Andrew Roberts’ new biography, “Churchill”, is magnificent, readable and inspiring. The book may not match its subject for greatness but it certainly gives a marvelous, full portrait of the “Last Lion”. All readers of history know about Churchill’s bravery as a soldier, immense contribution to English literature and peerless leadership of Britain during the last world war (“Let us brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves…”). Not so well-known is the human side of the “icon of bulldog Britishness”.
Churchill kept large numbers of animals at his home Chartwell. He loved his two faithful red-orange poodles Rufus and Rufus II so much originally he wanted to be buried next to them. There were black swans from Australia and a Canadian goose called “the Flag Lieutenant” which would fall in two paces behind his master and march proudly as he made his tour of the estate. Another goose would respond to Churchill’s cries of “Ah-wah-wah” with a distant “honk honk” from the other side of the lake. One animal was called unimaginatively “Cat”. It would lie at the foot of Winston’s bed as he dictated to a secretary and he would gaze at it affectionately, calling it “Cat darling”. Then there was Jock, a beautiful marmalade cat. It has become a tradition for a marmalade cat always to reside at Chartwell. The current incumbent is Jock VI. Churchill also kept pigs and had a wire brush attached to a long stick in order to scratch their backs. “Dogs look up to you,” Winston told an aide. “Cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.”
He was an emotional man, crying from pleasure or from sadness. Walking the Champs-Elysees with the impossible General de Gaulle, their differences put aside for the celebration of Nazi defeat, Chruchill cried buckets. General Ismay said, “As they walked through the streets of Paris tears poured down his face.” Paying his respects at the tomb of Marshal Foch and meeting Foch’s widow, “not for a moment did Churchill stop crying.”
Brother Jack died in 1947 just a few days after daughter Mary married Christopher Soames. While Jack was sinking due to heart disease, Winston visited him daily and was with him at the end. “I feel lonely now he is not here,” he told Hugh Cecil. “Death seems very easy at the end of the road. Do you think we shall be allowed to sleep for a long time? I hope so.” To Jack’s son, he said, “Johnny, I will take your father’s place. Come to me if you are in trouble. I will be your father.”
In 1948, now seventy-four, Churchill had made a lot of money because of his prodigious writing. He invested in 37 racehorses. One was Colonist II. Winston would talk to his horses before they raced. He said to Colonist II: “This is a very big race and if he won he would never have to run again but spend the rest of his life with agreeable female company. Colonist did not keep his mind on the race.” When later it was suggested Colonist be put out to stud, Winston remarked, “And have it said that the Prime Minister of Great Britain is living off the immoral earnings of a horse.”
King George VI died in his sleep at only fifty-six on 6 February 1952. Told of the death, Churchill “slumped as a man in shock, clearly deeply affected,” private secretary Edward Ford recalled. The prime minister cried unashamedly. He admired the King, even loved him. Churchill thrust aside his papers, saying, “How unimportant these matters seem.” In a broadcast, Winston said, “…The King walked with death, as if death were a companion, an acquaintance, whom he recognised and did not fear.” In a note he placed on the King’s coffin, Churchill wrote, “For Valour”, the rubric of the Victoria Cross. Of the new Queen, he said, “With the new reign we must feel our contact with the future. A fair and youthful figure — princess, wife and mother — is the heir to all our traditions and glories never greater than in her father’s days… She is also heir to our united strength and loyalty.” Churchill quickly established a close personal relationship with Queen Elizabeth II. His entourage saw he was besotted. “When Winston had his weekly audience in the Bow Room at Buckingham Palace…” Tommy Lascelles wrote in his diary, “I could not hear what they were talking about but it was more often than not punctuated by peals of laughter, and Winston generally came out wiping his eyes.” On one occasion he commented to Moran his doctor, “All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited to the part.”
These are snippets from a brilliant 1105-page biography. Perhaps only Roy Jenkins and William Manchester did as well in chronicling Churchill’s life. All people who love memory of the great statesman will cherish this book. We got our copy from Sai Kung’s Kidnapped bookshop.
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