No More Champagne

by David Lough

  In Munich the following day, the British, French, German and Italian leaders met, but without any Czechs present. Churchill attended a Focus Group lunch at the Savoy Hotel and returned that evening for a dinner at The Other Club. That night early copies of the next morning’s newspapers arrived, bringing news of the Munich Agreement: Germany was to annexe all Sudetenland areas with a German-speaking majority within a fortnight, before a plebiscite elsewhere. Churchill experienced ‘a towering rage and a deepening gloom’, according to a fellow Other Club member.23

  Chamberlain returned home to a hero’s welcome and promised ‘Peace in our time’. Just one cabinet minister (Alfred Duff Cooper) resigned and the thirty or so Conservative MPs who opposed appeasement still looked to Anthony Eden for leadership, rather than Churchill. He retreated to Chartwell, where he laid bricks and picked up once more the threads of his History. The House of Commons debated the Munich Agreement over three days in the following week, but Churchill delayed speaking until the final day. Those who read his Daily Telegraph column knew that he had already condemned the British and French leaders for applying ‘unbearable pressure’ on the Czech government.

  By Christmas 1938 Churchill’s History had reached the Wars of the Roses. He was ahead of his target, but not enjoying the experience. ‘It is very laborious: & I resent it, & the pressure,’ he told Clementine, who was once again cruising with Lord Moyne. ‘If nothing intervenes, it will be done by June... My life has simply been cottage and book, (but sleep too before dinner).’24

  At least Churchill’s bank account had finished 1938 just in credit, thanks to Sir Henry Strakosch’s rescue, plus a second successful brandy bet with Lord Rothermere, and the News of the World’s agreement to let him cash its cheque early.25 Chartwell’s economy drive had kept costs steady and as he mapped out prospects for 1939 Churchill felt relatively optimistic about his finances. The delivery of the manuscript of his History accounted for a third of Churchill’s projected income for the year of £22,000. This was well ahead of his estimate of spending, which was just £13,000.26 (The eventual outcome of 1939 was to be almost the reverse of Churchill’s estimates: he finished with receipts of £13,000, while he spent more than £20,000.)

  On 7 January 1939, following a day of talks with French leaders in Paris, Churchill caught the night train to Cannes for a New Year break. He dictated his Daily Telegraph column over a dinner washed down with champagne.

  Poor weather kept him mostly inside Maxine Elliott’s home in Cannes, but this meant that his History made steady progress at 1,500 words a day. ‘BEWARE CASINO,’ Clementine warned him towards the end of his fortnight’s stay,27 but Churchill could not resist and found fortune to be on his side.

  ‘Just as at Chartwell I divided my days between building and dictating, so now it is between dictating and gambling,’ he told her. ‘I have been playing very long but not foolishly, and up to date I have a substantial advantage. It amuses me very much to play, so long as it is with their money.’28 Churchill had drawn 40,000 francs in cash, but had already deposited winnings of 60,000 at the Cannes branch of the Comptoir National de Paris.29 On his way to the station for the journey home, he could not resist a final visit, as his secretary Mary Penman recalled:

  As we passed the Casino, he ordered the car to stop although we had little time to spare before catching the train. He jumped out and ran to the Casino entrance, his clothes flapping about him in the strong wind, looking a little shabby and untidy. He disappeared inside briefly and then came out still running, he waved his right hand triumphantly to me and grinned as he leapt into the car beside me. ‘I have just won enough to pay for our fares home – what do you think of that?’30

  ‘Safely home with forty-two thousand,’ he cabled to Clementine.31

  On the political front, Churchill anticipated another government reshuffle, but he told Clementine that he was happy to remain on the political sidelines until after an election. He was still confident that his History would be finished well ahead of its deadline:

  In the summer when I am sure the book will be finished, I think I will build a house on the ten acres. It will cost about three thousand pounds to give a lovely dwelling for a man and his wife, two children, one double and one single visiting bedroom, and I expect we could sell it for five or six thousand with the bit of land.32

