May 7, 2015

Finest Hour 115, Summer 2002

Page 10

HAROLD NICOLSON, AS WE VERY WELL KNOW

Not only have you misspelled Harold Nicolson’s name in “Who Really Put Churchill in Office?,” but you fail to mention that he became a member of the Watching Committee (see HN’s Diaries and Letters, vol. 2, 1939-1945, bottom of page 72). But these are trifling flaws noted by a persnickety old man of 89 who is always delighted when a new number comes in the mail and 114 was one of the best ever.
DEREK LUKIN JOHNSTON, VANCOUVER, B.C.

RODGER (WITH A “D”) YOUNG

The correct name of the patriotic Army song (page 12) is Rodger Young with a “d.” We used to sing the song many years ago, and I remember it well.
AL LURIE, NEW YORK CITY

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In “Rodger Young,” you left out a verse:
“Caught in ambush lay a company of riflemen
Hand grenades against machine guns in the gloom
Fought in Ambush till this one of twenty riflemen
Volunteered, volunteered to meet his doom.”

And then, “It was he who drew the fire of the enemy…” and so on as you have it. I’m afraid Gerald Lechter was right, but you did get most of the words!
JONATHAN HAYES, SEATTLE, WASH.

CHURCHILL ’S POLITICAL OFFICES

On page 46, Churchill left the Board of Trade 14Feb10, not “25Oct11.” Postwar, Churchill remained Minister of Defence only through 1Mar52, when the office went to General Alexander, who returned from being Governor-General of Canada. thanks to John Ramsden and David Ramsay.

LORD LLOYD AND LORD MOYNE

On page 49 we confused Lords Lloyd and Moyne. George Lloyd, Churchill’s first Secretary of State for the Colonies, died suddenly in office in February 1941. He was succeeded by Lord Moyne, formerly Walter Guinness, an old friend who had hosted both Winston and Clementine on his yacht Rosaura at various times in the 1930s. (The Second World War, vol. III, English edition, 784.) Churchill’s tribute to Lloyd appears in The Unrelenting Struggle, 50-53. Moyne was replaced by Lord Cranborne at the Colonial Office in a reshuffle of the Government in February 1942 (The Second World War, vol. IV, English edition, 70-71) but Churchill later appointed him Minister of State in the Middle East. It was Moyne, not Lloyd, who was murdered by Jewish extremists, and the assassination was in Cairo in November 1944 — not in Jerusalem at the King David Hotel, which was blown up in 1946. Churchill’s tribute to Moyne and his statement on the assassination are in The Dawn of Liberation, 235-36 and 251-52. Thanks for this to David Ramsay.

Now: we are really going to have to get a grip…