Returning to London on 28 April 1955, Churchill watched and welcomed Eden's activities in leading the Conservative Party into the General Election. He also welcomed the announcement that Four-Power talks would after all be held that summer between the British, French, American and Soviet Foreign Ministers. During the election campaign he made several speeches in his constituency, and one at Bedford, for his son-in-law Christopher Soames. He made no attempt to intervene in Conservative politics, or to influence the conduct of the election campaign in any way. 'I have at the moment a great desire to stay put and do nothing,' he wrote to Bernard Baruch on May 26.
The election result was a decisive victory for the Conservatives. On the day the results were known, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook, wrote to Churchill from the Cabinet Office: 'You have been much in my thoughts during this Election, and I should like to send you my sincere congratulations on its result. For it is a most remarkable testimony to the record and achievement of your Government over the past 3½ years. The real issue was whether the people were content with the Government they had had. And it is very evident that they were. The drop in the Labour vote is surely significant. I am sure you must be gratified by the way things have gone.'
Churchill's mood after the election was benign. On May 29, at Chartwell, Lord Moran recorded Elizabeth Gilliatt's comment: 'He has been so good-tempered. Even when he had three speeches on his hands and we were looking out for storms, there was never a cross word. You know, Lord Moran, how he dislikes a new secretary. Now he has two, and he has been so sweet to them. This morning I was unpunctual, but when I said I was sorry, well, you heard how kind he was.' The new secretaries were Doreen Pugh and Gillian Maturin. It was intended that they should remain until the correspondence generated by the election had cleared, a matter, it was thought, of three or four weeks. In the event, Miss Maturin stayed for three and a half years and Miss Pugh for nearly ten.
On May 30, in the course of a long and friendly letter, Eden told Churchill that he expected to hold a top-level meeting with the Russians that July. 'I was sorry I could not persuade Ike to test the Malenkov "New Look" in 1953,' Churchill replied on the following day, and he added: 'Khrushchev has the Army in a way that Malenkov did not, so that if there is a "New Look" it may be more fruitful. I do not think the Russian Army wants war. There is no such thing as military glory now. Soldiers would be safer than civilians, though not so comfortable as in time of peace. Surveying the scene from my detached position, I feel the corner will be gradually turned, and that the human race may be subjected to the test of extreme prosperity.'
At Chartwell, Churchill worked on his history of the English-Speaking Peoples helped by Denis Kelly and Alan Hodge. On June 2 work was halted when he suffered a spasm of an artery, and for several days had some difficulty writing, picking up his coffee cup, or holding his cigar in his mouth. But he felt well enough six days later to go up to London for the opening of Parliament, and was pleased when, on entering the Chamber, he heard an MP cry out 'Churchill', whereupon there was a great clapping of hands in the public gallery, and MPs crowded round him, cheering and waving their order papers with enthusiasm.
Churchill returned to Chartwell, and to work on his history. On June 15 he learned from Macmillan that he could retain the services of one of his former Private Secretaries, Anthony Montague Browne. 'Please make all use of him you can for as long as you wish,' Macmillan wrote. He also wrote to Montague Browne: 'I am lending you to Winston because he needs somebody. In the nature of things it will only be a year or two.' In fact, Montague Browne was to be Churchill's devoted Private Secretary for nearly ten more years. 'From 1955 until my father drew his last breath,' Mary later recalled, 'Anthony was practically never absent from his side,' and she commented: 'The mail poured in. My father's business affairs, and his private life, Anthony really masterminded and managed, advised and helped. His knowledge, his professional know-how, his devotion to my father was one of the major factors in the last ten years of my father's life.'
On June 21 Churchill returned to London to speak at the Guildhall, at the unveiling of his statue. 'I confess,' he said, 'that like Disraeli I am on the side of the optimists. I do not believe that humanity is going to destroy itself. I have for some time thought it would be a good thing if the leaders of the great nations talked privately to one another. I am very glad that this is now going to happen.' The statue which Churchill unveiled was the work of a Yugoslav Jewish refugee, Oscar Nemon.
From the Guildhall, Churchill returned to Chartwell. 'I am getting much older now the stimulus of responsibility & power has fallen from me,' he wrote to Pamela Lytton on June 30, 'and I totter along in the shades of retirement.' On July 18 he wrote to Eisenhower: 'It is a strange and formidable experience laying down responsibility and letting the trappings of power fall in a heap to the ground. A sense not only of psychological but of physical relaxation steals over one to leave a feeling both of relief and denudation. I did not know how tired I was until I stopped working.' To his friend General Tudor he wrote a month later, about his departure from office, 'The worst thing about it is that when you let all these responsibilities drop, you feel your power falls with the thing it held.'
