THIS WORK is a biography, not a history. The two are often confused, and understandably so, for both recount the past. But there is a distinction. History is a chronological account of prior events. Biography focuses on one figure, exploring the significance of his life by examining “the earthly pilgrimage of a man,” in Thomas Carlyle’s words, or, in Sir Edmund Gosse’s, by presenting “the faithful portrait of a soul in adventure by life.”
In the view of this writer, there can be no enlightening life which does not include an account of the man’s times. This need for context is even greater when the central figure is a towering statesman. It is impossible to understand Churchill and his adversaries in the 1930s, for example, without grasping the British revulsion against the horrors of World War I. If a man casts a long shadow, as Churchill did, extensive research leads to lengthy books. I propose to cover the life of Churchill in three volumes. Three volumes is a lot. But he deserves at least a triptych if one is to meet the exacting standard set down by Paul M. Kendall of the University of Kansas. The biographer, he writes in Encyclopaedia Britannica,
seeks to elicit from facts, by selection and design, the illusion of a life actually lived. Within the bounds of given data, the biographer seeks to transform plain information into illumination…. His achievement as a biographer will be measured, in great part, by his ability to suggest the sweep of chronology and yet to highlight the major patterns of behavior that give a life its shape and meaning.
My personal encounters with Sir Winston Churchill were confined to a five-day Atlantic crossing aboard the Queen Mary in January 1953, when he was in his last premiership. Subsequently, I visited No. 10 Downing Street. But when I undertook my present task I was remembered by members of his family and entourage. Their hospitality, when I set about the ten-year job of researching and writing The Last Lion, honored me and moved me. Thus began the most ambitious literary venture of my life, which included taped interviews of such diversity and length that their transcription required a full year. Those are essential to The Last Lion’s scholarly foundation.
I am particularly grateful to Martin Gilbert, MA, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, for his time, his generosity, his kindness in guiding me toward sources, and for his invaluable narrative and document volumes.
My debt to Lady Soames, DBE, née Mary Churchill, is immense, for her recollections of her father, her patience in answering my inquiries, and her role as my tour guide through the rooms, the grounds, and the outer buildings of Chartwell, in one of which, her father’s studio, I saw—perhaps gaped at would be more accurate—nearly five hundred of her father’s paintings. They are stunning, and serve to confirm Sir Isaiah Berlin’s conclusion that Churchill was “the largest human being of our times.”
The late Sir John Colville, CB, CVO, Honorary Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, retired RAF fighter pilot, author, and private secretary to three prime ministers—chiefly Churchill—was cooperative, forthcoming, and encouraging throughout. To assist me he devoted hours he could have spent in more urgent causes, and did so with that understated charm which is the mark of an English gentleman, almost convincing me that there was nothing he would rather do.
Among others who were most helpful to me were surviving “Churchillians,” as Sir John called them: Sir William Deakin, DSO, MA; Sir Fitzroy Maclean, CBE, MP (C); the late Lord Boothby, KBE; Sir David Pitblado, KCB, CVO; Sir John Martin, KCMG, CB, CVO; the late Lord Soames, PC, GCMG, GCVO, CH, CBE; Lieutenant General Sir Ian Jacob, GBE, KBE, CB, DL; Anita Leslie; Sir David Hunt, CBE, OBE, DFC; Lord Bonham-Carter; young Winston Churchill, MP, grandson of his namesake; the late Oscar Nemon; the late, gallant Viscount Head, PC, GCMG, KCMG, CBE; the late Lord Duncan-Sandys, who was Churchill’s son-in-law; and five of Churchill’s secretaries—Grace Hamblin, OBE, Jane Williams, Kathleen Hill, Vanda Salmon, and Cecily (“Chips”) Gemmell. I should also express my appreciation to Wing Commander R. M. Sparkes, RAF, who took me through the Annexe—Churchill’s wartime bunker and the site of the Cabinet War Room as it had been in 1945—long before it was opened to the public.
With the exception of one member of the Royal Family, no one refused to be interviewed and taped. The late Harold Macmillan (Lord Stockton) set an entire day aside for me; so did the late Lord Butler of Saffron Walden (“Rab”); so did the ineffable Malcolm Muggeridge. All questions I posed (including some which were clearly impertinent) were answered by Lady Avon, the widow of Anthony Eden; the late Lady Diana Cooper, widow of Alfred Duff Cooper, Viscount Norwich; the historian A. J. P. Taylor; Lord Strauss; Lord Hailsham; the Rt. Hon. Malcolm MacDonald, OM, PC, MP, son of Ramsay and a cabinet minister in Churchill’s wartime national government; Lord Geoffrey Lloyd; R. L. James, the retired headmaster of Harrow; Lord Selkirk; Noel Mander; George Malcolm Thompson; Denis Kelly; Alan MacLean; Elizabeth Gilliatt; John Grigg; Sir Charles Martin; Richard Hill; Lord Southbridge; Graham Norton; and certain Americans who enjoyed a special relationship with Churchill: the late Virginia Cowles, Kay Halle, and the late Averell Harriman. Mrs. Harriman provided immense help and encouragement, though classifying Pamela Harriman as American or British presents difficulties. As Averell was, she is very active in the U.S. Democratic party. However, she was born Pamela Digby, the daughter of the eleventh Lord Digby, KG, DSO, MC, TD, and her first husband was Randolph Churchill. As Winston’s daughter-in-law and the widow of one of the greatest statesmen in American history, she is, so to speak, an English-speaking Union unto herself.
