January 1, 1970

Introduced by Richard Langworth

Speaking between Lord and Lady Soames, Sir Anthony felt ‘rather like a priest in a small Italian village getting up to make a sermon and finding not one but two popes sitting there.’ Unabashed, he then delivered one of the warmest and most personal memoirs of Churchill the family man, the devotee of Chartwell, the world leader, the political philosopher.

Studying Churchill, Sir Anthony said, is ‘rather like looking at one of his paintings. You need to be a certain distance away to appreciate the sweep of his life, and the qualities that illuminated it. High among these I put prescience and prophecy. Violet Bonham Carter, who had known him nearly all her life, said, “Demons seem to whisper things to him”. Churchill himself would not have felt he was out of our time: He might have had a few ideas to present to us today. When he was reminded by a solemn friend of the evanescence of our lives and our mortality, he replied, “Yes, we are all of us worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm”’.

Read the full article here: ‘Memories of Winston Churchill’ by Sir Anthony Montague Browne, in Finest Hour 50, Winter 1985-86, scroll to page 10.