A Personal Memoir of Churchill

After the spate of world eulogy, it will soon be fair if the historians and moralists refer to the bitter criticism, amounting to envious hatred, which followed Winston Churchill privately and publicly until the Second World War. The curious thing was the courageous indifference with which he treated what would have downed a lesser man. In those days, when every London hostess and Tory politician, not to say every blackballing club, turned their hands against Winston, he had few champions save his mother and mine. As sisters they upheld each other’s progeny. My mother alone of that generation lived to see Winston fulfill their prophecy that he would become Prime Minister.

May I reminisce, as the only survivor of his youthful days? The Churchill boys were nursed and governed by the beloved Mrs. Everest, from whom I remember receiving a much-needed hot bath after following Winston into a muddy birdnesting expedition in the country near Newmarket. Normally Winston and Jack lived at 2 Connaught Place (now marked with a London County Council plaque). Their younger cousins only sought to have an occasional peep at Winston’s army of toy soldiers and a loan of his candle-lit homemade theater or an old boat. (One of the plays engineered by Winston had a program printed, of which he signed every copy in full; this sheaf proved very useful long after when war charities demanded autographs for sale from my mother’s once plentiful supply.) We younger ones were not allowed to accompany Winston to the London Aquarium to see boxing kangaroos or human freaks. Even the Boneless Wonder was forbidden by Mrs. Everest, but the name of this forgotten exhibit has passed into political history, since Winston used it to describe Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.

SL

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Sir Shane Leslie

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After the spate of world eulogy, it will soon be fair if the historians and moralists refer to the bitter criticism, amounting to envious hatred, which followed Winston Churchill privately and publicly until the Second World War. The curious thing was the courageous indifference with which he treated what would have downed a lesser man. In those days, when every London hostess and Tory politician, not to say every blackballing club, turned their hands against Winston, he had few champions save his mother and mine. As sisters they upheld each other’s progeny. My mother alone of that generation lived to see Winston fulfill their prophecy that he would become Prime Minister.

May I reminisce, as the only survivor of his youthful days? The Churchill boys were nursed and governed by the beloved Mrs. Everest, from whom I remember receiving a much-needed hot bath after following Winston into a muddy birdnesting expedition in the country near Newmarket. Normally Winston and Jack lived at 2 Connaught Place (now marked with a London County Council plaque). Their younger cousins only sought to have an occasional peep at Winston’s army of toy soldiers and a loan of his candle-lit homemade theater or an old boat. (One of the plays engineered by Winston had a program printed, of which he signed every copy in full; this sheaf proved very useful long after when war charities demanded autographs for sale from my mother’s once plentiful supply.) We younger ones were not allowed to accompany Winston to the London Aquarium to see boxing kangaroos or human freaks. Even the Boneless Wonder was forbidden by Mrs. Everest, but the name of this forgotten exhibit has passed into political history, since Winston used it to describe Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.