May 5, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 37

Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas


Tracking Churchill’s Motorcars

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A friend and I are a keen owners of Morris Oxford VIs similar to one owned by Sir Winston (reg. no. 6000KP) before his death. We are writing a book forty years since they ceased production and wish to include his car, which in the 1990s was still in Kent. We also understand that both 777SKE and 6000KP are still around and wonder how we verify this?
—George Weatherley, England ([email protected])

As an automotive writer, I have long planned to write about Churchill’s cars, or those used by his staff. Yes, the Morris Oxfords you mention do exist, though I can’t believe he owned two; perhaps one was a staffer’s car? In 2005, 6000KP was sold by Christie’s (see http://bit.ly/mNZvyV). On the tracking of British cars by number plate, I asked my colleague and sometime co-author, Graham Robson.

• Mr. Robson replies: If Mr. Morris Oxford VI Weatherley is a motoring enthusiast—and if he proposes to write a book about Morris Oxfords he will have to be!—he might know that the British car licencing authority (DVLA) has a small section for “do they still exist?” queries. Visit www.dvla.gov.uk, find the Press Office section, and ask for their help. It is regularly provided, but do not expect it to be done in a trice.

A book about Morris Oxfords is unlikely to be a best seller, so the authors should find themselves a publisher before they do a lot of work. I was recently approached for advice by someone who spent five years writing 165,000 words of self-aggrandising hagiography about BMC’s Sir Leonard Lord, and now expects publishers to be queueing up for it.

As author of a book on Humbers (a friend told me his Super Snipe gave him a case of mal de mer one summer’s eve), I certainly endorse Graham’s comments about finding a publisher. But how can they resist 165,000 words on Leonard Lord? —Ed.

They Spoke in French?

What can you tell me about Churchill’s Secret Agent, a new book by Reno residents Max and Linda Ciampoli, alleging that as a young man in World War II, Max was a secret agent who took orders directly from Churchill?
—Brian Duggan, Nevada Appeal, Carson City, Nev.

Some descriptions say this is a “novel based on fact.” Whatever it is supposed to be, we find no mention of Max Ciampoli in the Churchill papers and Martin Gilbert has never heard of him; nor has the official historian of MI5, whom Professor Kimball approached on our behalf. It sounds fanciful, like a similar novel, The Paladin, by Brian Garfield, reviewed in FH 139: 24. (A man claiming to be Garfield’s protagonist surfaced a few years ago but wasn’t taken seriously.) Our novels reviewer, Michael McMenamin, adds: “Churchill speaks to Ciampoli only in French and, so far at least, gives him all his assignments directly, many of which are pretty mundane.” You can’t say that about The Paladin, which is a page-turner.

Brodrick’s Army

Early in Winston Churchill’s Parliamentary career (1901), he opposed Secretary of War St. John Brodrick’s initiative to increase military expenditures by 15%, arguing that the Navy should be Great Britain’s primary military concern. Churchill went on to collect his speeches on the subject in Mr. Brodrick’s Army (1903), but I understand that the debate continued for three years. The Elgin and Norfolk Royal Commissions, along with the Esher Committee, resulted in Brodrick’s political isolation and reassignment as Secretary State for India. I assume that Churchill’s efforts ultimately won the legislative battle, but is there a reference—and where can I find information on the Esher Committee or the Elgin and Norfolk Royal Commissions?
—K.T.P. Lonard, Via Email

A. Maccallum Scott, author of the first biography of Churchill in 1905, wrote that WSC was ultimately victorious: “In the first division on Mr. Brodrick’s army scheme he was the sole Conservative to walk into the lobby against it. Two years later he had gathered round him a party and destroyed the scheme.”

But young Churchill’s efforts “meant more than the gaining of a Parliamentary reputation,” as WSC wrote in My Early Life: “It marked a definite divergence of thought and sympathy from nearly all those who thronged the benches around me.” Winston, his son wrote in the official biography, was already complaining to his mother about “a good deal of dissatisfaction in the Party, and a shocking lack of cohesion. The Government is not very strong….The whole Treasury bench appears to me to be sleepy and exhausted and played out….”

Churchill and a few dissident young Tory members added to the dis-array by outrageous Parliamentary manners and criticism of many senior Conservatives. Critics dubbed them the Hughligans (or Hooligans), after one of their members, Lord Hugh Cecil. Randolph Churchill concludes: “It was a modest attempt at a latterday Fourth Party. They began to meet for dinner on Thursday evenings; occasionally they asked leading political personalities of the day, maybe a Tory, maybe a Liberal, to join them at dinner.”

For a rather disjointed discussion of the Esher Committee and the Elgin Commission reports, see the following web page: http://bit.ly/lWRvPf.

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