendan Bracken’s biographers, is being reprinted in this First Quarter 2013 issue of Glow-Worm by kind permission of the publisher of History Today, where it was first published in February 2002, to mark the centenary of Bracken’s birth in 1901. The monthly magazine History Today — http://www.historytoday.com/ — was started by Brendan Bracken in January 1951, the last of his many publishing ventures. History Today website: www.historytoday.com/contents Editorial note: The cover story in the February 2013 issue of History Today is about Winston’s Black Dog (his occasional periods of depression)

Left to right: ‘Rufus’ Bruce Lockhart, unidentified, Brendan Bracken

(Editorial note: John Harold Bruce Lockhart (1889-1956) was a Cambridge double Blue and Scottish rugby and cricket international. He was Headmaster of Sedbergh between 1937 and

1954. His family called him ‘Rufus’ on account of his red hair when he was a child.)

Charles Lysaght’s profile of Brendan Bracken

The memory of Brendan Bracken, the centenary of whose birth occurred in February 2001, is inextricably linked with that of Sir Winston Churchill. ‘He has sometimes been almost my sole supporter in the years when I have been striving to get this country properly defended,’ Churchill wrote to the King in 1940, rejecting royal reservations about making Bracken a Privy Councillor.

Editorial note: Churchill’s letter, dated June 2, 1940, to the King’s secretary Sir Alexander Hardinge:

‘Mr. Bracken is a Member of Parliament of distinguished standing and exceptional ability. He has sometimes been almost my sole supporter in the years when I have been striving to get this country properly defended, especially from the air. He has suffered as I have done every form of official hostility. Had he joined the ranks of the time-servers and careerists who were assuring the public that our Air Force was larger than that of Germany, I have no doubt he would long ago have attained High Office. The fact that this is known to the public will be one of the reasons why his name will receive widespread approval.’ The King agreed to Churchill’s request that Brendan Bracken should become a Privy Councillor.

But overt political support was only one of the services Bracken rendered Churchill. Harold Macmillan remarked memorably that, like Aaron with Moses, Bracken held Churchill’s arms high during his years in the wilderness.

Editorial note: From Harold Macmillan’s The Blast of War, 1939-45. Brendan Bracken has been regarded by many as a somewhat mysterious character in British life. I first met him in the 1930s … With his red hair and white face and his extraordinary range of knowledge covering the most improbable fields (he was the leading expert on schoolmasters and bishops), he was a strange arrival in the City and the House of Commons. He had attached himself to Churchill during the worst period of Churchill’s eclipse and gave him the most devoted support in the darkest days. Some people feared Brendan, and thought him an adventurer. In fact, he had a sweet and lovable character. He was full of charitable instincts, which he translated in a quiet and unobtrusive way into reality. But his importance at this stage was his close friendship with Churchill, to whom he would speak with absolute and often outrageous frankness.

Churchill always called Bracken ‘dear Brendan’ rejoicing in the young

man’s vitality and outrageous ebullience that alone seemed able to banish the depression that often enveloped him. The friendship had started in 1923 when Bracken, then only twenty-two, contradicted Churchill at a lunch given by J. L. Garvin of The Observer. It was sustained by lively argument, constant

quarrelling and fierce loyalty until Bracken died in 1958. He gave Churchill much more than he took or even asked. In so doing he won his place in history.

Emerging from the newspaper world where he had assembled a stable of quality papers for the publishers Eyre and Spottiswoode, Bracken was first elected to the House of Commons in 1929 as Conservative member for North Paddington. He attached himself to Churchill, who had resigned from the Front Bench because Stanley Baldwin, the party leader, supported the Labour government’s proposals to devolve greater self-government on India. Almost uniquely, Bracken supported Churchill both on India and on the demands he made, from 1934 onwards, for re-armament to counter German aggression. Baldwin, inspired by his cousin Rudyard Kipling, called Bracken ‘Churchill’s faithful chela’ (‘chela’ is the Hindustani word for disciple). To many observers, the younger Bracken, with his brash colonial manner and right-wing views, was the quintessential political adventurer and epitomised the aura of unreliability that surrounded Winston Churchill. Larger than life and constantly overacting, having arrived mysteriously from nowhere, Bracken provided Evelyn Waugh with a model for his character Rex Mottram in Brideshead Revisited. ‘Everything about you is phoney,’ one interlocutor told Bracken; ‘even your hair which looks like a wig, isn’t.’ He had a great mop of carrot red hair which, combined with his white freckled skin, black teeth and features that some thought slightly negroid, gave him a somewhat bizarre appearance.

