Dinner With Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table

by Cita Stelzer

  Churchill was certainly aware that his talents were shown to best advantage on a carefully set stage. In 1929 he wrote to his wife from Santa Barbara, California, where he had been visiting Hearst:

  I am v. glad you are taking Venetia’s [Montagu] house for the session. Do not hesitate to engage one or two extra servants. Now that we are in opposition we must gather colleagues and MPs together a little at luncheon & dinner. Also I have now a few business people who are of importance. We ought to be able to have luncheons of 8–10 often & dinners of the same size about twice a week. You shd have a staff equal to this.35

  In 1922 Churchill had bought Chartwell, a country house in the county of Kent, within easy driving distance of London. It required a considerable amount of renovation, which he supervised, and some of which he carried out “with the same meticulous obsession he gave to his speeches”.36

  Churchill’s favourite stage: the dining room at Chartwell

  Dining at Chartwell, 1928

  Perhaps aware of the effect of the low ceiling in the dining room, to which he paid particular attention, Churchill specified floor-length windows and doors on three sides of the almost-square room to give it an open feeling. He directed to his wife a Dissertation on Dining Room Chairs:

  The Dining Room chair has certain marked requisites. First, it should be comfortable and give support to the body when sitting up straight; it should certainly have arms which are an enormous comfort when sitting at meals … One does not want the Dining Room chair spreading itself, or its legs, or its arms as if it were a plant … this enables the chairs to be put close together if need be, which is often more sociable …37

  The fun goes on. His wife answered that she had “digested his Dissertation”.

  Today, under the care of the National Trust, Chartwell remains much as it was during Churchill’s time, with white-flowered chintz on comfortable armchairs around a great round table in the dining room: round to ease conversation and create a sense of equality, no opposing sides, nor corners, no one below the salt.

  Two months before Churchill left for the Potsdam Conference and before the 1945 election, his cousin, Clare Sheridan, needing money, wrote to him offering to sell him her mother’s set of Napoleon’s special china. Clare’s mother was Lady Randolph’s sister, Clara. Clare thought the Prime Minister ought to have the china “on account of its family association … Before the Tuilleries [sic] were burnt [1871], the Commune sold at auction the contents! And our dear grandmother Jerome was there, bless her, and bid on the Tuilleries [sic] lawns for the china”.38

  Thomas Goode appraised the china and Clare attached the listing for Churchill’s consideration. Always considerate of family, Churchill sent her a cheque for more than the amount requested. The large set (38 dinner plates!) is white Sèvres china, gold-rimmed, with a large gold N below a crown – “the same monogram on chiffre as that of the first Napoleon”.39 I am told that Churchill used this china at Chartwell, where it is on display today.

  Attention to detail remained the order of the day at Chartwell even after its completion. For a garden party on Saturday 21 July 1934, the marquee was to be lined in olive green and lemon,40 and to accommodate some 250 guests, “all sitting at one time” according to the caterer’s notes. The menu was predictably lavish, and equally predictably, the musical selections reflected Churchill’s preference for Gilbert and Sullivan – selections from HMS Pinafore, The Gondoliers, and Iolanthe. And a bit of Clementine caution – insurance against rain, with the pay-out a function of the amount of rainfall: reportedly 30% of the insured amount for .5 inches of rain, up to 100% if .15 inches fell. It did not rain.41

  Nothing was more important to Churchill than the seating arrangements at his dinners, as we shall see when describing the Big Three dinners in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. He personally undertook this chore, which other politicians usually left to diplomatic wives or officials, reflecting yet another lesson learned from his mother, the widely acclaimed society hostess. She carefully seated strangers and, often, people who were not friendly, next to each other at her dinner parties, calling them the “dinner of deadly enemies”.42 Churchill said of his mother that “In my interest she left no wire unpulled, no stone unturned and no cutlet uncooked.”43 As a young man, he once sent her a letter of New Year’s wishes, with a sketch of her holding a menu.

