October 17, 2008

In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey
by Martin Gilbert
London: Harper Collins Publishers 1994

Reviewed by Richard Langworth
Published in Finest Hour 84

    In Search of Churchill is Martin Gilbert’s finest hour: as warm, ingenious, generous and humorous as its subject. For the dedicated student of Churchill it is Guy Fawkes Day and the Fourth of July rolled into one, an endlessly fascinating panorama of rare experience, a book no one seriously interested in WSC will be able to put down.

    Ostensibly these are Gilbert’s memoirs of his “search for Churchill” as Sir Winston’s official biographer, from the day in 1962 when at Stour, East Bergholt, he became one of Randolph Churchill’s “Young Gentlemen,” to 1993, when he sat on the Chartwell terrace “overlooking the lakes where Churchill had sat in his last years, [as] my search reached its final phase.”

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    This is how newspaper reviews have described it, but In Search is much more. It is deeply personal. It is Martin Gilbert’s answer to all those critics over the years (they are, in his polite way, never mentioned by name) who accused him of being uncritical about a man others have spent the last two years denouncing as a power-crazed, warmongering, racist drunk, who sold out the Empire and upped the Yanks and Bolshies. It is also, therefore, a self-defense manual for friends of Churchill, a smorgasbord of historical karate-chops.

    Why is Gilbert so pro-Churchill? Because time and again, as he explains, he would enter a controversial subject prepared to find the tragic flaw, the feet of clay; and afterward, having examined more evidence than anyone alive or dead, he would come away more impressed with Sir Winston’s genius, generosity, statesmanship and humanity. As Gilbert once said in these pages (FH #65), he might find Churchill adopting views with which he disagreed – “but there would be nothing to cause me to think: ‘How shocking, how appalling.”‘

    I don’t have the space to do this book justice. So rather than try to capture its essence in the usual way, let me go through the dog-eared pages I turned down as I read, too eager to see what was coming next to take my usual pencil notes. The first three chapters deal with Gilbert’s years as researcher for Randolph Churchill, 1962-88 (although the “Beast of Bergholt” reappears regularly throughout the book). Martin’s friends warned him he wouldn’t last long, but Sir William Deakin, who had worked for WSC, urged him to take the job, partly because “working with Randolph, for however short a period, would provide a lifetime of anecdotes.”

    Martin did survive, and Randolphian anecdotes are served up wholesale. I will content myself with only one, about the night a London newspaper editor was being entertained at Stour, Randolph serving a fine repast in the hope of getting the biography serialised in the paper. The conversation turned to the truncated 1930s reports from Berlin on the Nazi military buildup, and the poor editor made the mistake of saying he had been responsible. Randolph turned from the carving table, knife in hand: “S**** like you should have been shot by my father in 1940!” The editor, Martin recalls, left the next morning. (He felt able to spend the night!?) Randolph admitted that he was “an explosion that leaves the house standing,” but there arc many vignettes attesting to his kindliness toward his aides, his fascination with the fruit of their research, which he always referred to as “lovely grub.”

    A chapter is devoted to the Dardanelles, the first great controversy Gilbert was called upon to discuss, in Volume III. Gilbert leads us through his method of study: photocopy every relevant document in the archives; explore every source if necessary, ring everyone named “X” in the London telephone book. In this way, Gilbert learned that initially it was Churchill who was wary about the Dardanelles campaign, Fisher its ardent backer. Later Churchill, convinced it was viable, overextended himself defending an action he could not personally control; and his fate was scaled when the Prime Minister, Asquith, formed a coalition with the Tories, whose price was Churchill’s head.

    Why did Asquith give in? Gilbert could not comprehend it – until he found Judy Montagu, with whose mother, Venetia Stanley, Asquith was besotted at that time, whose engagement wrecked Asquith’s life, and with it his will to govern. Miss Montagu brought with her the priceless letters in which Asquith poured out his despondency. Here was the “lovely grub” which structured Volume III’s account of Churchill’s worst political defeat.

    In “Soldiers and Soldiering” Gilbert tells how he came to know the military Churchill, especially his fearlessness, in both combat and writing about it. (WSC: “After all in writing the great thing is to be honest.”) Above all emerged Churchill’s detestation of war. Biographers who claim the opposite should read this chapter: “Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever,” said Churchill, the warmonger… (85)

    Gilbert found in source after source that his subject “never lost these sentiments.” Contrary to claims that he gloried in World War II, Churchill would have preferred it had never happened. He was rarely vindictive, but he never forgave the Prime Minister he held responsible: “I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.” (106) “In my long search for Churchill,” comments Gilbert, “few letters have struck a clearer note than this one.

    In his chapter, “The Inhabited Wilderness,” Gilbert makes a point often made in Finest Hour: that the “Wilderness Years” were really a decade of blossom for Churchill the writer, the thinker, the defender of his country. We are introduced to cronies like Lindemann, the much-loved “Prof,” capable of reducing to a few words the most complicated scientific theory; and to those who risked their careers to keep WSC apprised of German rearmament, among them Ralph Wigram, Torr Anderson and Desmond Morton.

