NewsRemembering Winston Churchill 1940 - 2010
Curtis Brown remembers its longstanding client, Winston S. Churchill, author, journalist, adventurer and former MP, and is honoured to share some of his family's reminiscences of his life and work.
Son of Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer Churchill MBE, Sir Winston Churchill's only son, and Pamela Digby, daughter of Lord Digby 11th baron KC DSO MC TD, he was born at Chequers, the official country home of the Prime Minister, immediately after the Battle of Britain. The visitor's book there records, in Clementine Churchill's hand: ‘"Winston" 4.40 am October the 10th 1940." The night before a bomb had landed just 100 yards away. It was said that the next ‘bombshell' to arrive was him, the only baby to be born at Chequers. On one occasion it was noted that the Prime Minister, while the baby was sat on his knee and aircraft were fighting overhead and pilots dying, had tears running down his cheeks as he said ‘poor infant, to be born into such a world as this'. Much later, when this grandson was Member of Parliament for Stretford, he himself stood straight and proud at the graveside of a young soldier from his constituency, killed in Northern Ireland, with tears streaming down his own face.
Educated in Switzerland and at Ludgrove, Eton and Oxford, his first adventure after leaving university was to fly round Africa in a single engine plane with Arnold von Bohlen 1962-63 - recorded in First Journey (Heinemann).
As a Journalist and War Correspondent 1962-70, he covered Vietnam (1966), the Middle East (see The Six-Day War, co-written with his father and published as an ‘instant' book in1967) and Biafra. He had a roving brief for The Times 1969-70 and was the first presenter of the BBC News programme ‘The World at One' 1964-65.
He first stood as Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for the by-election at Manchester Gorton 1967 but narrowly lost, but went on to win the Manchester seat of Stretford from Labour in 1970 and held it until 1983, when boundary changes made the constituency Davyhulme - a seat he went on to hold until 1997.
His Parliamentary career included being Parliamentary Private Secretary to Julian Amery, Minister of Housing and Construction, in 1972, with whom he moved to the Foreign Office, where Amery was Minister of State 1972-73.
Margaret Thatcher appointed him Conservative spokesman on Defence 1976-78. But when he voted against the Conservative Whip over sanctions against Rhodesia he was promptly sacked. For the remainder of his political career he remained a back-bencher. As a very hardworking constituency MP, amongst other initiatives he initiated TRAFIC in 1971, a pressure group through which he helped persuade the Government to invest in the modernization of Trafford Park, still the world's largest industrial park.
As a member of the Defence Select Committee from 1984 he visited Nepal. At the British Military Hospital in Bojepaw he saw a little girl who had been very badly injured in an earthquake. Her father had carried her for two days from their home in the hills. Her leg was badly crushed and it would have been impossible for her return. By setting up a trust fund for her with money he had been awarded in a libel case she was able to obtain a good education at a boarding school in Kathmandu, and he brought her to London for several major operations on her leg, allowing her to lead a normal life, get married and have children. He remained in touch with her family and visited a number of times.
Another successful libel case win resulted in trees being planted through the centre of Trafford Park Industrial Estate.
Winston Churchill held private and commercial pilot's licences for both the UK and the USA and used his passion for flying to help others. He volunteered for the St John's Ambulance Air Wing and delivered, at short notice and always at night, human organs around the UK, Northern Ireland and to Europe, including a heart, together with the transplant team of doctors and nurses, to Lubeck on the East-West border of the then divided Germany.
On one of these occasions, whilst being protected by armed police at his home in Sussex as he was on the declared hit list of the IRA after having spoken out strongly after the murder of Ross McWhirter, the phone rang at about 10.30pm. Could he take a kidney for transplant to Newcastle? Of course, he said. Just over an hour later, the phone rang again. Slight change of plan, he was told. Can you go to Belfast? Of course, he said. The police were not amused. With a flask of tomato soup provided by his wife, and dressed in bright green corduroy trousers and a red jersey with holes at the elbows, he drove at high speed to Gatwick where he kept his twin-engined Piper Seneca. The kidney was delivered to the aircraft. With no other aircraft operating he was cleared directly across London. At 15,000 feet over Belfast the sun rose. He made a swift descent to the main runway at Aldergrove to watch a second sunrise. A police car was waiting to take the organ and, precious cargo safely delivered, it was time for the soup. Unfortunately, the laws of air pressure being what they are, the soup was still at 15,000 feet. So on removal of the flask top it exploded all over him and the aircraft. Undaunted, as he was Defence Spokesman, he decided to pay a visit to the Army - thus attired. Following meetings with the GOC Northern Ireland and a tour around Belfast to visit and thank serving soldiers for their contribution, his visit ended with a lunch in Belfast attended by very smart officers of senior rank. During lunch a message arrived, greeted by great cheers, saying that the transplant had been successful.
On another occasion, together with his wife Minnie, he flew a kidney across to Germany on Boxing Day night for a 10 year old boy. They completely iced up over the North Sea, with no visibility out of the aircraft, but the importance of the mission made them carry on. The young boy wanted a dog but his mother said he had to have a new kidney first. He got his dog. His mother wrote a six page letter of thanks, using a German/English dictionary, as she knew not one word of English.
Churchill was also a very keen sailor, and raced his 32-foot Contessa at Cowes.
On 18 December 1976 the dissident Vladimir Bukovsky was flown out of Russia in handcuffs, in an exchange for the Chilean Communist Leader Luis Corvalan. Befriended by Churchill, Bukovsky was to stay in the Churchill farmhouse in Sussex for a year, allowing him to write his book To Build a Castle.
He was Captain of the Lords and Commons Ski Team which raced against the Swiss Parliamentarians and also the French.
As well as being Trustee and then Chairman of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, he was a Trustee and Chairman of the National Benevolent Fund for The Aged. He frequently endowed the Sir Winston Churchill Grave Trust, which maintains his grandfather's resting place at Bladon, Oxfordshire.
In 2007, he became the founder-President of the United Kingdom National Defence Association, a group formed to highlight the state of Britain's chronically under-funded and over-stretched Armed Forces, and to lobby Parliament. Launched at the Churchill Museum within the Cabinet War Rooms in London, the UKNDA has campaigned vigorously and across party lines in support of Britain's hard-pressed Armed Forces and has played a key role in pushing defence and national security higher up the political agenda.
As a noted public speaker on a variety of post-war and contemporary issues, as well as the life and work of his grandfather, he was in demand worldwide. This aspect of his career both well pre-dated his years in Parliament - at the age of 25 he spoke in 47 US cities in 56 days - and became another significant focus of his later years.
His published work includes the books My First Journey, The Six-Day War with his father Randolph Churchill, Memories and Adventures, Defending the West and His Father's Son, about his father Randolph's life. Heir to his grandfather's literary Estate, he also edited a number of works of Sir Winston Churchill, including The Great Republic and the speech collection Never Give In! (Random House and Hyperion, 2003), and selected and recorded introductions to a number of these speeches in the accompanying BBC Audio Book.
Winston Churchill was married first to Minnie d'Erlanger, with whom he had four children, Randolph, Jennie, Marina and Jack, and eleven grandchildren. Our condolences go to them and his widow, Luce Churchill.