The Churchill Series - Jan. 13, 2006

(One of a series of daily post on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

It was August, 1950. The Prime Minister’s office was held by Clement Atlee. The Leader of the Opposition was Churchill, then age 75. He was spending August at Chartwell, his home in Kent, about an hour's drive from London.

At Scotland Yard that same August Detective Constable Edmund Murray, age 33 and a former member of the Irish Guards who’d served with both the French resistance and British intelligence, was ordered to complete all his outstanding case reports. He knew that meant an assignment change.

Murray was told he would now be part of Churchill’s protection detail. He tells us what happened next (British spellings):

I travelled by police car from Scotland Yard down to Chartwell. As I got out of the car I looked towards the half-open, substantial front door of the manor. (It looks as if it were made of solid English oak but is really ordinary pinewood and was designed by Churchill himself.)

In the hallway beyond I could see what appeared to be an immense figure, sitting on a red leather-covered bench.

I approached and recognised the most recognisable figure in the whole world. He was wearing a silver-grey Stetson hat and royal-blue velvet bedroom slippers initialed "WSC" on their fronts in gold thread. He was wearing his siren suit, as he called it, which he had perfected during the war years.

It was just a glamourised boiler suit, really, made in one piece more or less, with a zip fastener down the front. Occasionally when I was waiting for him to dress, I would hear a roar, and would know that he was having trouble with his zip fastener.

The Leader of the Opposition removed the cigar from his mouth with his left hand and offered me his right hand. As I took it I noticed its beauty: smooth and pink, unsullied by the liver spots that were to invade his hands sporadically in later years; with impeccable nails, one of which, that of the little finger of his right hand, was kept about a quarter of an inch long and well pointed. This existed for no unhygienic reason, but to be introduced into the end of any cigar that he took from the box in order to extract it without any damage to the object he loved so much.

I didn't know about Murray until a few days ago. How about you?

I want to learn more about this detective with such a fine eye for detail.
_____________________________________________
Edmund Murray, "The Churchill I Knew." Proceedings
of the International Churchill Societies 1992-93.