In addition to taped interviews, the primary biographical sources for this book are specified in the back of the work. Material is cited from, among others, the 300 collections of private papers in the Churchill College Archives Centre at Cambridge University; Hansard’s record of parliamentary debates; the private papers of prime ministers and the minutes of cabinet meetings now stored in the Public Record Office, Kew, Surrey; and over a hundred collections of personal papers which remain in private hands. Historical sources include British, French, German, and U.S. foreign policy documents and—in translation—those of the Polish, Italian, and Russian governments.
William L. Shirer was an indispensable source for the background of events in Germany and France during these troubled years.
On my own behalf, and that of my archival research assistants in England, I should like to express my gratitude for the assistance and advice of Correlli Barnett and Dr. Michael Hoskin (Keepers of the Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge), Sir William Hawthorne (Master of Churchill College at the time of our research), Captain Stephen Roskill, RN (Fellow of the College), and archivists Pat Bradford and particularly Marion Stewart, who seemed to have even the most elusive document at her fingertips; G. H. Martin (Keeper of the Public Record Office in Kew) and his colleagues Mrs. P. Piper, N. A. M. Rodger, and Dr. M. J. Subb; H. S. Cobb and F. Johnson (Record Office, House of Lords); Christine Kennedy (Nuffield College Library, Oxford); D. G. Vaisey (Department of Western Manuscripts in Oxford’s Bodleian Library—“Bodley”); Dr. B. S. Benedikz (Special Collections, University of Birmingham); D. A. Clarke and G. E. A. Raspin (British Public Library—formerly the British Museum Library—and British Library of Political and Economic Science, University of York); Gordon Phillips (Times Archive); Colin Watson (Obituary Department of The Times); A. E. Cormack and R. F. Barker (Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon); D. M. Smith and C. C. Webb (Borthwick Institute of Historical Research); F. Bailey (Naval Historical Society, Ministry of Defence); E. C. Blayney (Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Philip A. H. Brown, A. N. E. D. Schofield, and D. H. Bourke (British Library); Mrs. K. F. Campbell (Library and Records Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office); Eric Ceadel (Librarian, Cambridge University Library); Jacqueline Kavanagh (Written Archives Officer, BBC Written Archives Centre); L. H. Miller (Librarian, Ministry of Defence); Margaret Townsend (Editor’s Secretary, News of the World); Judith A. Woods (Archivist, the Labour Party Library); V. E. Knight (Librarian, University of Liverpool); L. R. Day (Science Museum Library, University of Liverpool); Kay Chapman and R. J. B. Knight (National Maritime Museum); Peter McNiven (University of Manchester); Diana Grimwood Jones and Gillian Grant (St. Anthony’s College, Oxford); Patricia Methven (Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, University of London); R. A. W. Suddaby (Imperial War Museum); and John Spencer-Churchill, eleventh Duke of Marlborough, who gave me the freedom of Blenheim Palace.
I am indebted to T. Chadbourne Dunham, professor emeritus of German at Wesleyan University, who checked my translations from the German, and to the graceful and bilingual Kathryn I. Briggs, who performed the same service with translations from the French.
I am grateful to Peter Day, Nigel Viney, and Richard Langworth, the International Churchill Society’s keeper of the flame, for their meticulous review of the final manuscript in the interests of historical accuracy, and to Perry Knowlton, Adam Deixel, and I. Gonzalez at the Curtis Brown literary agency, who provided access to Churchill’s American royalty statements.
My assistant, Margaret Kennedy Rider, has been loyal and tireless, as always. As my chief researcher in England, Deborah Baker once more proved imaginative and perceptive. Betsy Pitha assisted nobly in the annotation, as did Virginia Creeden, who was also invaluable in securing permission to quote from letters, diaries, documents, and published works. The staff of the Firestone Library at Princeton University was especially helpful. I am again grateful for the support and assistance provided by the staff of Wesleyan University’s Olin Memorial Library, led by J. Robert Adams, Caleb T. Winchester Librarian. Particularly helpful were Joan Jurale, head reference librarian; Edmund A. Rubacha and Suzanne Javorski, reference librarians; Margaret Halstead, reference secretary; Erhard F. Konerding, documents librarian; and Steven Lebergott, chief of interlibrary loans. Other members of the staff who were especially helpful were Alan Nathanson, bibliographer, and Ann Frances Wakefield and Dale Lee.
Finally, I once more acknowledge my gratitude to Don Congdon, my literary agent of forty years; Roger Donald, vice president and publisher of Trade Adult Books, Little, Brown and Company; and, last but foremost in the final stages of text revision, Peggy Leith Anderson, whose manuscript editing skills are unmatched in my long experience.
W. M.
Wesleyan University
December 1987