Dinner With Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table

by Cita Stelzer

  Vladimir Pavlov

  Stalin’s principal interpreter at the Big Three meetings.

  John Peck

  One of Churchill’s wartime Assistant Private Secretaries. He was appointed to work for Churchill at the Admiralty and then at Downing Street. He was with Churchill at Potsdam and accompanied him on his tour of the troops in Berlin. Then he transferred to the Foreign Service and became Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland. Knighted in 1971.

  Richard Pim

  Developed Churchill’s Map Room which went everywhere with the Prime Minister including to the White House in 1941 and all foreign conferences. Captain Pim was a trusted staff member throughout the Second World War

  Stewart Pinfield

  Chief Petty Officer and a Churchill favourite. He was in charge of catering for the Prime Minister at Carthage, Teheran and Potsdam.

  Henry Page Croft

  Brigadier-General in the First World War and Conservative MP from 1910 to 1940 whereupon he became Lord Croft. He joined Churchill in opposing granting greater sovereignty to India in 1935 and was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for War from 1940 to 1945.

  Odette Pol Roger

  Wife of Jacques Pol Roger, co-director of Churchill’s favourite champagne house. Churchill was entranced by her when they first met in 1945 and their friendship continued, fortified by the produce of the family firm, until his death. She died in 2009, aged 89.

  Charles Portal

  Air Chief Marshal of the RAF, 1940–45. He served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and helped oversee the RAF’s rapid expansion in 1939. Despite disagreements, he worked closely and successfully with Churchill and advocated the strategic bombing offensive on Germany. He also won the esteem of Eisenhower. He retired from the RAF in 1945, was given a peerage and directed the British atomic energy programme until 1951. Died 1971.

  Jane Portal, (subsequently Lady Williams of Elvel)

  Churchill’s personal secretary during his second premiership, 1949–55.

  Emery Reves

  Churchill’s literary agent. He was born in Hungary in 1904 but naturalised British in 1940. In later life, Churchill greatly enjoyed staying with Reves and his glamorous partner, Wendy Russell, at their home, the Villa La Pausa on the French Riviera.

  John Reith

  Creator of the BBC, serving as its first General Manager in 1922 and its Director-General from 1928 to 1938, shaping its public service ethos. A dour Scot, he was made Lord Reith in 1940 and held office successively as Minister of Information, Transport, Works and Planning. His relations with Churchill were fraught and Churchill sacked him in 1942. He subsequently channelled his energies into the development of new towns and harbouring grudges. Died, 1971.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Wife of President Roosevelt. Born into a wealthy New York family in 1884, she married the future President in 1905. The marriage held together through mutual affection and shared political activism rather than love and exclusive devotion. She outlived her husband by eighteen years and, as a US delegate to the UN General Assembly, chaired the UN Human Rights Commission.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  US President, 1933–45. A wealthy New Yorker whose distant cousin, Theodore, was also President. Confined to a wheelchair by polio in 1921, Roosevelt became Governor of New York in 1928 and was elected to the White House in the midst of the Great Depression. The extent to which his New Deal policies were successful remains contentious, although they did have positive effects on morale. His policy of neutrality – while sending supplies to Britain – ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage two months after the Yalta Conference and a month before the war’s end in Europe.

  Victor Rothschild

  A member of the banking family, Rothschild became a Labour peer in 1937 and served in the British Security Service, MI5, during the war, winning the George Medal. However, his earlier friendship at Cambridge with those subsequently unmasked as Soviet spies brought him – unfairly – under suspicion. After the war he was a prominent zoologist and advised the Tory prime ministers, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. He died in 1990, aged 79.

  Leslie Rowan

  Civil servant. Captained the English hockey team both before and after the Second World War. Churchill’s Private Secretary 1941, and Principal Private Secretary in 1945, continued to serve and advise the subsequent Labour government on economic policy. Knighted in 1949 and died, aged 64, in 1972.

  François Rysavy

  Czech-born White House chef, famed for his mastery of international cuisine. In 1957 he published an account of his time in the kitchens, complete with the favourite recipes of President Eisenhower and his wife.

  Frank Sawyers

  Churchill’s valet during most of the war years, accompanied Churchill on most of his overseas trips.

  Walter Bedell Smith

  Chief of Staff to General Eisenhower during the lead up to D-Day. He later served as American Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Director of the CIA.

  Jan Christiaan Smuts

  Despite having led a guerrilla campaign against British forces in the second Boer War, Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870–1950) was not only a political champion of South African involvement on the British side in both world wars, but served in the British Army in the First World War and was raised to the rank of British Field Marshal in the Second World War. He was a member of the Imperial War Cabinet. A scholar as well as a soldier and friend of Churchill, he was a driving influence in the creation of the League of Nations after the first conflict and the United Nations after the second conflict. He was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 until 1948, when he lost power to the National Party which campaigned against Smuts’ increasingly liberal attitude to racial segregation, which it replaced with apartheid.

  Edward S. Stettinius

  US Secretary of State, 1944–45. One of the architects of the UN, he stepped down as President Truman’s Secretary of State in order to become the first US Ambassador to the UN, but resigned in 1946, unhappy at Truman’s attitude towards the assembly. Died in 1949, aged only 49.

  Henry L. Stimson

  US Secretary of State, 1929–33, and Secretary for War, 1911–13 and 1940–45. Already aged 73 when in 1940 Roosevelt asked him to return to the post of Secretary for War which he had last held before the First World War, Stimson was a noted “hawk” in Washington against both the German and Japanese regimes.

  Walter Thompson

  Churchill’s bodyguard. He had been Lloyd George’s bodyguard from 1917 to 1920, when he took over Churchill’s security. He retired in 1936 to become a grocer, but returned to be Churchill’s bodyguard throughout the Second World War.

