The first Cabinet of Churchill's peacetime administration met on 30 October 1951. Its first act was to put in train the denationalisation of iron and steel, an election pledge. It also decided that, in view of the severe economic crisis with which it was confronted, all Ministers would accept an immediate reduction in salary; Churchill proposed to draw £7,000 instead of the Prime Minister's statutory salary of £10,000. At a second Cabinet, on November 1, he endorsed Butler's proposal for a drastic cut in Government spending. Four days later, in his first reference to Foreign Affairs since becoming Prime Minister, he told the House of Commons that he and Eden held to the idea 'of a supreme effort to bridge the gulf between the two worlds, so that each of us can live its life, if not in friendship, at least without the fear, the hatreds, and the frightful waste of the "cold war".'
On November 30 Churchill was seventy-seven. His Duty Private Secretary that day was David Hunt, who later recalled how, after dinner, 'he came down to the Cabinet Room to work just the same, and with his usual thoughtfulness invited me to have a drink with him'. Churchill said to Hunt, 'You've never seen a Prime Minister of seventy-seven before.' Hunt replied, 'No, but you have.' The last Prime Minister in office at Churchill's age was Gladstone.
Was Churchill too old to embark upon the rigours of the Premiership? Clementine had been most uneasy at the prospect of his returning to office at such an age. Even Churchill realised that the burdens of office would be severe; to Jock Colville, whom he invited to join his Private Office as Joint Principal Private Secretary, he confided that he intended to remain Prime Minister for one year only, and then hand over to Eden. He 'just wanted', he explained, 'to have time to re-establish the intimate relationship with the United States, which had been the keystone of his policy in the war, and to restore at home the liberties that had been eroded by wartime restrictions and postwar Socialist measures'.
In search of the first of these objectives, Churchill informed the Cabinet on December 11 that he intended to visit the United States as soon as possible. He also had a practical aim in mind, to ask for assistance in the form of 'equipment or materials' for Britain's defence programme. Before leaving, he went to Paris with Eden, where, on December 18, at the end of a two-day visit, he assured the French that Britain favoured the establishment of a European Defence Community, even though she could not join it. The British were prepared to associate themselves with it 'as closely as possible in all stages of its political and military development'. In private, Churchill would have preferred what he later called a 'Grand Alliance' of national armies, rather than 'a sludgy amalgam' of forces, but, whatever happened, he declared on December 22 in his first broadcast as Prime Minister, 'we shall stand up with all our strength in defence of the free world against Communist tyranny and aggression', working in 'true comradeship' for a United Europe. The aim was to avert war and enhance peace. 'It may be that this land will have the honour of helping civilisation to climb the hill amid the toils of peace, as we once did in the terrors of war.'
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On the last day of 1951 Churchill left London by train for Southampton, where he went on board the Queen Mary. New Year's Day 1952 was spent at sea. When, during the voyage, Colville tried to get Churchill to read some preliminary material for the American talks, he was reluctant to do so, commenting that he was going to America 'to re-establish relations, not to transact business'. But the economist Donald MacDougall, who showed him the brief for the economic part of the talks, was delighted when, after Churchill read it, 'he sent me back a masterly summary in true Churchillian prose'.
The Queen Mary reached New York on 4 January 1952. From New York, Churchill flew in Truman's plane to Washington. That night he and Truman dined together on board the Presidential yacht. Churchill was full of praise for the American effort in Korea and for American rearmament. 'Now the free world is not a naked world,' he said, 'but a rearming world.' He hoped that the United States would join Britain in sending forces to guard the freedom of navigation through the Suez Canal. As he prepared to leave the yacht to go to the British Embassy, Churchill turned to Dean Acheson, the American Secretary of State, with the words, 'Did you feel that around the table this evening were gathered the governments of the world-not to dominate it, mind you-but to save it?'
The Washington talks continued for two more days. With regard to NATO, Churchill pledged the British Government to make 'the biggest contribution of which they were capable'. His aim, he told Truman at the first formal session of the conference, was that the 'strength of the West would now reverse Soviet fears of the friendship between Britain and the United States, 'so that they would fear our enmity more than our friendship, and would be led thereby to seek our friendship.' Churchill's sentiments were so deeply felt and strongly expressed, one of the British diplomats present wrote in his diary, that Truman 'was quite abrupt on one or two occasions with poor old Winston and had a tendency, after one of the old man's powerful and emotional declarations of faith in Anglo-American co-operation, to cut it off with a "Thank you, Mr Prime Minister. We might pass that to be worked out by our advisers." A little wounding.'
