Young Titan

by Michael Shelden

  7. Masterman, C. F. G. Masterman, 144.

  8. John Campbell, “Smith, Frederick Edwin, First Earl of Birkenhead,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Smith, F.E., 98 and 73; Campbell, F. E. Smith, 257.

  9. Iain Sproat, “Women Behind the Great Men of Parliamentary History,” Scotsman, April 18, 2004.

  10. Smith, F.E., 175; “Mr. F. E. Smith’s Attack,” Daily Mirror, Feb. 23, 1910.

  11. Batt, Dr. Barnardo, 161–62.

  12. David Lloyd George, “The Budget & the People: A Speech Delivered for the Budget League at the Edinburgh Castle, Limehouse, London, on July 30th, 1909,” Parliamentary Archives, LG/C/33/2/11.

  13. “Budget Battle,” Daily Mail, Aug. 2, 1909; “The House of Commons,” Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1, 1909. The repeal of the land taxes is discussed in Jenkins, Churchill, 159.

  14. “Chancellor & Landlords,” Daily Mail, Aug. 3, 1909.

  15. WSC, Free Trade Hall, Manchester, May 22, 1909, CS, 1258.

  16. WSC, St. Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, July 26, 1909; Colston Hall, Bristol, Nov. 13, 1909; Liberal Club, Branksome, July 31, 1909, CS, 1293, 1346, and 1300; Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 314–15.

  17. WSC, Palace Theatre, Leicester, Sept. 4, 1909, CS, 1314–24.

  18. “Mr. Churchill Flouts the Premier” and “Twelve Titled Relatives,” Daily Express, Sept. 6 and 8, 1909.

  19. Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill, 131.

  20. Soames, Clementine Churchill, 109 and 127.

  21. Edwards, David Lloyd George, 1:311.

  22. Grigg, Lloyd George: The People’s Champion, 220.

  23. Gilbert, David Lloyd George, 1:393.

  24. Farr, Reginald McKenna, 185. For Lloyd George’s prediction of a ninety-seat majority, see Gilbert, David Lloyd George, 1:403.

  25. Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 89; WSC, Liberalism and the Social Problem, xxiii; Gilbert, David Lloyd George, 1:465.

  26. WSC, Palace Theatre, Leicester, Sept. 4, 1909, CS, 1319.

  XIX: Life and Death

  1. “Mr. Lloyd George in Danger,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, Jan. 16, 1910; “Mr. Lloyd George and the People of Grimsby: Over a Wall,” Daily Express, Jan. 17, 1909 (see also the cartoon, “Still Running,” in this issue).

  2. WSC, Torquay, Devon, Jan. 21, 1910, CS, 1477.

  3. Margot Asquith to WSC, Feb. 12, 1910, CV 2:2, 1134; Clifford, The Asquiths, 165.

  4. WSC to H. H. Asquith, Feb. 5, 1910, CV 2:2, 1133.

  5. Lee, Jean, Lady Hamilton, 197.

  6. “The Burnley Child Murder” and “Refusal of Reprieve,” Times (London), Jan. 12 and Feb. 21, 1910. News reports identified the murdered child as a boy, not—as Jean Hamilton’s diary recorded—a girl.

  7. Home Office, “Capital Sentence Schedule,” CHAR 12/13/1–5. A researcher for Randolph Churchill counted forty-three cases (Winston S. Churchill, 396).

  8. “Suspension of Death Penalty for Murder,” House of Commons, July 15, 1948, Hansard; “Reprieved Man’s Suicide,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, Sept. 4, 1910.

  9. Lee, King Edward VII, 2:676; Jennie Churchill to Queen Alexandra, May 9, 1910, CHAR 28/78/73.

  10. Jennie Churchill to WSC, Aug. 25, 1906, CHAR 1/56/34–38.

  11. “The Creation of Peers,” Times (London), Sept. 11, 1909. Knollys’s comment has sometimes been described as part of a letter to the Times (Gilbert, Churchill, 206), but the national newspaper was merely reprinting a report in the Glasgow Herald. WSC to Clementine, Sept. 12, 1909, CV 2:2, 908–9.

