June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 41

By DAVID BOLER

On 22 May last I purchased a copy of the abridged one-volume edition of The World Crisis, Macmillan 1941, inscribed “Winston S. Churchill” on Easter 1942, from Andre Nikolai Smith of Southend-on-Sea, Essex. Andre, now aged 86, was a projectionist employed by the Ministry of Information (Mol) during the war. On most weekends from early 1942 to late 1944, he was sent with two colleagues, Messrs. Brownbridge and Hill, to Chequers to show the Prime Minister and his guests (and sometimes staff) feature films and Mol documentaries.

Andre and his colleagues would motor down to Chequers on a Friday afternoon in a car filled with a variety of films, staying in a basement dormitory in the house with other Chequers staff, and return to London on the following Monday morning. Films were shown on two Gaumont BN 35mm projectors. He recalls two Churchill favourites: “How Green is my Valley” and “Stage Door” with Betty Grable.

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The films were shown in the Great Library at Chequers (where Andre cannot recall seeing any books!) and he met the PM on two occasions when Churchill went to the projection room and said, “Take this away—I’ve seen it!”

Andre used to collect the Prime Minister’s cigar butts at the end of each performance, but threw them away at the end of the war as he felt they were of no value! He recalled that Chequers always smelt of lavender—”it was placed everywhere in the house, which reeked of it.” Also at Chequers, Andre remembers standing with a colleague in a room next to Churchill, monitoring the equipment as the PM made a radio broadcast following the fall of Singapore in early 1942, an event described by many as WSC’s lowest point in the war.

Andre did not go with Churchill to Ditchley Park when “the moon was high,” visiting only Chequers when Churchill was there. This book was presented to him by the Prime Ministers naval aide, Cdr. Tommy Thompson, at Easter 1942; his two colleagues were also given copies inscribed by Churchill on 10 Downing Street headed paper.

A colleague in my office spotted the advert for “a signed Churchill book” in his local paper. I was off like a flash that evening to Essex and met Andre Smith in his tiny flat, where he told me the story of how he came to receive the book. I wrote it all down to give the book its provenance. I won’t say how much I paid, except to admit I gave Andre more than he was asking, for his story alone was worth the visit. I send this along to show that the “little man” often has just as interesting a Churchill story as the Great and the Good.