Introduction
Winston Churchill is portrayed as the man who stood alone against Nazi tyranny during the Second World War until the United States came to Britain’s aid. Yet in his private life, he was a world leader who never stood alone; by his side at many of the most crucial moments in the conflict was one or other of his devoted daughters. They were eyewitnesses at some of the most important events in world history: beside him at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam and with him when he met Roosevelt, Stalin and de Gaulle.
Nor was this purely a wartime phenomenon. Throughout Winston’s political career, he liked to keep his daughters close. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s, his eldest daughter, Diana stood beside him outside No. 11 Downing Street before he presented his Budget. After the war, Sarah was his chosen companion on holidays to Italy, Morocco and the South of France, while Mary was there to support him at Chequers and Chartwell in his final years as prime minister.
Thousands of books have been written about Winston Churchill, but this is the first focussing on his four daughters: Diana, Sarah, Marigold and Mary. The Churchill Sisters brings them out of the shadows to discover who they really were, and by telling their story adds to our understanding of ‘the greatest Englishman’. Looking at him from their perspective, we see him in a new light as not just a great war leader but a father.
Building on the now widely accepted argument that Churchill could not have achieved what he did without his wife, Clementine, my book shows that he also depended on his daughters. The women in his family worked as a team to help him fulfil his destiny. Clementine was the most important person in his life, but when she was unavailable, one of his daughters stepped in to support him. During the Second World War, as his health deteriorated, they acted as a human shield, travelling with him when he met world leaders and protecting him whenever necessary. Together, they helped to create the stable domestic life he needed to be able to fight on. In those crucial days, when the future of Britain hung in the balance, there were few people Winston could trust and his wife and daughters were among the faithful few he knew would never let him down. As the pressures mounted, Clementine also relied on her girls to give her the strength to keep calm and carry on.
Despite touching on the great events of history, this is not a story set on the battlefields or in Parliament. It is an intimate family saga, which gives a behind-the-scenes insight into the Churchillian world. It recreates the atmosphere of what it was like to live in one of the most powerful families in England at a pivotal period in our history, and while there is plenty of country-house colour, this is far from a superficial chronicle of upper-class life. The Churchill girls were never just social butterflies and from an early age they were motivated by a profound sense of duty.
Drawing on hundreds of previously unpublished family letters, including those from the recently opened Soames archives, this book delves into the complex dynamics of the family.1 Although Winston was self-centred and his vocation came first, he was always very loving to his daughters. As I read their letters, I was impressed with the intimacy and informality of his relationship with his girls. At moments of crisis, they confided in him and sought his advice. They felt that he was the one person who could always make them feel better. As Sarah said, he created in his children the same emotions he inspired in people during the war: ‘It’s a feeling that no matter how grim things are, if you hold on, and do your best, all will be well in the end.’2
Churchill’s relationships with his daughters are a fundamental part of the story, but they are only one aspect of a multifaceted narrative. Clementine’s relationships with her daughters and their interactions with each other lie at the heart of it. The way one personality played off another shaped the people they became. Bright, attractive and well connected, in any other family the girls would have shone. But they were not in another family, they were Churchills and neither they nor anyone else could ever forget it.
The girls were born into a cast of larger-than-life personalities. It was their fate to be overshadowed and it was not just their famous father who expected to take centre stage; there were plenty of other flamboyant characters waiting in the wings. Their only brother, Randolph, was next in the pecking order. At first, he was the golden boy, then the enfant terrible who undermined family peace with his erratic behaviour. Even their more distant relatives stole the limelight; who could compete with their glamorous cousins, the Mitford girls?
In fact, the Churchill girls could and did. Their lives were just as full of drama, passion and tragedy as their Mitford rivals. There was an elopement, affairs with powerful characters and a series of suicides. It is a story of extremes which takes the reader from Hollywood to Holloway Prison, from the peaks of power to the depths of despair.
Theirs was a double-edged sword. Being Winston’s daughters opened up a world of privilege and opportunity, but it also raised expectations. Their positions as handmaids to the great man were the easy part of their role; establishing meaningful lives of their own away from their charismatic clan was harder. Sadly, Marigold died too young to achieve her potential, but Diana, Sarah and Mary coped in very different ways with the demands of living up to their famous name.
