Oblivion or Glory Read online

  OBLIVION OR GLORY

  Copyright © 2019 David Stafford

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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  Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

  Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941061

  ISBN 978-0-300-23404-6

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Jeanne

  Midway along life’s journey

  I found myself in a dark wood

  and the path was lost . . .

  Dante, ‘Inferno’, The Divine Comedy

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue: ‘A Bold, Bad Man’

  Introduction: ‘A Tragic Flaw in the Metal’

  WINTER

  1 ‘Rule Britannia’

  2 Family and Friends

  3 ‘He Uses It as an Opiate’

  4 A World in Torment

  5 The Great Corniche of Life

  6 ‘This Wild Cousin of Mine’

  SPRING

  7 ‘The Forty Thieves’

  8 The Smiling Orchards

  9 Tragedy Strikes

  10 Peacemaker

  SUMMER

  11 ‘Where Are We Going in Europe?’

  12 Imperial Dreams

  13 ‘I Will Take What Comes’

  14 ‘A Seat for Life’

  AUTUMN

  15 ‘The Courage and Instinct of Leadership’

  16 The Comfort of Friends

  17 ‘The Dark Horse of English Politics’

  18 Fleeting Shadows

  Epilogue: ‘He Would Make a Great Prime Minister’

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Churchill strides forcefully ahead during the Anglo-Irish conference in Downing Street, October 1921. Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

  2. Lady Randolph (‘Jennie’) Churchill, Winston’s beloved mother. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  3. In the bosom of his family: the young Winston with his mother and younger brother, John (‘Jack’). Time Life Pictures / Getty Images.

  4. Churchill heads the family procession at his mother’s funeral, July 1921. Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge.

  5. Clementine with daughter Marigold (‘the Duckadilly’). Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge.

  6. Winston and his only son Randolph. Keystone-France / Getty Images.

  7. A casual Winston and Clementine enjoy a rare relaxing moment in the garden. SZ Photo / Scherl / Bridgeman Images.

  8. Captain Frederick (‘Freddie’) Guest, Churchill’s favourite cousin. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  9. Clare Sheridan, Churchill’s ‘wild cousin’. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  10. The charismatic Boris Savinkov, former anti-Tsarist revolutionary and political assassin on whom Churchill pinned his hopes of toppling Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

  11. Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso, 1890–1970, portrait by Augustus John. National Galleries of Scotland.

  12. ‘Winston’s Bag: He hunts lions and brings home decayed cats’, cartoon by David Low. From The Star, January 1920. LSE6215, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent.

  13. ‘A New Hat’, cartoon by Sidney Conrad Strube. From the Daily Express, January 1921.

  14. Churchill takes a front row seat at the Cairo Conference, March 1921. General Photographic Agency / Getty Images.

  15. Churchill, escorted by Palestine High Commissioner and former Liberal Home Secretary Sir Herbert Samuel, greets Zionist youth during his visit to Jerusalem following the Cairo Conference.

  16. Churchill with Clementine, Gertrude Bell, and T. E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) in front of the Sphinx, March 1921. Fremantle / Alamy Stock Photo.

  17. Churchill with T. E. Lawrence during his Middle East trip. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction, number LC-USZ62-65460].

  18. Abdullah of Transjordan, brother to Faisal of Iraq, shakes hands with Clementine on the steps of Government House in Jerusalem, March 1921. Photo 12 / Getty Images.

  19. Hazel, Lady Lavery unlocked Churchill’s artistic inhibitions and played hostess to Michael Collins during the Anglo-Irish treaty talks. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction, number LC-B2- 2990-9].

  20. Michael Collins delivers a passionate speech, late 1921 or early 1922. Roger Viollet / Getty Images.

  21. Churchill in Dundee with Sir George Ritchie following severe riots, September 1921. D. C. Thomson & Co Ltd.

  22. The wealthy and well-connected Sir Philip Sassoon on the steps of his home at Lympne on the Channel coast in Kent. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  23. The ‘Big Three’ of the Coalition: Churchill seen here with F. E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead, the Lord Chancellor) and Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 1921. Fremantle / Alamy Stock Photo.