  12. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 319 and 327; “Duration of Parliament,” House of Commons, March 31, 1910, Hansard.

  13. Lindsay, The Crawford Papers, 153; Hassall, A Biography of Edward Marsh, 156.

  14. Asquith, Fifty Years in Parliament, 86–88.

  15. Lytton, Prison and Prisoners, 213–66; Earl of Lytton to WSC, March 18, 1910, CHAR 12/2/21; Hassall, A Biography of Edward Marsh, 162.

  16. Mosley, Julian Grenfell, 176.

  17. Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 130.

  18. WSC, “Memorandum,” Home Office, July 19, 1910, CV 2:3, 1447–48; “Plot to Kidnap a Cabinet Minister,” Daily Mirror, May 14, 1913; Dundee Advertiser, Dec. 2, 1910, CV 2:3, 1466.

  19. Toye, Lloyd George & Churchill, 83.

  XX: Valiant

  1. Wood, Nineteenth Century Britain: 1815–1914, 435; Smith, The Making of Scotland, 401.

  2. “Suspension of Death Penalty for Murder,” House of Commons, July 15, 1948, Hansard.

  3. Colliery Strike Disturbances in South Wales, 4.

  4. “Prime Minister (Engagements),” House of Commons, Nov. 30, 1978, Hansard.

  5. “A State of Siege,” Times (London), Nov. 9, 1910.

  6. Colliery Strike Disturbances in South Wales, 4–5; “Coal Owners and Mediation,” Times (London), Nov. 11, 1910.

  7. James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 44; House of Commons, Nov. 24, 1910, CS, 1619.

  8. Public Record Office, Home Office 144/1553/199768, cited in Anthony Mòr O’Brien, “Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots,” Welsh History Review/Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru, June 1994.

  9. Colliery Strike Disturbances in South Wales, 48; O’Brien, “Churchill and the Tonypandy Riots.”

  10. Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 71.

  11. WSC to Lloyd George, Nov. 13, 1910, CV 2:2, 1211.

  12. Lloyd George, Family Letters, 153.

  13. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 331; WSC to Asquith, Jan. 3, 1911, CV 2:2, 1032.

  14. Winston and Clementine, 42.

  15. WSC, Thoughts and Adventures, 68.

  16. WSC, My Early Life, 193; “Mr. Churchill in Command,” Daily Mirror, Jan. 4, 1911.

  17. Andy McSmith, “Siege of Sidney Street,” Independent (UK), Dec. 11, 2010; “Inquest on the Bodies of Two Unknown Men,” January 1911, CHAR 12/11/3. The three policemen weren’t murdered in January, as stated in Gilbert, Churchill, 223.

  18. Jenkins, Churchill, 200; Hassall, A Biography of Edward Marsh, 171.

  19. “His Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech,” House of Commons, Feb. 6, 1911, Hansard.

  20. Kipling, The Letters of Rudyard Kipling: 1911–19, 10.

  21. CHAR 12/3/62–64 and CHAR 12/7/9–11. John Syme, an ex-inspector of police, was charged with threatening WSC’s life (Times, Aug. 3, 1911).

  22. Soames, Clementine Churchill, 92; Lindsay, The Crawford Papers, 189.

  23. “Clause 9,” House of Commons, March 9, 1911, Hansard.

  24. “Angry Scenes in House of Commons,” Daily Mirror, March 11, 1911.

  25. WSC to the King, March 10, 1911, CV 2:2, 1057.

  XXI: Storm Signals

  1. Hassall, A Biography of Edward Marsh, 172; Winston and Clementine, 111.

  2. Winston and Clementine, 43.

  3. Soames, Clementine Churchill, 95.

  4. Ibid., 91.

  5. “Society in Costume,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, May 28, 1911; “Fancy Dress Ball at Claridge’s,” Times (London), May 25, 1911.

  6. “Parliament Bill,” House of Commons, July 24, 1911, Hansard. Unlike some fanciful accounts of this debate, mine is based primarily on the parliamentary transcript.

  7. Bonham Carter, Lantern Slides, 274; Clifford, The Asquiths, 185.

  8. Gardiner, Prophets, Priests and Kings, 90; Margot Asquith, Autobiography, 276.

  9. “Parliament Bill,” House of Commons, July 24, 1911, Hansard; Margot Asquith, Autobiography, 276.