***
On September 15 Churchill flew with Clementine to the South of France for a prolonged stay at Beaverbrook's villa. It was the start of a new pattern of life for him, spending more and more time in the sun and comfort of the French Riviera. Much of his time was spent in painting. He also dictated the preface to the new book. In October, Hodge and Kelly flew out to help him. Clementine returned to England on October 16. For five short speeches that he had agreed to give on his return, Churchill told her, George Christ had sent him 'a fine set of notes'. In England, Deakin had rejoined the team; he flew out to join Churchill on October 28. Before returning to London, Churchill began to search for what he called his 'Dream Villa', which he hoped to buy. He was never to find it.
Returning to England on November 14, Churchill made his five short speeches; in his constituency, to the boys of Harrow School, to the Young Conservatives, at the Drapers' Hall, and at the Mansion House. On this latter occasion he was given the Freedoms of Belfast and Londonderry. On November 30 he celebrated his eighty-first birthday. Then, in the second week of January 1956, he flew back to the South of France, not this time to Beaverbrook's villa at the Cap d'Ail, but to La Pausa, at Roquebrune, perched amid olive groves high above the Corniche. This villa, the home of Emery Reves and his wife Wendy, was to become the 'Dream Villa' of Churchill's last years. Named by him 'Pausaland', it provided him with comfort, calm and privacy, as well as magnificent views for painting. 'So far I have not left this luxurious house,' he wrote to Clementine on January 15, '& have passed the time mainly in bed revising the Book.' Two days later he wrote again: 'Reves & Wendy are most obliging. They ask the guests I like and none I don't.'
Churchill's pleasure at his new life was evident in all his letters. To Clementine, who had stayed in London dogged by ill-health, and was planning a long sea voyage to Ceylon, he wrote on January 30: 'I spend the days mostly in bed, & get up for lunch and dinner. I am being taken through a course of Monet, Manet, Cezanne & Co by my hosts who are both versed in modern painting and practise in the studio-now partly an office with Miss Maturin. Also they have a wonderful form of gramophone which plays continuously Mozart and other composers of merit and anything else you like on 10-fold discs. I am in fact having an artistic education with very agreeable tutors.' Churchill's pleasure at his first sojourn at La Pausa was evident from all his letters. 'Except for the book,' he wrote to Clementine at the beginning of February, 'I am idle & lazy.'
A week later Churchill flew back to London. 'It was very nice having a month under your care,' he wrote to Wendy Reves the day after his return, 'and I am certainly the better for it, although I get older as the days pass.' That month he went to the Commons for the free vote on hanging, where he voted to retain the death penalty. Then, on March 1, he flew back to La Pausa. While he was there the first bound copies of Volume One of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples arrived from the printer, entitled 'The Birth of Britain'. He meanwhile was working with Kelly and Hodge on the fourth and final volume. Each morning they came up from their hotel to work with him, as he sat up in bed surrounded by books and papers. One morning the narrative on which they were working dealt with the Congress of Berlin of 1878. Putting his finger on the sentence mentioning 1878, Churchill told Kelly, 'I'm alive now.'
On April 6 Clementine reached Marseilles on her way back by sea from Ceylon. Churchill telephoned the ship to ask her if she would like to join him at La Pausa. 'Cannot sort and re-pack crumpled and inadequate clothes,' she telegraphed in reply, 'so am making straight for home.' Five days later, when Clementine was still at sea, Churchill unexpectedly flew back to England in order to be waiting for her when she arrived. His return coincided with an intensification of the crisis in the Middle East, with Egypt insisting on keeping the Suez Canal closed to ships bound for Israeli ports.
Pressure was being put on Israel not to react. On April 13, two days after his return from France, Churchill referred to this during a short speech to the Primrose League, of which he was Grand Master, at the Albert Hall. If, he said, Israel was to be 'dissuaded from using the life of their race to ward off the Egyptians until the Egyptians have learnt to use the Russian weapons with which they have been supplied, and the Egyptians then attack, it will become not only a matter of prudence but a measure of honour to make sure that they are not the losers by waiting'.