One of the most important services he rendered the extravagant Churchill was to keep him solvent when he was out of office in the 1930s. Bracken sold Churchill’s articles to newspapers at home and abroad for good money and found in the Jewish financier Sir Henry Strakosch a backer without whose assistance Churchill, who had gambled unwisely on American stocks, might have gone bankrupt in 1937. In the years immediately preceding the Second World War, Bracken’s house, 8 Lord North Street, where Churchill often stayed, became the centre of the fight against appeasement. It was from here that Churchill, accompanied by Bracken, sallied forth in the autumn of 1938 to denounce the Munich agreement in a hostile House of Commons.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty and made Bracken his Parliamentary Private Secretary, having tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to make him Minister for Information. While Churchill was loyal to Chamberlain, Bracken was not, and briefed the press incessantly about the pusillanimous way in which the Prime Minister was fighting the war. ‘I hope you’ll give them Hell’, he remarked to W.P. Crozier of the Manchester Guardian, commenting on a leader in the Daily

Telegraph saying that private members must not express views that would endanger the government.

Bracken’s chance came in May 1940 when, following the fall of Norway, a large number of Conservatives failed to support the government on a confidence vote.

Churchill and Brendan Bracken visiting the sandbagged Ministry of

Information in London University, late August 1941.

A national government was imperative but the Labour party refused to serve under Chamberlain. If, as was likely, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, were called upon to form a government, Churchill felt that he would have to serve under him. Chamberlain and David Margesson, the chief whip, wanted to draft a reluctant Halifax and called him to a meeting with Churchill. Before this took place Bracken extracted from Churchill a promise that he would remain silent if it were proposed that Halifax should succeed. When Chamberlain and Margesson put forward the name of Halifax, Churchill did just that. After two minutes Halifax broke the silence and said that he did not think that he, as a member of the House of Lords, was in the best position to form a government. It was, claimed Lord Beaverbrook who was close to events, ‘the great silence that saved England.’

From his work in the newspaper world Bracken knew the United States and, by cultivating the American press, he helped the process of persuading President Roosevelt to support the British war effort by lend-lease and other measures. When in the dark winter of 1940-41 Roosevelt sent his right-hand man Harry Hopkins to England, it was Bracken who went to meet him at Poole Airport and began the task of convincing him that Britain was determined to fight on.

As Minister of Information from 1941 onwards, Bracken did not emulate his German counterpart Dr Goebbels by taking to the airwaves. Instead he cultivated the British and international press on his master’s behalf. He was the spin-doctor par excellence, half a century before the word was invented. ‘I have a warm spot for Brendan’, noted Robert Barrington-Ward, the editor of The Times; ‘he is very easy to talk to in the most candid way and, though he may take some colour from his company, that helps the process.’ Later, when a suggestion Barrington-Ward had made was acted upon by the government, Bracken wrote to him that ‘The Times is running the country as usual.’

Detractors said that no man knew better than Bracken how to lace fact with fiction. The son of an Irish republican activist, he spent a few teenage years in Australia. Then at the age of nineteen he got himself admitted to Sedbergh school by saying that he was fifteen. He claimed falsely that his parents had died in a bush fire in Australia leaving him money to complete his education. He spent only a term at Sedbergh but that was enough to make him a ‘public school’ man. In subsequent years he spread many false stories about his parentage and place of birth. Clementine Churchill blamed him for the clinging rumour that he was her husband’s natural son, and it took years of devoted service to waylay her mistrust.

