May 7, 2015

Finest Hour 117, Winter 2002-03

Page 34

Q: I have a photo of Churchill bowling at the Roxy Bowling Centre in New York. Any ideas? —Gia Winchester ([email protected])

A: Neither we nor the Churchill Archives Centre is certain. It is likely postwar, possibly 1946, but we have no real clue. Can any reader assist?

Q: The return to the gold standard in 1925 is now considered a mistake. But as Churchill said in his 1925 Budget Speech, the U.S., Germany, and many other countries were returning to the gold standard. If Britain had not, wouldn’t that have been a mistake too? Was it a case of short-term pain vs. long-term pain? — Evan Quenon (who also submitted the next two questions).

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A: Returning to gold was considered a mistake by trendy economists including their patron, John Maynard Keynes (The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, 1925) but not all economists—Milton Friedman is a notable holdout. FH 115/Summer 2002 (p. 46) contains a chart of dollar-pound values since 1874; it shows that the pound had dipped to $3.66 by 1920 after Britain left the gold standard, but had recovered nearly its Victorian value by 1930, after Churchill put it back on gold. The problem , Friedman and others argued, was that the return to gold was incomplete: Britain failed to make commensurate adjustments in domestic wage, tax and price policy to accommodate the stronger pound’s negative impact on exports…and those failures led to the General Strike and other calamities.

Q: Churchill (I think I’ve read) wrote out all his speeches, which I assume includes his Commons speeches. Yet he seems quite effective at handling interruptions and heckling. My experience with people who have to write out their remarks is that they are not good at responding to such things. How did he do that?

A: WSC was not nearly as good offthe-cuff as his son Randolph, or, e.g., Lloyd George. But he had the ability to inject humor into the most contentious issues (read Paul Courtenay’s “Question Time” columns in odd number issues of Finest Hour, including this one). He so loved the game, that he relished responding to hecklers.

Q: In Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches (NY: Bowker, 1974, 8 vols.) Robert Rhodes James in his editorial remarks seems quite unsympathetic to Churchill, if not hostile. Why was he chosen to edit Churchill’s collected speeches?

A: Sir Robert was at heart an admirer, but not an uncritical one. His Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939 (1970) showed that the mythical giant of history had definite faults and failures— especially pre-1940. Rhodes James was chosen for the Complete Speeches, as he told me, “because I was the only young man around foolish enough to believe that £5000 was a generous fee” for what turned into a titanic job. It was his next project after A Study in Failure, and his impressions lingered. Unfortunately he died before completing his sequel, which was to be entitled Churchill: A Study in Triumph 1940-1965.

Q: I’m a Forbes writer researching about Churchill’s favorite hotel, which I believe is the la Mamounia in Marrakech. I noticed his bed was very low. Why? Also, did he pay for his hotel stays? Was he in the habit of staying in bed until noon and sometimes drinking in the morning? I understood he often did some of his best writing that way, which as a writer I should try. —Dyan Machan ([email protected])

A: His beds at Chartwell and the War Rooms are normal height so I suppose Mamounia’s must be owed to local custom. He did pay for his hotel stays, much to the anxiety of his wife, who ever worried about money. His drinking was greatly exaggerated, partly by himself. His typical day was: wake at 8 and often spend the morning in bed, dictating letters and reading the papers (he took them all, including the Daily Worker). By noon he’d had a bath and would go down to lunch, where he might hold forth a couple of hours if the company was congenial. He would then stroll around Chartwell, visiting his goldfish, black swans, and perhaps the farm animals. Back for tea, he’d take a nap in pajamas and eyeshade. He would wake refreshed, bathe again, dress for dinner, which could last till 10; then a film. At about 11 or 12 work would begin—dictation of books, articles or speeches until as late as 3 a.m. Thus he got by on 5-6 hours sleep and made 1 1/2 days out of one. I have tried this and it works fine if you have four secretaries, a butler, valet, cook—or one person to do all. My wife was not amused.

He would occasionally wash down breakfast with a glass of white wine. His “highball,” which his daughter has demonstrated, was a tumbler with the bottom covered in scotch and then filled with water and nursed for hours. He picked up this habit in India and Africa where he had to add whisky to make the water potable. “By diligent application I learned to like it.” It was more like mouthwash than a highball, and he would nurse it for long periods. Since he always had one near at hand, people assumed he drank constantly. He did not disabuse them of this notion.

Where he did consume vast quantities of alcohol was at lunch and dinner—and perhaps this was how he got away with such consumption. William Manchester correctly said Churchill “always had some alcohol in his bloodstream.” But nobody, friends or staff, ever saw him the worse for drink.