by Erik Larson
Banks of tall windows would, in peacetime, have been filled with a welcoming amber light but now were dark, in accord with the strict blackout rules in place throughout the country. The cars entered a semicircular drive and came to a stop before the main entrance, on the east side of the house, where the party was greeted by Miss Grace Lamont, “Monty,” a Scot who had managed the house for its prime ministerial tenants since 1937. Her official title was “lady housekeeper.”
The terms of Lee’s gift specified that no work was to be done at the house—that it was to be a place of rest and renewal. Lee had written, “Apart from these subtle influences, the better the health of our rulers, the more sanely will they rule and the inducement to spend two days a week in the high and pure air of the Chiltern hills and woods will, it is hoped, result in a real advantage to the nation as well as to its chosen leaders.”
It was indeed an idyllic locale. “Happy Prime Ministers, whichever way you go fresh beauties meet you,” wrote Hubert Astley, a descendant of an early owner. The house stood in a shallow valley of the Chilterns, surrounded on three sides by rising terrain laced with paths that led walkers among yew hedges, ponds, and copses of beech, larch, and holly, delicately patrolled by chalk-blue butterflies. One of the estate’s comely forests was the Long Walk Wood, happily and densely populated with rabbits. The immediate grounds had a croquet lawn, which delighted Clementine, an avid and demanding player. Churchill would soon put the croquet lawn to secondary use, testing novel military weapons, some the brainchildren of the Prof. Off the south end of the house was an ancient sundial with a gloomy inscription:
Ye houres doe flie,
Full soone we die
In age secure
Ye House and Hills
Alone endure.
The front door opened onto an entry passage that led to the Great Hall, whose walls rose the full height of the house and displayed thirty large paintings, including Rembrandt’s The Mathematician. (The painting was later determined to have been done by one of Rembrandt’s students.) The entire house embodied the grand sweep of British history, but it was in the Long Gallery, on the second floor, that a sense of the past was most palpable. Here stood a table used by Napoleon Bonaparte during his exile on St. Helena. On the mantel of a large fireplace lay two swords once wielded by Oliver Cromwell, one of which supposedly accompanied him into battle at Marston Moor in 1644. To the left of the fireplace hung the cheery letter written by him from the scene with the notable line “God made them as stubble to our Swords.”
The house was not to everyone’s taste. Lloyd George disliked the fact that it was situated in a hollow and thus afforded only constricted views of the countryside. The house, he said, was “full of the ghosts of dull people,” and this, he mused, might explain why his dog, Chong, tended to growl in the Long Gallery. Churchill visited the house during Lloyd George’s tenure, in February 1921, a visit that must surely have stoked his lust to one day be prime minister. “Here I am,” he wrote to Clementine about his visit. “You [would] like to see this place. Perhaps you will some day! It is just the kind of house you admire—a paneled museum full of history, full of treasures—but insufficiently warmed—Anyhow a wonderful possession.”
Churchill quickly demonstrated that he had no intention of honoring Arthur Lee’s demand that prime ministers leave their work behind.
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DINNER ON THAT SATURDAY, June 15, was to begin at nine-thirty. The cook, alerted that the Prof would be a guest, prepared a special meal for him, suited to his vegetarian palate. He favored asparagus omelettes, lettuce salads, and tomatoes, first peeled, then sliced—anything, basically, that could be matched with eggs and olive oil–based mayonnaise. Clementine did not mind bending the culinary apparatus of the house to accommodate the Prof. “My mother took endless trouble,” Mary recalled. “There was always a special, different dish cooked for Prof, endless egg dishes, and he would carefully pick out the yolks and eat the whites.” Meals aside, he was an easy guest. “Prof was never a worry,” Mary wrote. “He wasn’t any trouble to entertain: he would take himself off to play golf, or he was working, or he was enlightening Papa, or he was playing tennis. He was a totally wonderful guest.”