It is ironic therefore that, as Minister of Information, he was, on the whole, a relentless opponent of false propaganda. He grasped the essential truth that no propagandist can afford to lose credibility, and he deserves some of the credit that British propaganda did not repeat the mendacity of the First World War. It is also to his credit that, even in wartime, the British Press and even broadcasters on the BBC were allowed to criticise government. He often had to withstand pressure from Churchill on these matters. In doing so Bracken had the advantage that he had not sought ministerial office but had accepted his post only because Churchill begged him to do so.

Bracken retained the ‘chef de cabinet’ role he had assumed when he moved to live at 10 Downing Street after Churchill became Prime Minister. He was pre-eminent in the inner circle of the men ‘who saw Churchill after midnight’ (Bracken, Beaverbrook and Lindemann — known as the Kitchen Cabinet). Bracken

busied himself identifying candidates for ministerial office and other posts in the gift of the government — although never a member of any church since he abandoned Roman Catholicism in his teens, he delighted in selecting bishops of the Established Church. More crucially he frequently found himself heading off confrontations between the obstinate Prime Minister and his advisers. The full details of this role are, of their nature, elusive. But it was typical that when Harold Macmillan was minded to resign he turned to Bracken, who persuaded him to hold his hand; soon afterwards Macmillan was made resident minister in North Africa, an appointment that set him on the path to political greatness. Likewise, it was Bracken who persuaded Ernest Bevin not to resign in 1943, so preserving the wartime coalition.

Churchill, Brendan Bracken and Harry Hopkins

Roosevelt’s ‘faithful chela’, 1941.

As the war moved to a close, minds turned to the future of peacetime Britain.

Bracken believed that the wartime restrictions should be dismantled and free rein be given to enterprising businessmen to rebuild the war-ravaged economy. He and his friend Lord Beaverbrook made bad blood with Labour ministers, so precipitating the break-up of the coalition. Bracken became First Lord of the Admiralty in Churchill’s one-party caretaker government. As the youngest member of the cabinet he was spoken of as a future Prime minister. He was a leading spokesman at the General Election at which Churchill led the charge, raising a scare that Labour would set up a totalitarian state. Yet when the Conservatives suffered a heavy defeat, Bracken lost his own seat. The party looked around for scapegoats, and Bracken stood next to his friend Beaverbrook among those blamed.

Out of office after the 1945 General Election, Bracken, soon MP for Bournemouth, was an active and truculent member of the Conservative front bench. Unlike Butler, Macmillan and others who were to dominate post-war Conservative politics, he refused to compromise on nationalisation and high taxation. He waxed eloquent on the importance of reviving the spirit of enterprise and self-reliance that had made Britain great when ‘she was the mother of hard sons’.

He was remarkably prescient and anticipated the kind of economic policies that were to become the received wisdom in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Maynard Keynes was the high priest of the orthodoxy which Bracken attacked. Of him Bracken remarked that ‘for all his beguiling power of expression and great but disordered force of intellect he would be best remembered as the man who made inflation respectable’. He was a master of the bon mot and the devastating epithet. At a party given by Lord Beaverbrook he berated Nye Bevan, the Labour politician as ‘a Bollinger Bolshevik, a lounge-lizard Lenin, a ritzy Robespierre swilling Max’s champagne and calling yourself a socialist’. General Montgomery, he once remarked, was ‘a master of caution in all things except speech’.

As sinusitis and minor ailments sapped his strength and he found himself out of tune with others on the Conservative front bench, Bracken grew tired of the hard grind of the House of Commons. Pleading ill-health he declined to serve in the last Churchill government formed in December 1951 and left politics at the early age of fifty. He was created Viscount Bracken of Christchurch in Hampshire (his last constituency) but he never took his seat in the House that, in his irreverent way, he always called the morgue. Although no longer involved politically, and privately critical of many of Churchill’s ministers, he remained close to Churchill and fiercely protective; he was the prime mover in covering up the Prime Minister’s stroke in 1953.