  Commander C. R. (Tommy) Thompson

  A Flag Lieutenant at the Admiralty, he was responsible for organising Churchill’s wartime travels both in Britain and overseas, accompanying him throughout and journeying over 40,000 miles in doing so.

  Harry S Truman

  US President, 1945–53. A Missouri haberdasher by trade who assumed the highest office on Roosevelt’s death, although widely discounted as greatly inferior in stature and ability to Roosevelt, whom he had served as Vice-President. Despite winning re-election in 1948, he suffered low popularity during his presidency, although subsequent analysis of his handling of foreign affairs, in particular his decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan, contain communism, sanction the Marshall Plan programme to rebuild Western Europe and engage in the Korean War has led to his being adjudged one of the most underrated presidents in American history.

  Sumner Welles

  US Under-Secretary of State, 1937–43. Roosevelt described him as “the only man in the State Department who really knew what was going on”. Born into a wealthy and influential New York family, Welles had been a page boy at the wedding of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The two men had a strong rapport and Welles wielded more personal influence on foreign policy matters with the Presid
ent than the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. Hull was among Welles’s political enemies who forced his retirement by threatening to reveal his homosexual importuning. Thereafter, he attempted suicide and retreated into alcoholism and the manipulative care of his manservant, Gustave.

  Wendell Willkie

  Unsuccessful Republican contender in the 1940 presidential election. Initially a Democrat, Willkie had come to prominence campaigning against aspects of Roosevelt’s New Deal and was the surprise “outsider” choice on the Republicans’ 1940 ticket. Despite some tactical backflips during the election campaign, he was mostly a vocal supporter of sending aid to Britain, in contrast to some isolationists in his party. After his defeat, he divided his party by backing Roosevelt’s lend lease policy and was sent by the President as a personal wartime emissary to Britain, the Soviet Union and China. Having failed to be re-adopted as the Republican contender and toying with establishing his own Liberal Party, he died in 1944, age 52.

  Charles Wilson, (Lord Moran)

  Churchill’s doctor from 1939. Awarded the Military Cross for his valour on the front line in the Medical Corps during the First World War. As President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1941–50, he was active in the establishment of the National Health Service. Knighted in 1938, he became Lord Moran in 1943. His decision to publish his account of life with Churchill, including details of his physical decline, the year after Churchill’s death, was widely condemned for its questionable ethics, although it provided much informative detail for the historian. He died in 1977.

  John Winant

  US Ambassador to Britain from 1941 to 1946, much respected and admired there. He was dining with Churchill when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor was received. Despite the high regard in which he was held, he suffered depression and committed suicide in 1947.

  Lord Woolton

  Born Frederick Marquis in 1893, he was Chairman of the John Lewis department store chain from 1936 to 1951. Created Lord Woolton in 1939, he proved a successful and popular Minister of Food, overseeing rationing, and was Minister of Reconstruction from 1943 to 1945. He was subsequently a successful Chairman of the Conservative Party, helping to revive its post-war fortunes and modernise its organisation, thus contributing to his re-election. He died in 1964.

  Woodrow Wyatt

  A journalist, author and a Labour MP, he served as Personal Assistant to Sir Stafford Cripps in India. He was knighted in 1983 and became Baron Wyatt of Weeford in 1987. He wrote three volumes of scandalously delicious diaries.

  ENDNOTES

  NB: Full details of all publications referred to in these notes can be found in the bibliography, following

  Prologue

  1. Churchill to the House of Commons, 3 November 1953, Hansard HC Deb 5s., vol. 520, col. 29

  2. D’Este, Carlo, Warlord, p. 386

  3. CHAR 2/240B/70, and CHAR 2/240B/152

  4. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume V, p. 617

  5. Gilbert (ed.), The Churchill War Papers, The Ever-Widening War, Volume 3, p. 320

  6. Bradford, Sarah, George VI, p. 450

  7. Soames, Mary Clementine Churchill, p. 445

  8. Gilbert, Churchill, Finest Hour, 1939-1941, Volume VI, p. 160

  9. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, 1917-1922, Volume IV, p 35

  10. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Road to Victory, 1941-1945, Volume VII, p. 664

  11. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume VII, p. 802

  12. Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 69

  13. Pawle, p. 190

  14. CHUR 1/285

  15. Kass, The Hungry Soul, Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature, p. 182

  SECTION 1

  Chapter 1 The Importance of Dinners

  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

  Chapter 2: Meeting off Newfoundland

  1. FDR to WSC on the occasion of FDR’s 60th birthday, in response to the Prime Minister’s birthday wishes, Moran, p. 25

  2. Larson, Philip P., “Encounters with Chicago”, Finest Hour 118, p. 30.
<
br />   3. McJimsey, The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, p. 138

  4. Churchill, The Second World War, The Grand Alliance, Volume III, p. 427

  5. Colville, p. 415

  6. Colville, p. 368

  7. Colville, p. 369

  8. Dilks, David (ed.), Cadogan, p. 395

  9. Morton, H., Atlantic Meeting, p. 74

  10. Dilks (ed.), p. 396

  11. Joan Bright in conversation with the author

  12. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941, p. 391

  13. Gilbert (ed.), The Churchill War Papers, Volume 3, p. 1036

  14. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, p. 391

  15. Wilson, Theodore, The First Summit, p. 92

  16. Morton, p. 104

  17. Wilson, p. 104

  18. Although the press was barred, Morton and Howard Spring, a novelist, were invited to go along to describe what they saw. They were not told where they were going and were sworn to secrecy by Brendan Bracken. Morton asked an important question: “Should I pack a dinner jacket?” Bracken said, “yes”.