Like so many women of their generation, their lives were limited by their gender. Until his daughters’ sterling war work changed his attitude, Winston had a Victorian view of women’s roles; they were expected to be dutiful wives and mothers. Their brother Randolph, purely because he was male, was treated as the star. Arguably, the girls had greater potential, which they fought in varying degrees to fulfil.
Although Diana was very political, she chose a traditionally female role, acting as a supporter of first her father and then her husband. She only found her true vocation at the end of her life. Similarly, after a brilliant wartime career, Mary put her family first. It was only in later life that she became a public figure in her own right. In contrast, Sarah was the least conventional of her sisters and always the rebel. She became an actress and pursued her career in America. It was not an easy choice, but as she wrote to her father, ‘I have in me, as strong an instinct, as most women (as Mary for instance) as powerful an instinct to be alone and free, as they have to find a true mate and found a family.’3
In a less sexist era, it might have been Sarah rather than Randolph who became Winston’s heir apparent. She was the one who inherited a touch of her father’s genius. Always on the cusp of success, she was almost a great beauty, nearly a famous film star, but she never quite made it. Her self-destructive streak sabotaged her talent.
In such a dynamic family there was never a dull moment, but there is a point in their story when the drama takes a darker turn. The issue of mental health runs like a deep vein through this book. Both Diana and Sarah fought poignant battles against personal challenges which threatened to overwhelm them. Drawing on the Churchill girls’ candid letters, doctors’ reports and friends’ memories, this book pieces together what happened.
Most people know about the legendary courage Churchill showed in the war, but fewer know about the adversity he faced in private. Over the years his family endured more than its fair share of problems, but the lasting image of the Churchill girls is not one of tragedy; they are heroic rather than tragic figures. Like their father and mother, Diana, Sarah and Mary were resilient and courageous.
This book is an extraordinary love story – not in the conventional sense, but in the true meaning of the word because Winston’s daughters’ deep love and loyalty to their parents and each other was exceptional. Their relationships are inspiring because they were so compassionate; they accepted human frailties and forgave past failures. Tested to the limits, the bond between them was indestructible. In later life, as they remembered all they had been through together, Mary wrote to Sarah, ‘I cling to our loving bond of sisterhood – and know that is one of the most precious things in my life.’4 Sarah agreed, ‘Out of it all comes a shining light for me – we were really sisters.’5
1
DianaThe Gold Cream Kitten
When Winston Churchill’s first child, Diana, was born, he wrote to his wife, Clementine:
I wonder what she will grow into, and whether she will be lucky or unlucky to have been dragged out of chaos. She ought to have some rare qualities both of mind and body. But these do not always mean happiness or peace. Still I think a bright star shines for her.1
Winston firmly believed in destiny, but was it really written in the stars what life would be like for his daughters? Were they predestined to follow a course charted for them by fate, step-by-step to its inevitable conclusion, or did a unique combination of characters playing off each other have consequences none of the main protagonists could have foreseen? Did nature or nurture turn the Churchill girls into the women they became? Piecing together what shaped their ends involves tracing their stories from the beginning, and that started when two exceptional people met and fell in love.
When Winston Churchill married Clementine Hozier at St Margaret’s, Westminster, on 12 September 1908, it was the most important political wedding of the decade. Politicians from across Parliament joined the congregation as Winston’s former headmaster, Dr Welldon, told Clementine that her role and the influence she exerted in her husband’s future public life would be so important it would be ‘sacred’.2 Never off duty for long, during the signing of the register in the vestry the groom discussed politics with David Lloyd George. Afterwards, Winston’s Cabinet colleague told a friend he had ‘never met anyone with such a passion for politics’.3
Winston never hid his ambition and it seems that, when Clementine married him, she understood what she was signing up to. Like her husband, she believed he was a man of destiny and she saw her role as supporting him to achieve his potential.4 However, Clementine was never just some flimsy, submissive wife. Intelligent and strong-willed, she was special too. Her husband loved her deeply, but he also respected her and realised how lucky he was to have her. She was her own person, and was a shrewd judge of character with her own political views. She challenged him and her emotional intelligence made her worth listening to.
As well as mutual respect, an emotional neediness brought them together. Neither Winston nor Clementine had ever come first with anyone before they met and the knowledge that they were at last the centre of another person’s world gave them the stability they both craved.5 The closely bonded couple had much in common. They both had unhappy childhoods and complicated relationships with their parents and, inevitably, their lack of positive role models was to affect their parenting.