For the most part he now concentrated on his business interests, notably as Chairman of the group of quality papers that included the Financial Times and The Economist where in pre-war days he had devised a constitution with trustees protecting editorial independence that was to become a model of its kind. His papers are his lasting monument. Gordon Newton, the great Editor of the Financial Times, wrote a few years ago of the vision of independence and integrity Bracken implanted and said that for that reason he ‘must be placed in the forefront of the major figures in the paper’s history’. The former headquarters of the Financial Times near St Paul’s, designed to his directions by his friend Sir Albert Richardson, was named Bracken House after his death from cancer of the throat in 1958 at the early age of fifty-seven.

His other architectural memorial was the restoration by Richardson of the eighteenth-century schoolhouse of his alma mater Sedbergh, of whose board of governors Bracken had become chairman. Over the door there is the inscription ‘Remember Winston Churchill’. As a pupil at the school Bracken’s favourite subject had been history. His speeches, conversation and letters bear witness to his knowledge of history and his romantic devotion to England’s past. He was also tireless in advocating the preservation of the great architecture of bygone ages. In his diary Sir John Colville recalled a spring evening in 1941 when Bracken summoned him from his desk in the Prime Minister’s office: as they walked through the bomb-damaged squares and streets of Westminster, Bracken recited the names and recalled the deeds of the occupants during the last 200 years; there were no blue plaques in those days. Before the war Bracken had been the prime mover in having his own North Street renamed Lord North Street, to establish its historical connection with the eighteenth-century premier.

It was therefore wholly in character that in the aftermath of the war Bracken conceived the idea of starting an historical journal with a broader appeal than the academic journals of the universities. So in 1951 the Financial News Group launched History Today, edited by his former assistant Alan Hodge in partnership with Peter Quennell. ‘Love of history ran through his words,’ recalled the historian A. J. P. Taylor, who was present at the launch in Claridges and who was impressed by Bracken’s erudition as well as his commitment, which had to be honoured, to persevere with the magazine even if it did not make money at first.

It was Bracken’s idea that Churchill should complete his History of the English-Speaking Peoples after he retired. Alan Hodge was called in to advise. When Bracken received a gift of the finished product from Churchill in 1957 he wrote back:

Most modern historians are anaemic creatures and therefore write pallid prose. Nature enabled you to make history and to write it as well. What praise could be higher?

But much as Bracken loved history, it did not prevent him from ordering the destruction of his own papers after his death. They must have contained many invaluable memorabilia of the Churchillian age. Happily many of his letters survive in others’ papers. The best are an invaluable historical source.

The late Earl of Longford described Brendan Bracken as the most remarkable man he ever met. Tall, upright, loquacious, with a striking appearance, he was well served by a powerful presence that enabled him to dominate any gathering however distinguished. Although he was something of a bully and had a

quick temper and sharp tongue, he was a kind man who helped both the great and the obscure. He even supported his siblings in Ireland from whom he had cut himself off. While he lied to the point of fantasy about himself, especially in his younger days, he was essentially a man of probity. Like Churchill he was a warm character full of sentiment and shed tears easily.

Bracken never married. In his thirties he had been the unsuccessful and rather clumsy suitor of Penelope Dudley Ward whose mother Freda was the intimate friend of the Prince of Wales. Inevitably people wondered if Bracken might be homosexual but no credible evidence of homosexual activity on his part has ever emerged. Anxious as he was to conceal his origins, he remained a very private person. But he gave in friendship and, in turn, inspired immense affection among his friends, who subscribed over half a million pounds in today’s money to build a room in his memory at Churchill College Cambridge. He also left to the College Romney’s portrait of Edmund Burke, a figure from his beloved eighteenth century whose conservatism and romantic attachment to England he shared and to whom in his early days he sometimes even claimed kinship. Brendan Bracken himself must rank as the most significant native Irishman in English political life since Burke.

Homage to a Leader — Churchill’s lying-in-state, January 27-29, 1965

During the three days lying-in-state, a total of 321,360 people filed past the catafalque.

This article by John Stewart Collis on Churchill’s lying-in-state is republished with copyright permission from the Spectator.

