by Working
While in the Soviet Union, Hamblin attended a performance of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi, performed in honour of Mrs Churchill’s visit. Sitting in the equivalent of a royal box, Hamblin watched ‘as the ballerina was taking her bow, she raised her hand in a gesture to Lady Churchill… and the whole audience turned around and cheered.’ That experience was repeated at every stop on their long train tour across the Soviet Union: the Russian people cheered their British visitors. But it was not all a series of wonderful, heart-warming experiences. Hamblin remembers the terrible devastation and suffering she saw as they visited hospitals, sanatoria, orphanages and children’s homes in all the large cities and small towns in which their private train stopped.
Towards the end of their trip, news arrived that Germany had surrendered. Because VE day was celebrated a day earlier in the United Kingdom (8 May) than in the Soviet Union (9 May), Mrs Churchill and Hamblin went that night to celebrate at the British embassy, where they ‘made quite merry’. The following day, when the Soviets celebrated their VE day, Hamblin celebrated in Red Square, where she was surprised to be ‘thrown up into the air. Apparently, it is quite an honour. If you’re light, you are thrown high up. It’s terrifying in a way.’ Either Mrs Churchill was simply too grand to be tossed around in that manner or she was not out among the Russian people in Red Square. Whatever the reason, this was one of the rare instances in which Mrs Churchill and Hamblin were separated. It was a joyful day, but both women missed being in their own country on such a momentous occasion.
Both viewed the trip as a success – ‘wonderful’ is the word Hamblin uses to describe it. Mrs Churchill reassured the Soviets that Britain was doing all it could to relieve their pain, and Hamblin contributed by keeping all of the schedules and other aspects of the long journey in perfect order. Despite the hectic pace, Hamblin managed to keep up with all of Mrs Churchill’s enormous correspondence, including the almost daily letters between her boss and the prime minister, who attached great importance to her visit at a time when relations between the Soviet Union and the West were worsening, just as the Allies were winning the war. Mrs Churchill sent telegrams, Churchill dictated long newsy letters to her, both in code and en clair, sometimes sent through the diplomatic pouch. Churchill had instructed his Foreign Office and the British Embassy to share all cables with his wife, so that she continued to be as knowledgeable as he. Hamblin was probably as up-to-date as her boss, and helped relieve the burden the possession of secret information placed on Mrs Churchill by serving as ‘a constant, steady and “padlock” companion’.50 And we can assume that as her last chore in relation to the trip, Hamblin submitted to a grilling by the prime minister, his usual procedure with all returning travellers. She would have related what she saw and heard, and her impressions, feeding them into the flow of information the prime minister so valued.
In 2016 a memorial plaque to Lady Churchill was unveiled in the building in Rostov-on-Don where she stayed on her visit to the Soviet Union. She called that city ‘the highlight of her whole trip for it is there that the Aid to Russia fund is re-equipping two great hospitals’. The Foreign Office official at the unveiling of the plaque reminded the invited guests of the great work Lady Churchill had done and said that the plaque was ‘a very visible reminder of our shared history as we prepare to commemorate the 71st anniversary of the end of World War Two’.
Hamblin was in those years remarkably happy, or ‘as happy as one [could be] in the war and after’. She was working hard and appreciated by her boss and those around her. When asked by the Churchill Archives interviewer if she were happy, she answered ‘[T]here are so many degrees of happiness, aren’t there? I don’t think that I was consciously happy, but I think that I was. I mean, these days I’m very consciously happy, but I think in those days I wasn’t conscious of it, but yes, I think I was happy. As far as one was in the war and after.’
That happiness must have been reduced, at least temporarily, when the voters in the July 1945 general election entrusted their post-war future to the Labour Party rather than Churchill’s Tories. Although Churchill retained his seat in parliament, Labour won a convincing victory, taking 393 seats to the Conservatives’ 210, and polling some two million more popular votes. Churchill declared himself ‘deeply distressed at the prospect of sinking from a national to a party leader’,51 but ‘the instinct for change was understandable and doubtless wholesome’.52 Hamblin very quickly adapted to the changes in the work and office structure of Churchill’s new role as Leader of the Opposition.