  24. Churchill playing his beloved polo, 1921. Hulton Deutsch / Getty Images.

  25. Winston Churchill Painting, portrait by Sir John Lavery. Fremantle / Alamy Stock Photo.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Over several years writing about Churchill I have benefited greatly from discussions with many friends and colleagues too numerous to list here. For this book in particular, however, I wish to thank Paul Addison and Piers Brendon, as well as the anonymous readers who made helpful and constructive comments at various stages of the project. Heather McCallum of Yale University Press UK and my agent Andrew Lownie both showed encouraging faith in the project from the start and contributed with many valuable insights and suggestions. I am also grateful to Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, who helped facilitate my stay at the College as an Archives By-Fellow in 2016, and to members of his staff, especially Natalie Adams who guided me through its digital holdings and, along with Katharine Thomson, helped with my many enquiries. Cameron Hazlehurst generously shared information about Churchill’s first biographer, Alexander MacCallum Scott, as well as on The Other Club. In Scotland, staffs at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and at the Dundee City Archives helped me track down useful references to Churchill and, as ever, the resources of the University of Victoria Library along with its Inter-Library Loan service proved indispensable. For permission to quote from the papers of Wing Commander Maxwell Coote, I wish to thank the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, London, and for similar use of the papers of Gertrude Bell and of Alexander MacCallum Scott I wish to thank the Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle and the University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, respectively. Quotations from the Clementine Churchill Papers are reproduced with the permission of the Master and Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge, and for those from Clare Sheridan’s papers I wish to thank Jonathan Frewen.

  It has been a pleasure to work with the team at Yale University Press in London. The incisive editorial comments by Marika Lysandrou along with her scrupulous guiding hand proved enormously helpful; Rachael Lonsdale, Clarissa Sutherland, and Lucy Buchan skil
fully shepherded the book through its various stages of production; and Richard Mason copyedited the text with brisk and greatly appreciated efficiency. Others I wish to thank include Matt James, Rosamund Howe, and Douglas Matthews, who compiled the index. Above all, as always, my deepest thanks go to my wife Jeanne Cannizzo for her tremendous moral and practical support, creative editorial suggestions and invaluable assistance with picture and other research.

  David Stafford

  March 2019

  PROLOGUE

  ‘A BOLD, BAD MAN’

  Shortly before noon on Wednesday 26 January 1921 an express train bound for Shrewsbury in England was speeding towards the small rural station of Abermule, close to the Severn river in Wales. It was on a single-track line. A safety system used by the Cambrian Railway Company involving the exchange of tablets ensured that no two trains travelling in opposite directions should enter the same section. But the experienced stationmaster was on holiday and junior members of his staff made a series of catastrophic errors. As the express approached the station, its horrified crew saw a local passenger train heading straight towards them. They immediately threw on the brake. It was too late. In the shattering impact that followed, the express train mounted the oncoming engine and crashed down on the roof of the first carriage, smashing it into fragments. Many of the fragile wooden carriages of the express were brutally telescoped together, crushing and maiming their passengers. Miraculously, the express crew crawled out of the wreckage alive after jumping clear at the last moment. But both the driver and fireman of the local train were instantly killed. Fifteen passengers also perished in the collision and dozens of others were injured.

  Amongst the dead was a director of the Cambrian Railway Company who’d been travelling in the express. Lord Herbert Lionel Vane-Tempest was fifty-eight years old, a Justice of the Peace, an Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel in the Durham Artillery Volunteers, and a Knight Commander, Royal Victorian Order (KCVO). More importantly, he was the youngest son of the fifth Marquess of Londonderry and owned Garron Towers, a large estate in Ireland that produced an annual income of some £4,000 (approximately £160,000 in today’s values). He was also unmarried, and his heir was a first cousin once removed. Lord Herbert’s name is long forgotten. But the man who unexpectedly inherited his fortune was one of the most controversial British politicians of the day: Winston Churchill, the Secretary of State for War and Air in the Coalition government of the Liberal prime minister, David Lloyd George.1

  *

  The year 1921 proved pivotal for Churchill in crucial ways. For his personal life it was, in the words of one his closest friends, both ‘wonderful and terrible’. The inheritance delivered by the railway disaster helped transform his finances, as did the signing of lucrative contracts for The World Crisis, his multi-volume history of the First World War which established his reputation as a man of action who understood the grave issues of war and peace confronting the new century. He had also just turned forty-six, thus surpassing the lifespan of the father whose legacy and memory he idolized. ‘Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality,’ he once exclaimed despairingly during his thirties. Now, he was able to imagine a longer-term future with a normal lifespan. This was also the year that he fully realized his abilities as a gifted amateur artist and enjoyed success with the first public exhibition of his works.

  Yet it was also marked by tragedy and grief caused by the sudden and unexpected deaths of beloved family members as well as old friends. The end of youth and the passing of loved ones are part of the human condition. But he overcame these everyman losses with a resilience and courage that demonstrated formidable strength of character along with an acceptance of life’s tragedies. ‘The reflections of middle age are mellow,’ he confessed to his wife Clementine. Although no less ambitious than before, he was no longer the impetuous young man in a hurry, desperate to make his mark.2

  Politically, the year was also a milestone. When it began, his position was precarious and no one could be sure whether he was headed for oblivion or glory. Damned as impetuous and belligerent for his role in the disastrous Dardanelles Expedition of 1915, his violent denunciations of the Russian Bolsheviks and his enthusiastic support for reprisals against armed rebellion in Ireland had only strengthened this view. ‘Winston has a reputation as a buccaneer,’ observed one shrewd insider in British politics shortly before the year began. ‘The country regards him as a bold, bad man.’ Yet by the end of 1921 another critic was offering a radically different view of him, as both a statesman and a peacemaker with a shining future ahead of him: ‘Were I an ambitious young backbencher I would hitch my wagon to [his] star,’ he declared. ‘Winston seems to be the only man in the Cabinet with a sane and comprehensive view of world politics.’3 Churchill clearly stood at a crossroads. It was to take him two more decades to obtain the keys to 10 Downing Street and become the leader of his nation in war. But in these crucial twelve months he laid the foundations for his future glory. How he did so is the subject of this book.