  By the end of January Churchill had reached ‘Cromwell’s Great Rebellion’ in his History, at which point his main researcher Bill Deakin had to leave for military service. He was replaced by George Young,*2 an older historian who had recently written about Victorian England and was introduced by Eddie Marsh. ‘I hope you will not be vexed if I venture to suggest an honorarium of fifty guineas,’ Churchill proposed to Young, setting him to work on the Stuarts.33

  Meanwhile, Churchill was frustrated to find that after three months in America Revesz had still not managed to sell his newspaper column to a newspaper; his agent seemed more interested in pioneering the broadcast of the speeches of European politicians across the Atlantic. Revesz tried to explain his strategy when he unveiled his ‘greatest success to date’ in February: the New York Herald Tribune had agreed to carry Churchill’s columns at $80 each. There was no American tradition of paying politicians for newspaper articles, Revesz explained, so he had concentrated on setting up ‘an entirely new wireless service of international opinions’. Promising to pay the radio transmission costs personally, he forecast that new buyers would soon double or treble the Herald Tribune’s fee within months. ‘It will mean that all the subscribing newspapers will be able to pick up the articles directly from Europe, and that they will receive everything you and the other European statesmen write within a few hours and directly.’ The next step, Revesz expected, would be an opportunity for Churchill and other European politicians to earn additional fees by broadcasting recordings of their speeches to America over the radio.

  Churchill reacted to his agent’s long and excited letter with a single sentence, insisting that he would accept nothing less than $125 a column.34 A less determined man than Revesz might have given up, but he immediately promised to pay the difference between $80 and $125 himself. His confidence was vindicated within a fortnight when he was able to cable: ‘Further contracts already signed Washington Philadelphia Boston Buffalo Cleveland San Francisco Los Angeles Toronto.’35

  Revesz returned to Amsterdam for the first radio transmission, after which he reported to Churchill: ‘It is a very exciting procedure. After ten minutes came the message from New York that the reception was good and they speeded it up until 75 words per minute. About an hour later I received already the following message: ARTICLE FINE RECEPTION PERFECT THANKS.’

  Cooperation started adding £50 ‘on account’ for US sales to its payments, taking Churchill’s earnings from each newspaper column close to £200.36

  Three-quarters of Churchill’s History was in print by the end of February, but he was facing mounting distractions. Picture Post magazine – only two years old, but already boasting a readership of one million – sent a crew to Chartwell to photograph Churchill writing and bricklaying.

  Meanwhile, Randolph confessed to yet another set of debts that forced Churchill to release his son’s final tranche of Lord Randolph’s will trust, having first worked out that he could do so without having to repay any of his own loan from the same source.37

  Most importantly, Chartwell remained the destination of choice for anyone who wanted to share private information about Hitler’s military preparations, among them Sir Henry Strakosch. On 22 February he handed Churchill an unofficial estimate that Germany was spending 26 per cent of its national income on armaments, in contrast to Britain’s 12 per cent.38

  Three days later, Hitler’s troops marched into Prague, Bohemia and Moravia, bringing an effective end to Czechoslovakia’s existence as an independent state. It proved a pivotal moment for the British public, after which the word ‘appeasement’ began to carry a different meaning. Churchill called for Britain’s air
defences to be put on full alert.

  He had only reached Queen Anne’s reign in his History and Churchill realized that he was falling seriously behind schedule. Turning aside from a long memorandum to the prime minister on the use of sea power, Churchill asked the publishers of Marlborough: His Life and Times if he could reuse whole passages from the book to cover the reign of William and Mary in his History. ‘I do of course paraphrase and alter as I go along, but still the identity of the two versions would be noticeable,’ he admitted to George Harrap junior, who had taken over the running of Harrap with his younger brother Walter after the sudden death of their father. At the end of his letter Churchill offered them first refusal on a book of his Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph articles, which he described as ‘a continuous survey of the darkening scene... Under some title such as Step by Step, I should think they would have a very good sale.’39 The Harraps were not convinced: they allowed the reuse of the Marlborough material, but bid just £500 for Step by Step, thus allowing Thornton Butterworth a chance to take back his old author, by pledging £750 and promising to find buyers in Europe and America.40