As welcome as he was, Mary had her reservations. “I always rather dreaded sitting next to Prof as he didn’t make many jokes, and for a young person he was a little boring. I never felt cozy with Prof. He was absolutely charming,” she remarked, “but he was a different animal altogether.”
Neither Clementine nor Mary was present that Saturday night, presumably having chosen to stay behind to continue the process of moving the family, and Nelson, into No. 10 Downing. The guests who would stay the night included Churchill’s daughter Diana and her husband, Duncan Sandys, and the ever-present John Colville; the Prof, leery of encountering others while on his way to the bath, never stayed overnight, preferring the privacy and comfort of his rooms at Oxford or his new workday residence at the Carlton Hotel.
Shortly before everyone entered the dining room, Colville received a telephone call from a fellow private secretary on duty in London, reporting the grimmest news from France thus far. The French were now openly demanding to be allowed to make their own peace deal with Hitler, in violation of a prior Anglo-French pact. Colville took the news to Churchill, “who was immediately very depressed.” At once the atmosphere at Chequers grew funereal, Colville wrote. “Dinner began lugubriously, W. eating fast and greedily, his face almost in his plate, every now and then firing some technical question at Lindemann, who was quietly consuming his vegetarian diet.”
Churchill—troubled and glum—made it clear that, at least for the moment, he had little interest in routine dinner talk and that only Lindemann merited his attention.
At length, the house staff served champagne, brandy, and cigars, and these did wonders to lighten the mood. This revitalization over drink and dinner was something of a pattern, as Lord Halifax’s wife, Dorothy, had noted in the past: Churchill would be “silent, grumpy and remote” at the start of a meal, she wrote. “But mellowed by champagne and good food he became a different man, and a delightful and amusing companion.” After Clementine once criticized his drinking, he told her, “Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”
The talk grew animated. Churchill began reading aloud telegrams of support that had come from far-flung lands within the empire, this by way of cheering himself up and heartening the others in the party as well. He offered a sobering observation: “The war is bound to become a bloody one for us now, but I hope our people will stand up to bombing and the Huns aren’t liking what we are giving them. But what a tragedy that our victory in the last war should have been snatched from us by a lot of softies.” By “softies,” he was referring to supporters of Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement.
The group went outside to stroll the grounds, with Churchill, son-in-law Duncan, and Inspector Thompson going to the rose garden, while Colville, the Prof, and Diana headed for the opposite side of the house. The sun had set at nine-nineteen; the moon was up and bright, a waxing gibbous, with a full moon due in five days. “It was light and deliciously warm,” Colville wrote, “but the sentries, with tin helmets and fixed bayonets, who were placed all round the house, kept us fully alive to the horrors of reality.”
Colville was summoned often to the telephone, and each time set out to find Churchill—“searching for Winston among the roses,” as he put it in his diary. The French, he told Churchill, were moving ever closer to capitulating.
Churchill said, “Tell them…that if they let us have their fleet we shall never forget, but that if they surrender without consulting us we shall never forgive. We shall blacken their name for a thousand years!”
He paused, then added, “Don’t, of course, do that just yet.”
* * *
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DESPITE THE NEWS, CHURCHILL’S mood continued to improve. He passed out cigars; matches flickered in the dark. As the coal ends of cigars glowed, he recited poems and discussed the war with an animation that verged on delight. At intervals he chanted the refrain from a popular song performed by the male duo Flanagan and Allen:
Bang, bang, bang, bang goes the farmer’s gun,
Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run, run.
The song would become immeasurably more popular later in the war when Flanagan and Allen substituted “Adolf” for “rabbit.”
A telephone call arrived for Churchill, from America’s ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy. Colville retrieved Churchill from the garden. His demeanor immediately more grave, Churchill unleashed on Kennedy “a flood of eloquence about the part that America could and should play in saving civilization,” Colville wrote in his diary. Churchill told the ambassador that America’s promises of financial and industrial support constituted “a laughing-stock on the stage of history.”
