I am grateful to the following for permission to quote from letters or documents of which they own the copyright or which they have in their possession: Curtis Brown, London on behalf of the Beneficiaries of the Estate of Winston S. Churchill (copyright © The Beneficiaries of the Estate of Winston S. Churchill); the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College, Cambridge (copyright © The Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College, Cambridge); the Sir Winston Churchill Archive Trust; the Churchill Centre; the Beaverbrook Foundation; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, the New York Public Library (Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations); Douglas and Valerie Boud; Harriet Bowes-Lyon; Elizabeth Buxton; the 140 Trustee Co. on behalf of Viscount Camrose; the earl of Dundee; ESI Media; Citibank NA, London Branch; the partners of Fladgate LLP; Andrew and Elizabeth Graham-Dixon; Ian Hamilton; the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co.; the partners of Knight Frank LLP; Stephen Knowles; Little, Brown Book Group Ltd.; the Hon. Richard Lloyd George; Lloyds Bank PLC; the Countess Mountbatten of Burma; Macmillan Publishers Ltd.; News UK & Ireland Ltd.; Orion Publishing Group; Princeton University Library; the Rothschild Archive; the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust; Simon & Schuster Inc.; Ian Thorton-Kemsley; and Time Inc. Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.
Before her death in 2014, Lady Soames most kindly gave me permission to examine those statements of her father’s bank account which do not survive in his own archive, but do survive in the Lloyds Banking Group Archives. I am also most appreciative of the encouragement given to me by Randolph Churchill (now Winston Churchill’s senior direct male descendant) and of his help in securing my access to the papers of Fladgate LLP, the solicitors to his great-grandfather. In no sense do these acknowledgements of help from the Churchills mean that they have approved the contents of this book, because they have never sought such control. Lady Williams, née Jane Portal, who served as one of Churchill’s private secretaries after the Second World War, was very kind to share her memories of the people who helped Churchill with his finances at the time.
I acknowledge my debt to several published works which I found invaluable when researching the financial world into which Churchill was born: notably Sir John Habakkuk’s Death, Marriage and Estates 1660–1880; Sir David Cannadine’s Decline and Fall of the English Aristocracy; David Kynaston’s The City of London; and Martin Daunton’s history of Britain’s tax system, Just Taxes. I am also indebted to the authors of two works that impinge on important aspects of Churchill’s finances: Stefan Buczacki’s Churchill and Chartwell (which chronicles Churchill’s dealing with all his many homes); and David Reynolds’ In Command of History: Churchill, Fighting and Writing The Second World War.
No account of the works about Churchill to which I owe a debt could possibly be complete without the inclusion of Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert’s official biography, Winston Spencer Churchill. It was their giant work, with its companion volumes of Churchill’s documents, letters and speeches, which first sparked my love of history.
My chief thanks for help during the primary research required to write this book go to Dr Allen Packwood, the director, and all his staff at the Churchill Archives Centre of Churchill College, Cambridge. They have been unfailingly helpful and cheerful in dealing with my requests for literally hundreds of spools of microfiche material (as it then was before the archive’s recent conversion to digital form); in addition, Allen Packwood has helped me to trace holders of private papers and, with Natalie Adams, their copyright owners.
Very few of Churchill’s personal papers lodged in his archive remain restricted; the main exception is the working papers of his accountants Wood, Willey & Co. However, James Wood’s lengthy reports to Churchill are open to researchers, so it is hard to conceive that there will be major revelations when these papers are opened on 1 January 2036.
The Churchill Archives Centre also houses the main papers of Churchill’s mother, father, brother, private secretary Edward Marsh and (above all for this book) of his bank manager for nearly twenty years, William Bernau. Helpfully Bernau kept his personal notes of private meetings with Churchill and copies of the internal memos which he exchanged about Churchill’s account with his superiors at the bank. Bernau’s son later presented these papers to Churchill.