Daisy Wallis, PA to Editor, Spectator, [email protected] Spectator website: www.spectator.co.uk/

Richard Ingrams, the founder editor of Private Eye, in his book John Stewart Collis A Memoir wrote:

John Stewart Collis was a remarkable writer about nature in the tradition of W. H. Hudson and Richard Jefferies. He was born in Dublin: after Rugby and Oxford he became a farm labourer during the war — an experience which inspired his book The Worm Forgives The Plough, now widely regarded as a classic.

Churchill’s Lying-in-State

It was the last week of January 1965. Churchill’s funeral took place on Saturday 30 January…The queue, starting from the gates of the House of Commons, curled round over Westminster Bridge, then along Lambeth Palace Road, thence over Lambeth Bridge to Millbank leading to Westminster Hall in which the catafalque was placed. I understood that it meant about four hours in the queue before reaching the Hall. It flowed on throughout every day and every night.

It occurred to me that this was one of those historic occasions in which it would be good to participate. I was living in Ewell in Surrey at the time, and I thought that if I drove up on the Tuesday of the second week in the middle of the night, arriving at about 3 a.m., the queue would surely be short, and I wouldn’t have to join it for more than an hour before reaching the catafalque. So I went up and parked my car in the vicinity of Parliament Square — for no policeman was making the slightest objection as to where one put a car on this occasion.

I hastened to walk across the Square and was pleased to find no queue in sight. Then in high spirits I walked quickly over Westminster Bridge, and turned to the right into Lambeth Palace Road — to be confronted almost at once by an enormously wide queue, a long distance from the bridge. My heart sank. It is an eccentricity of mine to do things on impulse without taking simple precautions. It was a cold night, and I was wearing only a light overcoat and thin socks, and absolutely the wrong kind of shoes. By the time I had reached Lambeth Bridge, I had become alarmed by my predicament, but hoped that I would make it.

I looked round at this great queue of people, so long and wide. Many were young and must have been children during the war, perhaps not yet born at its outset. Many others were middle-aged — they had heard that voice coming to them over the wireless, whether to groups or into lonely rooms. Twenty years had passed since the final triumph of this man. But neither the young nor the middle-aged were thinking of those last years, but of what he had been, of what he was in their imagination. He was the man who had overcome Hitler. He had promised nothing. He did not rant. He never smiled. There was melancholy in his cadence, and there was understanding of simple people when he spoke of ‘that bad man over there’. Now his body was soon to disappear from the surface of the earth.

I spoke to nobody, and I heard no memorable remark. It had become very cold. I welcomed this. It was far more appropriate for the sombre scene than a

warm summer night would have been. But on account of my faulty clothing I became anxious. Something must be done. After we had at last crossed Lambeth Bridge, the queue took an enormous loop around a Green before joining Millbank. In the middle of this Green a marquee had been erected to serve the purposes of a lavatory. I had a hat on and it occurred to me that if I stepped out of my place in the queue, entered the tent, and then emerged hatless from it, I could join the far end of the loop without attracting any notice. And indeed I did accomplish this quite easily. This reprehensible tactic cut out at least an hour of my queue-crawling, yet it was not until 6.30 a.m. that I was able to mount the steps of Westminster Hall and go inside. What a change! I came into wonderful warm air and a cathedral peace. A long staircase led down to the floor of the great hall in which the catafalque stood. Our queue, the river of people come to pay homage to Churchill, flowed slowly down this long staircase. We were not chivvied by any policemen, there was no ‘keep moving, please’, all was discreet courtesy. In fact I paused on my way down and stood still to watch something. There were four sentinels stationed at the catafalque, one at each corner. They were relieved at regular intervals by fresh guards. It was my good fortune while descending the stairs to see a relief party in action.

From a door on the left side of the catafalque, and higher up, four sentinels appeared. The other four standing by the coffin had their rifles in the ‘at ease’ position, their legs apart, their heads bowed. They were motionless as any statue. Gradually the four men from above, in obedience to no verbal command, with incomparable grace of movement, each soundlessly approached the separate sentinels, and stood behind them. Then quietly the statues came to life; their limbs assumed slow motion; their bowed heads were raised: silently they came to attention and sloped arms, and each with the same rhythm left the catafalque by the way the others had come — who now slowly ordered arms, stood at ease, bowed their heads, until their figures too were frozen.

