Gilbert - Winston S. Churchill, Volume VIII

Churchill in Morocco, January 1948

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

by M ARTIN G ILBERT

VOLUME VIII

N EVER D ESPAIR

19451965

Hillsdale College Press

RosettaBooks

2015

Hillsdale College Press
33 East College Street
Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
www.hillsdale.edu

Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 19451965 (Volume VIII)
Copyright 1988 by C & T Publications Limited

Originally published in 1988 by William Heinemann Ltd. in Great Britain and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States.

All rights reserved. eBook edition published 2015 by Hillsdale College Press and RosettaBooks
Cover art by Jirka Vtinen (based on photograph from P.A.-Reuter Photo, 26 October 1951)
Cover design by Jay McNair
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795344695

www.RosettaBooks.com

For Susie

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

One of Churchills pigs, drawn after his signature when writing to his wife (this one is from his letter of 11 March 1957)

This volume spans Winston Churchills life from the defeat of Germany in 1945 to his death nearly twenty years later. It covers Churchills meetings with Truman and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, his Caretaker Government in the summer of 1945, his six years as Leader of the Opposition, his second premiership, from October 1951 to April 1955, and the final decade from his resignation until his death in 1965.

As with each of the preceding volumes of the biography, I am grateful to Her Majesty The Queen, who graciously gave me permission to seek guidance on various points from the Royal Archives, and to make use of the letters which both she and her father sent to Churchill on many occasions. I should also like to thank, for his guidance on a number of historical matters relating to Her Majesty, her Private Secretary, Kenneth B. Scott.

I am grateful to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother for permission to reproduce extracts from her letters to Churchill; and to her Principal Private Secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Martin Gilliat, for his help. I am also grateful to His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, for his personal recollections of Churchill, and for permission to reproduce extracts from the letter which he sent to Lady Churchill following Churchills last dinner as Prime Minister.

For help in answering my various queries relating to the Royal Archives I should like to thank Oliver Everett, Librarian, Windsor Castle; Sheila de Bellaigue, Deputy Registrar; Miss Pamela Clark, Assistant Registrar, and the other members of the staff of the Royal Archives for their courtesy over many years. I should also like to thank Sir Oliver Millar, Surveyor of the Queens Pictures.

I am grateful to the Editor of The Times, for allowing me to make two appeals for recollections and materials through his letter columns, the first in 1968 and the second in 1983; and to the late Roy Plomley, for encouraging me to make a similar appeal on Desert Island Discs. The response to these appeals was substantial, bringing me information about many episodes which would otherwise have gone unrecorded.

Churchills grandson, Winston S. Churchill MP, has also made material available to me, including the letters sent to his grandfather from Her Majesty The Queen.

In the late autumn of 1968, following Randolph Churchills death, I was asked to continue the work which he had taken up to the outbreak of the First World War. In doing so, I was fortunate to be able to make use of three interviews which he had conducted for the last phase of the biography, the first with Harold Macmillan (later Earl of Stockton), the second with Jock Colville (later Sir John Colville), the third with Emery Reves. I have also been able to use the notes which Randolph Churchill made of various meetings with his father after he had been asked, in 1961, to write this biography.

During the course of my researches, I was also helped considerably by Churchills daughter Sarah, Lady Audley, and by his daughter Lady Soames, who not only made available to me material from her mothers archive, and her own, but has always been most encouraging to me in my task, as was her husband Lord Soames.

Since October 1968, when I began preliminary work collecting material for this volume, I was able to talk to many of Churchills colleagues and contemporaries who had worked with him during the post-war years. All those to whom I spoke were most generous of their time and recollections, as well as providing me with a considerable amount of historical material in the form of diaries, letters and documents. In the last months of 1968 I was fortunate to have a number of talks with Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis. Earl Mountbatten of Burma gave me many vivid memories at a luncheon in London in 1975. I was later to have several talks with the Earl of Avon.

I am also grateful to Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, for his help both in 1969 and again in 1984, a few months before his death; and to the Earl of Stockton for his help and encouragement over many years.

Five members of Churchills wartime and post-war Private Office have been exceptionally helpful in providing me with personal recollections, with documents from their private archive, and with comments and suggestions. In this regard, I am indebted to Sir John Colville, Sir David Hunt, Anthony Montague Browne, Sir John Peck and Sir David Pitblado, each of whom saw Churchill at close quarters during his years as Prime Minister. Anthony Montague Browne also gave me invaluable guidance for the years from 1955 to 1965, during which he was Churchills Private Secretary, guide and friend. Lady Sargant (formerly Mrs Anthony Montague Browne) has also been of considerable assistance to me in the portrayal of Churchills last years, when she saw so much of him.

Churchills secretaries of the war and post-war years have likewise been extremely generous of both time and recollections. For their indispensable help, I should like to thank Mrs Kathleen Hill, Mrs F. Nel (Elizabeth Layton), Mrs M. Spicer-Walker (Marion Holmes), Miss Elizabeth Gilliatt, Mrs R. G. Shillingford (Lettice Marston), Lady Onslow (Jo Sturdee), Lady Williams of Elvel (Jane Portal) and Miss Doreen Pugh. I am also grateful to Mrs James R. Bonar (Lorraine Bonar) for her recollections of Churchills visit to Miami in 1946, during which time she was enlisted as one of his secretaries. On all matters relating to Lady Churchill and to Chartwell, I am grateful, as in previous volumes, to Miss Grace Hamblin.

I have been considerably helped for many years by Sir William Deakin, who has discussed with me many of the controversial episodes in these pages, both from his personal recollections of his work with Churchill on the war memoirs, and from the perspective of one who was the first to study in detail the voluminous official and hitherto secret files of Churchills wartime premiership. Bill Deakins friendship has been a high point in my work since its very first days when, in October 1962, I was taken on by Randolph Churchill as a research assistant.

Another of those who were prominent in the preparation of Churchills war memoirs, Denis Kelly, has likewise given me the considerable benefit of his recollections of so much time spent working at Churchills side and on his behalf. I am also grateful to Eileen Wood, the daughter of Charles Carlyle Wood, for having made available to me a considerable quantity of material relating to her fathers work for Churchill on both