In Britain, I am also grateful to the staff of the following libraries for their help in researching papers among their collections: the National Archives at Kew; the British Library; the University of Southampton; the University of Reading; and the London Metropolitan Archive. The staff of the London Library has helped me to trace some of the more obscure published works which I have consulted and the library itself has afforded unequalled working space in the heart of St James’s Square in London.
Turning to papers held in private hands, I am most grateful to the head of Lloyds Banking Group Archives, Karen Sampson, and to her assistant Silvia Gallotti: Lloyd’s archive holds records of not only its dealings with Churchill after the Second World War, but its reluctant rescue of Churchill’s private bank, Cox & Co., in 1923.
I am also grateful to Melanie Aspey, director of the Rothschild Archive, and her staff for help when I researched the banking records of Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph: the Rothschild Archive is now rehoused in splendid quarters at the heart of the bank’s new London building. I am obliged to the partners of Fladgate LLP, particularly Simon Ekins, for allowing me to see the records of Anthony Moir, Churchill’s principal solicitor after the Second World War. I was also fortunate to be allowed to examine the Camrose papers which give a first-hand account of several important episodes in Churchill’s financial life: I am grateful for the hospitality of Mr and Mrs Jeremy Deedes while I researched these papers and to Viscount Camrose for the right to quote from them. I am also grateful for the help of Anne Jensen while researching the management papers of The Times, held in the News UK & Ireland Archive in north London.
Churchill’s life and finances were closely bound to the United States through ties of family, friendship, publishing, stockbroking, banking and lecturing. I am grateful to the staff of the following American libraries who helped me in my research: the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library and Rare Books and Special Collections Library of Princeton University; the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of Columbia University; the Houghton Library of Harvard University; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. I am especially grateful to my Oxford history contemporary, Sir Peter Westmacott, to his wife Susie, Lady Westmacott, and their staff at the British Embassy in Washington for looking after me so well during two research visits.
Sadly some papers do not survive. Those of Churchill’s main inter-war British publisher, Thornton Butterworth, fell victim to either the liquidator of his publishing business or to a German bomb; the pre-war papers of Cassell & Co. were definitely destroyed by fire after a bombing raid during the Blitz. Brendan Bracken ordered his chauffeur to burn his papers after his death – a great shame for historians as it robs us of the records kept by Churchill’s self-styled ‘honorary man of business’. I suspect the burned papers must include Churchill’s stockbroking records for the months leading up to his financial rescue of March 1938, which Bracken arranged: it is the only small section of Churchill’s investment records which is missing. In the same vein, I suspect that Bernard Baruch weeded out much of his private financial correspondence with Churchill from his otherwise immaculately ordered archive: many of Baruch’s letters and cables appear in Churchill’s papers, but not in his own.
As a new author I am particularly grateful for the early advice and encouragement I received from two friends in the literary world, Gill Leeming, née Coleridge, and Paul Langridge. Many others have helped me at some stage of the journey and I thank them all: James Bettley, Iain Butters, John Adam Fox, Tom Godfrey-Faussett, Anthony Greayer, John Harley, John Heskett, Jonathan Martin, Edward Paice, Jay Parini, Lee Pollock, Andrew Pomfret, David Reed, Sir Hew Strachan, Tim and Mary Seymour, Alan Warner, Andrew Whiffin, Margaret Willes and John Wilson.
I am especially grateful for the guidance and early confidence of my agent, Andrew Lownie. I have been lucky to benefit from the editing and copy-editing skills of Ian Pindar and Gill Paul respectively. I am grateful for the copyright help of Frederick Courtright and The Permissions Company and am indebted to the limitless patience and wise guidance of my publishers, Richard Milbank, assisted by Georgina Blackwell, at Head of Zeus and Stephen Morrison, assisted by Peter Horoszko, at Picador USA.
Last but not least I want to thank my family who have had to put up with a substantial extra presence in the Lough household for several years; nonetheless they have given me invaluable help in proofreading and de-contaminating my text of financial jargon, so far as is possible. This is especially true of my daughters Rosie and Kate, and above all of my wife Felicity, to whom I owe more than I can express in print. All remaining errors are of course my sole responsibility.
David Lough
Penshurst, April 2015