June 24, 2015

Finest Hour 120, Autumn 2003

Page 30

Family Industry: Four New Books by Sir Winston’s Granddaughter, Grandson, and Daughter

By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH

Chasing Churchill: The Travels of Winston Churchill, by Celia Sandys. Carroll & Graf, 288 pp., illus, $25. Member price $18.

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Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches, selected and edited by his grandson, Winston S. Churchill, 592 pp., illus., $27.95. Member price $21.

We were recently obliged to write a major newspaper in defense of the Churchill family’s “cottage industry”: writing about Sir Winston, which the spokesman for an alleged Churchill organization had termed “Somewhat Disreputable” (page 7)—unthinkingly, since Churchill himself began the practice in 1908 with his biography of his father. Besides, what his family with its special perspective delivers is usually good material which we wouldn’t get from outsiders in quite the same way.

Take Celia Sandys, for example, who has now published five books about her grandfather, among which Chasing Churchill is something only a family member could properly write. Given special entree as a close relative around the world, she traveled widely in Winston Churchill’s footsteps, learning much that is new about his travels.

The first chapter, which is the author’s personal remembrance of a voyage with her grandfather on the Onassis yacht Christina, is alone worth the price of the book. Rich beyond imagination, Onassis was determined to subdue nature itself if necessary to make a good show for his guests. Christina is not nearly as elegant as Creole, the yacht of Ari’s rival Stravos Niarchos (who shows up to dinner one night despite their longstanding feud); but Niarchos has nothing like Christina’s lounge, with solid gold plumbing and bar stools upholstered in whale foreskins. And Stavros cannot match Ari’s feat at the volcano Stromboli, which dutifully erupts after a prolonged blast of Christina‘s horn.

What a vulgar menagerie Onassis kept! There were his “two wives” (as Churchill once wrote of Hearst): the diva Maria Callas, “tall, very dark, and striking in a reptilian sort of way,” does her best to make life embarrassing for everybody; and Tina Onassis, “elegant and understated,” who tries to make everyone except Callas welcome.

The hangers-on Christina picks up en route are material for a soap opera. At Capri, the singer-actress Gracie Fields comes aboard with “Boris, her Yugoslav husband,” to serenade the party. “There was something incongruous about the sight of Maria Callas pretending to enjoy singing along to ‘Daisy, Daisy,'” Sandys writes….”Callas was clearly seething, and apparently my grandfather whispered to Anthony Montague Browne, ‘God’s teeth! How long is this going on for?'”

It is hard to escape the impression that Churchill, for all Ari’s protestations of respect, was just another prize brought aboard to show off. One is glad to read that WSC enjoyed himself.

The only problem with this book is that it is too short for all the anecdotes still unplumbed. Perhaps there will be a sequel, where the author will track her grandfather to the places she didn’t visit. These include the Sudan, where he charged with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman in 1898; or the Marlborough battlefields in Germany and the low countries, which he examined in detail, in 1932 — when he nearly met Hitler. The author visited Madeira, where WSC had a “paintaceous” holiday at Reid’s Hotel in 1950, and enjoyed a bottle of 1792 Madeira once intended for Napoleon; but we are not told of her experiences there.

At a number of venues the author was disappointed in her quest. Virtually no souvenir is left of young Winston’s 1895 visit to Cuba, and I could have done without the gushy account of meeting Castro, who lives elegantly in a country he has made the largest jail in the Caribbean. Most of the other personalities we meet are better briefed on WSC, willing to answer the author’s pointed questions. El Commandante, dressed in hand-tailored fatigues though well past pensionable age, prefers to rhapsodize about a life so good that his countrymen frequently risk their lives to escape it.

Celia Sandys’ personal touch is what makes the book valuable. As the great man’s granddaughter, she was hardly ever denied by local authorities, and made it her business to seek out descendants of those who actually encountered WSC. Nearly 300 pages document not only her personal connection with Churchill’s venues but the artifacts she discovered. There is the Malakand Pass, where a hilltop fort carries white stones reading “Churchill Picket”; the Villa Taylor in Marrakesh, probably his favorite place in the world next to Chartwell; and South Africa, where he led the Boers a merry chase and left impressions preserved generations later among descendants of people he met—or managed to elude.