  Churchill’s History fell further behind schedule in April. He put the book aside to prepare a speech to the House of Commons welcoming Chamberlain’s surprise guarantee of the security of Poland, the country widely expected to be Hitler’s next target. Churchill deprecated ‘a sinister passage’ in a leading article in The Times of 1 April which suggested that there was a distinction between guaranteeing Poland’s ‘independence’ and guaranteeing its territorial ‘integrity’. Churchill’s suspicions were well founded – on 3 April Chamberlain confirmed privately that The Times’s interpretation of the government’s intentions was correct.

  On 7 April Mussolini’s troops massed on the border before invading Albania. Harold Macmillan, who was visiting Chartwell at the time, recalled Churchill spreading maps all over his study, then sending Chamberlain unsolicited advice on how best to use the British fleet to seize Corfu and prevent a further Italian advance. On two further occasions in April Churchill had to put his History aside to prepare speeches in the House of Commons. He called for the establishment of a new ministry of supply (which Chamberlain did establish, but without appointing Churchill to head it) and urged as much co-operation with Russia as with France.

  By May his History had already overrun its intended length, but Churchill had not yet reached the American Civil War. He dictated passages during car journeys to and from London, but he realized that he now needed literary reinforcements. John Wheldon*3 arrived at Chartwell to check the section on Henry VIII, while Maurice Ashley returned to inspect Cromwell and the Stuarts. ‘It is very hard to transport oneself into the past when the future opens its jaws upon us,’ Churchill told Ashley.41 He also recalled Eddie Marsh to renewed proofreading duties. ‘It has been a most educative ride for me,’ he told his former private secretary. ‘Though I have frequently had to dismount and talk politics to the wayfarers.’42

  Churchill’s fortnightly Daily Telegraph column was due to come to an end in mid-summer 1939. Cecil King, a friend of Randolph’s and a young journalist at the Daily Mirror, suggested that his newspaper should take over. The editor Cecil Thomas offered 70 guineas a column, but for a period of only three months, until Revesz inspired a counter-bid by the News Chronicle, after which Thomas increased his bid to £100 and six months.43

  Churchill’s relief at this new arrangement was short-lived when the New York Herald Tribune announced it was cutting its fee by a third at the end of its trial three months, even though the number of American newspapers now signed up to print Churchill’s journalism had grown to fourteen.44 Revesz set off immediately for America to take up the cudgels on Churchill’s behalf, but once there he changed his priorities, preferring to concentrate on the other reason for his trip. He successfully concluded arrangements with the National Broadcasting Company for Churchill and other European politicians to make fortnightly broadcasts to America on ‘international topics or events of worldwide interest’. Churchill’s fee of £100 a broadcast, Revesz confided, was to be three times as much as any of his political colleagues.45

  In Britain, there was a mounting press campaign for Churchill’s restoration to the government, but he was locked in a race against time to finish the History. His bank overdraft had risen back above £7,000 and, if he did not complete his manuscript before the declaration of war (which he now regarded as inevitable), he would not only forfeit the £15,000 still due from the publisher, but have to reimburse the £5,000 he had already received – and long since spent.46

  While Churchill continued writing, the Bank of England started secret shipments of its gold to Canada.47 Nevertheless, life continued: debutantes danced in London beneath the Rembrandts and Gainsboroughs of Londonderry House; young men in striped blazers turned out for the rowing regatta at Henley; and at Blenheim the new duke and duchess of Marlborough threw open the palace’s gates for a party in honour of their daughter. Powdered footmen in red velvet waited on guests in the library and chefs cooked lobster on the terrace beneath the palace’s floodlit façade, but Churchill stayed in London to work on his History. ‘I am staggering to the end of this job,’ he told Marsh.

