— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 124
"This is the sort of company I should like to find in heaven.” Duncan and Diana Sandys and WSC at baby Celia’s christening, 1943.
Here are quotations relating to Churchill personally: his character, habits and family, and his prescriptions for living life to the full, which he certainly did. (His method for squeezing a day and a half out of every day, symbolised by the verse above, will be found under “Sleep”.) Personal tastes and favourites will be found in the following chapter.
A variety of quotations speak to his political and personal philosophies, some of them with a high degree of frankness. See for example Ambitions, Conceit, Consistency, Criticism and Disposition. On debates in the Commons, he freely confessed using provocative language, musing that he was surprised “that a great many of my colleagues are on speaking terms with me”.
Reactions to election results, and thoughts about his being variously a Conservative and a Liberal, are pithy and pointed. And there are examples of self-doubt, which he rarely confessed publicly but sometimes wrote about later: see Deja vu, Fate, Fear, Overconfidence and, in particular, Faults.
Churchill’s domestic existence, which it is safe to say always came second after politics, was generally a rousing, warm affair, except for an occasionally tempestuous relationship with his son Randolph. Sir Fitzroy Maclean remembered being asked with his wife “now and then to Chequers or Chartwell to join him and his family in their noisy, affectionate, hilarious, often uproarious family life”.125
WSC’s comments to and about his wife, the best of which I trust are here, would make a perfect series of greeting cards for any husband wondering how to express himself. As Sir Fitzroy put it, “Mrs. Churchill was one of the sweetest and most remarkable women I ever met, and all those years a marvellous wife to Winston, soothing him or bullying him as necessary and standing by him through thick and thin.”126 Their own daughter’s books about her parents are ample testimony to one of her father’s favourite maxims describing his marriage: “Here firm though all be drifting.”127
What strikes me about these quotations as a group is what one of his secretaries said about Churchill: “_he was so human, so funny - that always saved the day.”128 Humorous allusions to animals are poignant; illnesses are treated like invading armies. Interestingly, a wartime ally drew the same conclusion. Marshal Tito, a perceptive man, was once asked what most struck him about WSC. “His humanity,” Tito said immediately. “He is so human.”129
World History
