June 23, 2015

Finest Hour 114, Spring 2002

Page 06

Send your questions to the editor

Q: Did Churchill play golf? If so, where? I once noted his supposed description of the sport in a book of quotations: “a game where you put a small ball in a small hole with tools singularly ill-designed for the purpose.”
—Mike Campbell

(The Editor is preparing a book of Churchill quotes and would be grateful if someone could provide attribution for this quotation, which I think Mike has right.)

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A: He played golf into the Teens, but it wasn’t really his game, needed too much precision. Polo suited him better: live opposition, a much bigger ball, and a real mallet to smack it with. See FH 111:7 for a photo of WSC setting off on the links with Maxine Elliott in Cannes, February 1913. See also Randolph Churchill-Helmut Gernsheim, Churchill: His Life in Photographs (1955), photos #62 (same as above) and #63 (apparently taken the same day). Randolph’s caption: “He fails to keep his head down and foozles his drive. Mr. Churchill had little aptitude for golf and so he abandoned it quite early in life.”

Robert Courts adds: “He certainly played with Asquith in his Liberal days: Violet Bonham-Carter, in Winston Churchill as I Knew Him (1965) recalls that it was quite easy on the golf course to get WSC onto one of his favourite subjects (e.g., Dreadnoughts), after which he would not play another shot, much to Asquith’s delight!”

Q: I am researching the history of a British Army base in Germany Hohne (Bergen-Belsen) and I have been told that Churchill paid a visit to the camp for a couple of days in May 1956. Can you provide me with any information?

A: The visit followed his trip to Aachen to receive the Charlemagne Prize. Sir Martin Gilbert’s Volume VIII (“Never Despair, “p. 1197) mentions the visit but gives no details. Anthony Montague Browne’s Long Sunset mentions the visit on page 207, specifically the visit to Celle, near Hanover, but is also scarce on details.
—Gregory B. Smith

Q: After a lifetime in business a Canadian friend writes of his experience as a young child in the Blitz. He has retired to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Is PEI its own province, or is it part of another, larger one? How long has that bridge been there?
—Scott Mantsch

A: Prince Edward Island, the site of the creation of the Canadian Confederation in 1867 (though PEI did not join the provinces that formed Canada until 1873), is a province in its own right. It can be reached by car ferry from Nova Scotia, as well as by the new bridge from New Brunswick. Our drive from Halifax, N.S. to Charlottetown was easily done in a day, taking the ferry. There are many intriguing Churchill sites in Halifax and recollections of his visits in the archives there. On PEI we were most interested, having a daughter then seven years old, to visit the Anne of Green Gables sites.
—James W. Muller

More on P.E.I….
It’s a great summer vacation spot (the northern shore of PEI is basically one long beach), and is the site of my ancestors’ first landing in North America from Scotland. I’d say the drive from Halifax to Charlottetown via the Confederation Bridge is about 3.5 hours. I believe the bridge was completed in 1997; I recall taking the nowdefunct ferry along the course of the span as it was being constructed. The ferry from eastern PEI to Nova Scotia is still in operation.
—Mike Campbell

And does everyone know that the author of Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery, was born (ready for it?) on 30 November 1874?
—Todd Ronnei