Churchill's Hour

‘One of the most misleading factors in history is the practice of historians to build a story exclusively out of the records which have come down to them.'
WINSTON CHURCHILL

TO WILL.

TO MIKEY.

TO ALEX.

TO HARRY.

MY FOUR MUSKETEERS.

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Also by Michael Dobbs

Copyright

About the Publisher

Christmas Day, 1940.

Winston Churchill sat propped up against the pillows of his bed. The room was cold, a sullen December sky rattling at the mullioned window, but the old man didn't complain. The foul weather had kept the bombers at bay last night. Peace on earth, at least until tomorrow.

A servant entered the room carrying a pair of freshly ironed trousers on one arm and a silver tray on the other. Frank Sawyers was short, hairless, with piercing blue eyes and two missing teeth. He was no more than forty years in age yet his attitude was timeless.

‘Did you knock?' Churchill's brow was split by a crease of irritation.

‘As always, zur,' Sawyers said, a trifle wearily and with a pronounced lisp and Cumbrian burr.

‘And what's that disgusting green stuff?' The Prime Minister took off his reading glasses and used them to indicate the jar on the silver tray. ‘No
medicine, do you hear me? I'll have none of your quackery. I'm not ill.'

‘Chutney. Home-made. By way of me Christmas present to yer, like. With season's greetings.'

Churchill stared at the jar, his blue eyes alert as though suspecting some plot. Sawyers had a knack of producing exotic and unexpected gifts, even through the constraints of wartime, and Churchill knew that no matter how alarming the sour green pickle might appear, it would taste delicious. He didn't have the knack himself; he'd given only books for presents, and mostly his own books at that.

As he approached the bed, the servant glared at Nelson, the patch-eyed cat who lay sprawled across the eiderdown at Churchill's feet. Nelson possessed a foul temper that had grown ever more unreliable from spending too many nights in Downing Street during the air raids, and Sawyers' loathing for the cat had grown with the number of scratch marks left on the back of his hands. He gave the beast a wide berth as he placed the tray on the bedside table and dealt with the refreshed trousers. Then he took down a vivid red silk bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the door.

‘Not yet,' Churchill said, ‘I've not finished my papers.'

‘You'll be late,' the other man insisted. ‘Family's already gathered round fire, and if you're not down there soon, Mr Oliver will be on serenading us all with his piano music.'

‘Bloody racket.'

‘Exactly,' Sawyers agreed, holding up the bathrobe in the manner of a matador tempting a bull.

‘Not now, not now,' Churchill said, shaking the paper in his hand. ‘D'you know there's a Nazi battleship on the loose in the southern Atlantic?'

‘I dare say it'll still be there after luncheon.' The servant stood resolute. ‘You can sink it then.'

Churchill was contemplating the next phase of this battle for domestic supremacy when, in some distant part of the old house, notes began to cascade from a piano and a baby started to cry. Instantly Nelson sprang from his warming place at the old man's feet, arching his back in displeasure before strutting from their view. Churchill had been deserted by his last remaining ally. Sawyers barely stirred. Only the rustle of the silk robe and the elevation of the left eyebrow suggested he was claiming victory.

Churchill cursed. His concentration was broken and nothing more would be achieved that morning. He had lost the battle of the bathrobe. He heaved himself from his bed, scattering papers in his wake, and, ignoring his servant, stomped off in the direction of the bathroom.

It was known as Chequers Court, an age-mellowed manor house constructed of red brick and surrounded
by parklands and beech woods in the Chiltern hills, some forty miles to the north-west of London. It was graced by ambitious chimneys, loose windows and a system of heating that, in deference to the ancient timbers, remained totally inadequate. Chequers had once belonged to Mr and Mrs Arthur Lee, who had no children and therefore no lasting use for the property, so in 1921 they had handed it over to the nation complete with all its furniture and fine paintings as a country retreat for whoever was Prime Minister of the day. A year earlier the occupant had been Neville Chamberlain, a proud but inadequate man who remained mercifully unaware that the dogs of misfortune were already on his trail and would soon tear him apart. Calamity had got him first, then cancer, and only six weeks ago they had buried him. Dust to dust. So the keys had been passed to Winston Churchill, who had summoned three generations of his family to spend Christmas with him in his new retreat. It was to be a special occasion, one that everyone present would remember, although, in hindsight, not for all the most comforting reasons.