At the fourth session, Churchill argued in favour of a European Army, as offering 'the only method of integrating German forces in the defence of Western Europe'. But he warned that the current struggle in French Indo-China, where the French were fighting 'like tigers' to protect their Far Eastern Empire, meant that France was not doing her 'full part' towards the European Army. Were it not for this, he said, 'the French would become stronger in Europe, and therefore be willing to permit the Germans to become stronger'.
During their Washington talks, Churchill and Truman reaffirmed, and made public, a secret understanding which Truman had made earlier with Attlee, that the atom bomb would not be used from the American air bases in East Anglia without British consent. In reporting this agreement to the Commons two months later, Churchill also referred to Britain's own atomic bomb. 'I was not aware until I took office,' he said, 'that not only had the Socialist Government made the atomic bomb as a matter of research, but that they had created at the expense of scores of millions of pounds the important plant necessary for its regular production.' This weapon, Churchill added, would be tested during 1952 by agreement with the Australian Government 'at a suitable place in that continent'.
On January 9 Churchill left Washington for New York. Two days later he travelled by night train to Ottawa, where he spoke at a banquet given in his honour by the Government of Canada. Despite the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan, he said, 'Peace does not sit untroubled in her vineyard.' Now, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, was 'the surest guarantee not only of the prevention of war, but of victory should our hopes be blasted'.
His speech made, Churchill returned by overnight train from Ottawa to Washington, where for two days he worked at the British Embassy on the speech he was to make to Congress. Much of the work was done in bed; indeed, at 11.20 on the morning of January 17 he was still in bed, forty minutes before he was expected at the Capitol, which, by a superhuman effort and the assistance of a motor-cycle escort, he reached in time. His theme was a hopeful one: 'Under the pressure and menace of Communist aggression,' he said, 'the fraternal association of the United States with Britain and the British Commonwealth, and the new unity growing up in Europe-nowhere more hopeful than between France and Germany-all these harmonies are being brought forward, perhaps by several generations, in the destiny of the world. If this proves true-and it has certainly proved true up to date-the architects in the Kremlin may be found to have built a different and a far better world structure than what they planned.'
Churchill also spoke about the Middle East, telling Congress that it was 'no longer possible' for Britain alone 'to bear the whole burden of maintaining the freedom of the famous waterway of the Suez Canal'. That had become 'an international rather than a national responsibility'. There were more than 80,000 British troops in the Canal Zone. Even 'token forces' of the United States, France and Turkey would create a 'symbol of the unity of purpose which inspires us'. Nor did he believe that it would be an exaggeration to say that such token forces 'would probably bring into harmony all that movement by which the Four-Power policy may be made to play a decisive part by peaceful measures, and bring to an end the wide disorders of the Middle East in which, let me assure you, there lurk dangers not less great than those which the United States has stemmed in Korea'.
Churchill then spoke of an area of the Middle East, where, he said, 'there is still some sunshine as well as shadow', telling Congress: 'From the days of the Balfour Declaration I have desired that the Jews should have a national home, and I have worked for that end. I rejoice to pay my tribute here to the achievements of those who have founded the Israelite State, who have defended themselves with tenacity, and who offer asylum to great numbers of Jewish refugees. I hope that with their aid they may convert deserts into gardens; but if they are to enjoy peace and prosperity they must strive to renew and preserve their friendly relations with the Arab world without which widespread misery might follow for all.'
Turning to Europe, Churchill spoke about the prevention of a third world war by means of a 'united command' of the strongest possible forces; the sooner this was done, 'the sooner, also will our sense of security, and the fact of our security, be seen to reside in valiant, resolute and well-armed manhood, rather than in the awful secrets which science had wrested from nature'. Those secrets, the secrets of the atom bomb, constituted, 'at present', what he called 'the supreme deterrent' against a third world war, and the 'most effective guarantee' of victory should such a war take place.
That afternoon, at the fifth and final session of the Washington conference, Churchill explained to Truman his reluctance to seek a meeting with the Soviet leaders until such time as they 'indicated that they were prepared to make a genuine effort to reach an understanding with the democracies'. He was afraid that if such a conference took place, and then broke down, people would assume that 'war would be inevitable'. But if the democracies were to make an intensive effort 'by broadcasting, by dropping leaflets, and by all other methods of propaganda that were open to them', to bring to the people behind the Iron Curtain the 'true facts' of the situation, the leaders of the Kremlin, fearing 'such a revelation of the truth to the masses whom they held in their grip', might agree to renew the conference, which, Churchill thought, might then be resumed 'with greater hope of success'.