Some typos weren’t caught: WSC returned from Cuba in 1896 not 1986 (40); the 1929 World Crisis volume was the fourth not second (83); a 1942 photo includes Inspector Thompson not Commander Thompson. One of Churchill’s escape co-plotters in Pretoria was Sergeant-Major not Lieutenant Brockie: significant because Brockie had the disdain of some enlisted men toward aristocrats, and his antagonism toward Churchill influenced the third conspirator, Captain Haldane, who later accused Churchill of deserting his comrades. These are minor, and outweighed by the fine array of Churchill paintings in color, chosen to document places he visited. I would have liked to see more “then and now” photos of historic places like the Villa Taylor, one of the few venues where the author was unable to gain admission, though she provides a nugget: “Local legend has it that Mrs.Taylor sold the villa after the war because, as a staunch Republican, she had been incensed that Roosevelt, a Democrat, had slept in her bed.” Now there’s a purist…

Churchill, whose “simple tastes” were “quite easily satisfied with the best of everything,” left fascinating tracks. Pursuing them as often left his granddaughter more or less camping out of an evening, not enjoying the lap of luxury. But “the journey was interesting, and well worth the making,” as her grandfather said of life. Chasing Churchill is imaginatively conceived to give the reader a taste of his wide travels. Don’t miss it.

Send for Christ

There was a Conservative party official named George Christ, Lady Soames recalls in a comment to her nephew, published herein. Churchill often consulted him when writing speeches as Tory leader. Christ pronounced his name “Krist,” but WSC, who often preferred his own pronunciations, inevitably summoned him with the cry, “Send for Christ!”

I hope this doesn’t sound over-thetop, but the speech book equivalent of the Second Coming has arrived. Short of meeting the man himself, or a nonexistent a set of recordings of his speeches live, this is the most faithful reproduction of Churchill’s oratory as you can buy in one volume.

By way of full disclosure, the writer played a minor research part in the book, though if this were a haphazard collection he would say so. It is not. It is probably the most considered collection of Churchill’s speeches yet published—not every one reflects favorably on him. Graduate Churchillophiles probably have some or all of these orations in one form or another, but to have them all in one volume is a great pleasure and service. Never Give In! belongs on the shelf of every serious student, critic and admirer.

Among the gems you don’t often read are Churchill’s speech in Durban after he turned up there following his escape from the Boer prison camp in 1899; his little-known Great War victory speech of 16 December 1918, so upbeat compared to the summaries he delivered after WW2; a pair of 1921 speeches extolling both a Jewish National Home and “the culture and glories of the Arab race” (one entirely compatible with the other); the full text (remarkably and inexplicably not in Rhodes James) of his despairing speech following the Austrian Anschluss: “I have watched this famous island descending the staircase which leads to a dark gulf….”

In part 4 are gathered all the great World War II orations, and some that we may overlook but which deserve to be there. “Greece Forever, Greece for All,” delivered from Constitution Square, Athens in February 1945 after Yalta, gives the lie to those who say Churchill cared only for British interests. His tribute to Lloyd George in the House of Commons a month later equally belies the fashionable notion that WSC didn’t understand or care about other people.

There is simply not a major Churchill speech I can think of—and I tried—that is not included among these nearly 200 speeches, and part 5, “The Sunset Years 1945-63,” is typical of the book’s selectivity. Here the reader has the sense that aged though he was, Winston Churchill could still bring an audience to its feet or to tears if he judged the occasion worthy of his powers. Such were his “Sinews of Peace” at Fulton in 1946, and his great speeches on European reconciliation at The Hague and Zurich a few months later. The selection ranges from the chilling to the humorous—from “When they get the atomic bomb” (9 October 1948) to his famous caution to the French in Strasbourg: “Prenez-garde! Je vais parler francais!” (12 August 1949).

The book ends inspirationally with Sir Winston’s last great speech in the Commons, “Never Despair,” in March 1955; his retirement toast to the Queen, “which I used to enjoy drinking during the years when I was a cavalry subaltern in the reign of your Majesty’s great-great grandmother”; and the speech read by his son Randolph in Washington upon receiving honorary American citizenship in 1963. “I accompanied my father to the ceremony,” writes the editor in his introduction, “which was the crowning of all the many honours my grandfather had received.”

Given the several thousand speeches Winston Churchill delivered over the course of sixty active years, it cannot be easy to come up with such a truly representative and balanced collection. I’m reminded of a similar effort some years ago in which the academic editor thought it appropriate to add his own unbalanced observations on many of them; here we get only balanced, brief introductions to set the scene. Readers are allowed to make up their own minds on the merits of the varied issues and interests Churchill argued over the years.

What more can be said? This is as fine a value for the money as you can find after a zero percent car loan—yet it costs half or less the price of a decent meal out. Buy this one, too!