Clementine’s father, Sir Henry Hozier, was from a wealthy brewing family while her mother, Lady Blanche Ogilvy, was the daughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie. The couple had four children, Kitty, Clementine and the twins, Bill and Nellie, but it was rumoured that none of them were fathered by Henry. Apparently, Blanche had at least nine lovers, so the paternity of her children was hard to pinpoint. There were various candidates for Clementine’s biological father, but it seems most likely to have been Bertie Mitford, the 1st Lord Redesdale.6 As Bertie was married to Blanche’s younger sister, it was a liaison which verged on the incestuous even by her promiscuous standards.
After Clementine’s parents separated in 1891, she had an insecure childhood. Blanche was always short of money, so in a quest to make economies she moved her family to Dieppe in France. She could not have chosen a worse place. As she was a gambler, the lure of the local casinos soon attracted her, and she was often in debt.
Although Clementine had inherited her mother’s strong features, they had little else in common. Blanche favoured her vivacious eldest daughter, Kitty, and showed little affection to her serious-minded second child. However, despite their mother’s blatantly divisive behaviour, the two sisters became inseparable.
The most formative moment in Clementine’s early life came in 1900 when Kitty developed typhoid. She watched as, in just a few weeks, her vibrant sister was transformed into a wraith. The memory of the person she was closest to dying at the age of nearly 17 would haunt Clementine when she had children of her own. She had seen for herself that the worst thing possible could happen and fate could be cruel. Rather than deal with the complex emotions triggered by Kitty’s death, both Clementine and Blanche just kept a stiff upper lip and carried on. Although they were both bereft, rather than consoling each other, Blanche turned all her attention on to her youngest daughter, Nellie.7
Clementine grew up to be very different from her mother. Rather than inheriting Blanche’s spendthrift tendencies, she was always careful with money. Perhaps in reaction to her mother’s decadence, Clementine had a puritanical streak and she was to be a faithful wife throughout her long marriage to Winston. No doubt she also intended to be a very different mother from Blanche, but sadly, she repeated many of the same mistakes with her own children.
Winston’s relationship with his parents was equally problematic. His recent biographer, Andrew Roberts, describes his mother and father’s treatment of him as ‘verging on the abusive’.8 His father, Lord Randolph, was always a harsh critic of his eldest son. When Winston was 20, Lord Randolph died from a rare brain disease. For the rest of his life, the younger Churchill wished they had known each other better and been closer. Winston hero-worshiped his father and wanted to emulate his career to prove his underestimation of his potential wrong. He dreamed of having a son who would one day enter Parliament with him and form a political dynasty.
Winston’s high-spirited American mother, Jennie Jerome, was no more nurturing than his father. When he was a child, she neglected him to pursue her all-consuming social life. Winston was abandoned at a school he hated.9 Despite his begging letters, Jennie rarely visited or even wrote to her lonely little boy.10 So, lacking maternal love, Winston turned to his nanny, Mrs Everest, who gave him the emotional support and devotion he needed to thrive. He was determined not to repeat the mistakes his parents made with his own children. He did break the pattern by being a very loving father, but his over-indulgence of his only son was to be as detrimental as his own parents’ neglect.
Deprived of a stable home in his childhood, Winston could not wait to start a family. When Clementine became pregnant shortly after their wedding, he was delighted. The couple moved into a town house at 33 Eccleston Square, London, and prepared for the arrival of their baby. Winston’s younger brother Jack’s wife, Goonie (Gwendoline), was also expecting and the two young wives became firm friends. After Goonie gave birth to their first child, John George (known as Johnny), Winston wrote to Clementine telling her what an easy time her sister-in-law had, hoping this would reassure his nervous bride. He added that he did not like to think about her having to go through such a painful experience but that it would be worth it for the joy the baby would bring.11 Fortunately, the birth was straightforward and on 11 July 1909 Diana was born.