The Middle East was also one of the subjects to which Churchill referred in a letter which he wrote to Eisenhower on April 16. 'I am so glad that you recognise so plainly the importance of oil from the Middle East,' he told the President. 'When I was at the Admiralty in 1913 I acquired control of the Anglo-Persian Company for something like £3,000,000, and turned the large fleet I was then building to that method of propulsion. That was a good bargain if ever there was one.' Turning to the current confrontation between Egypt and Israel, Churchill wrote, 'I am sure that if we act together we shall stave off an actual war between Israel and Egypt,' and he went on to tell Eisenhower: 'I am, of course, a Zionist, and have been ever since the Balfour Declaration. I think it is a wonderful thing that this tiny colony of Jews should have become a refuge to their compatriots in all the lands where they were persecuted so cruelly, and at the same time established themselves as the most effective fighting force in the area. I am sure America would not stand by and see them overwhelmed by Russian weapons, especially if we had persuaded them to hold their hand while their chance remained.'
That April the Soviet leaders, Bulganin and Khrushchev, came to Britain; Eden invited Churchill and his wife to lunch with them at No. 10 on April 17. 'I sat next to Khrushchev,' Churchill told Moran. 'The Russians were delighted to see me. Anthony told them I won the war.' The war was much on Churchill's mind three weeks later, when he flew from London to Aachen to receive the Charlemagne Prize. The ceremony took place on May 10, sixteen years to the day since he had become Prime Minister in the war against Germany. His aim in his acceptance speech was twofold; to urge upon the Germans a receptiveness to any possible relaxation in Soviet policy, and at the same time to warn them not to be too hasty in their desire for reunification. With these themes in mind, Montague Browne had drafted the speech, which Churchill then delivered. 'It was his own idea,' Montague Browne later recalled, and he added, 'It struck a chill.'
For the next three days Churchill visited British Army bases and spoke, impromptu, on six occasions. Dinner with the British troops at Celle was 'a tremendous success', Montague Browne remembered. 'The soldiers were so nice to him. It was very much his atmosphere.' On the afternoon of May 13 he flew back to Biggin Hill, escorted by fighters of 615 Squadron. 'Altogether the visit leaves a pleasant memory in my mind,' he wrote to Eisenhower, 'and I was glad to see that in spite of the march of time I can still do four days' continuous toil.'
***
At the end of May, Churchill returned to La Pausa. Clementine went with him, as did Sarah. In July he flew back to Germany, for a race-meeting at Düsseldorf. Shortly after his return to England, President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal. 'Personally, I think that Britain and France ought to act together with vigour,' Churchill wrote to Clementine on July 30, 'and if necessary with arms, while America watches Russia vigilantly. I do not think the Russians have any intentions of being involved in a major war.'
Eden had begun to prepare for a possible invasion of Egypt, and sent Churchill a considerable number of secret telegrams in order to keep him in touch with events. On July 30 he saw Churchill in the Prime Minister's Room in the House of Commons and gave him more details. 'I am pleased with the policy being pursued about Suez,' Churchill wrote to Clementine on August 3. 'We are going to do our utmost. Anthony told me everything, and I even contemplated making a speech, but all went so well in the Thursday debate that this would have been an unnecessary hazard. As I am well informed, I cannot in an unprotected letter tell any secrets, but I feel you may rest assured that there will be no ground of complaints on what we try to do.' When Macmillan dined with Churchill at Chartwell two days later they discussed a possible British invasion of Egypt. 'Surely if we landed,' Macmillan told him, 'we must seek out the Egyptian forces, destroy them and bring down Nasser's Government?' Churchill then 'got out some maps', Macmillan wrote in his diary, 'and got quite excited'.
Anxious to give Eden the benefit of his advice, on August 6 Churchill set off by car from Chartwell for Chequers. Taking Doreen Pugh with him, he dictated as they drove, then stopped in a lay-by so that she could type out what he had dictated: 'The military operation seems very serious. We have a long delay when our intentions are known. The newspapers and foreign correspondents are free to publish what they choose. A censorship should be imposed. In a month it should be possible for at least 1,000 Russian & similar volunteers to take over the cream of the Egyptian aircraft and tanks. This might expose us to much more severe resistance.' Churchill added: 'The more one thinks about taking over the Canal, the less one likes it. The long causeway could be easily obstructed by a succession of mines. We should get much of the blame of stopping work, if it is to be up to the moment of our attack a smooth-running show. Cairo is Nasser's centre of power.'
Churchill had been glad to learn from Eden that armoured divisions would be used, 'properly supported by air'. When he reached Chequers he handed him the note and, after a short talk, returned to Chartwell. To Clementine, who was on holiday in Switzerland, he wrote three days later: 'The unity of Islam is remarkable. There is no doubt that Libya, to whom we have paid £5,000,000 a year, like Jordania, to whom we paid £10,000,000 or more, are whole-heartedly manifesting hostility.'
