Dinner With Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table

by Cita Stelzer

  P.J. Grigg

  British public servant and friend of Churchill. He was Private Secretary to Churchill when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1924 to 1929, and Secretary of State for War from 1942 to 1945. Died in 1964, aged 74.

  Lord Halifax

  Born Edward Wood, he was Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931 and succeeded his father as Lord Halifax in 1934. As Foreign Secretary from 1938 to 1940, he was not uncritical of Neville Chamberlain’s Munich diplomacy but went along with it. He probably enjoyed greater support among Conservative MPs than did Churchill in May 1940 but accepted Churchill as Prime Minister. At the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, he argued in the War Cabinet for a negotiated peace to be brokered through Mussolini. In December 1940, Churchill removed him from the Foreign Office by making him Ambassador in Washington DC. Halifax was a devout Anglican and a keen fox-hunter, hence his nickname, the “Holy Fox”.

  Averell Harriman

  US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1943–46, and to Britain, 1946. Harriman was Roosevelt’s special envoy to Europe and, as such, was greatly engaged in Anglo-American diplomacy prior to his appointment to Moscow. Late in life, in 1971, he took Anglo-American partnership further by marrying Pamela, the ex-wife of Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph.

  Pamela Harriman

  The daughter of a peer who held the Military Cross and bar, Pamela Digby met Randolph Churchill in 1939 while she was a translator in the Foreign Office. They married in 1939 but their relationship deteriorated after Randolph was posted to Egypt, and they divorced in 1946. Among her many male consorts during this time was the broadcasting pioneer William S. Paley, who described her admiringly as “the greatest courtesan of the century”. Another of her wartime conquests, Averell Harriman, eventually became her third husband in 1971. She was appointed by Bill Clinton as US Ambassador to France in 1993 until her death in 1997.

  Oliver Harvey

  British diplomat. Born 1893. Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, 1941–43. Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, 1943–46 and Deputy Under-Secretary there, 1946–48. Ambassador to France, 1948–54. Ennobled, 1954. His diaries, edited by his son, were published in two volumes after his death in 1968.

  William Randolph Hearst

  American press magnate. Born in 1863, the son of a senator, he stood unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York in 1905, subsequently becoming a Congressman. His business methods and seclusion at his private mansion at San Simeon made him a model for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. He died in 1951.

  Kathleen Hill

  Churchill’s secretary. Born in 1900, she was a talented violinist who helped organise the Girl Guide movement in India. When she returned to Britain in 1937, she became Churchill’s secretary at Chartwell, and was his personal private secretary during the war. She was the curator at Chequers from 1946 to 1969.

  Leslie Hollis

  Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff Committee whose memoir, War at the Top, provides a fascinating insight especially into the state of British military unpreparedness in the early stages of the war.

  Marian Holmes

  Churchill’s secretary. She joined the Downing Street secretariat in 1938 while Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister and from 1943 was part of Churchill’s pool of secretaries, accompanying him on tours abroad. She continued working as a Downing Street secretary after Clement Attlee became Prime Minister, which she described “as the difference between champagne and water”.

  Harry Hopkins

  The President’s principal diplomatic adviser during the Second World War, and, because he lived almost permanently at the White House, was sometimes seen as even more influential than the Secretary of State. Hopkins worked with Roosevelt to develop the New Deal relief programmes in the 1930s. With war in Europe, the US President sent Hopkins to assess Britain’s chances and – after Churchill himself – nobody did more than Hopkins to convince Roosevelt that Churchill was a strong leader of a country that needed American backing and Lend-Lease assistance. Hopkins was also present at the major wartime conferences at Teheran, Casablanca and Yalta. He died in 1946, aged 55.

  Roy Howells

  Churchill’s nurse and personal attendant from 1958 until Churchill’s death in 1965.

  Cordell Hull

  US Secretary of State, 1933–44. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had called for stepping-up American rearmament and supporting Britain, albeit while keeping America out of the European war. Much of his work during the war was spent drawing-up plans for the post-war world, including the role of the UN. He retired from the State Department because of ill health, dying in 1955.

  Thomas Cecil Hunt

  Churchill’s gastro-enterologist. He often wrote to Churchill with sensible recommendations on dieting, exercise, smoking and the drinking of brandy rather than port. He saw active service in North Africa and at the age of 70 he founded the British Digestive Foundation. Died in 1981.

  Ismet Inönü

  President of Turkey, 1938–50 and Prime Minister of the country, 1923–27 and 1960–65. He maintained Turkey’s neutrality during the Second World War despite endeavours by Hitler and Churchill to enlist Turkey’s support.

  Hastings Ismay

  British general, known as “Pug”. He served with the Camel Corps in the First World War and became Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1938. During the Second World War he provided an essential link between Churchill and the military Chiefs of Staff. First Secretary-General of NATOTO, 1951–7. Died 1965.