  Chartwell garden party and Mrs. Churchill’s prudence

  President Eisenhower, interviewed years later, remarked on the great attention Churchill paid to correct placement at dinners. He said Churchill always put him on his right at the table, explaining: “anybody who held a commission from two countries outranked anyone who had a commission from one”. Only once did this change. Churchill rang him to explain that he would have to sit on his left as

  My old friend Field Marshal Smuts is to dinner with us this evening. Won’t you give up your place on my right and take a place on my left?44

  Detailed attention extended to costs. Churchill quite regularly questioned bills received from Claridge’s and the Savoy,45 but was always careful to reward staff at such venues, for example adding £3 to the bills for his dinner for Baruch and again for a dinner for sixteen at Claridge’s on 30 January 1935, for which the manager thanked Churchill profusely.46

  In one letter, Churchill thanks the Savoy Hotel manager for sending back his opera hat which he had left at the hotel. He then complains that the charge included a full bottle of port, whereas only one half was consumed, and requests the details on the charges for cigars and cigarettes.47 The manager responds fully, giving details of the expenses: no cigarettes were consumed and the bill was adjusted, but the eight cigars, two of which were taken away by Churchill’s son, are listed and named.

  Best to look over the bills

  The missing port is explained:

  Martinez Port was as usual charged for by the bottle out of which five glasses were consumed. The remainder, that is to say more than half the bottle, is being kept at the bar for Mr. Churchill’s use next time we are honoured with his patronage.48

  The letter then specifies that:

  Two Half Cider Cups were ordered and served. As to the Whiskey, when the bottle was returned to the bar it was found that nine measures had been consumed. The 7/6d Liqueurs is for the Brandy which Mr. A. Eden had.49

  Note that at these functions the whisky bottles were left on the table for guests to serve themselves.

  Churchill’s fondness for combining dining and business extended to picnics. Some of the picnics he organised during the Second World War were hastily convened conferences with his field commanders to discuss tactics and strategy – one in the sands at Tripoli in 1943 and another one “somewhere in north-west Europe”. Concerned as always for the morale of his troops as well as the British public, Churchill had tea with Royal Air Force pilots and with army gunners.

  At another picnic, during a campaign tour, he was accompanied by his daughter, Sarah. Still others, later in life, were jolly affairs including large numbers of friends and associates.

  Churchill had his own idiosyncratic picnic customs: some snippets of verse were to be recited only at picnics, and there was singing while “drinking old Indian Army toasts” at the end of every picnic.53

  Churchill and British generals, Alan Brooke, Montgomery and Ismay, plus Randolph, picnic in the desert, Tripoli, 1943

  Churchill and American generals Eisenhower and Patton, picnic lunch in northwestern Europe

  Tea with RAF pilots, September 1941

  Picnic on the hustings, Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, pouring tea, June 1945

  Lady Diana Cooper, in her memoirs, described a 1944 picnic with Churchill in the North African desert in some detail “… we laid out our delicatessen, the cocktail was shaken up, rugs and cushions distributed, tables and buffets appeared as by a genie’s order … he is immediately seated on a comfortable chair … a pillow put on his lap to act as a table, book-rest etc. A rather alarming succession of whiskies and brandies go down,
with every time a facetious preliminary joke with Edward, an American ex-barman.”50

  Picnic at Marrakesh 1944

  Her husband, Duff Cooper, summarises the seven picnics in a two-week stay in Marrakesh as comprising “large amounts of food and drink”. It seemed to him “a curious form of entertainment”.51

  As late as 1948, when Churchill was 74, one of his secretaries reports that at a picnic in Morocco the fare included “a whacking great slab of ice (to keep the white wine cool), a box of cold luncheon … consisting of poached eggs and ham in aspic jelly (2), two slices of cold beef, half a cold chicken, potato salad, bread, butter, 2 apricot or strawberry tarts, cheese, orange, tangerine and lots of wine and brandy”.52 A reasonable repast after a hard morning at the easel.