Sawyers had risen before six that morning to make sure that everything was in proper festive order. The fire in the Great Hall had been lit, the boilers stoked, the baths run, breakfast served in the bedrooms, the great dinner prepared on a scale that was prodigious. Hitler's U-boat campaign in the Atlantic
was supposed to be starving the country into submission, but the German Fuehrer had apparently failed to take into consideration the legendary Mrs Landemare, who was in charge of the Chequers kitchen. She was short, exceedingly stout, and married to a renowned French chef, but her prime loyalty was directed towards the Prime Minister, whose gastronomic demands were notorious. Breakfast was taken in bed and often consisted of chops as well as bacon and a glass of something red, while what followed throughout the day would have left the regulators at the Ministry of Food reeling in horror. There wasn't supposed to be much food around, but Churchill had a lot of good friends, and so did Mrs Landemare. As a consequence the huge bleached wooden table that ran down the centre of the kitchen was now piled high like that of a medieval court. The first course—an entire smoked salmon, half a dozen lobsters and several pots of duck terrine—had been provided by parliamentary colleagues, all anxious to display their loyalty and show off the extent of their country estates. The dessert that sat at the end of the table was a thickcrusted pie filled with apples from the orchards at Churt, the home of a previous Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. Churchill's own family home at Chartwell had been the source of most of the fresh vegetables, sent up by train, while as usual Mrs Landemare had made up any shortfall from the
contacts she maintained below the stairs of several other country estates. But the pride of place in this year of famine was occupied by the turkey—an enormous beast, sent on the instructions of the dying Viscount Rothermere as one of his last mortal acts, perhaps in repentance for the appalling things his newspapers had often written about Churchill. It had been plucked, stuffed, basted, and was now roasting under the watchful eye and moist brow of the blessed Mrs Landemare.

‘Unusual large, cook,' Sawyers had said as he'd watched her thrusting chestnut stuffing deep inside the bird.

Mrs Landemare had given a defiant twirl of her white cap to keep the perspiration from dripping into her eyes. ‘What were you expecting me to give him for his Christmas dinner? Toast? Anyhows, Mr S, we might find there's even a couple of mouthfuls left over for the likes of us.'

‘Wouldn't want it to go wasting, cook,' he'd said. ‘I might even be able to find a bottle of something to go with it, like.'

‘You are a man after my own heart, Mr Sawyers, so you are,' she had exclaimed, smiling. She didn't mean it, of course. Sawyers was unmarried and always would be—‘a gentleman's gentleman, one of those who lisps to port,' as she would explain it to friends, ‘but there's nobody else on God's earth who can deal with Mr Winston the way that he can.'

And so long as Mr Winston was happy, he wouldn't miss an occasional bottle. Ah, but as for Mr Randolph, the son, he was altogether another matter…

Randolph Churchill, the sole, much-excused and overindulged son of the Prime Minister had been expected to arrive at Chequers the previous evening, Christmas Eve, but a hurried phone call had offered some vague excuse about pressing duties—easy enough to concoct, given his status as an officer in No. 8 Commando and a newly elected Member of Parliament. But Sawyers was sceptical. The younger Churchill hardly ever passed through his constituency and his regiment was notorious for its careless habits; the only landmark Randolph and his fellow officers could be relied upon to hit while on exercise was the officers' mess. That, in Sawyers' eye, was not enough to condemn him—it seemed little more than aristocratic excess, the pampering of the privileged class—but there were other reasons why Sawyers reserved for ‘his master's little echo' the contempt that only servants can manage to keep out of sight of others. The first was the man's spitefulness. It wasn't for Sawyers to moralize if Randolph decided to spend the night his son was born in the arms of another man's wife, but to make it so blatantly obvious was unnecessarily cruel. Like burning beetles. And there was a more personal reason. Even after all the years Sawyers had served
his father, after the many times he'd been forced to help the son to his bed, take off his soiled clothes, clean up after his excesses, he knew that Randolph didn't even know his first name. Didn't care. Wasn't important. For the younger Churchill, Sawyers was as insignificant and expendable as old orange peel.