  He promised his publisher in July that the work was almost done: ‘I have had to work very hard, and many a night have sat up until two or three in the morning.’48 Right up to the end, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples had to compete for time with magazine articles for Picture Post or a Daily Mirror column or a last speech to the House of Commons before its summer recess or a first American radio broadcast. Then there was the 1940 series for the News of the World to consider. ‘In view of the uncertainties which may affect me personally,’ he told the newspaper’s chairman, ‘I should like to get the series for 1940 in an advanced condition, or at any rate on the stocks before the end of September.’49

  In the middle of August Churchill made a short diversion to France to watch the French army on manoeuvres: the visit ‘tore to shreds any illusion that it was not Germany’s intention to wage war and to wage it soon’, recalled his travelling companion General Spears.50 Afterwards, Churchill painted in Normandy with his artist friend Paul Maze. ‘Suddenly he turned to me,’ Maze recalled, ‘and said: “This is the last picture we shall paint in peace for a very long time.”’51

  With speculation mounting that Hitler’s next move was imminent, Churchill flew back early to London, arriving as news broke that Germany and Russia had reached a non-aggression pact and that George VI had left his summer home at Balmoral to meet government ministers in London. The bank rate doubled to 4 per cent on 24 August. Churchill’s Daily Mirror column that day was entitled ‘At the Eleventh Hour’. The following day the British government advised Britons still living in Berlin and Germans living in Britain to return home.

  On 29 August Churchill was still discussing passages in his History concerning the Seven Years’ War with Bill Deakin. On 31 August, as some children began to leave London, Churchill wrote to his publisher Sir Newman Flower:

  I am, as you know, concentrating every minute of my spare life and strength upon completing our contract. These distractions are trying. However 530,000 words are now in print and there is only cutting and proof reading, together with a few special points, now to be done.52

  Churchill was still dictating at one o’clock on the morning of 1 September, as the first German tanks rolled into Poland.

  *1 Reginald Thompson (1896–1956), served on the Western Front 1914–18; journalist, Daily Express, Evening News; editor Evening Standard 1938–9; editor and managing director, Essex Chronicle.

  *2 George Young, (‘G.M.’, 1882–1959), fellow of All Souls College, Oxford 1905; civil servant 1908–20; author of an essay on Victorian Britain, Portrait of An Age (1936).

  *3 John Wheldon (b.1911), literary assistant to Churchill 1934–5, lecturer Balliol College, Oxford 1935–6, Courtaulds Ltd. 1936–9; war service including with the Special Operations Executive 19
39–45; Courtaulds Ltd. 1945–60.

  20

  ‘All my arrangements depend on this payment’

  Early Burdens of War, 1939–41

  Exchange rate: $4 = £1

  Inflation multiples: US x 16; UK x 50

  CHURCHILL TRAVELLED STRAIGHT to London when he heard the news. He was asked to call at 10 Downing Street, where the prime minister invited him to join a war cabinet as minister without portfolio. Pacing up and down at Morpeth Mansions, Churchill waited all that day for further word. It was not until the early evening of Saturday, 2 September, when Chamberlain summoned MPs to the House of Commons.

  He surprised his cabinet colleagues by speaking of possible further negotiations with Hitler, rather than the ultimatum they had agreed to hours before. A group of rain-soaked ministers interrupted a private dinner between Chamberlain and Lord Halifax in 10 Downing Street to make their feelings known. Chamberlain backed down and an ultimatum was finally sent to Hitler: it would expire at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.

  When by a quarter past eleven on the next morning no official word had arrived from Berlin, Chamberlain announced on the radio that Britain was consequently at war against Germany. He made the same announcement to the House of Commons at noon; immediately afterwards he asked Churchill to serve as First Lord of the Admiralty with a seat in the war cabinet. Churchill accepted the very post he had filled at the outbreak of war twenty-five years earlier.