***
On September 12 Churchill and Clementine were together at Hyde Park Gate for their forty-eighth wedding anniversary. Five days later Churchill flew to the South of France to return to La Pausa. Clementine remained in London. For company, Lord Cherwell flew out; for work on the last volume of the History. Hodge was there, and a young Oxford don, Maurice Shock, who was helping on the Gladstone and Disraeli section. In mid-October Hodge returned to London with his wife Jane, who wrote to Churchill that when her daughters asked her where she had been, 'I shall tell them I have been visiting the world's kindest great man.'
On October 19 Churchill suffered a black-out, fell down, and lost consciousness for twenty minutes. It was another stroke. Nine days later he was well enough to return to Britain. Two days later, Israeli forces crossed into the Sinai desert, destroying the Egyptian Army and reaching within a few miles of the Suez Canal. Following a twelve-hour Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt, insisting that an Anglo-French force be allowed to 'move temporarily' to the Suez Canal, British bombers struck at Egyptian airfields, while British troops set sail from Malta towards Port Said at the Canal's northern end.
On November 3, as the British forces were still on their way to Egypt, Churchill issued a public statement giving 'the reasons that lead me to support the Government on the Egyptian issue'. In spite of all the efforts of Britain, France and the United States, he wrote, 'the frontiers of Israel have flickered with murder and armed raids'. Egypt, 'the principal instigator of these incidents', had 'rejected restraint'. Israel, 'under the gravest provocation', had 'erupted against Egypt'. Britain intended 'to restore peace and order' to the Middle East, 'and I am convinced that we shall achieve our aim'. He was also 'confident that our American friends will come to realise that, not for the first time, we have acted independently for the common good'.
Churchill's message was published in the newspapers on the morning of November 5, at the very moment when British and French paratroops, in advance of the forces still on their way by sea, landed at the northern end of the Suez Canal, capturing Port Said. 'My dear Winston,' Eden wrote to him that day, 'I cannot thank you enough for your wonderful message. It has had an enormous effect, and I am sure that in the US it will have maybe an even greater influence.' Eden added, 'These are tough days-but the alternative was a slow bleeding to death.' 'Thank you for your kind words,' Churchill replied, 'I am so glad it was a help.'
On the morning of November 6, the seaborne forces of Britain and France finally reached Port Said, landed, and advanced southward along the Canal. Later that same day, however, after a week of intense American pressure, augmented by the refusal of many Cabinet colleagues to support him, Eden agreed to a ceasefire. On the following day, November 7, Churchill was at a ceremony in Parliament Square, for the unveiling of a statue to Field Marshal Smuts. During the course of his few remarks Churchill declared, with Nasser's triumph much in mind: 'Today, among the many clamours and stresses of the world we are beset by a narrow and sterile form of the vast and sometimes magnificent force of nationalism. To Smuts, great patriot though he was, this shallow creed would have been distasteful and alien. His own qualities transcended nationality.'
On November 20 Jock Colville dined with Churchill at 28 Hyde Park Gate. The eventual withdrawal of the Anglo-French forces had been accepted by Eden as the one condition on which Eisenhower and the United States would continue to support Britain. Speaking of Eden's decision to attack Egypt, Colville asked Churchill:
'If you had been Prime Minister, would you have done this?'
'I would never have dared, and if I had dared, I would never have dared stop,' Churchill replied.
To another friend, Churchill commented with asperity, 'This would never have happened if Eisenhower had been alive.'
***
On 9 January 1957, beset by illness, and stunned by the savagery of the criticism of his actions at Suez, Eden resigned. Coming up from Chartwell to London on the following day, Churchill, then eighty-two, was asked as a matter of courtesy to Buckingham Palace, for his advice as to Eden's successor. He recommended Macmillan, as did the three other Privy Councillors who were consulted. That night Macmillan became Prime Minister; on the following night he dined at Hyde Park Gate with Churchill.
Churchill was once more about to leave England in search of the sun, his destination was again La Pausa. The last volume of his History was now almost done; Kelly, Hodge and Montague Browne were with him to check the final facts. After three weeks, work was completed. Then, on February 13, he flew back to England, for a whirl of engagements, including lunch with Macmillan, dinner at the Other Club and a quiet evening with Randolph, before flying back to La Pausa with Clementine. 'He has aged,' Macmillan noted in his diary, 'but is still very well-informed and misses little that goes on.'
Churchill's life at La Pausa revolved around painting; among his visitors was the Greek shipowner, Aristotle Onassis, whose conversation and personality he much enjoyed. 'The conversation centred on politics & oil,' Churchill wrote to Clementine, who had returned to England. 'I reminded him that I had bought the Anglo-Persian for the Admiralty forty or fifty years ago and made a good profit for the British Government, about 3 or 4 hundred millions! He said he knew all about it. All this reminded me of poor Hopkins-but I think we did it together. I enjoy the credit.' Hopkins, a thirty-three-year-old Treasury official in 1913, had died in 1955.