    An embittered Morton extracted his pound of flesh from the Churchill “legend” in later life, as chief consultant to an early revisionist author. Evidently Morton forgot the note Churchill wrote him in 1947 – this Churchill who we are told cared nothing for others: “When I read all these letters and papers you wrote me, and think of our prolonged conversations, I feel how very great is my debt to you, and I know that no thought ever crossed your mind but the public interest.” (120)

    The vast writing factory of Chartwell, the many who provided glimpses of it in action, are described in three chapters devoted to literary assistants, secretaries and private secretaries, all of whom rounded and firmed Gilbert’s account. The Churchill papers, Gilbert writes, “gave me a day-by-day picture of historical teamwork.” Some critics of Churchill’s literary life dwell on how much of his assistants’ work he passed off as his own. In fact he signed off on every word, and his assistants loved him for the respect and appreciation he paid them. One quote again suffices, by Maurice Ashley, who said as much to ICS when he addressed us in 1989 and received our Emery Reves Award: “He treated me with the utmost consideration, almost as an equal, was exceedingly generous and good humoured, wrote to my father kindly about me, and raised my salary when I told him I was in difficulties. His secretaries adored him. Although he kept his chief secretary, Mrs. Pearman, working late at night, he always telephoned himself for a car to take her home. When she died he gave financial help to her only daughter.” (141)

    Winston’s secretaries began with a Harrow school chum named John Milbanke, who took dictation while Churchill bathed. With the typical drama of Churchill’s saga, Milbanke later won the Victoria Cross in the Boer War and was killed in action at Gallipoli. (153) A succession of young people followed, many of whom came to tell of their experiences, including such Friends of ICS as Grace Hamblin, the late Kathleen Hill, Patrick Kinna, Jo Sturdee (now Lady Onslow), Elizabeth Layton (now Nel), Doreen Pugh and Elizabeth Gilliatt. “One lady who worked with Churchill for just under three months in 1931, while he was in the United States, did not like him,” notes Gilbert, who never missed a secretary, pro or con. “She made her objections plain when, nearly sixty years later, she was interviewed at length by the BBC. It was curious, and for me distressing, that the other secretaries, who were with him for so much longer, and saw him at his daily work, were given far less time to say their piece.” What a shame that unjust criticism is today so much more newsworthy than forthright praise.

    Another subject of modern hindsight is Churchill’s marriage which one well publicized biography called a “loveless farce,” a notion Finest Hour took pains last issue to contradict, with the piece by Lady Diana Cooper – and his family life, which another biography repeatedly described as “egregious.” Gilbert explored every aspect, every paper, diary and memory touching on Churchill’s marriage and family: “I became aware of how close he had been to his wife and children—: a closeness shown both by the time spent together, and intimate correspondence; an uninhibited and open relationship within the family circle.”

    Scores of examples show the love Clementine and Winston bore each other, one involving a Friend of ICS, Bill Beatty, who demonstrated to Gilbert “the unending fascination of the search.” Volume VIII stated that Clemmie, Winston’s “sagacious cat,” prevailed upon him to wear civilian dress in Paris to receive the Medaille Militaire in 1947, instead of his RAF Honorary Air Commodore’s uniform – but Gilbert learned, through Mr. Beatty’s on-the-spot photograph, taken on the day and published in Finest Hour, that WSC had for once rejected her advice, choosing the uniform of the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, his old regiment.

    Churchill’s letters about his children “radiate affection,” Gilbert continues – reaching even pretense for their sake. Randolph once told Martin of an occasion when he and Winston had gone to a cinema, and how Randolph later “felt ashamed” for diverting his busy father to see a “trashy, slushy” film: “But Winston put his hand on Randolph’s shoulder and said with gentleness: ‘We must lend ourselves to the illusion.”‘

    Even as he profited from such personal recollections, Gilbert admits that he is probably dealing with just a fraction of the true record: “How often must Churchill have spoken on similar occasions, with no mechanical or human Boswell present, only a small group of listeners caught up in the force of his convictions, and realizing that they had listened to something rare, profound and extraordinary.” (246)

    In “Diaries and Diarists” Gilbert describes the “golden inkwells” that mean so much to a biographer; in this and a chapter entitled “Dear Mr. Gilbert” he chops away at the vines of apocryphal stories choking our image of Churchill, ascribing to Paul Robinson, Chairman of ICS United States, the assurance that a famous quote about Royal Navy traditions (“rum, sodomy and the lash!”) was not Churchill’s. Paul knew this from Anthony Montague Browne, whose source was WSC himself; Anthony’s speech appeared in Finest Hour #50. “I felt ashamed to have been caught telling it,” writes Gilbert, “being always so scornful myself of unauthenticated stories.” (232)