  Ruth Ive

  Worked as a censor for the transatlantic telephone link during the Second World War and recently wrote a lively memoir of her work listening into the conversations between, among others, Churchill and Roosevelt.

  Ian Jacob

  Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet. After the war he went into broadcasting and was Director-General of the BBC from 1952 to 1960.

  Joseph Kennedy

  US Ambassador to London, 1937–41. Prominent leader of Boston’s Irish-American community. He did not disguise his belief that Britain would be defeated. His sons included John F. and Robert Kennedy, both of whom he outlived.

  Archibald Clark Kerr

  Experienced British diplomat. As Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1942–46, he worked hard to build good relations with Stalin. He attended key conferences at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. Ambassador to the United States, 1946–48. Created Lord Inverchapel in 1946 and died in 1951.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Economist. He was a critic both of demanding war reparations from Germany after the First World War and of Churchill’s economic policy in 1925. Keynes argued that mass unemployment could be cured by the government’s management of demand. He was a Treasury civil servant during the Second World War and led British negotiations with the United States over Lend-Lease and the post-war international economic order at the Bretton Woods Conference, 1944. Died 1946.

  Ernest King

  US Chief of Naval Operations during the Second World War. Despite the requirements of working with America’s allies, he never hid a deep-seated mistrust of the British. At the Casablanca Conference he almost hit General Alan Brooke. He was not greatly impressed by democratic politicians of any stripe.

  William Lyon Mackenzie King

  Canadian Prime Minister, 1921–30 and 1935–48. Leader of the Liberal Party from 1919, Mackenzie King was the dominant figure in the first half of Canada’s twentieth century. During the 1930s he had made clear Canada’s reluctance to join a European war unless Britain was directly attacked, but in 1939 he mobilised his country for a full-hearted commitment, which included not only a massive deployment of Canada’s armed forces but also generous financial aid to Britain, while always retaining his dominion’s right to independent action. He died in 1950, aged 75.

  Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen

  British diplomat. He served as Minister to the Baltic States from 1930–34, Minister i
n Teheran from 1934–36, Ambassador in China from 1936–38, Ambassador in Turkey from 1939–44 and as Ambassador in Brussels and Minister to Luxembourg from 1944 until his retirement in 1947.

  Elizabeth Layton (later Nel)

  Churchill’s secretary during most of the war years who accompanied him to meetings in the US, Canada, Athens, Casablanca and Yalta. Her book on these years, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, is wonderful.

  Harold Laski

  British Socialist theorist. Academic at the London School of Economics, 1920–50. Chairman of the Labour Party, 1945. Frequent target of Churchill’s invective. Died, age 57, in 1950.

  William D. Leahy

  Fleet admiral of the US Navy.

  Professor Frederick Lindemann, Lord Cherwell

  Churchill’s scientific adviser. German-born and educated physicist, whose mother was American and father a British naturalised Frenchman. He helped transform the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University into a world-class scientific research institution. He was Churchill’s personal assistant during the Second World War and Paymaster-General from 1942 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1953. A keen pianist and tennis player. His vegetarianism, teetotallism and abstention from tobacco made him an unlikely favourite of Churchill, who nonetheless admired his mental dexterity and love of argument. Created Lord Cherwell in 1941 and died in 1957.

  John Jestyn Llewellin

  Conservative politician. After working in the Department of Supply, he succeeded Lord Woolton as Minister of Food from 1943 to 1945. He was created Lord Llewellin in 1945 and served as Governor-General of the Rhodesian Federation from 1953 to 1957. Died 1958.

  David Lloyd George

  Prime Minister, 1916–22. Dynamic Liberal politician who led a coalition government in the latter stages of the First World War. Churchill admired his energy but was disappointed first by Lloyd George’s admiration for Hitler’s economic policies and then, in 1940, by his defeatist attitude and reluctance to join Churchill’s government or accept the post of Ambassador to Washington. Died in 1945, aged 82.

  Hugh Lunghi

  British diplomat. Born in the British legation in Teheran where his father served as economic advisor to the Shah. After Oxford, he became a Major in the British Army. A Russian speaker since childhood, he was appointed ADC to the Head of the British Military Mission in Moscow in 1943. Served as interpreter for the British Chiefs of Staff and for Churchill at the Big Three conferences as well as at Churchill’s meeting with Stalin in 1944 (and later for Khrushchev). After the war served in the British embassy in Moscow and at the Foreign Office. Later joined the BBC World Service.

  Oliver Lyttelton

  Conservative politician and member of the War Cabinet. In 1941 he was appointed Minister of State in Cairo and liaison officer with the Free French. From 1942 to 1945 he was Minister of Production. Colonial Secretary from 1951 until 1954, when he was made Viscount Chandos. Chairman of the National Theatre from 1962–71 – the Lyttelton Theatre is named after him.

