Churchill never doubted his own genius – subordinates often wished that he would. But there were many moments when his confidence in a happy outcome faltered amid bad tidings from the battlefield. He believed that destiny had marked him to enter history as the saviour of Western civilisation, and this conviction coloured his smallest words and deeds. When a Dover workman said to his mate as Churchill passed, ‘There goes the bloody British Empire,’ the prime minister was enchanted. ‘Very nice,’ he lisped to Jock Colville, his face wreathed in smiles. But, in profound contrast to Hitler and Mussolini, he preserved a humanity, an awareness of himself as mortal clay, which seldom lost its power to touch the hearts of those who served him, just as the brilliance of his conversation won their veneration.
He was fearless about everything save the possibility of defeat. Hurrying from Downing Street to the Annexe with Colville one day, in his customary uniform of short black coat, striped trousers and white-spotted blue bow tie, they heard the whistle of descending bombs. The young official took cover as two explosions resounded nearby. He rose to observe the prime minister still striding up King Charles Street, gold-headed walking stick in hand.
Disraeli said: ‘Men should always be difficult. I can’t bear men who come and dine with you when you want them.’ Churchill, with his tempestuous moods and unsocial hours, certainly fulfilled this requirement. The prime minister’s typists were expected instantly to comprehend the meaning of some mumbled injunction such as ‘Gimme “Pug”!’ When taking dictation, they were required to respect every nuance of his precision of language. Alan Brooke was once outraged when Churchill shouted down the telephone to him: ‘Get off, you fool!’ It required intercession by the staff to soothe the general’s ruffled feathers with the explanation that the prime minister, who was in bed when he called Brooke, had been telling Smokey the black cat to stop biting his toes. Jock Colville and the King’s assistant private secretary Tommy Lascelles, lunching together one day, debated ‘whether very great men usually had a touch of charlatanism in them’, and of course they were thinking of the prime minister. Some fastidious souls recoiled from Churchill’s perceived ruthlessness, though US military attaché Raymond Lee applauded him as ‘an unscrupulously rough-and-tumble fighter…perfectly at home in his dealings with Hitler and Mussolini’.
Churchill was self-obsessed, yet displayed spasms of concern for his intimates just often enough to prevent them from becoming disgusted by his selfishness. After one outburst, he suddenly put his hand on private secretary John Martin’s shoulder and said, ‘You know, I may seem to be very fierce, but I am fierce only with one man – Hitler.’ He expressed regret that he had lacked leisure to get to know Martin at the start of their relationship, back in May.
He was always happy to reminisce about himself, but had no small talk, in the sense of being willing to display a polite interest in the affairs of others, save those important to the state. He was reluctant even to pretend to pay attention to people who failed to capture his interest. Leo Amery contrasted him with Britain’s First World War leader: ‘Ll[oyd] G[eorge] was purely external and receptive, the result of intercourse with his fellow men, and non-existent in their absence, while Winston is literary and expressive of himself with hardly any contact with other minds.’ ‘Pug’ Ismay shook his head in dismay when the prime minister once wantonly kept an entire ship’s crew waiting half an hour to be addressed by him: ‘It’s very naughty of the PM. It’s this unbridled power.’
Churchill’s doctor Sir Charles Wilson wrote of ‘the formidable ramparts of indifference which he presents to women’, and which only his wife Clementine and their daughters were sometimes capable of scaling. Clementine – highly strung, intensely moral, sensitive to vulgarity – was often ignored, mauled, taken for granted. Yet beyond her fierce loyalty to her husband she marvellously sustained her commitment to rebuke his excesses, to repair the fractured china of his relationships. On 27 June she wrote a letter which has become justly famous:
Darling Winston, One of the men in your entourage (a devoted friend) has been to me & told me that there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues and subordinates because of your rough sarcastic & overbearing manner…My darling Winston – I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be. It is for you to give the Orders & if they are bungled – except for the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury & the Speaker you can sack anyone & everyone. Therefore with this terrific power you must combine urbanity, kindness & if possible Olympic [sic] calm…I cannot bear that those who serve the country & your self should not love you as well as admire and respect you. Besides you won’t get the best results by irascibility & rudeness. They will breed either dislike or a slave mentality – ‘Rebellion in War Time being out of the question!’ Please forgive your loving devoted & watchful
Clemmie
This note, of which the signature was decorated with a cat drawing, she tore up. But four days later she pieced it together and gave it to her husband – the only letter she is known to have written to him in 1940. The country, as much as he, owed a debt to such a wife. More than any other human being, Clementine preserved Churchill from succumbing to the corruption of wielding almost absolute authority over his nation.
Churchill seldom found a moment to read a book in 1940, but he addressed with close attention each day’s newspapers, windows upon the minds of the British people. His hunger for information was insatiable. Not infrequently he telephoned personally to the Daily Telegraph or Daily Express at midnight to enquire what was their front-page ‘splash’ for next day. One night at Chequers he caused Colville to ring the Admiralty three times in quest of news. On the third occasion, the exasperated duty captain at the other end gave way to invective. The prime minister, overhearing the babble of speech from the other end, assumed that at least a cruiser must have been sunk. He seized the receiver from Colville’s hand, ‘to find himself subjected to a flow of uncomplimentary expletives which clearly fascinated him. After listening for a minute or two he explained with great humility that he was only the Prime Minister and that he had been wondering whether there was any naval news.’
He detested wanton as distinct from purposeful physical activity, and enjoyed relaxing with bezique or backgammon, which could be indulged without abandoning conversation. His companions remarked his lack of manual dexterity, evident when his pudgy fingers shuffled a pack of cards. ‘He has more wit than humour,’ suggested Charles Wilson. Colville noticed that while Churchill often smiled and chuckled, he never laughed outright, perhaps perceiving this as a vulgarity. The devotion he inspired in most of those who served him derived from a deportment which was at once magnificent and devoid of pomposity. In the early hours of a Sunday morning in his bedroom at Chequers, Colville recorded that Churchill ‘collapsed between the chair and the stool, ending in a most absurd position on the floor with his feet in the air. Having no false dignity, he treated it as a complete joke and repeated several times, “a real Charlie Chaplin!” ’