September 11, 2015

Finest Hour 165, Autumn 2014

Page 31

By RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL


It was Lady Diana Cooper who introduced Martin Gilbert to my grandfather and namesake. His brilliant life of the 17th Earl of Derby so impressed Sir Winston in 1959 that he had assigned Randolph to write his official biography.

I was born on 22 January 1965, some thirty-six hours before my great-grandfather died. As a child, one of the highlights of each year was our family Christmas at my parents’ farmhouse in Sussex. We were often joined by Clementine, and also by Peregrine Churchill (born Henry Winston, younger son of Churchill’s brother Jack) and his wife Yvonne. During mealtimes the discussion would turn to the “Great Work,” and inevitably the pace of progress! My father Winston regaled us with stories of how the biography began, with his father Randolph, gathering together the resources at his beautiful but chaotic Georgian house Stour, in East Bergholt, Suffolk. Many times at Stour, the house guests were provoked by Randolph who, fortified by scotch and claret, relished debate and argument. He sometimes found that by the time he awoke in the morning his guests had left. That option was not available to his team of young researchers, who grew up on a diet of Churchill excitement, debate and endless energy.

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Stour became the nerve centre for Randolph’s team. Michael Wolff, formerly a journalist in the Beaverbrook empire, was Director of Research and Randolph’s righthand man, spending much of his time at Stour. Martin Gilbert, a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford soon joined the team of “Young Gentlemen,” as they were known. Eager to help, he fitted this obligation in amongst his many other projects. Always interested in maps (see “the Map-Maker,” page 15), he published several very successful atlases, and built a home at North Hinksey which he called “Map House.” The house was designed around one large room dominated by a desk extending wall to wall, where he carefully laid out the Churchill documents. He continued this practice wherever he worked (see “Cosmos out of Chaos,” page 28).

To accommodate an archive numbering over a million documents, Randolph had erected a special building with a Chubb safe door near the main house. The records ran from young Winston’s earliest letters to his parents to his death. Here the Young Gentlemen accessed the sources Randolph needed to write the story. Martin spent hours delving into this goldmine, photocopying anything he needed to continue his work back in Oxford.

My grandfather said Martin “worked like a tiger.” He had an enormous capability for absorbing the essence of what “the Boss” needed, which ranged far beyond Stour. What he couldn’t find there or at Oxford he would obtain by interrogating aged politicians, journalists, military men and others—anyone he thought would be able to help. In 1994 Martin published some of these amazing experiences in his book, In Search of Churchill.

As Randolph’s health deteriorated, progress slowed. When Michael Wolff resigned and Martin had to spend more time at Oxford, the remaining staff continued supporting Randolph as best they could. He had bursts of energy when he was able to dictate lengthy tracts, but sadly, Randolph died just three years after his father, having seen publication of two main biographic volumes and two document volumes. The archive was moved to the Bodleian and Martin was asked to take over, working there and visiting other archives, personal and national. In 1988 Martin completed the main biography in eight volumes, three more than originally contemplated.

The respect and support of his team enabled Randolph to get as far as he did. Esther Gilbert sent me a letter Martin wrote to Sir Isaiah Berlin on 6 June 1969, which summarizes Martin’s relationship with my grandfather:

Today is also the first anniversary of Randolph’s death; and I am on my way this morning to his grave. It has not been easy taking up his work. But now that I have begun the actual writing of volume three, which covers the First World War, I feel a new upsurge of energy and inspiration. When I began to work for him I felt a great deal of fear mingled with a certain amount of awe; after six years the fear had been replaced by admiration and the awe by affection. And then he was gone: and neither the honour of having been chosen to carry on his work nor the excitement, variety and interest of the work itself can ever obliterate the pain of his departure.

Martin’s interest in life is boundless. I have many happy memories of the joy, humour and fun that he relished with my grandfather. In 2006 on his 70th birthday, Martin entertained us with his memories. He picked out, and we sang together, soldiers’ songs as they headed to the front in the Great War. I was entranced with his account of how he was evacuated from Liverpool to Canada when he was not yet four years old; how, at the age of seven-and-a-half, he returned to Liverpool having not seen his parents in the intervening period. Martin was a great correspondent and I treasure the postcards he sent to me on his travels around the globe.

The Churchill family owes Martin the greatest gratitude for recording and preserving the record of Winston Churchill and all those around him so faithfully, that we may better understand his life and times and reach our own conclusions. Martin understood completely the context and the pressures of that time. He certainly mapped the history most clearly for all of us to see.

As the years go by the “Great Work,” started by Randolph and completed by Martin, will go down as one of the greatest biographies ever written, not least because of Martin’s love for accuracy and detail, for seeking the truth. He has enabled history to judge Churchill fairly because he has placed the story fully and accurately in our hands.  He is the Macaulay of the modern world.


Mr. Churchill, a member of The Churchill Centre’s Board of Trustees, is Sir Winston Churchill’s great-grandson. He lives in Kent, quite close to Chartwell.

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