    “Dear Mr. Gilbert” is a grand finale of spiraling fireworks and shooting stars, the biographical equivalent of the final celebratory moments in New York Harbor on the American Bicentennial. Here amidst queries of every kind, Gilbert explodes ridiculous myths with which the public, and certain writers, seem besotted: How did Churchill get by on so little sleep? (Actually he averaged seven to eight hours a day; Lady Thatcher operates on much less.) Did WSC allow Coventry to be bombed to preserve the secrecy of British Intelligence? (Of course not – see also FH #41.) Did actor Norman Shelley deliver a Churchill speech over the BBC? (Never, though a cigar sometimes obfuscated WSC’s delivery.) Was it true that WSC praised Hitler in his 1935 Strand article, repeated in Great Contemporaries? (Those who say this ignore the context. The Foreign Office actually tried to suppress this chapter in the 1937 book, fearing it would offend Germany.) Is this signature or that painting a fake? (A surprising number are.) Was WSC really 1/16th American Indian? (A qualified “yes.”) Did he have royal blood? (undetermined) or illegitimate offspring? (No.) Was he unfaithful? (Never.) Did he rant against the Jews, contrary to his Zionist pretensions? (Only those Jews working with Lenin.) Did he blow the 1945 election with his “Gestapo Speech?” (“The Gestapo speech is always quoted, the social reform pledge hardly ever.”)

    Some questions led to unexpected experiences. ICS Friend Otis Jones asked: had WSC ever been a Freemason? (Yes, from 1901 to 1912.) Prime Minister Heath asked: how did WSC work with his speechwriters? (“He didn’t use them,” said Martin, incurring the wrath of a speechwriter present – who is today Britain’s Foreign Secretary.) The Churchill papers on Dieppe are open only to Gilbert, right? (“This caused me to blow my top in Canada during a speech of thanks: I said they were at the Public Record Office at [The speaker] who went a bright puce, and I have felt sorry for him ever since.”)

    Quote attribution is a heavy Gilbert task, much heavier than for ICS, which is also asked, but less often. Thus we understand his delight in finding this precursor to a famous speech, made upon the launch of RMS Queen Mary in 1935: “Never in the history of transatlantic travel has so much been done for those who travel tourist.”

    There are a few trifling mistakes which, after this incredible narrative, I am almost loath to list. But not quite, since our author is ever ready to amend. Churchill served under five not four Prime Ministers. (50) Phyllis Moir’s name is misspelled. (206). It is said that Lullenden, WSC’s pre-Chartwell country home, was rented (297); but at the outset of his Volume IV Gilbert wrote that Churchill bought it, and in a minor “search” of my own I was privileged to see the deed, which Lady Randolph countersigned for Winston, presumably as guarantor, still safely preserved at Lullenden itself. (In a recent note, Martin thinks Volume IV is right – and will correct In Search at first opportunity.) That the official biography never paid a royalty is correct, but the inroads of inflation did not go unadjusted; increases were granted over the years, and then there were the spin-offs, such as this book. On the other hand, the publishing process was tremendously complicated, with publishers going through changes of ownership, mergers and divorces; delays and readjustments of various terms; the American publisher quit, requiring another to be found for the ten final companion volumes. Anent the latter, in our own files are 300 pieces of correspondence relating to these volumes alone.

    In Search of Churchill properly finishes at Chartwell, “where every vista, every artifact and every room has a story behind it.” Gilbert writes of his first and last visit there, and the many – in between: things old hands pointed out to him, the central role Chartwell played in Sir Winston’s life. Here, in Gilbert’s discrete way, are more polite but firm rebuttals of silly stories spun by less fastidious biographers: Churchill’s alleged ego, lack of friends, heavy drinking, cavalier treatment of guests. Again one quote will suffice, by Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, later Lord Hailes, to Martin Gilbert, c. 1970:

    “Winston was a meticulous host. He would watch everyone all the time to see whether they wanted anything. He was a tremendous gent in his own house. He was very quick to see anything that might hurt someone. He got very upset if someone told a story that might be embarrassing to somebody else in the room. He had a delicacy about other people’s feelings. In his house and to his guests he was the perfection of thoughtfulness.” (305)

    And, on a broader aspect of his attitudes, Buchan-Hepburn spoke of the Churchill some call a snob, a man who didn’t understand ordinary people: “He had no class consciousness at all. He was the furthest a person could be from a snob. He admired brain and character; most of his friends were people who had made their own way.

    The computer tells me I am well over my allotted 2000 words and I haven’t told you the half of it. In Search of Churchill is pure gold, one of the volumes you simply must have, and mark for reference in your confrontations with scoffers. It deserves to be bound uniformly with the Official Biography itself. It is that warm, personal side of Martin Gilbert which he set out not to show in his strictly chronological biographic volumes. Honest critics may argue over the merits of that approach, and the conclusions it draws; Gilbert himself admits that he has barely scratched the surface. But they will come away from this book realizing that Sir Winston was lucky to have had such a biographer, to stand as a buffer between his life and the hordes of interpreters, some worthy and some not; and here that biographer has left a monument as stable and lasting as Chartwell itself.