Oliver Williams - Winston Churchill & The Queen: An Unlikely Friendship

Winston Churchill

&

The Queen

An Unlikely Friendship

Oliver Williams

Everyone knows which day Valentines falls on. The same can be said for Christmas and New Year. The dates seem to be imprinted on our minds.

But what about International Friendship Day?

Although this is an internationally recognized celebration begun in 1919 by Hallmark cards and proclaimed worthy of global commemoration by the United Nations in 2011 it doesnt fall on the same day in every country. That might be the reason most of us fail to register the date, if at all.

What are the chances that Queen Elizabeth II thinks of Winston Churchill when her secretary brings Friendship Day to Her Majestys attention? Turns out, the chances are extremely high she remembers her friendship with the late Prime Minister very fondly indeed.

The Queen has always had men in her life who changed the trajectory of their lives for the common good. It is with these men whom she seems to not only have found the most in common, but also holds a deep and abiding affection for.

Her father was groomed for a life of playing second fiddle to his brother. This comfortable life was whisked away from him when his brother abdicated, an action which forced Elizabeths father to ascend to the throne.

Happy father and husband to King George the Sixth of Great Britain.

The Queens husband was satisfied with his life as a naval commander before he met her. Philip Mountbatten graduated as the finest cadet in his course at Dartmouth and achieved great feats of bravery during the Second World War. Once the King gave the young couple his blessing and said they could announce their engagement after Elizabeths twenty-first birthday, the noble ships captain had to settle for the life of playing Elizabeths husband and Queens Consort.

Brave British Naval Commander to HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

And then there was Churchill. Today, he might be best remembered for leading Great Britain through the dark days of World War II, but thats not what Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill first set out to do. At heart, Churchill was a soldier.

Just like the other two important men in Elizabeths life, Churchill presented one facet of his personality to the world, while harbouring another inside himself.

Soldier to Statesman.

It is easier to see the foundation that underlies the friendship Sir Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth had throughout their lives when it is measured against those other two important men in her life. All three men were groomed and rigorously trained for one thing, but gave it up to do their duty and serve their country. And that duty and patriotic servitude assisted and benefited Elizabeth Windsor in the best possible way.

All three men carried the instincts and discipline of their original training into their new lives: The Duke of York as King; First Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten as The Queens Consort; Lieutenant Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

Elizabeth has always been canny enough to see the correlation. Putting aside ones natural inclinations to carry out ones duty is the lifeblood of the Royal family. And this is something Churchill had in spades. When we add this to all the other attributes Winston Churchill displayed throughout his life: ready wit, great good humour, intelligence, bluff candour, and well camouflaged aggression, it is no wonder that the two not only considered one another to be allies, but formed a friendship that would carry them through the rough and the smooth years of post-war Britain.

How lovely it must have been for the young Queen to have Sir Winston Churchill at her side. Just as Victoria had Lord Melbourne and Elizabeth the First had Burghley and Walsingham, Elizabeth Windsor appreciated Churchills advice. Churchills ability to see past the regalia and rank, to the person underneath the trappings of queen, stood him in good stead during all his royal interactions which were numerous and frequent.

There was a fifty-odd year age gap between Sir Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth. If anyone was able to imbue Elizabeth with a sense of the future while informing her about the mistakes of the past, it was he.

Elizabeths cousin, Margaret Rhodes, The Queen Mothers Woman of the Bedchamber, might have described her as a fundamentally well-behaved and sensible little girl when Elizabeth was a child, but it was Churchill who described the two-year future monarch as a character, with an instinctual air of authority and reflectiveness not usually found in toddlers!

Churchill watched the young Elizabeth grow into a carefree princess, only for her to seamlessly segue into becoming a queen who was destined to be universally admired. At least, that was the publics perception of the young queens transformation.

Perhaps another thing that solidified the friendship between Queen Elizabeth and Sir Winston Churchill was that he knew enough about rulership to be able to see behind the curtains. She might drop the pretence of regal omnipresence in his company and be the formerly carefree Princess once more.

Elizabeth must have watched Sir Winston bounce around during his Wilderness Years the financial losses after the Wall Street Crash, his car accident and subsequent depression, and finally back to triumphant political ascendency and identified with all his ups and downs.

This is an account of two very different people who also happened to have a lot in common. And how they went from occasionally crossing paths, to acquaintances, to premier statesman and monarch, and finally on to firm friends is a tale worth telling.

L

ets run through the facts briefly so we have a better understanding of the two close friends:

• Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War 1940 1945, and again in 1951 to 1955. Married Clementine Hozier, and had five children, with only four children surviving into adulthood. His marriage lasted 57 years. He lived to reach the venerable age of ninety years old, dying in 1965, ten years after his last year as Prime Minister.
• Elizabeth II Queen of the United Kingdom, also Queen of the Commonwealth countries (14) that form part of the realm. Ten years old when her father, King George VI, ascended to the throne, thus becoming heir presumptive at a young age. The majority of her teenage years passed during the Second World War (13 years old to 19 years old), so it would be safe to say that watching her father the King, and Winston Churchill, the Wartime Prime Minister, bolster up the nation through its darkest hour, played a major part in her life. Married Philip Mountbatten, and had four children. Married for 70 years, until the Duke of Edinburghs death in 2021. Currently 95 years old, and counting.

Winston Churchills relationship with the Royal Family was preordained. Since the days of Queen Anne in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, the Churchills and the Royal Houses of Stuart, Hanover, and Windsor have had lives that overlapped and intertwined, just like the devices on their coat of arms.

Not many people know this, but the Sir Winston Churchill of the nineteenth and twentieth century was not the first Sir Winston Churchill to walk the corridors of power in Whitehall. To get a better idea of how interlinked Queen Elizabeths and Churchills ancestors lives actually were, we have to go back to Queen Anne, Englands reigning monarch from 1703 1707 and Britains Queen until her death in 1714, after the unification of Scotland and England.