After passing the catafalque I stopped before the exit to look back at the steady stream of people descending the stairs. That stream had flowed during all the previous week, night and day, and would continue day and night until the ending of this second week.

As I left the Hall I stumbled and fell to the ground. Two policemen quietly restored me to the perpendicular. This indignity did not bother me at all. I had seen something I would not forget. After seventeen years I put it in words now as if, for me, it had been yesterday. There was a message too, could I but read it, as to the meaning of Homage and of Leadership.

JOHN STEWART COLLIS, Spectator, 10 January 1982

Editorial note: I mentioned Churchill’s lying in state to very good friend of mine Elspeth Griffiths, a former librarian at Sedbergh School. Elspeth sent me the following note:

WSC’s Lying-in-State

My friend and I were students at London University in 1965; we made up our minds to join the queue to pass by the catafalque of Winston Churchill. There was a long queue, even at night, which was when we went.

It was incredibly moving, and we were fortunate enough to be able to pay a personal tribute to a remarkable statesman.

Book Reviews

A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES Volume I The Birth of Britain by Winston S. Churchill

Reviewed in The Observer, Sunday April 22, 1956

by SIR ERNEST BARKER

What if Caesar, after fighting his battles in Gaul and playing his part in Roman politics, had been granted a ripe old age, and had sat down to write ‘a history of Rome from the foundation of the city’? What if Napoleon, after all his cam-paigns and all his political activity, had settled down in St. Helena during the last six years of his life to write ‘a history of the French people from its first beginnings’? Would Caesar have outshone Livy, and would Napoleon have put Michelet in the shade? There is no answer to these hypothetical questions; and the only point in asking them is that they suggest the nature of the achievement to which Sir Winston Churchill has set his hand.

Here is the first of four volumes which are to describe the history not of the English people only, but of all the English-speaking peoples; and here, in the 400 pages of this first volume, is the story of the birth and development of Britain down to the end of the Middle Ages. The volume is written in a high style and with a flowing pen: it contains many stirring and flashing passages of narrative (the author is at his best in narration, and especially in his narratives of battles and war): it also contains some fine portraits of his-torical figures, notably Henry II and Richard I. Indeed in his picture of Coeur de Lion Sir Winston almost describes himself: ‘he loved war, not so much for the sake of glory or political ends, but as other men love science or poetry.’ And in his farewell to Richard he seems almost to anticipate the last trumpet-notes that may be sounded at the end of his own career: ‘worthy, by the consent of all men. to sit with King Arthur and Roland . . . at some Eternal Round Table, which we trust the Creator of the Universe in His comprehension will not have forgotten to provide.’

Sir Winston makes history what Wordsworth said that Milton made the sonnet: a trumpet from which he blows soul-animating strains. But this first volume is rather literature— literature of a high rhetorical order —than an addition to history. There is much stirring narrative; there is less reflection. The author writes with gusto and zest of the

Vikings and their ships and their tactics; he is less full and less authoritative on the stock, the institutions, and the literature of the Anglo-Saxon people itself, which is surely of cardinal importance in the ‘birth of Britain.’ He is less concerned with the development of a people, and of its social life and culture, than he is with military episodes. Indeed, his general treatment of his theme is essentially episodic: he flashes scenes and events on the screen in a series of passages each ending with a number of asterisks; and one misses (to alter the metaphor, and to turn from the cinema to music) the deep thorough bass and continuo of sustained thought and reflection.