At one A.M., Churchill and his guests gathered in the central hall; Churchill lay down on a sofa, puffing his cigar. He told a couple of off-color jokes and talked about the importance of increasing the production of fighters for the RAF.
At 1:30 A.M. he rose to go to bed, telling the others, “Good night, my children.”
That night in his diary Colville wrote, “It was at once the most dramatic and the most fantastic evening I have ever spent.”
CHAPTER 13
Scarification
AT SEVEN-THIRTY ON SUNDAY MORNING, upon learning that Churchill was awake, Colville brought him the latest report on the French situation, which had arrived earlier both over the telephone and in the form of a document delivered by courier. Colville brought the messages to Churchill’s room. Churchill was in bed, “looking just like a rather nice pig, clad in a silk vest.”
Churchill decided to convene a special cabinet meeting at ten-fifteen that morning, in London. As Churchill breakfasted in bed, his valet, Sawyers, ran his bath, and the house roused to action. Mrs. Hill readied her portable typewriter. Inspector Thompson checked for assassins. Churchill’s driver prepared the car. Colville raced to dress and pack, and rushed through his breakfast.
They sped back to London through heavy rain, splashing through stoplights and hurtling along the Mall at high speed, with Churchill all the while dictating minutes to Mrs. Hill and generating a morning’s worth of work for Colville and his fellow private secretaries.
Churchill arrived at 10 Downing Street just as his cabinet ministers were gathering. The meeting resulted in a telegram to the French, sent at twelve thirty-five P.M., authorizing France to inquire about the terms of an armistice on its own behalf, “provided, but only provided, that the French Fleet is sailed forthwith for British harbors pending negotiations.” The telegram made clear that Britain planned to fight on, and would not participate in any deliberations that France pursued with Germany.
Churchill knew France was lost. What he cared about most, now, was the French fleet. If it fell under Hitler’s control, as seemed likely, it would change the balance of power on the high seas, where Britain, at least for the time being, retained superiority.
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IN LONDON THAT SUNDAY, the Prof and young Dr. Jones of Air Intelligence attended a meeting of the RAF’s Night Interception Committee, convened by Air Marshal Philip Joubert to further consider Jones’s apparent discovery of a new German beam navigation system. Churchill, otherwise engaged, did not attend, but the galvanic power of his interest was evident. What had hitherto been the subject of more or less academic interest now became a target of concrete inquiry, with specific tasks assigned to various officers.
“What a change,” Jones wrote, “from my inactivity of only a week ago!”
But doubts about Jones’s theory persisted. One key participant in the meeting, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command, described Jones’s case as consisting of “some rather nebulous evidence.” Another, Henry Tizard, a prominent scientific adviser to the Air Ministry, wrote, “I may be wrong, but there seemed to me to be unnecessary excitement about this latest alleged German method for dealing with the country. One cannot possibly get accurate bombing on a selected target in this way.”
The Prof, however, was convinced that the matter was urgent. Lindemann again wrote to Churchill, this time urging him to issue a directive “that such investigation take precedence, not only as regards materials but especially the use of men, over any research whose results are not liable to affect production in the next three months.”
Churchill agreed. On Lindemann’s note he jotted, “Let this be done without fail.”
Soon Jones heard a rumor that Churchill considered the matter so grave that he planned to convene a meeting on the subject at 10 Downing Street.
To Jones, this seemed implausible, very likely the opening move in a multiple-step practical joke by his colleagues in Air Intelligence, who had elevated the art of pulling pranks to a high level; Jones himself was acknowledged to be a foremost practitioner.
* * *
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ON MONDAY, JUNE 17, “a certain eventuality” came to pass. France fell. Churchill’s cabinet met at eleven A.M. and soon afterward learned that Marshal Philippe Pétain, who that day replaced Reynaud as leader of France, had ordered the French army to stop fighting.