  10. WSC to the King, July 24, 1911, CV 2:2, 1101; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 393.

  11. Lord Derby to WSC; and the King to WSC, Aug. 15 and 16, 1911, CV 2:2, 1274.

  12. “Fighting in Liverpool,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, Aug. 20, 1911.

  13. Lewis Harcourt to Mary “Molly” Harcourt, Aug. 16 and 17, 1911, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

  14. Austen Chamberlain, Politics from Inside, 437.

  15. “Strike Calamity,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, Aug. 20, 1911.

  16. Riddell, Diaries, 25; Bonham C
arter, Winston Churchill, 180.

  17. House of Commons, Aug. 22, 1911, CS, 1875.

  18. Robbins, Sir Edward Grey, 243; WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 40. Harold Nicolson identified the lone German in Agadir as Herr Wilberg (King George the Fifth, 186).

  19. WSC to Edward Grey, Nov. 22, 1911, CHAR 13/1/25 (Andrew, Defend the Realm, 37); WSC, Thoughts and Adventures, 83.

  20. Gilbert, David Lloyd George, 1:450–54.

  21. WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 44–45.

  22. Ibid., 58–62.

  23. On Sept. 4, 1914, the Kaiser believed that the war was won. “It is the thirty-fifth day,” he said. “We are besieging Rheims, we are thirty miles from Paris” (Keegan, The First World War, 112).

  24. Daily Mirror, Sept. 5, 1911; Hassall, A Biography of Edward Marsh, 174.

  XXII: Armada

  1. Country Life, Jan. 18, 1908; Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill, 187.

  2. Haldane, An Autobiography, 245. Asquith sent his criticisms to McKenna on Sept. 18, 1911 (Farr, Reginald McKenna, 210).

  3. Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill, 187.

  4. Haldane, An Autobiography, 246–47.

  5. Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill, 188, and Lantern Slides, 285.

  6. Farr, Reginald McKenna, 217–18.

  7. Bonham Carter, Lantern Slides, 306.

  8. WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 71.

  9. WSC, Glasgow, Feb. 9, 1912; CS, 1912; Toye, Lloyd George & Churchill, 119.

  10. WSC, Burlington House, London, May 4, 1912, CS, 1961–62.

  11. WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 111–12.

  12. WSC, House of Commons, March 26, 1913, CS, 2082; and The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 126.

  13. Ibid., 127–28.

  14. Morgan, Churchill, 322; WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 87–88.

  15. WSC, My Early Life, 196.

  16. WSC, Glasgow, Feb. 9, 1912, CS, 1910.

  17. “Mr. Churchill’s Speech: German Comment,” Times (London), Feb. 12, 1912.

  18. Huldermann, Albert Ballin, 183.

  19. WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 103.

  20. “Black Outlook in Belfast,” Daily Mirror, Feb. 5, 1912; Alexander Murray [Elibank] to WSC, Jan. 31, 1912, CV 2:3, 1390. For an example of the use of “provocative” to describe WSC’s visit, see “Mr. J. H. Campbell and Mr. Churchill,” Times (London), Feb. 10, 1912.

  21. George Bernard Shaw to Jennie Churchill, Jan. 20, 1912, CHAR 28/81/4–8; Hassall, A Biography of Edward Marsh, 184.

  22. Soames, Clementine Churchill, 105; Winston and Clementine, 61–62.

  23. WSC, Belfast, Feb. 8, 1912, CS, 1909.

  24. “Mr. Balfour in the Park,” Daily Mail, April 6, 1914.

  XXIII: The Old Man and the Sea

  1. For a superb account of Jennie’s fair, see Marion F. O’Connor, “Theatre of the Empire: ‘Shakespeare’s England’ at Earl’s Court, 1912,” in Howard and O’Connor, eds., Shakespeare Reproduced, 68–98.

  2. “Fiasco at Earl’s Court,” NYT, Aug. 4, 1912.