What of the scholarship of the volume? Sir Winston does not stumble; if he trips here and there, that is what most writers do; on the whole he neither goes astray himself, nor is he likely to lead his readers astray. He has had good helpers in his work, and he has read and quotes original sources (at any rate down to 1066) and good secondary authorities. One has, at times, the sense that there are ‘ghosts’ about — ghosts who are whispering into his ear knowledge which he then translates into his own high style. Did a ‘ghost’ whisper to him the sound sentiments on the nature of the English common law which come in the fifth chapter of Book II? And have ghosts inspired him with the wisdom of his views on the meaning of Magna Carta and the origins of Parliament? These may seem foolish questions; but they are questions which an old teacher of history, who had to spend years on such matters before he got any light, is bound to ask himself. The two brief sentences of acknowledgments at the beginning of the volume, and the few footnotes (which cease almost entirely after the first hundred pages), do not give a sufficient basis for an answer.

Sir Winston, in his preface, defines his aim as bring ‘to present a personal view on the processes whereby English-speaking peoples throughout the world have achieved their distinctive position and character.’ It is a high and worthy aim, partially attained, but often forgotten in favour of simple narrative and the description of dramatic moments. Would the author not have done better, and been truer to his title (‘the history of the English-speaking peoples’) if he had written on the broad and reflective lines which his title suggests ? When

one speaks of ‘peoples,’ and the history of ‘peoples,’ is not one involved in deep issues of social life, of economic structure, of general culture (as expressed in literature and the other arts), and ought not one to rise to the height of that great argument?

But perhaps a book that attempted to pursue that argument would not have the vigour and the vivida vis animi (lively strength of the mind) which runs through this volume on the birth of Britain. And anyhow the author, when he writes of the Middle Ages, has not got home to the period which is really congenial to his thought. He is not by nature a medievalist: he is essentially modern; and it will be when he reaches the seventeenth century and the age of Marlborough that his foot will be on his native heath.

The Last Lion, volume III in the William Manchester trilogy

William Manchester & Paul Reid, The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill, Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, 1199 pages, Little-Brown, 2012. $40.00. The book is also available in various electronic formats.

Reviewed by Gregory Bell Smith, Sonoma, California (Glow-Worm Secretary, and Liaison Officer with the Churchill Centre)

In 1961, fresh out of graduate school with a M.S. in mathematics, I read my first history book from cover to cover: William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I couldn’t put it down and it led to a lifelong interest in history in general and Winston Churchill in particular. I began reading Churchill’s books and later that year I read a curious biography of Churchill’s early years by Peter de Mendelssohn: The Age of Churchill, Heritage and Adventure 1874-1911 which was supposed to be the first of a three volume biography of WSC whose remaining volumes never appeared. Nevertheless the appetite for a Churchill biography was whetted. In 1983, when Manchester published the first volume of his projected two

volume biography (later extended to three volumes), I grabbed it and found it an absorbing read. (I have since read all Manchester’s superb non-fiction works, and tried one of his novels but couldn’t get through it). Five years later volume two sustained my interest and I eagerly awaited volume three.

Alas, as we all know, Manchester’s health gave out and he was unable to finish the book. His publisher urged him to select someone to finish the book, suggesting several historians, but Manchester insisted on selecting a writer, not an historian, and finally chose his journalist friend Paul Reid. In 2003 Manchester told him “I’d like you to finish the book” adding “You write I’ll edit,” but Manchester died four months later. Reid was a splendid choice. Some great historians are good writers (Andrew Roberts comes to mind) and some great writers make good historians; Manchester and Reid epitomize the latter. For a fascinating glimpse into the back story of the writing of volume three, see the New York Times Sunday Magazine article by James Andrew Miller, A Problem of Churchillian Proportions (November 11, 2012). For more on the back story, listen to Diane Rehn’s NPR interview with Reid at http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=16941. Reid spent eight years writing the book and it nearly bankrupted him.

Do not be dissuaded from reading the book based on the review by Deborah Baker in the Wall Street Journal (November 9, 2012). Her ‘review’ if you can call it that, is more a musing on her relationship with Manchester (she was once his editor) and spurious speculation on why Manchester chose not to write the third volume. I’d almost bet my first edition of The River War she didn’t even read the book. The review can be found at http://tinyurl.com/d565w33.

