Thursday, August 02, 2007

The Churchill Series – Aug. 2, 2007

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

Yesterday’s post included the recollections of one of Churchill’s WW II Private Secretaries, Sir John Peck, who described how Churchill went about preparing a major speech.

Since Churchill often worked late into the night, he would estimate how long he was likely to work after dinner and then alert his staff “that I shall need one (or sometimes two or three) woman tonight,” who would then work in shifts with one starting off taking dictation, then going off to type what she’d recorded while the next secretary began taking dictation. And so it would go until he’d finished, often in the early morning hours of the next day.

Churchill had been using this “system” since well before the war. He used it in the 30s when he worked on his biography of Marlborough and his History of the English Speaking Peoples.

It was often a source of fun for him as follows: If Clementine were away and he was entertaining guests for dinner, he would say to the butler as dinner was ending something like:

We shall have coffee and brandies in the library. Then after our guests depart I shall want two women. No, I’m a bit tired. One will do for tonight.
The butler would play it straight and after a few minutes Churchill would let his surprised guests in on the joke.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Instead of "due", please use "do,"

JWM said...

Dear Anon @ 6:04,

Thank you.

I've made the correction.

If you see this acknowledgement, please let me know.

I always feel better knowing folks who've pointed out my mistakes know I corrected the mistakes and thanked them.

People like you help make JinC a better place.

Best,

John

Anonymous said...

You are way nicer to snippy than I would be. A typo here or there does not in any way diminish the quality of your work.

The comment I came here to make was how much I enjoy it when the genuinely brilliant also exhibit a healthy sense of humor.

Do you think a total lack of humor might be indicative of a small/limited mind?