Drawing on a combination of the pet names Clementine and Winston used for each other – ‘Kat’ or ‘Cat’ for her, and ‘Pug’ or ‘Amber Dog’ for him – their baby daughter was soon known as ‘the Puppy Kitten’ or, because of her auburn hair, the ‘Gold Cream Kitten’.12
From the start, Diana looked more like her father than her mother. When David Lloyd George asked Winston, ‘Is she a pretty child?’, he replied proudly, ‘The prettiest child ever seen.’ To which his friend responded, ‘Like her mother, I suppose.’ Winston answered, ‘No. She is the image of me.’13
Setting a pattern which would continue throughout her children’s childhood, shortly after the birth, Clementine went away. While she convalesced in a cottage near Brighton, Diana was left in the care of Winston and her nanny in London. Showing her priorities, Clementine wrote to her husband saying that she missed them both, but especially him.14
Although leaving her baby daughter sounds strange to modern readers, Clementine’s behaviour was not unusual for her era. Many upper-class Edwardian mothers spent much of their time apart from their children, delegating their care to nannies. For some, it enabled them to pursue a hedonistic existence, but for Clementine the reasons were far less frivolous. Self-preservation rather than self-indulgence made her go away. Throughout her life she suffered from anxiety and frequent holidays seemed to be the only way she could cope with her demanding husband and motherhood. Over the years, Winston accepted that she needed to get away. He understood that it was her way of regaining her emotional balance. It also allowed her to reassert her own identity which was in danger of being crushed by living with such an egocentric husband.15
With Clementine away, Winston became a surprisingly involved father for his generation. Whenever she was absent, he happily stepped in, displaying an enthusiasm for everyday experiences that she lacked. He enjoyed officiating at bath times and reading Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit to his first-born at bedtime. Admittedly, he was not expected to shoulder the same responsibility as his wife and could opt in and out of family life as he pleased, but he relished being a father. Even when he was particularly pressured at work, he took his duties seriously. In between making important political decisions, he spent time carefully choosing just the right present for his daughter.16 It seems that he found involving himself in family life a way to switch off from his work.
Refreshed after her convalescence, Clementine collected Diana and took her to stay with her Stanley relatives at Alderley Park, Cheshire. Diana was a particularly pretty baby, which pleased her competitive mother. She reported with pride to Winston about how their daughter compared with the six other infants who were visiting. She wrote, ‘None of them are fit to hold a candle to our P.K. or even to unloose the latchet of her shoe.’17 She was delighted when the staff at Alderley considered Diana to be ‘the finest specimen’ ever to visit.18
However, during their stay, Clementine became concerned that her baby daughter seemed unwell. Understandably, after the tragedy of her sister’s death, she became anxious when her baby showed the slightest signs of illness, and naturally inclined to worry; as a first-time mother she lacked confidence and preferred to rely on their nanny’s judgement rather than her own.19 Throughout her children’s childhood, when she was with them she fussed about their health.20 She veered between being over-protective in some ways and then strangely under-protective in others. As she was unable to strike an equilibrium, it seems that she could only escape her anxieties by handing the responsibility to someone else and getting away from it all.
However, the threats to her children’s well-being were not just in Clementine’s imagination. As the daughter of one of the country’s leading politicians, Diana grew up in a privileged but high- pressured environment. It was a turbulent political period and Winston was a controversial figure at the centre of the action. In 1910, he became Home Secretary. As he was known for his opposition to giving women the vote, he became a target for the suffragettes.21 When Diana was only 16 months old, it was rumoured that the most militant campaigners might try to kidnap her. For her protection, a detective was assigned to accompany Diana and her nanny on their walks in Hyde Park.22 This was to be the first of several times during Diana’s childhood that there would be a threat of violence against her father or his family. Although Diana was too young to understand what was happening, it is likely that she would have picked up on the tense atmosphere.