The book is a big book, weighing in at over 3 pounds, 10 ounces. It is organized into eight parts following a 50 page preamble: the first six parts (880 pages) cover the War years, part seven (106 pages) the postwar period through the second premiership and the last part (18 pages) covers Churchill’s remaining years. There are 128 pages of notes and index. There are 32 pages of photographs, virtually all of which will be very familiar to Churchillians. Essential to any history of WW II,

there are eight pages of maps. I would have preferred more and certainly would have liked to see them all together at the beginning of the book à la Andrew Roberts.

Manchester published two episodes of his volume three in the periodical Military History Quarterly, the first, Another Bloody Country Gone West appeared in volume 9 (winter 1997), the second Undaunted by Odds in volume 10 (spring 1998). Reid has substantially rewritten the first which covers Churchill’s efforts to keep France in the war. The second covers the Battle of Britain (pages 131-160) and hews closer to Manchester’s. Here is Manchester’s opening sentence:

“In preparing England for what he called ‘The Battle of Britain’ Winston Churchill envisioned a mighty struggle on land between infantrymen, masterminded by generals and supported by mounted troops, armor, and sea power.”

Reid’s opening sentence:

“In christening what would come to be known as the Battle of Britain, Churchill envisioned a mighty struggle on the beaches between infantrymen, masterminded by admirals and generals and supported by armor and sea power.”

Manchester’s first two volumes were sometimes accused (mainly by historians) of being overly hagiographic. I don’t think Reid is liable for the same criticism. He covers the good and the bad about Churchill, for example, he is very critical of Churchill’s decision to send Britain’s largest battleship Prince of Wales to defend Singapore without air cover which resulted in it promptly being sunk by the Japanese.

The book is primarily about World War II as seen through Churchill’s eyes. With vivid descriptions of the horrors of the London blitz and the seemingly endless string of defeats, retreats, sunken shipping and lack of allies, one comes away with renewed appreciation of what Churchill endured, plus increased respect for the sheer guts it took to stick it out. There is occasional humor, I found myself laughing out loud, for example on page 185, when Churchill was reported to have said just before his famous radio speech to the defeated French, “Where’s my frog speech?” Fortunately for history the microphones were off.

Reid’s treatment of the Teheran conference is especially riveting; one can almost feel Churchill’s frustration and agony as his authority was eclipsed by Roosevelt’s and Stalin’s.

Just before tackling volume three, I had finished reading Andrew Robert’s The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War and Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945, both excellent reads, and so I was well steeped in World War II history and Churchill’s part in it. (It helps to be retired to keep up with all this history). I found Defender of the Realm full of new insights into the conflict. The many quotes from the Colville, Harold Nicolson, Eden, Goebbels, and the Alan Brooke diaries, the Churchill/Roosevelt correspondence and the wartime Letters from London appearing in the New Yorker by Mollie Panter-Downes provide a lively contemporary flavor to the history.

Having recently read Barbara Leaming’s excellent Churchill Defiant: Fighting on: 1945-1955 covering Churchill’s active postwar years, I was prepared to be disappointed by Reid’s treatment. Manchester had not planned to take the history beyond World War II, but Reid chose to take it all the way to Churchill’s death. I am happy to say Reid’s treatment of these years sustained his fine treatment of the war years.

Who should read this book? If you read and enjoyed the first two volumes, it is a must read and you will not be disappointed. If you have not read the first two volumes, the book stands on its own as a fine, well-written history of Churchill’s part in World War II and a brief story of his postwar years. Anyone with an interest in Churchill or World War II history will enjoy this book. I’m sure, if he were alive, Manchester would applaud Reid’s fine work.

Greg Smith’s 2008 photograph of the Sedbergh School memorial

Marble memorial stone in Westminster Abbey

Just inside the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, near the grave of the Unknown Warrior, is a green marble memorial stone.

It was unveiled by The Queen on 19 September 1965.

The inscription was cut by the sculptor Reynolds Stone:

REMEMBER WINSTON

CHURCHILL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WISHES OF

THE QUEEN AND PARLIAMENT THE DEAN & CHAPTER PLACED THIS STONE ON THE TWENTY FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN 15 SEPTEMBER 1965