As with the move to the Admiralty in 1939, and the subsequent move to Number 10 in 1940, so with the move out of Number 10, once again Hamblin assisted him and Mrs Churchill in organizing their living and working quarters. The Churchills bought 28 Hyde Park Gate, because as Leader of the Opposition Churchill needed a London base from which to attend the House of Commons. As Number 28 did not have enough room for an office, the Churchills bought Number 27 next door, part of which was let out, and part turned into offices for the secretaries, including Hamblin. She organized this move, calling it ‘very household’, perhaps because she viewed it from Mrs Churchill’s perspective; in fact, the move was much more complicated than the usual household move. She was helping to convert a former prime minister into the Leader of the Opposition, and arranged things so that he could resume work on his multi-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, while at the same time beginning to consider writing his war memoirs. In fact, Hamblin worked between both households, doing whatever was required, as did all the other secretaries.
The good news, for Churchill if not for his wife, was that with war over, Chartwell was accessible again. It took a good deal of rehabilitation, with Hamblin helping with the scrubbing and polishing.53 She had always ‘helped Clementine to grapple with the ups and downs of Chartwell life’,54 so this was nothing new for her. She loved working there, as did so many of the other secretaries, and as, of course, did Churchill. When they were driving down from London and
we entered the precincts of Chartwell… he would say ‘Ah, Chartwell’ and he’d throw all the things to one side. I loved it so much that I always said, ‘oh, yes, Chartwell’ and I felt that once we were here everything would be all right. … It has been said, and this is very true, that he built Chartwell not only with his hands but with his heart… There was [always] a great deal going on. It was like a little Factory… It was very much a home but there was never a dull moment. It was terrific. … Everything is made to feel very important. He had his way of making one feel that everything you did was of great importance… [a] wonderful quality that one rarely finds in an employer… although he could knock you down and be really rude and beastly but he made you feel that whatever you did was of importance.55
He worried about Chartwell when he was away. Just before sailing to America in 1949 he wrote to the head gardener ordering new rhododendrons and reminded him to ‘Report to Miss Hamblin at once any signs of trouble with the goldfish. The most serious need was more logs. For these a fallen beech tree should be cut.’56
In October 1951 Churchill, at the age of seventy-six, was returned to Downing Street as prime minister, the Tories having won the general election. Hamblin was still working for Mrs Churchill, and once again found herself helping to organize the move into Number 10, this time from Hyde Park Gate rather than from the Admiralty. It was during Churchill’s ‘Indian Summer’ that Hamblin was to be treated to an unexpected and delightful trip by Mrs Churchill, a trip not quite as fraught as their wartime travels. In the hope of curing a painful case of neuritis, Mrs Churchill went to a spa in Aix-les-Bains in Savoie, and took Hamblin, who was suffering from what she later described as tension-induced shoulder pains.
Lady Churchill was very kind and she said [as]… she was seeing the best man in Europe and… I might see him too. And when he saw me he said, ‘Oh yes, you’re very tense so I’ll give you the works,’ and I had three weeks of – I’ve never had anything like it in my life. I had mud bat
hs and underwater massage and the lot.
In the likely event that Hamblin was interrupting her ‘cure’ to handle Lady Churchill’s correspondence, she would have known that the prime minister inquired as to not only his wife’s progress, but Hamblin’s as well. In a letter to Mrs Churchill he asked, ‘How is the Hambling [sic] getting on? Is she having a stronger or weaker dose than you?’57
The 30 November 1954 celebration of Churchill’s eightieth birthday started well enough. Hamblin describes ‘the greatest party at No. 10… a large family dinner and then after dinner a real old-fashioned evening party at 10 p.m. … with masses and masses of people… He had two wonderful cakes with 80 candles on them… it was fantastic.’