  3. Cornwallis-West, Edwardian Hey-Days, 163–64.

  4. Kate Carew, “Mrs. Cornwallis-West Interrupts a Busy Day to Chat with Kate Carew,” New York Tribune, Sept. 8, 1912.

  5. Gardiner, The War Lords, 306; Fisher, Memories, 208–9 and 163.

  6. Ibid., 274; Begbie, Master Workers, 38.

  7. WSC, Great Contemporaries, 337.

  8. Fisher, Memories, 110 and 116; Mackay, Fisher, 289.

  9. Ibid., 319, 320, and 403.

  10. Lord Fisher to WSC, Dec. 10, 1911, and April 24, 1913, CV 2:3, 1927 and 1939.

  11. Mackay, Fisher, 434–35.

  12. Fisher, Memories, vi.

  13. Riddell, Diaries, 28.

  14. Lord Fisher to WSC, April 22, 1912, CV 2:3, 1545–46; WSC, The World Crisis: 1911–1914, 126.

  15. Bonham Carter, Lantern Slides, 316.

  16. Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill, 202.

  17. WSC to Lord Fisher, June 11, 1912, CV 2:3, 1929.

  18. Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill, 217.

  19. “Unionist Gain at Crewe,” Daily Mail, July 29, 1912.

  20. Adams, Bonar Law, 108–9 and 101.

  21. Gardiner, Pillars of Society, 121. Carson’s unpublished letters are quoted in Thomas C. Kennedy, “Troubled Tories: Dissent and Confusion Concerning the Party’s Ulster Policy, 1910–1914,” Journal of British Studies, July 2007, 574.

  22. “Conservative Fete at Blenheim,” Lloyd’s Weekly News, July 28, 1912.

  23. There are various accounts of the assault on WSC in the House of Commons, but few note how serious the impact would have been from a large book thrown by a “giant.” For McNeill’s height, see his obituary in the Times (London), Oct. 13, 1934. For my account I have drawn on Lewis Harcourt’s description in his journal entry of Nov. 13, 1912 (“Book thrown by McNeill . . . at Winston, hit on cheek and drew blood.”), Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; and the reports in the Times, Nov. 14, 1912, and the Daily Mirror, Nov. 15, 1912. McNeill’s name is incorrectly given as “O’Neill” in Gilbert, Churchill, 250.

  24. Austen Chamberlain, Politics from Inside, 491.

  25. “Speaker’s Plan to Restore Peace,” Daily Mirror, Nov. 15, 1912.

  26. “Silenced,” Penny Illustrated Paper, Nov. 30, 1912.

  XXIV: Wings

  1. Toye, Lloyd George & Churchill, 95.

  2. Frances Lloyd George, The Years That Are Past, 53.

  3. Gilbert, David Lloyd George, 2:45; “Doing Himself Well,” Primrose League Gazette, March 1, 1913.

  4. Moran, Diaries, 168; Diary of Francis Octavius Grenfell, Dec. 25, 1913, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury.

  5. “The Anger of Mr. Winston Churchill,” Daily Mirror, April 29, 1913.

  6. “Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company,” House of Commons, June 19, 1913, Hansard; Cooper, Old Men Forget, 46.

  7. Buczacki, Churchill & Chartwell, 51–52.

  8. On Aug. 25, 1913, Margot copied into her diary the notes that she had taken on the cruise in May (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and Clifford, The Asquiths, 208).

  9. Bonham Carter, Lantern Slides, 384–85; “Churchill in Collision with Labor Members,” New York Tribune, May 28, 1913.

  10. Winston and Clementine, 85 and 70; WSC to the Duke of Marlborough, Nov. 6, 1912, Library of Congress.

  11. Bonham Carter, Lantern Slides, 383.

  12. “Mrs. Cornwallis-West Gets Divorce,” Daily Mirror, July 16, 1913.

  13. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 681; Briggs, ed., They Saw It Happen, 27.

  14. Clementine Churchill to Jennie Churchill, Sept. 3 [1913], CHAR 28/80/6–7 (misidentified as 1912). Clemmie said that she flew in an “aeroplane,” not a “sea-plane,” but press accounts were confusing on this matter. See “Mrs. Churchill in a Waterplane,” Daily Mirror, Sept. 5, 1913, and “Mrs. W. Churchill Flies,” NYT, Sept. 5, 1913.