He arrived that morning, shortly before his father came down and while the rest of the family including his young wife Pamela was gathered round the log fire, singing carols. He appeared, dark-eyed, dishevelled, and told them he had spent the night on some railway station platform waiting for his train. That was possible, as a matter of fact, but doubtful as a matter of habit. Hardship wasn't Randolph's style. But Sawyers would find out where he'd been sleeping, given a few days. The network that operated below the stairs of all fashionable homes—the same one that made up for any shortages in Mrs Landemare's kitchen—would also make up for any shortcomings in Randolph's explanation. The man simply didn't realize that the servants knew. Could tell whether a bed had been slept in, by how many and to what purpose. The telltale signs on a freshly laundered sheet were as clear to a chambermaid's eye as an elephant's rump, and if the chambermaid knew, the news would get round the scullery faster than a mouse.

Yet, for the moment, there was harmony. Sawyers stood guard as the family sang their carols, led by
the old man, who had a voice that sounded as if it had been broken on a capstan. It was as close as Churchill got nowadays to his son-in-law, Vic Oliver, who was playing the piano. Oliver had never truly been part of the Churchill family scene; he was a music-hall comedian who had been born an Austrian and who was now a naturalized American citizen. It was difficult to count the number of reasons why Churchill held reservations about him: he was brash, he was so much older than Churchill's daughter, Sarah, he had been married twice before. He also preferred to crack jokes for a living when in Churchill's view he should have been cracking German skulls. Oliver used words like ‘cute' and ‘Britisher'. In retribution, Churchill had given him a copy of Fowler's
Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
But mostly Churchill's antipathy was because of the effect Oliver had on Sarah. She had always been a perfectionist, desperate for applause and approval—it was one of the reasons why she had become an actress—yet she could never persuade herself that she merited any measure of her success. She had rushed into marriage, but it had only caused her sense of inadequacy to grow worse. She was beautiful but fragile, while Oliver was domineering. It had left her limping like a butterfly with a broken wing.

The eldest daughter was Diana. She had the same blue eyes and auburn hair of Sarah, inherited from
their father, yet Diana was as reticent as her father was extrovert, as sensitive as he was bullish. When the Churchill family was at play, to most outsiders it seemed as though they were at war, and at such moments Diana would withdraw to the sidelines and wait to tend the casualties. Her husband, Duncan Sandys, was constructed of sterner stuff. He was a Member of Parliament and a colonel on active duty, and she clearly adored him, but marriage was never an easy option in the Churchill family.

Only Mary, the youngest, seemed completely at ease, more down to earth than any of them, her family path beaten flat by the struggles of those who had gone before. As they exchanged presents, they fussed over Pamela's baby, Churchill's first grandchild, still only ten weeks old, and when it was time for the King's radio broadcast they stood for the National Anthem, then sat on the edge of their seats as they waited for one of his terrible stutters to tangle his words—all except Randolph, who relaxed in the folds of his armchair with a whisky. But His Majesty didn't falter, announcing that his countrymen could look forward to the New Year with sober confidence. Well, some of them, at least.

When the King had finished they were at last released to the dining room. ‘Pour the wine, Sawyers!' the old man instructed. As the first dribble of golden liquid fell into his glass, he grabbed the bottle, trying to decipher the label. ‘Where are my
reading glasses, Sawyers? What have you done with them?'

‘I suspect you'll find ‘em in yer top pocket.'

‘Dammit,' Churchill said, fumbling for his elusive glasses, ‘so what is this you're trying to poison us with?'

‘An excellent hock. A gift to yer from Mrs Chamberlain. From the late Prime Minister's personal cellar.'

‘German, is it?'

‘That's right. Given him by an admirer.'

‘Ah, one of von Ribbon-top's bottles, I'll be bound.'

‘I'll throw it away, then.'

‘Steady on, it's a pre-Nazi vintage, I'll say that much for it,' Churchill said, peering at the label. ‘A shame to get rid of it before we've had a chance to taste it. So damn the Fuehrer and pour, Sawyers. What are you waiting for, man?'

‘Damn the Fuehrer, zur.' The servant moved along the table, filling glasses and condemning the Fuehrer at every turn, ignoring the scowls of Clementine who, even after so many years of enduring blasphemy at her table, still insisted on showing her displeasure.