December 2, 2023

The Art of Being Winston Churchill: Harrow

By BARRY SINGER

In September 1940, Harrow School was hit by hundreds of German incendiary bombs. On December 18, Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited his old school for the first time since the start of the war. Despite, as he told his private secretary John Colville, having “spent some of the unhappiest days of his life” at Harrow as a child, Churchill thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

The boys of Harrow that year sang a selection of school songs personally chosen by the Prime Minister, who was accompanied by his wife Clementine and his brother Jack, also an Old Harrovian. The songs brought Churchill to tears. When they were done, Churchill delivered a short speech:

“Hitler in one of his recent discourses, declared that the fight was between those who have been through the Adolf Hitler Schools and those who have been at Eton. Hitler has forgotten Harrow, and he has also overlooked the vast majority of the youth in this country who have never had the advantage of attending such schools, but who are standing staunchly together in the nation’s cause and whose skill and prowess is the envy of the world.

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“When this war is won by this nation, as it surely will be, it must be one of our aims to work to establish a state of society where the advantages and privileges which hitherto have been enjoyed only by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many and the youth of the nation as a whole.”“When this war is won by this nation, as it surely will be, it must be one of our aims to work to establish a state of society where the advantages and privileges which hitherto have been enjoyed only by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many and the youth of the nation as a whole.”

For more about Churchill’s experiences with Harrow, see the forthcoming issue of Finest Hour, which features the school on its cover.

Barry Singer is proprietor of Chartwell Booksellers in New York City and author of Churchill Style (2012).