Over several years writing about Churchill I have benefited greatly from discussions with many friends and colleagues too numerous to list here. For this book in particular, however, I wish to thank Paul Addison and Piers Brendon, as well as the anonymous readers who made helpful and constructive comments at various stages of the project. Heather McCallum of Yale University Press UK and my agent Andrew Lownie both showed encouraging faith in the project from the start and contributed with many valuable insights and suggestions. I am also grateful to Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, who helped facilitate my stay at the College as an Archives By-Fellow in 2016, and to members of his staff, especially Natalie Adams who guided me through its digital holdings and, along with Katharine Thomson, helped with my many enquiries. Cameron Hazlehurst generously shared information about Churchill’s first biographer, Alexander MacCallum Scott, as well as on The Other Club. In Scotland, staffs at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and at the Dundee City Archives helped me track down useful references to Churchill and, as ever, the resources of the University of Victoria Library along with its Inter-Library Loan service proved indispensable. For permission to quote from the papers of Wing Commander Maxwell Coote, I wish to thank the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, London, and for similar use of the papers of Gertrude Bell and of Alexander MacCallum Scott I wish to thank the Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle and the University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, respectively. Quotations from the Clementine Churchill Papers are reproduced with the permission of the Master and Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge, and for those from Clare Sheridan’s papers I wish to thank Jonathan Frewen.
It has been a pleasure to work with the team at Yale University Press in London. The incisive editorial comments by Marika Lysandrou along with her scrupulous guiding hand proved enormously helpful; Rachael Lonsdale, Clarissa Sutherland, and Lucy Buchan skilfully shepherded the book through its various stages of production; and Richard Mason copyedited the text with brisk and greatly appreciated efficiency. Others I wish to thank include Matt James, Rosamund Howe, and Douglas Matthews, who compiled the index. Above all, as always, my deepest thanks go to my wife Jeanne Cannizzo for her tremendous moral and practical support, creative editorial suggestions and invaluable assistance with picture and other research.
David Stafford
March 2019