  Ramsay MacDonald

  Prime Minister, 1924, and 1929–37. Labour politician who split his party by forming a coalition with the Conservative and Liberal parties to fight the economic crisis in 1931. He pressed, unsuccessfully, for world disarmament.

  Norman McGowan

  One of Churchill’s valets, late in Churchill’s life.

  Harold Macmillan

  Prime Minister, 1957–63. Conservative politician who combined progressive social views with opposition to appeasement. During the war he was successively Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Supply and Minister Resident, Allied Headquarters in North-West Africa. His period as prime minister was marked by growing consumerism and higher living standards in Britain, accelerated decolonisation in Africa and his failed attempt to join the nascent European Union, the EEC, was vetoed by De Gaulle.

  George C. Marshall

  As Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff, Marshall transformed the relatively under-resourced peacetime US armed forces into a massive power capable of winning a global war. He was both an excellent organiser and picker of capable commanders. His plan for an invasion of Europe in 1943 met opposition from Churchill and was not enacted until June 1944. Although he failed in his post-war mission to bring peace to China, he had more success as Truman’s Secretary of State between 1947 and 1949, proposing and driving through the Marshall Plan of aid that fuelled Western Europe’s economic – and perhaps political – recovery. Briefly Defense Secretary for a year between 1950 and 51, he then retired from public life, accepted the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize and died in 1959.

  John Martin

  A civil servant, Martin was Private Secretary to Churchill when he was appointed Prime Minister in 1940, becoming his Principal Private Secretary the following year and serving him closely both in Downing Street and on his trips around the world during the war. After the war, he served in the Colonial Office and was High Commissioner in Malta from 1965 to 1967. He died in 1991.

  Robert P. Meiklejohn

  Personal assistant to Averell Harriman. Kept a diary of his service with Ambassador Harriman.

  Vyacheslav Molotov

  Soviet Foreign Minister, 1939–49 and 1953–56. Stalin assigned him to drive through rapprochement with Hitler, agreeing the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact in August 1939, enabling the Soviet Union to invade eastern Poland and subsequently the Baltic States and, less successfully, Finland. Once Germany attacked the Soviet Union, he proved a tough negotiator with his new British and American allies. He lived to the age of 96, dying in 1986. Churchill considered him “a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness”.

  Walter Monckton

  Lawyer, who advised King Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936 and served as Director-General of the Ministry of Information in 1940. He was Solicitor-General in 1945 and subsequently a Conservative MP, serving in Churchill’s second administration as Minister for Labour. He gained a peerage in 1957 and died in 1965.

  Venetia Montagu

  Born Venetia Stanley. Overly close personal confidante – despite considerable age difference – of the Liberal Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, during the First World War. Married his former Private Secretary, Edwin Montagu. Clementine Churchill’s first cousin.

  Bernard Montgomery

  British soldier. He commanded the British Eighth Army in North Africa in 1942, masterminding its decisive victory over Rommel at the battle of El Alamein and proceeding to sweep German forces out of North Africa and then take the fight into Sicily and Italy. He was Supreme Allied Commander until disagreement with Eisenhower led to the latter assuming the role. “Monty” led ground forces on D-Day and commanded the British advance through Western Europe. He was created Field Marshal in 1944 and Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946 when he succeeded Lord Alanbrooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and served as Eisenhower’s deputy as Supreme Commander of NATOTO in Europe from 1951 to 1958. He was popular with his troops despite his personal asceticism and disciplinarian attitude, but his American colleagues found his manner overbearing, verging on insufferable.

  Henry Morgenthau

  US Treasury Secretary, 1934–45. Before the war, he had fought with Roosevelt to try and balance the budget. In 1944 he proposed breaking Germany up into its constituent states after the war. Even more controversially, he called for it to be economically disabled and returned to a primarily agrarian society. The plan was adopted in September but Truman backed away from it and, believing his advice was being ignored, Morgenthau resigned in 1945, and published a book propagating his ideas on a Carthaginian peace.

  H.V. Morton

  Henry Vollam Morton (1892–1972) was a British journalist and travel writer whose In Search of England was a best-selling book, first published in 1927 and frequently reprinted. Present at the Newfoundland meeting in the Atlantic. After the war he emigrated to South Africa.

  Edmund Murray

  Detective and Churchill’s personal bodyguard from 1950 until
his death in 1965. He shared Churchill’s love of painting.

  Henrietta Nesbitt

  White House principal housekeeper, 1933–46. Born in 1874, her White House Diary was published in 1947. Famous for her substandard cuisine.

  Harold Nicolson

  British diplomat and politician. He opposed appeasement before the war and was elected a National Labour MP in coalition with the Conservatives. During the war he served as Parliamentary Secretary and Governor of the BBC. He was knighted in 1953. A historian and biographer, his diaries provide an illuminating narrative of the events and personalities of his political and social circle from 1930 until 1962.