Hamblin goes into great detail about one of the cakes, made as usual by Madame Floris, who baked him one specially every year. Hamblin describes the cake Madame Floris made for his eighty-fifth birthday:
she decided she would write to countries all over the world and get whatever they produced which could go into a cake… Carrots from the country which produce carrots, dates and wheat and so on… the response was terrific and she had masses… we had them in a pile in the corner of one of the State Rooms for the party. I think they went to some good cause afterwards.
So far, so good. But earlier in his eightieth birthday year, parliament had decided that a portrait of Churchill would be an appropriate gift for his upcoming eightieth birthday celebration. Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords donated 1,000 guineas and commissioned Graham Sutherland to paint it. Instrumental in that selection was Jennie Lee MP, who was a friend of the artist and wife of Aneurin Bevan, godfather of the National Health Service. Churchill agreed to sit for Sutherland about three times, a process more fully described by Elizabeth Gilliatt and Jane Portal. No one in the family saw the final version until it was publicly unveiled in Westminster Hall, recalls Hamblin. But Jane Portal remembers something slightly different: Lady Churchill (she had become so in 1953, when Churchill was knighted) was invited to see the portrait at the house where the painter was staying. She came back from that visit ‘shaken’. There was a photograph, of unknown origin, which Churchill showed Portal and to which he reacted with distaste.
Both Churchills hated Sutherland’s portrait and Hamblin says that Lady Churchill ‘didn’t want it to go down to posterity because she felt it didn’t do him justice… [he was] much stronger than that. After all, it was a gift to them… and they could do what they liked with it.’ And so Lady Churchill decided to have it destroyed and asked Hamblin for ideas. Hamblin confesses:
I destroyed it myself… I could not do it alone because it was a huge thing… [So I said to Lady Churchill] I think my brother would help us… So [in] the dead of night, in the dark, we took it away in the van and we took it to his house and burned it in his garden… a few miles away [from Chartwell.] But of course it was a deadly secret… Lady Churchill and I decided we would not tell anyone… [when] a thing like that comes out, it would make life impossible for me.
Later, Mary Soames told the press that the portrait in fact had been destroyed, but revealed nothing about how it had been done or by whom. Hamblin goes on to recount: ‘Mary thought she had better come out in the clear… She made me go and see her solicitor and swear an affidavit about how it was done… because it might come up again in fifty or a hundred-years’ time.’ Sutherland called the destruction of the portrait ‘an act of vandalism’.58 Portal was among those glad to see the end of what she considered an unfair representation of a great man.
In April 1955, only six months after what Hamblin called ‘the greatest party’, Churchill felt compelled by his failing health, and pressure from a no-longer patient successor, Anthony Eden, and others, to resign as prime minister. The Churchills, and of course Hamblin, returned to Chartwell. Because Winston remained in the House of Commons, to which he was re-elected in 1959, and attended the House as often as he could manage, and continued to dine at The Other Club (his dining society at the Savoy) almost until the end of his life, the Churchills maintained their London residence at Hyde Park Gate.
Hamblin was there throughout these final years, and, less frequently, at Chartwell. As we have seen, the usual guests arrived to visit and Mrs Churchill would ‘feed him people… She would think all the time and get him people who would entertain him and be good with him’. Anthony Montague Browne had become Churchill’s Principal Private Secretary and ‘was a great companion to him’, and added ‘a great deal to his life in the end’. Hamblin arranged all these visits with some help from other more junior secretaries.
Following Churchill’s death on 24 January 1965, Hamblin was one of the very few non-family members invited to attend his burial service at the churchyard of St Martin’s Church, Bladon, in Oxfordshire. In his will, Churchill left Hamblin £500, about £10,000 today.
Later that year, Lady Churchill moved out of Chartwell and into Hyde Park Gate. That same year Grace Hamblin was awarded an OBE and was appointed the first curator/administrator at Chartwell when it was turned over to the National Trust in 1966. The Trust assigned Hamblin ‘the arduous task of putting Churchill’s vast archive back into order’.59 She ran it until 1973. No one knew Chartwell as well as she did – possibly only Churchill himself. Cecily ‘Chips’ Gemmell says that Hamblin ‘ran [every aspect of] the house beautifully [and] that everyone depended on her’.