After the meeting, Churchill walked into the garden at 10 Downing, alone, and began to pace, head down, hands clasped behind his back—not depressed, and not cowed, but deep in thought. Colville watched him. “He was doubtless considering how best the French fleet, the air force and the Colonies could be saved,” Colville wrote. “He, I am sure, will remain undaunted.”
Judging by the telegram Churchill sent to Pétain and General Maxime Weygand later that day, this appeared to be the case. Deploying flattery leavened with irony, he began: “I wish to repeat to you my profound conviction that the illustrious Marshal Pétain and the famous General Weygand, our comrades in two great wars against the Germans, will not injure their ally by delivering over to the enemy the fine French Fleet. Such an act would scarify”—scarify, a six-hundred-year-old word that only Churchill would use in crucial diplomatic correspondence—“would scarify their names for a thousand years of history. Yet this result may easily come by frittering away these few precious hours when the Fleet can be sailed to safety in British or American ports, carrying with it the hope of the future and the honor of France.”
The news about France was first broadcast by the BBC at one o’clock that afternoon. Home Intelligence reported that the reaction by the public “has been one of confusion and shock, but hardly surprise. From all parts come reports of bewilderment and great anxiety.” There was widespread fear that the British government might “go abroad” or simply give up. “A few feel all is over.” The two questions most on people’s minds were what would happen to the soldiers still in France—“Will a second Dunkirk be possible?”—and what would now become of the French air force and navy. It was crucial, the report said, that Churchill or the king come forward that very night to speak.
Olivia Cockett, the Scotland Yard clerk and Mass-Observation diarist, was at work when she heard the BBC broadcast. “Poor France!” she wrote at three-forty P.M. “The 1 o’clock news was a bomb to me. I’d said over and over again that I didn’t believe France was ever going to give in to Germany. We all fell very silent.” The afternoon tea service arrived. Cockett did not share England’s national obsession with tea, but today, she said, “I was grateful for a cup, for once.” She spent the next hour “quivering and with tears.”
But at 10 Downing and Buckingham Palace, there was a new and welcome sense of clarity. “Personally,” the king wrote, in a letter to his mother, Queen Mary, “I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to & to pamper.” Air Marshal
Dowding was elated, for it meant the end, at last, of the persistent threat that Churchill, in a rash and generous moment, would send fighters to France and deplete the force needed to repel the massive assault by the German air force that was certain to come now that France had capitulated. Dowding later confessed to Lord Halifax, “I don’t mind telling you, that when I heard of the French collapse I went on my knees and thanked God.”
But all this relief was tempered by an appreciation of just how radically the French collapse altered the strategic landscape. The Luftwaffe was sure now to move its air fleets into bases along the channel coast. Invasion seemed not only practical but imminent. The British expected it to begin with a massive onslaught by the German air force, the much-feared “knock-out” blow.
* * *
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MORE BAD NEWS ARRIVED that afternoon. Churchill was seated in the quiet of the Cabinet Room at No. 10 Downing when he was told that a large Cunard liner, the Lancastria, which was serving as a troopship and loaded with more than 6,700 British soldiers, air crews, and civilians, had been attacked by German aircraft. Three bombs had struck the ship and set it afire. It sank in twenty minutes, with the loss of at least 4,000 lives, far more than the combined tolls of the Titanic and the Lusitania.
So wrenching was this news, especially on top of the French debacle, that Churchill barred the press from reporting it. “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least,” he said. This was, however, a misguided attempt at censorship, given that 2,500 survivors soon arrived in Britain. The New York Times broke the story five weeks later, on July 26, and the British press followed suit. The fact that the government never acknowledged the sinking caused a surge of distrust among the public, according to Home Intelligence. “The withholding of the news of the Lancastria is the subject of much adverse criticism,” the agency stated in one of its daily reports. The lack of disclosure raised “fears that other bad news is withheld…and the fact that the news was only released after publication in an American paper gives rise to the feeling that it would otherwise have been withheld longer.”