  No matter the circumstances – whether in the dining room at Chartwell or on a picnic chair in the desert – Churchill’s profound belief in the importance of face-to-face meetings, and his unshakeable confidence in his ability to get his own way in such intimate encounters, never wavered. It is summed up in a telegraph to Roosevelt, sent shortly before he headed to Moscow in October 1944: “I feel certain that personal contact is essential.”54

  Churchill thought such personal contact, preferably at dinner, important not only with allies, but also with enemies. He planned to bring the Greek Civil War to an end by inviting the Communist Greeks to the negotiating table with the Greek Archbishop, Damaskinos, in Athens at Christmas 1944. There Churchill reversed his earlier vow not to shake hands with the three ELAS representatives, and afterwards told Lord Moran that he “felt that if the three Communists could be got to dine with us all difficulties would vanish”.55

  On board HMS Ajax, off the coast of Athens, where Churchill, Eden and others were staying (for their own protection) during the Christmas 1944 meetings, a temporary valet, who usually cared for Commanders-in-Chief, was assigned to Churchill. He complained to his Admiral that Churchill “breakfasts at nine-thirty in the morning off a wing of chicken and a bottle of white wine … ”56 Perhaps an accurate report, perhaps not.

  Churchill could not always convert his dominance of the dinner table into dominance of events. Conversational skills and conviviality were no match for facts on the ground, as he was well aware, or for the need of other leaders to pursue the interests of their own nations, as they perceived them.

  Three of Churchill’s diplomatic defeats – the losses that most affected the shape of the post-war world – came at dinner tables at Yalta (1945), Bermuda (1953) and in Washington (1954), the latter when he was 80. On each of these occasions, an American president failed to succumb to Churchill’s immense personal charm and intellect.

  At Yalta, Roosevelt used the Big Three dinners to make it clear to Stalin that Churchill was no longer to be regarded as consequential a player as he had been and they now were. In Bermuda in 1953 and again in Washington in 1954, when he once again lived at the White House, Churchill was unable to persuade President Eisenhower, or his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to agree to a summit meeting with the Soviets. This was particularly galling, since Eisenhower arguably owed his career and the wartime reputation that eventually landed him in the White House to Churchill, who had even amended the US edition of his history of the Second World War to delete anything unfavourable to Eisenhower. Churchill, fearful of the consequences of a continuation of the Cold War, was convinced that the Anglo-American Allies should meet with the new Soviet leaders to try to end or ease the tensions before they led to a nuclear war. Despite the opportunity presented by dinners in balmy Bermuda, and a three-night stay in his familiar haunt, the White House, Churchill was defeated in his quest for trilateral talks by the intransigence of John Foster Dulles and Eisenhower’s view that “under this dress” – the dress of post-Stalin Russia – the Soviet Union was “still the same old girl” – a “woman of the streets”.57 Of little use to the outraged Churchill was Eisenhower’s assessment of the wartime leader’s place in history: “He comes closest to fulfilling the requirement of greatness of any individual that I have met in my lifetime.”58

  The defeat at Bermuda must be viewed in the light of John Foster Dulles’ implacable opposition to any negotiations with the Soviet Union and in the context of what Churchill’s special brand of personal, dinner-table diplomacy had accomplished in the past. One of the leading military historians of our time, Eliot Cohen, puts it best:

  Churchill’s conduct of the diplomacy of war reveals an extraordinary blend of techniques and approaches … The cohesiveness of the Grand Alliance stands out as a remarkable feat. Churchill’s personal control of those relations – through extensive correspondence and frequent overseas trips for private meetings and the large conferences that dominated the strategy of war – accounts for much of the success.59

  Churchill, a star player on the world’s stage for more than 50 years, looking back on his time spent at dinner tables, could be confident that those meals involved a lot more than excellent food, good champagne and robust cigars. One achievement – if one were needed – the establishment of the special relationship with Roosevelt that was so crucial to defeating Nazi Germany, clearly outweighs any subsequent setbacks.