After five weeks at La Pausa, Churchill returned to England. Old age was slowly taking its toll. After dining at Chartwell in April, Macmillan noted in his diary, 'He was in good form though getting very deaf. He does not say much now, for the first time he listens. All this is rather sad-for the fight has gone out of him. He is a very charming, courteous old man.' But he was still able to speak in public on special occasions, and did so at the Primrose League annual gathering at the Albert Hall in May. He was also still keen to spend as much time as possible in the South of France; that summer he stayed for a month at La Pausa, sending his wife regular hand-written letters. He painted almost every day. He dined out. He read novels. He continued his search for a Dream Villa. But more and more often he was in a reflective mood. 'I am weary of a task which is done,' he wrote in one of his letters home that summer, '& I hope I shall not shrink when the aftermath ends. My only wish is to live peacefully out the remaining years-if years they be.'
***
The passage of Churchill's remaining years was inevitably marked by the sadness of the death of close friends. In July 1957 his closest friend and confidant, Lord Cherwell, died; he was seventy-one years old, the same age as Clementine. Before the war it was with 'Prof' that he had examined the weaknesses and inventions of Britain's Defence policy. It was to him that Churchill had entrusted the secrets of Britain's nuclear policy during both his wartime and peacetime Premierships. He went to Oxford for Cherwell's funeral. 'As we came up the aisle of Christ Church Cathedral,' one of the mourners later recalled, 'the congregation rose spontaneously to their feet. After the service he drove to the cemetery. He walked in procession up the cemetery path. He walked beyond the path, advancing over the difficult tufts of grass, with unfaltering but ageing steps, onward to the graveside of his dear old friend.'
***
In October, the third volume of Churchill's history was published. The fourth volume was finished. 'I have now retired from literature,' Churchill wrote to Bernard Baruch, 'and am endeavouring to find ways of spending pleasantly the remaining years of my life.' That autumn he went with Clementine for three weeks to Beaverbrook's villa at Cap d'Ail. To a guest with whom, one luncheon, he discussed India, Churchill commented, with a twinkle in his eye, 'I am now merely a retired, and tired old reactionary.' To Montague Browne he remarked a few days later: 'I think the earth will soon be destroyed by a cobalt bomb. I think if I were the Almighty I would not recreate it, in case they destroyed Me too next time.'
From La Capponcina, Churchill returned to La Pausa. 'I have started a new picture of flowers painted indoors,' he wrote to Clementine, who had returned to England, 'and am about to get up for the purpose.' That October, while Churchill was still at La Pausa, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite. 'The satellite itself, etc, does not distress me,' he wrote to Clementine. 'The disconcerting thing is the proof of the forwardness of Soviet sciences compared to the Americans. The Prof was as usual vigilant and active. Plenty of warnings were given but we have fallen hopelessly behind in technical education & the tiny bit we have tends to disperse & scatter about America & the Dominions. This is the mechanised age, & where are we? Quality & of the front rank indeed we still possess. But numbers are lacking. The necessary breeding ground has failed. We must struggle on; & look to the Union with America.'
***
A month after returning to England, Churchill was eighty-three. Indomitable, he attended several debates in the Commons, returned in the New Year to La Pausa, painted, read novels, and continued to send Clementine handwritten accounts of his activities. But in February 1958, while at La Pausa, he caught bronchial pneumonia. When he recovered, the House of Commons sent him a message of congratulations. So did Brendan Bracken, who wrote: 'I am pleased and relieved beyond all telling by your rapid recovery. If you were to write a book on "Health without Rules" it would outsell all your other books.'
In March, while still at La Pausa, Churchill suffered two further bouts of fever. After his return to England in April the fever recurred. Two nurses were brought to Hyde Park Gate to look after him; they were to remain his constant helpers, assisted by a male nurse, Roy Howells. Such help was part of the sad reality of old age. But by the end of the month, though now visibly frail, Churchill was well enough to dine at the Other Club, and to take his seat in the Commons.
In July, rebellion in Iraq led to the murder of the King, his family, and his Prime Minister. In the Lebanon, an appeal for American help led to the arrival of American troops in Beirut. In Britain, the Government supported the American action, to which the Labour Opposition, still angered by the Suez intervention, was opposed. Churchill decided to speak on these events in the Commons, in support of the Government's attitude, and, after telling Macmillan that he would intervene in the debate, wrote out in the note form which had been his habit for more than half a century, what he would say:
'America & Britain must work together, reach Unity of purpose.'
