2. Here I must question the almost always unexceptionable and often brilliant Andrew Roberts, in the conclusion of his biography of Halifax: “The oft-repeated assertion that had Halifax become Prime Minister instead of Churchill ‘we might have lost the war’ is as hypothetical as it is hyperbolical. Churchill would still have been running the operational side, with Halifax providing the political leadership. History would have been denied morale-boosting speeches from No. 10, and Halifax might have been relegated to ‘honorary’ Prime Minister, but Britain would not have lost the war as a result” (Roberts, The Holy Fox, 308). I am not sure of this.

3. The record shows that he had the First Lord, A. V Alexander, for lunch. During the afternoon an applicant for another household maid was being interviewed. He asked Chamberlain and Mrs. Chamberlain to dinner next night. During the day, too, came a handwritten note from the Treasury, an answer to Churchill’s inquiry about his salary as prime minister, including his income tax reduction. It would be £1,737, 12 shillings and 7 pence (Churchill Diary, CA).

It was on this day that Churchill began to affix his later-famous slips of paper, with the phrase “Action This Day,” on some of his orders.