Churchill's hopes revealed the extent of his determination to find some way out of the impasse of the Cold War. On the following day he went by train from Washington to New York. 'I have just finished what seems to me the most strenuous fortnight I can remember,' he wrote to Clementine from New York on January 20, '& I am staying here for 48 hours to recover. I never had such a whirl of people & problems, and the two speeches were very hard & exacting ordeals.' Two days later he sailed for Southampton, reaching England on January 28.
On February 6 King George VI died. Churchill spoke movingly of his final illness when he broadcast on the following day. 'During these last months,' he said, 'the King walked with death, as if death were a companion, an acquaintance whom he recognised and did not fear. In the end death came as a friend; and after a happy day of sunshine and sport, and after "good night" to those who loved him best, he fell asleep as every man or woman who strives to fear God and nothing else in the world may hope to do.' Of the new Queen, 'the Second Queen Elizabeth', Churchill told his listeners, 'I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian Era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the Anthem: "God Save the Queen".'
Churchill's own health was not good; on February 21 he suffered a small arterial spasm. Lord Moran feared that it might be followed by a stroke. The pressures of the Premiership had to be reduced. Several senior Party members who were consulted suggested that Churchill might resign as soon as the Coronation was over, in May 1953. One thought was he should go to the House of Lords, remaining Prime Minister but giving Eden the management of the Commons. Churchill, meanwhile, had gone down to Chartwell to recuperate. He was also working on his speech in answer to a Labour Motion of Censure accusing him of wanting to make war on China in order to hasten the end of the military stalemate in Korea.
When Churchill spoke in the debate on February 26, his vigour seemed unimpaired; not only did he deny the charge, but, with devastating effect, revealed that the Labour Government had twice, first in May and then in September 1950, agreed with the United States that in certain circumstances and contingencies action would be taken 'not confined to Korea'. Labour MPs were shocked, the Conservatives delighted. Harold Nicolson commented: 'How much better he is in the House than on a platform! How he loves it! He is looking white and fatty, a most unhealthy look, you would say, if he were anyone else, but somehow out of this sickly mountain comes a volcanic flash.'
In Cabinet, Churchill's main concern remained national and imperial defence, and the sending of a clear signal to Russia that Britain was not defenceless. On his initiative, more than 30,000 men were registered for Home Guard duty. At the same time, troops in depots throughout England were organised into five hundred 'mobile columns', capable, he later told the Commons, 'of giving a good account of themselves and imposing a considerable deterrent upon any airborne adventure by being able to kill or capture the ones who land.' Casting his eye far afield, on February 20 he asked the Chiefs of Staff to make sure that the Falkland Islands were properly defended, and that a detachment of Royal Marines be sent in a frigate to the vicinity of the islands.
On March 5 Churchill introduced the Defence Estimates in the Commons, telling MPs that his first impression, on becoming Minister of Defence the previous October, as well as Prime Minister, had been 'a sense of extreme nakedness such as I had never felt before in peace or war-almost as though I was living in a nudist colony'. Now all that was being rectified. But financial considerations would mean that defence spending might have to be slowed down and even reduced, 'We must not mislead the country into expectations beyond what its life energies can fulfil.'
To reduce his workload, Churchill asked Field Marshal Alexander to take over the Ministry of Defence. But Defence issues still dominated his thinking; on March 19, when the Cabinet's Defence Committee discussed an American suggestion to extend the area of conflict in the Korean War by bombing ports and lines of communication in China, he spoke out against such action. 'It would be silly to waste bombs in the vague inchoate mass of China,' he said, 'and wrong to kill thousands of people to no purpose.'
***
The Labour Opposition now instituted a series of late-night, and even all-night, sessions, hoping to wear the Conservatives down. Churchill was a frequent attender, but it was not a happy time for him. 'Could there be any more nauseating performance,' Channon noted on April 9 in his diary, 'than that of half a dozen hale young Socialists howling at Mr Churchill, jeering at his pronouncements and even at his entrances and exits to the House, taunting him with his advanced age and growing deafness?' A week later Churchill was taken ill; 'a miserable cold has settled on my chest', he told Moran. He recuperated at Chartwell, but returned to London to speak in the Commons on April 25. 'I cannot remember a time,' he said, 'and my experience is a long one-when public difficulty and Party strife have both risen to such heights together.'