  Notes

  1. Wilson, “World of Books,” commenting on Roy Jenkins’ life of Churchill, Daily Telegraph, 7 June, 2004

  2. Sir Christopher Meyer to the author

  3. Soames, Mary Clementine Churchill, p. 260

  4. “In Honour Bound: My Father, Lord Mountbatten”, talk by The Countess Mountbatten of Burma, in Proceedings of the International Churchill Societies, p. 5

  5. Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill as I Knew Him, p. 16

  6. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946, p. 80

  7. Coote, The Other Club. Endpapers

  8. www.bbm.org.uk/Savoyhotel.htm

  9. Macmillan, The Past Masters 1906-1939, p. 150

  10. Gilbert (ed.), War Papers, Volume 3, p. 421

  11. Martin, Lady Randolph Churchill, The Dramatic Years, 1895-1921, p. 295

  12. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Prophet of Truth, Volume V, 1922-1939, p. 265

  13. Manchester, William, The Last Lion, Volume 2, p. 27

  14. Roberts, Andrew, Masters and Commanders, p. 80

  15. The Washington Post, 27 December, 1941

  16. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, The Stricken World, 1917-1922, Volume IV, p. 138

  17. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume IV, pp. 138-9

  18. Kramnick, Isaac and Sherman, Barry, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left, p. 1

  19. DeWolfe, Mark (ed.), Holmes-Laski Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Harold Laski, 1916-1953, p. 1136

  20. Henderson, Nicholas The Private Office Revisited, p. 83

  21. Davies, Joseph E., Mission to Moscow, p. 150

  22. Letter from the 4th Lord Dufferin and Ava. Lord Dufferin added, “I shall ever remember the evening throughout my life”. CHAR 1/232/11

  23. CHAR 1/232/ 7

  24. CHAR 1/242/21

  25. Nasaw, David, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, p. 418

  26. CHAR 1/254/39

  27. Wyatt, To The Point, p. 32

  28. CHAR 1/244/81

  29. Gilbert, email to the author, 19 April 2011

  30. Buchan-Hepburn, Patrick, to Sir Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey, p. 304

  31. James Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, quoted in Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, A Historian’s Journey, p. 231

  32. Montague Browne, Anthony, The Long Sunset, p. 116

  33. Montague Browne, p. 118

  34. In conversation with the author

  35. Soames (ed.), Speaking for Themselves, p. 344

  36. Edward Rothstein, “Contemplating Churchill,” Smithsonian, March 2005, p. 91

  37. Soames (ed.), p. 259

  38. CHAR 1/386/16

  39. CHAR 1/386/17

  40. CHAR 7/15/103

  41. CHAR 7/15/99

  42.
Martin, Ralph G., Lady Randolph Churchill, Volume I, p. 149, from George W. Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 1911

  43. Churchill, My Early Life, p. 150

  44. Cooke, Alistair, General Eisenhower and the Military Churchill, p. 52

  45. CHAR 1/315/121 and CHAR 1/268/98

  46. CHAR 1/254/40 and CHAR 1/282/66

  47. CHAR 1/315/125

  48. CHAR 1/315/122

  49. CHAR 1/315/123

  50. Cooper, Trumpets from the Steep, p. 180

  51. Norwich, John Julius (ed.), The Duff Cooper Diaries, 11 January 1944

  52. Letter from Jo Sturdee, later Countess of Onslow, to her family from Hotel de la Mamounia, Marrakesh, Morocco, 7 January 1948. CHUR/ON SL 2

  53. Graebner, My Dear Mr. Churchill, p. 78

  54. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Road to Victory, 1941-1945, Volume VII, p. 979

  55. Moran, Winston S. Churchill, The Struggle for Survival, p. 213

  56. Pawle, p. 344

  57. Colville, The Fringes of Power, p. 639

  58. Reported by Elizabeth Olson, “Churchill’s Lifelong Romance With a Feisty Former Colony,” The New York Times, 7 February 2004

  59. Cohen, Supreme Command, p. 118