June 12, 2016

Finest Hour 172, Spring 2016

Page 27

On 6 May 2015 a new bust of Sir Winston Churchill was officially dedicated inside the Pentagon. Finest Hour Senior Editor Paul H. Courtenay is a friend of the artist and provides the following background.

I live in a small Hampshire village about a five minutes’ walk from the workshop of the artist Vivien Mallock. We have been friends for a long time, as I first served in the Army with her husband Ross some fifty years ago. Vivien is a leading sculptress, and I had often seen her at work and marvelled at her skill when in September 2010 I casually asked what she would create as her next project. She replied that she had recently submitted a detailed application to be chosen for a commission to create a bronze bust of Sir Winston Churchill. I rather brashly said: “I haven’t heard anything about this!” Equally surprised, she replied: “Why should you?” Clearly, she knew nothing of my Churchill interests, so I told her about them, which led her to say: “I wish I had known that months ago: it would have saved me a lot of research work.”

Not long afterwards, in November, Vivien heard that she had been selected for the commission. She then told me that this was from the UK Ministry of Defence, which wanted to present the bronze to the US Department of Defense for permanent display in the Pentagon. The bronze would be one-and-a-half times life-size and extend from the top of Sir Winston’s head to the bottom of his waistcoat. At about this time I thought I should find out if the Churchill family was aware of what was in the wind; it was a complete surprise to them all.

While Vivien worked on Sir Winston, I visited frequently to see how she was getting on and supplied her with a large number of photographs, so that she could study the details of her subject from every angle. I also took several photographs of the bust as the work progressed and showed them to members of the Churchill family, so that they were no longer in the dark. Finally, I was able to introduce Ross and Vivien to Lady Soames, the Hon. Celia Sandys, and Randolph Churchill. The work was finished in September 2013.

In December 2013 the bronze made its first appearance, when it was unveiled before Randolph Churchill at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), next to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. This was a temporary waiting room until Sir Winston was ready to cross the Atlantic. At length the RAF was able to give him a flight to Washington (presumably First Class), where he took up residence at the British Embassy for a few months until a suitable opportunity for a dedication ceremony arose. This at length took place in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. The final unveiling was jointly carried out by US Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and British Chief of Defence Staff General Sir Nicholas Houghton in the presence of the Chiefs of Staff of both nations.