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘A TRAGIC FLAW IN THE METAL’

  In his early political career Churchill enjoyed dizzying success, breaking records as he hurtled his way along the political track. Elected to Parliament in 1900 at age twenty-five, by 1908 he was President of the Board of Trade and two years later he became Home Secretary, the youngest since Sir Robert Peel in the early Victorian era. When Britain went to war against Germany in August 1914 he was First Lord of the Admiralty, not yet aged forty, and responsible for the world’s largest and most powerful navy. Many observers saw him as a prime minister in the making.

  Then, in 1915, his career spectacularly crashed. The cause was the ill-fated naval assault on the Dardanelles Strait, the narrow stretch of water linking the Mediterranean to Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire which was allied to Germany. If the British fleet could force its way through the Dardanelles, so Churchill imagined, its appearance before Constantinople could force the Turks to sue for peace, open up the sea route through the Black Sea to Britain’s hard-pressed ally Russia, and prompt the Balkan states to join the Allies. It was an imaginative way to break the deadlock of bloody trench warfare on the Western Front, and a typically bold Churchillian idea. But its execution was bungled, and the results were disastrous. An expedition landed on the Gallipoli peninsula but after months of fierce Turkish resistance it was forced to withdraw with the loss of almost 50,000 Allied lives. ‘Remember the Dardanelles’ was to become a hostile catchphrase that was to haunt Churchill and his reputation for years to come.1

  Responsibility for the disaster was far from his alone. But he was one of the fiercest early champions of action in the Dardanelles and became the obvious political scapegoat. He was removed from the Admiralty and shifted to the largely empty position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. After a few depressing months he resigned his office and left for the Western Front to fight in the trenches. ‘I’m finished,’ he despondently told one of his closest friends, ‘I’m done.’ In his own graphic words, he descended into ‘a sort of cataleptic trance’. Like a sea beast fished up from the depths, he wrote, ‘. . . my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure’. His wife Clementine later confessed that she feared he would die of grief, and he clearly came close to a severe nervous breakdown.2 The distinguished Irish artist William Orpen completed an intense and sombre portrait of him that powerfully captures his mood in these dark post-Gallipoli days. ‘All he did was to sit in a chair before the fire with his head bowed in his hands, uttering not a word,’ wrote Orpen about one of their sittings: when the artist returned from a lunch break, it was to find his subject still in the same position. At four o’clock he got up, asked Orpen to call him a taxi, and left without saying a word. Yet the painting became his favourite portrait of his younger self and was to hang in his London dining room until his death.3

  *

  Gallipoli let loose the critics. Many were savage. Several had long been waiting for the chanc
e to strike. Churchill’s switch from the Conservative Party to the Liberals in 1904 in defence of free trade principles against the growing move towards protectionist tariffs by the Tories had sparked charges of being disloyal, unscrupulous, and unreliable. His overt ambition grated on the sensibilities of many. His egotism and unashamed love of the limelight hinted at superficiality and showmanship. In the new age of the photograph and the cinema his transparent delight in seeking out the camera raised dark suspicion. It didn’t help, either, that he was the son of a controversial father. Lord Randolph Churchill had risen brilliantly through the Tory ranks to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1886, only to catastrophically self-destruct by an impulsive resignation and disappear into political oblivion before dying prematurely at the age of forty-five. Churchill idolized his father’s memory. At only thirty-one he published a two-volume biography of Lord Randolph that was widely praised. Unfortunately, it also encouraged comparisons between father and son that did the younger man few favours. Many of Lord Randolph’s contemporaries had regarded him as little more than an unprincipled and publicity-hungry opportunist. ‘Churchill, with all his remarkable cleverness, is thoroughly untrustworthy; scarcely a gentleman, and probably more or less mad,’ the fifteenth Earl of Derby had confided to his diary. Sir Henry Lucy, a veteran parliamentary sketch writer for Punch magazine, widely known on both sides of the Atlantic as a commentator on public affairs since the 1880s – Woodrow Wilson once credited him with propelling him into political life – lamented that for all his gifts Winston Churchill was a replica of his father and possessed ‘the same arrogance of manner, the same exaggeration of speech, the same readiness to make the best of both worlds of political party’. For many contemporary critics, indeed, Churchill the younger seemed to live the life of ‘a particularly wayward, rootless and anachronistic product of a decaying and increasingly discredited aristocratic order’.4