On May 3 Churchill broadcast a survey of the first six months of his administration. Three or four years of 'steady, calm, resolute Government' were needed, he said, to redress the balance of the Labour Government's years 'of extravagance and waste, of overspending, and of living upon American money'. He had already put his full support behind Butler's first budget, and would continue to sustain his Chancellor of the Exchequer in his search for economies. At Cabinet on May 7, Churchill strongly supported Butler's plea to reduce the cost of the British forces in Germany, then estimated at £130 million a year. Churchill proposed that a Cabinet Committee be set up to seek ways of cutting this down to £70 million. His proposal was accepted.
Although he attended every Cabinet meeting, and presided over the Cabinet Defence Committee, Churchill found it harder and harder to read the mass of materials submitted or to follow the intricacies of some of the discussions. 'The bright and sparkling intervals still come, and they are still unequalled,' Colville wrote in his diary on May 16, 'but age is beginning to show.' That night Churchill went so far as to speak to Colville about the possibility of a coalition government, to deal with Britain's financial difficulties. 'He would retire in order to make it possible,' Colville noted. 'He might even make the demand for it an excuse for retiring.' As to the merits of a coalition, which Churchill had earlier proposed during the political turmoil of 1910, he now commented, 'Four-fifths of the people of this country were agreed on four-fifths of the things to be done.'
In the debate on transport on May 21 Churchill's mental vigour was unimpaired. At one point he described Herbert Morrison as 'a curious mixture of geniality and venom the geniality was natural, he explained, the venom 'has to be adopted for him to keep on sides' with the Labour backbenchers. Speaking of the Conservative Government's decision not to denationalise the railways he said: 'I have never been shocked by the nationalising of the railways, in fact, I believe I proposed it on my own before almost all the members of the House had even thought about going into Parliament. I am by no means sure I have been right. It is no part of my case that I am always right. Anyhow, we have to face facts. The railways are and will remain nationalised.'
Churchill had prepared his remarks beforehand with his usual care. But when he spoke on the evening of May 23 to a Tax Inspectors' dinner in London, his speech was written almost entirely by Colville. This was the first time in more than half a century of public speaking that Churchill had allowed this to happen. Colville commented, 'This is indeed a sign of advancing senility,' and a week later he wrote in his diary, 'Mrs Churchill does not think he will last long as Prime Minister.' But Churchill's stamina was not to be written off; on June 11, as the guest of honour at the annual luncheon of the Press Association, he spoke with vigour of how Britain was now fighting 'not for vainglory or imperial pomp, but for survival as an independent, self-supporting nation'.
Work had still to continue on the final volume of the war memoirs; on June 13 Deakin went down to Chartwell to assure Churchill that all his helpers, including General Pownall, Commodore Allen and Denis Kelly, were making continuous progress. The appendices and maps were now almost completed; Churchill was content that his helpers should take on the full weight of these final aspects. Three days later Colville wrote in his diary: 'The Prime Minister is depressed and bewildered. He said to me this evening: "The zest is diminished." I think that it is more that he cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. Nor can I. But it is 1.30 a.m., approaching the hour when courage and life are at their lowest ebb.'
Unknown to Churchill, that very day, June 16, four members of his Government met in London and decided to ask him either to resign at once, or to set a date for his resignation. They were the Leader of the House and Lord Privy Seal, Harry Crookshank; the Commonwealth Secretary, Lord Salisbury; the Scottish Secretary, James Stuart; and the Chief Whip, Patrick Buchan-Hepburn. It was Buchan-Hepburn, who had been Churchill's Private Secretary after the election defeat in 1929, who undertook to convey the message; he did so on the evening of June 23, but was not well received. Three days earlier, Churchill had told Lord Moran, 'There is a move to get me out.'
Now Churchill knew the truth, but he could still find the reserves of energy needed to lead his Party and defend his Government. On July 1 the Opposition attacked the Government's failure to have known in advance of the recent American bombing of North Korean hydro-electric plants. These plants, on the Yalu River, lay along the Chinese border. Churchill led the Government's defence with skill and effectiveness. Channon noted in his diary, 'The old lion, coolly dressed in light grey trousers and a short coat, fairly pulverised his attackers; rarely has he been more devastating.' Channon added, 'Perhaps he is aware of the growing Tory discontent.'
