September 7, 2025

Churchill’s Visit to Lake Como, Sept. 1945

On the day representatives of the Japanese government signed the official instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay officially ending the Second World War eight years ago, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed London for a month-long holiday in Italy. Accompanying him were his daughter Sarah, his doctor Lord Moran, his secretary Elizabeth Layton, his new detective Sergeant Davies, and his valet Frank Sawyers. It would be Churchill’s first true holiday since before the war.

The party flew in a C-47 Dakota provided by Field Marshal Alexander to Italy, where they stayed for seventeen days on the shores of Lake Como in a villa also made available to them by Alexander. Clementine Churchill did not accompany her husband because she did not feel well enough. This resulted in husband and wife writing lengthy letters to one another, as they always did while separated. On his first full day at Lake Como, Churchill wrote:

My darling Clemmie, This is really one of the most pleasant and delectable places I have ever struck. It is a small palace almost entirely constructed of marble inside. It abuts on the lake, with bathing steps reached by a lift. It is of course completely modernized….Every conceivable arrangement has been made for our pleasure and convenience. Sarah and I have magnificent rooms covering a whole floor, with large marble baths and floods of hot and cold water.

During his stay, Churchill enjoyed getting back to his hobby of painting and did a canvas of the neighboring Lake Lugano. He also unwound by reading for pleasure and made his way through Robert Graves’s novel The Golden Fleece. “It is the stiffest of your books,” Churchill wrote Graves, ”but once it gets hold of you, you cannot put it down.”

Winston and Clementine had spent part of their honeymoon on Lake Como in September 1908. Thirty-seven years later, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, he wrote to her that “the Italians are very good at making themselves agreeable….The Partisans are frequently to be seen in their half uniform carrying their weapons….The people have the air of having won the war (if there was a war), and make the V-sign to me with gusto.”

The fourth-quarter issue of Finest Hour this year will be about Churchill and Italy. All members of the International Churchill Society will receive a copy. If you are not yet a member, you can JOIN HERE.