The Churchill Series – Nov. 3, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

WARNING. Today’s post is drawn from the top of my head.

We know Churchill could be brusque and would often interrupt people who were telling him things he already knew. “Prey get on with it.”

There was the time a secretary taking dictation in the early morning hours at Chartwell sat by uncomfortably as Churchill and a young don who’d done research for him got into a dispute. The secretary tried to break the tension with: “My, it’s very dark outside.”

Churchill took his glasses off, stared at her for a moment and then said: “It generally it at night.”

But I can tell you of a group of people with whom Churchill was very patient and even thanked them fro telling him things he had known for decades.

The people were prominent Americans who visited Churchill during the period September, 1939, when he became First Lord of the Admiralty, until Pearl Harbor.

Many of the recorded in diaries, letters or in later interviews the time and care they took to explain to the First Lord and later the PM the American government’s constitutional structure, its public opinion and how all of that was influencing FDR, especially as the 1940 presidential election approached..

The visitors explained how the Electoral College worked, that FDR’s decision to seek a third term flew in the face of Washington’s “No third term” decision, and so on.

Churchill knew all of that. As we learned in Tuesday’s post he’d written a respected history of America. What’s more he’d visited the U.S. often and frequently wrote about America for British papers and magazines.

But invariably we find Churchill’s American visitors recording things like, “He listened attentively as I explained how the Electoral Collage works; and asked some good questions afterwards,” and, this a common one, “As I was leaving, Churchill thanked me again for what I’d told him about the President’s constraints.”

I always smile when I read those accounts.

BTW – If you haven’t read Churchill’s The Great Republic in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples I hope you do. Maybe put it on your holiday gift list.

Have a nice weekend.

John