'The complications which the problem presents can be cured if, & only if, they are dealt with by united forces & common principles, not merely increase of strength.'
'When we divide we lose.'
'It is not primarily a question of material force.'
'Anthony Eden & Suez. He was right. These recent events prove him so. It may be that his actions were premature.'
Churchill intended going on to say that it would be 'too easy to mock at the USA' for its action in the Lebanon; this was no time 'for trying to balance a long account' with America because of her opposition to Suez. 'The accounts are balancing themselves. What is really foolish is for two nations like England & USA to search for points of difference.' The Americans were 'in every way justified' in entering the Lebanon. 'They do not need our material or military help. If they did, I am sure they would receive it.'
Having prepared his speech notes, Churchill hesitated. He was too frail and too tired to embark upon a further Parliamentary speech. 'I spent an hour or two thinking what I would say,' he wrote to Macmillan on July 15, 'and came to the conclusion that I had nothing worth saying. I will turn up to support you in the Lobby. Forgive change of plan.'
***
That summer Churchill returned to La Capponcina, again the guest of Lord Beaverbrook. He had only been there a week when he learned that Brendan Bracken had died. He had known him, as he had Lord Cherwell, since the 1920s, and given him Cabinet Office in the war. He had welcomed his counsel and enjoyed his company. He at once prepared to fly back to England, but then he was told that Bracken had specifically asked for 'no memorials', and so remained in France. 'I know how much you loved Brendan,' Colville wrote, 'and what this breach with the happier past will mean to you.' Meanwhile, Beaverbrook had left La Capponcina for Canada. 'I am very glad that you liked my companionship,' Churchill wrote to him a few days later. 'It has now become very feeble, though none the less warm. The ties we formed so many years ago and strengthened in the days of war have lasted out our lifetime.'
On September 12 Churchill and Clementine celebrated their Golden Wedding at La Capponcina; Randolph and his daughter Arabella flew out to be with them. Ten days later Churchill embarked on a new venture, a cruise on the yacht Christina, as the guest of Onassis. The days on board the yacht were a time of tranquillity, presided over by a considerate and amusing host. During the day Churchill rested or played bezique. Each evening there was a film. After ten days Christina reached Gibraltar, from where Churchill flew back to England. Then, on October 12, he returned by air to La Pausa. He had planned to paint, 'but,' he explained to Clementine, 'I am doubtful, inert & lazy.' Later in his letter he wrote, 'The closing days or years of life are grey and dull, but I am lucky to have you at my side.'
Concern for Clementine's health was a dominant feature of Churchill's thoughts and letters whenever she was away from him. There was concern also for the well-being of three of his children; Diana was frequently depressed and sought the help of the Samaritans; Randolph had a fierce temper and lost many friends; Sarah, like Randolph, was the victim of alcoholism, and was hounded by the press. For Churchill, the plight of his three children, each of whom was talented and affectionate, was a source of pain.
Life at La Pausa provided Churchill with distraction and even excitement; having never flown in a helicopter before, he accepted an invitation from the Captain of the American aircraft carrier Randolph to fly out to the carrier and inspect a naval guard of honour. The helicopter ride was 'an exhilarating incident', he told Wendy Reves, who accompanied him. Then, on November 6, he flew to Paris, to be decorated by de Gaulle with the Croix de la Liberation, the highest award given to those who had served with the Free French Forces or in the Resistance. He began his speech of thanks, which he made in English, with the words, 'I have often made speeches in French, but that was wartime, and I do not wish to subject you to the ordeals of darker days.'
Back in London, Churchill went almost every day to the Commons, and again contemplated making a speech, but again decided against it. On November 30 he was eighty-four. Five weeks later he left with Clementine for Marrakech, for five weeks in the North African sun which he so enjoyed, after which he and Clementine joined Christina for his second cruise, along the Moroccan Coast and to the Canary Islands. Then, in March 1959, he flew back to London for a hectic four days, including a visit to Chartwell and dinner at the Other Club, before flying back to La Pausa.
At La Pausa Churchill painted. Thirty-five years earlier he had written in Nash's Pall Mall: 'Painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude. Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day.'
While Churchill was at La Pausa, Sarah, then acting in a play in Liverpool, was arrested late one night after losing her way while returning to her hotel; after a brief appearance in court the next morning she was fined £2 for drunkenness and released from custody. Some newspapers revelled in her distress. 'I think they treated her very roughly at Liverpool and roused her fiery spirit,' Churchill wrote to Clementine from La Pausa, and he added: 'I am sorry this burden rests on you & hope that staying with Mary and Christopher will relieve your troubles. Dearest, my thoughts are with you. It all falls on you. "Poor lamb!" With all my love I remain a wreck (but with its flag still flying).'