  15. Davies, Sailor in the Air, 83.

  16. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 682.

  17. “The Eastchurch Aeroplane Accident,” Times (London), April 24, 1913; Wildman-Lushington to Airlie Hynes, Nov. 30, 1913, CV 2:3, 1889; WSC, Thoughts and Adventures, 196; “Naval Air Accident,” Times (London), Dec. 3, 1913; “First Lord As Air Pilot,” Daily Mail, Dec. 2, 1913; Airlie Madden to Martin Gilbert, Jan. 6, 1963, CV 2:3, 1895.

  18. F. E. Smith to WSC, Dec. 6, 1913, CV 2:3, 1893.

  19. Theodore Lumley to Edward Marsh, Dec. 4, 1913, CHAR 1/108/42.

  20. WSC, Thoughts and Adventures, 195; Winston and Clementine, 91; Thomas Hardy to Florence Henniker, July 17, 1914, Selected Letters, 285.

  XXV: Countdown

  1. “The Archduke at Windsor,” Daily Mail, Nov. 18, 1913.

  2. Hirst, The Six Panics, 6; Roch, Mr Lloyd George and the War, 74.

  3. Ibid., 78–79; Grigg, Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 134–35.

  4. David Lloyd George, “I Talked to Hitler,” Daily Express, Sept. 17, 1936.

  5
. Ibid.

  6. Toye, Lloyd George & Churchill, 318.

  7. Diary of Francis Octavius Grenfell, Dec. 25, 1913, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury.

  8. Gilbert, David Lloyd George, 2:72.

  9. Diary of Francis Octavius Grenfell, Dec. 26 and 28, 1913, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury.

  10. Riddell, Diaries, 77.

  11. Ibid., 79.

  12. Farr, Reginald McKenna, 255.

  13. Toye, Lloyd George & Churchill, 136.

  14. Sir Francis Hopwood to Lord Stamfordham, Jan. 5, 1914, CV 2:3, 1842.

  15. Haldane, An Autobiography, 287; Briggs, ed., They Saw It Happen, 170.

  16. Adams, Bonar Law, 152.

  17. Toye, Lloyd George & Churchill, 115; “Lest We Forget,” Nineteenth Century, March 1919.

  18. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, 484.

  19. “Personalities of the Session,” Fortnightly Review, May 1, 1914.

  20. Lee, “A Good Innings,” 132.

  21. WSC, The World Crisis, 205.

  XXVI: Last Stand

  1. WSC, The World Crisis, 246.

  2. Pamela Lytton to WSC, Aug. 10, 1914, CHAR 1/112/13.

  3. Holroyd, Lytton Strachey, 308.

  4. Winston and Clementine, 96.

  5. Lewis Harcourt Journal, Aug. 1, 1914, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

  6. Riddell, Diaries, 89; WSC, Great Contemporaries, 105.

  7. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 365 and 247.

  8. Ibid., 309.

  9. Lord Haldane to WSC, Sept. 3, 1914, CV 3:1, 79.

  10. WSC to H. H. Asquith, Oct. 5, 1914, and Sir Edward Grey to Clementine Churchill, Oct. 7, 1914, CV 3:1, 163 and 178.

  11. Gwynne, The Rasp of War, 39.

  12. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 260 and 262.

  13. WSC, The World Crisis, 388.

  14. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 266–67.

  15. Mackay, Fisher of Kilverstone, 488.

  16. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 327.

  17. WSC to H. H. Asquith, Dec. 29, 1914, CV 3:1, 344.

  18. Lord Fisher to William Tyrrell, Jan. 12, 1915, and WSC to Lord Fisher, Jan. 4, 1915, CV 3:1, 407 and 371. Fisher also advocated the “naval advantages of possession of Constantinople” in a letter to WSC of Jan. 4, 1915 (CV 3:1, 372).

  19. WSC to the Grand Duke Nicholas, Jan. 19, 1915, CV 3:1, 430.

  20. “Meeting of the War Council,” Jan. 13 and Jan. 28, 1915, CV 3:1, 409–10 and 464; Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 445–46.