It was not a happy time for the whole Churchill family. Winston’s depression, which he called ‘the Black Dog’, reared its head during his period at the Home Office. In a letter to Clementine in July 1911 he told her that his cousin Ivor Guest’s wife, Alice, had seen a doctor in Germany who had cured her depression. He felt the man might be useful if his ‘black dog’ ever returned, adding that it was a great relief that he did not feel that way any longer.23
It seems his role as Home Secretary had put a strain on his mental well-being. A distinguished psychiatrist, Anthony Storr, believed Winston was affected because he had the imagination to empathise with the distress of others. He identified with the underdog and showed genuine concern for prisoners.24
Winston found it particularly onerous making the ultimate decision on whether criminals condemned to death should live or die. One particularly gruelling case, which worried him so much he mentioned it to Clementine, concerned a woman who murdered her 2-year-old illegitimate child ‘under very bad circumstances’. He described it as ‘a very disagreeable Death Sentence’.25 Perhaps it weighed particularly heavily on his conscience because his own daughter was the same age. He knew Clementine also found mother-hood challenging but the childcare and support she had was in striking contrast to the situation of the woman whose life he held in the balance. The woman was due to be executed, but on Winston’s advice she was given a reprieve and the death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.26
Just a few days after Winston wrote to his wife about his dilemma, the difference in the two mothers’ worlds was highlighted. Clementine was mourning the loss of her trusted nanny, Nurse Hodgson, who had left to work elsewhere. Being unprepared to shoulder the responsibilities of motherhood alone, she recognised how dependent she was on good staff. She told her husband that she missed their old nanny very much and she was concerned because the new nursery maid was careless when left in charge of Diana.27 Winston promptly advised Clementine to sack her.28 Finding suitable staff to care for their children was to be a major problem for the Churchills throughout this decade.
* * *
Diana’s rule as sole heir was short-lived. In 1911 Clementine gave her husband his longed-for son, Randolph. Nicknaming him ‘the Chumbolly’, Winston immediately treated him as a young crown prince. Although there is no doubt that Winston loved all his children deeply, as a man of his era, he believed that a son could achieve more than his daughters.
A good-looking, extrovert child, Randolph seemed to have the potential to fulfil his paternal dreams. From his first years, Randolph was spoilt by his father. In a letter to his wife, Winston rather guiltily expressed a preference for his more outgoing son over his self- conscious, enigmatic daughter.29
After Winston became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, the family moved into Admiralty House, overlooking Horse Guards Parade. As Winston advanced up the ministerial ladder, the demands on Clementine became even greater. As chatelaine of a grand house, she entertained his colleagues with style, while behind the scenes offering sound advice. Clementine always put her husband’s needs above her children’s, and Randolph and Diana were far down her list of priorities. As she later told her youngest daughter Mary, after she had given her all to her husband there was nothing left over.30
The children’s care was delegated to nannies. In many ways it was a challenging job to be a nanny to the Churchill children. As they grew older, Randolph and Diana were partners in crime who delighted in devising childish pranks and, always rebellious, Randolph was the ringleader while the more docile Diana followed his lead. Their nannies rarely lasted long and when they left the mischievous duo would chuck their bags down the stairs, chanting, ‘Nanny’s going, Nanny’s going. Hurrah! Hurrah!’31
At this period in her life, Clementine gave even less attention to her children because she was unwell. The year after Randolph’s birth she suffered a miscarriage. It was an unpleasant experience which left her physically and emotionally drained. To recuperate, Clementine went with Goonie and their children to stay at a friend’s house at Sandwich.
Throughout their childhood, Clementine always tried to take her family on a summer holiday by the sea. These breaks were some of the happiest, most relaxed times she spent with her children. However, to her frustration, Winston was less keen, preferring more glamorous destinations. The attraction of British seaside resorts could never compete with the French Riviera for him. He rarely joined family holidays for long, usually just popping in for part of the time. Annoyingly for Clementine, who invested so much time and effort in these breaks, his intermittent visits were often the highlight of the holidays for his children. While he was there, he focussed his full attention on them and made every moment fun.
When Winston finally visited his family at Sandwich, as usual he brought drama with him. The suffragettes had tracked down where their adversary was staying. As he arrived at the holiday home, two women on bicycles blocked his car. A few days later, a larger group of campaigners tried again to interrupt his journey, but this time he had left before they arrived. After these incidents, he warned Clementine to be careful not to open any suspicious parcels in case they contained explosives.32
As when Diana was a baby, the most militant suffragettes were once again targeting the Churchill children. They sent letters threatening to kidnap them,33 and these were not just idle threats. Back in London, when Randolph and Diana were having their daily walk in the park with their nanny, Randolph recalled being pulled out of his pram by a would-be kidnapper. Thanks to his nanny reacting quickly, catching hold of him and putting him back into the pram, the half-hearted attempt failed.34 According to her brother’s account, Diana witnessed this frightening incident. Secure children grow up feeling the world is a safe place; for the Churchill children that comforting myth was shattered early.
Copyright © 2021 by Rachel Trethewey