Churchill returned to London at the beginning of April. A week later he suffered another small stroke, but once more his determination overcame his infirmity; a week after the stroke he went to his constituency to speak at the meeting in which he would be renominated as its candidate. His speech was prepared for him by Montague Browne, but he read it himself, speaking for more than twenty minutes, slowly, and in a voice at times scarcely audible. It was a formidable effort. Then, as he left the platform, he turned to Montague Browne with the words, 'Now for America.'
Nothing could dissuade Churchill from crossing the Atlantic once more. 'He is determined to visit America again, so that is that!' Montague Browne told a friend. Clementine did not feel well enough or strong enough to make the journey. Churchill kept her in touch with his activities, writing on May 5 on White House stationery-he was Eisenhower's guest: 'My dearest Clemmie, Here I am. All goes well & the President is a real friend. We had a most pleasant dinner last night & I caught up my arrears of sleep in 11 (eleven) hours. I am invited to stay in bed all the morning & I am going to see Mr Dulles after luncheon.' When he did see Dulles, he was shocked by the Secretary of State's appearance; Dulles was to die of cancer two weeks later.
In several talks with Eisenhower, Churchill raised various points the Foreign Office had asked him to raise about American discrimination against British contractors. On the way to Washington airport at the end of the visit, he said to the British Ambassador, 'I hope you will give the Prime Minister a good report of my visit; and say that I behaved myself.'
Returning to Britain in mid-May, Churchill soon left again for sunnier climes, joining Christina for a cruise in Greek and Turkish waters, and then spending several weeks at La Pausa; for four years it had been a haven of peace and contentment, his beloved 'Pausaland'.
***
Frail but indomitable, on September 29 Churchill spoke in his constituency at his adoption meeting, and a few days later spoke in the neighbouring constituency of Walthamstow on behalf of the candidate there. At the General Election on October 3 the Conservatives were returned to power with an increased majority. On November 30 Churchill was eighty-five; in search of sun he went to the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, where he and Clementine stayed in a penthouse suite with magnificent views over the Corniche and the Mediterranean. Later that year he went on another cruise on board Christina, to the West Indies. Returning to England, he remarked to his daughter Diana, 'My life is over, but it is not yet ended.'
***
A week before his eighty-sixth birthday, Churchill suffered another small stroke. On his birthday he was well enough to get up for lunch with his family. Three months later he was on his travels once more, flying to Gibraltar to rejoin Christina for another cruise with 'Ari' Onassis to the West Indies. During the voyage he wrote to Clementine, who had not been well enough to undertake the journey:
My darling Clemmie,
Here is a line to keep us posted
in my own handwriting-all done
myself! And to tell you how
much I love you: we have travelled
ceaselessly over endless seas-
quite smoothly for weeks on end
and now here we are-within
a few days of meeting Ari and his
family. This is the moment for me
to show you that I still possess
the gift of writing & continue to use
it. But I will not press it too far
Ever your devoted
W
Christina sailed from the West Indies along the Atlantic coast of the United States to New York. From there, Churchill flew back to London. Then, after two months at home, he returned to Monte Carlo for the rest of the winter. Painting was no longer possible for him; his pastime now was to read novels, and to be with friends and family; his twenty-one-year-old grandson Winston was among those who flew out to be with him. Churchill still managed to write several times to his wife, by hand. One of these letters read:
My dearest Clemmie,
All is very pleasant and the days slip by. We are steadily wiping off old friendship's debts with lunches and dinners. I find it very hard to write a good letter and wonder at the rate with which my friends accomplish their daily tasks. It is amazing they can succeed so well.
But now here I have written what is at least the expression of my love. Darling, when I was young I wrote fairly well, but now that I am played out you have my fondest love,
Your devoted Winston
PS. I am daily astonished by the developments I see in my namesake. He is a wonderful boy. I am so glad I have got to know him.
Churchill left the South of France at the beginning of September 1961, returning to Chartwell. On October 30 he attended the State Opening of Parliament; a month later he was eighty-seven; that night he dined with Beaverbrook at Hyde Park Gate, then, on the following day, flew once more to Monte Carlo. It was there, at the start of another visit in June 1962, that he fell down, breaking his hip. A French hospital bed was made ready for him, but he told Montague Browne, 'I want to die in England.' When this comment was relayed to Downing Street, Harold Macmillan sent a Royal Air Force Comet to fly him back to London. As he was brought off the aircraft on a stretcher he gave the onlookers a V-sign.