Having retired from running Chartwell, Hamblin ‘dreaded this [not working] more than anything… and the blank it would leave… suddenly out of the blue, came this bomb of a job’.60 In 1974 she was appointed secretary to the Churchill centenary exhibition in London’s Somerset House and travelled with it to Australia in 1975.
Grace Hamblin died in 2002, aged ninety-four. She had spent seventy of those years working with the Churchills and strengthening and promoting their memory, the longest-serving member of Churchill’s secretarial staff.
* ‘I mean there was a butler, and a head house maid, and an under-house maid, and a tweeny, and a footman. And then in the kitchen I think there was a cook and a kitchen maid and a scullery maid, and then there was someone else in the pantry – oh, that would have been a parlour maid… And Sir Winston’s valet and a parlour maid and Lady Churchill’s lady’s maid.’
† A boon for historians, as all these notes have been perfectly filed, restored if need be, and are available at the Churchill Archives.
‡ The National Trust acquired Chartwell in 1946. The necessary funds were provided by a group of Churchill’s friends, on the understanding that the Churchills were to be given life tenancy of the property. Lady Churchill surrendered her lease on Churchill’s death in 1965 and Chartwell was opened to the public in 1966.
§ This was Rufus I. There would later be a Rufus II (see Chapter 9).
¶ The present-day Jock is a frequent blogger on the Chartwell page on Facebook.
# He was called ‘Mr Accounts Wood’ to distinguish him from C. C. Wood, Churchill’s very skilled and truculent proofreader, who was called ‘Mr Literary Wood’.
** Churchill’s bodyguard Walter Thompson has told his tales of protecting Churchill in several books and television programmes. He married Mary Shearburn, one of Churchill’s secretaries. Edmund Murray, who took over the job of protecting Churchill many years later, has also written his autobiography.
†† In addition to flowers and vegetables, suitcases and painting equipment.
‡‡ Admiral Sir John Fisher (known as ‘Jackie’), a reformer of the Royal Navy, served from 1911 to 1915 as First Sea Lord when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty.
§§ So close were Hill and Hamblin that Hamblin was asked to be godmother to Kathleen Hill’s granddaughter, Georgina Hill.
¶¶ Long woollen socks meant to be worn under boots, and not just at sea.
## Clementine Churchill and Hamblin went alone, without a Foreign Office official, only a British Red Cross representative, Miss Mabel Johnson, who later became a close friend of Clementine’s.
Kathleen Hill
‘I had never been in a house like that before. It was
alive, restless. When he was away it was still as a mouse.
When he was there it was vibrating.’
Kathleen Hill describing Chartwell in 1936 1
‘… the ruthless partition of
the day, the planning of things all to come. There was never a wasted moment.
He had intense control.’
Bill Deakin describing Chartwell in 1936 2
BORN IN AUGUST 1900, Kathleen Hill trained as a professional shorthand typist, and began her secretarial career in Portsmouth working for several insurance companies. She was also a solo violinist and was first violin in the Portsmouth Philharmonic Society.3 After her marriage to an Indian Army officer in Calcutta, Hill ‘worked for the girl Guides’ in Bengal.4 In India the Girl Guides movement had started in 1911 and by 1928 Hill had become senior secretary to the Chief Commissioner of Girl Guides for All India. As a violinist, too, while she lived there, her performances were broadcast on the radio in Calcutta, Bombay and Delhi. In India, she ‘had that late-Raj life-style… masses of Indian servants’, according to her granddaughter Georgina Hill.5
While in India Kathleen Hill borrowed from the club library and read several of Churchill’s books, little thinking that a few years later she would be working for him in London. She later said that when she returned from India she ‘had hoped to find a post in a school combining school work with music supervision, and I remember thinking when he [Churchill] was in good dictational form – well, I have lost the music, but I have got the music of words’.6