***
On 1 April 1963 Clementine Churchill was seventy-eight. That day her eighty-eight-year-old husband sent her a hand-written letter:
My darling one,
This is only to give you
my fondest love and kisses
a hundred times repeated.
I am a pretty dull and
paltry scribbler; but my
stick as it writes carries my
heart along with it.
Your ever & always
W
Later that April, Churchill returned to the Hôtel de Paris at Monte Carlo for two weeks. Then he flew back to London. As the result of considerable urging from Clementine he agreed not to stand again for Parliament. In June he returned to Monte Carlo and to Christina. The cruise, which was to be his last, took him to Sardinia, Corfu and Athens. Back in London in July he went once more to the House of Commons, where MPs were shocked by his frailty. Two weeks later he suffered another stroke. That October, Diana committed suicide. She was fifty-four years old and had long suffered from depression. 'The lethargy of extreme old age dulls many sensibilities,' Mary has written, 'and my father only took in slowly what I had to tell him, but then he withdrew into a great and distant silence.'
Two days before his eighty-ninth birthday, Churchill went to the House of Commons again; he was brought into the Chamber in a wheelchair. That night he dined at the Other Club. He returned twice more to the Commons, his last visit being on 27 July 1964. In mid-October he left Chartwell for London for the last time. On November 30 he was ninety. Taken to the window at Hyde Park Gate to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd, he raised his hand in the V-sign. On December 8 Bill Deakin came to lunch with him; two days later they went together to the Other Club. 'It had become increasingly difficult to awake the spark, formerly so vital,' one of the members there that evening later recalled, 'and all that could be said was that he knew where he was and was happy to be there.' A month later, on 10 January 1965, Churchill suffered a massive stroke. Two weeks later he died.
***
The nation mourned, showing its grief at Churchill's lying-in-state in Westminster Hall, when 300,000 people filed past his coffin, and during the State Funeral, the first given to a commoner since the death of the Duke of Wellington more than a century earlier. Men and women wept as the coffin was borne past them on a gun-carriage through the streets of London, followed by members of Churchill's family, led by Clementine and Randolph. The funeral service at St Paul's was attended by six thousand people, including six Sovereigns and fifteen Heads of State. It ended with the sounding of the Last Post and the Reveille by a trumpeter high up in the Whispering Gallery. The coffin was then taken by barge along the Thames to Waterloo Station, and on by train, to the parish church at Bladon, where Churchill was buried next to his parents and his brother Jack, within sight of his birthplace, Blenheim Palace.
In her message to Parliament, the Queen called Churchill 'a national hero'. Attlee, his wartime deputy and post-war successor, described him as 'the greatest Englishman of our time-I think the greatest citizen of the world of our time'. At the next meeting of the Other Club, which Churchill had hoped to attend and which was the only engagement marked on his February calendar, Macmillan told those present, 'Our finest hour and our greatest moment came from our work with him.' Lord Chandos, the former Oliver Lyttelton, recalled Churchill's qualities as a statesman: 'He enjoyed a conflict of ideas, but not a conflict between people. His powers were those of imagination, experience, and magnanimity. Perhaps not enough has been made of his magnanimity. He saw man as a noble and not as a mean creature. The only people he never forgave were those, who, in the words he so often used, "fell beneath the level of events".'
Each generation will make its own assessment of Churchill's career. 'It is difficult to overtake slander,' he himself had written in February 1942, 'but the truth is very powerful too.' As the years pass and the historical record is studied without malice, Churchill's actions and aims will be seen to have been humane and far-sighted. His patriotism, his sense of fair play, his belief in democracy, and his hopes for the human race, were matched by formidable powers of work and thought, vision and foresight. His path was often beset by controversy, disappointment and abuse, but these never deflected him from his sense of duty and his faith in the British people.
'It is hardly in the nature of things,' Churchill's daughter Mary had written to her father in 1951, 'that your descendants should inherit your genius-but I earnestly hope they may share in some way the qualities of your heart.' Four years later Randolph had written to him: 'Power must pass and vanish. Glory, which is achieved through a just exercise of power-which itself is accumulated by genius, toil, courage and self-sacrifice-alone remains. Your glory is enshrined for ever on the unperishable plinth of your achievement; and can never be destroyed or tarnished. It will flow with the centuries.' Such was a son's encouragement at the time of his father's final resignation. From Mary had come further words of solace nine years later, when his life's great impulses were at last fading. 'In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving, generous father,' she wrote, 'I owe you what every Englishman, woman & child does-Liberty itself.'
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