The burden of Britain's position weighed heavily on Churchill; to Clementine, who was on holiday in Italy, he explained on July 11: 'It is a very bleak outlook, with all our might, majesty, dominion & power imperilled by having to pay the crashing bills each week. I have never seen things so tangled & tiresome. But we must persevere.' Ten days later Churchill told Clementine that Eden's absence through jaundice added to 'my burdens'. There was also the problem of Lord Salisbury who, Churchill wrote, had been 'very tiresome', being of 'a defeatist frame of mind' as far as proceeding with the denationalisation of steel was concerned.
In Cabinet, Churchill's suggestions were often decisive. On July 24 he successfully supported Macmillan's plea not to reduce Government spending on housing. Five days later he proposed an amnesty for men who had deserted from the armed forces during the war; he thought it was a 'grievous thing' that so many men were still living in Britain 'as outcasts and outlaws'. His proposal was eventually accepted, and an amnesty declared. In the Commons, too, his authority was considerable; on July 30, in a speech which he had worked on himself, he defended the need to keep Britain's Defence spending 'within the limits of our economic strength'. The effort had been considerable. 'Am recovering from speech,' he telegraphed to Clementine the following evening.
***
On August 14 Churchill and his wife gave a wedding reception at No. 10 for Churchill's niece Clarissa and Anthony Eden. Three days later there was another family celebration, the christening at Westerham Church of Churchill's grandson Jeremy Soames. Then, on September 9, Churchill and Clementine left London for a holiday in the South of France, at Beaverbrook's villa, La Capponcina. 'To be lent a villa sounds the perfect way to spend a few peaceful days,' wrote the Queen, in approving her Prime Minister's departure. His holiday coincided with the publication of Volume Five of his war memoirs. It was also a chance for him to make further progress with the sixth and final volume; to this end, both Elizabeth Gilliatt and Jane Portal flew out with him. He stayed at La Capponcina for two weeks, painting, swimming and working on his book. A typical note was one which he dictated, to be sent to Deakin, which began: 'The death of President Roosevelt. How did it reach me? How soon did I speak to Parliament? What did I say?'
On September 25 Churchill returned to England by air. Six days later he flew north to Scotland, where he was the Queen's guest at Balmoral. While he was there, news reached No. 10, in the early hours of the morning, of the successful explosion of Britain's first atom bomb, at Monte Bello Island off the north-west coast of Australia. A new Private Secretary, Anthony Montague Browne, who had arrived at No. 10 while Churchill was in Scotland, was advised to telephone Balmoral and have the Prime Minister woken up to tell him the news, 'but even at this early stage', he later recalled, 'I concluded that this would be imprudent!'
The following day Churchill returned to London. In a letter to the Queen on his return he wrote: 'I was keenly impressed by the development of Prince Charles as a personality since I last saw him at Windsor. He is young to think so much.' Prince Charles was then not quite four years old. A week after his return to London, Churchill travelled north again, to Scarborough, where on October 11 he addressed the Conservative Party Conference, speaking of the need for continuing economy in Government spending. He repeated this theme in the Commons on November 4, and at the Cabinet Defence Committee the following day. It had been his father's theme seventy years earlier. That month Churchill wrote to R.A. Butler, whose own father had just died: 'I know what it was to me to lose my father, although I had seen him so little. I revered and admired him from a distance, except for a few glittering occasions.' Churchill added, 'I have striven to vindicate his memory.'
On November 4 General Eisenhower was elected President of the United States. Publicly, Churchill welcomed the appointment. Privately, he was far from happy, telling Colville five days later: 'I am greatly disturbed. I think this makes war much more probable.' Churchill now felt a new mission and a renewed sense of purpose: to use his great authority as Prime Minister to try to bring about a reconciliation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Would he have the stamina to pursue such a goal? That same day, Colville noted in his diary: 'He (W) is getting tired and visibly ageing. He finds it hard work to compose a speech and ideas no longer flow.'
Churchill again referred, as he had done in May, to the possibility of resignation. On November 28 the Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Evelyn Shuckburgh, a confidant of Eden, noted in his diary: 'PM has told Clarissa he wants to give up. She says he is looking for an opportunity and Anthony must be gentle with him. Must let him go to America.' Churchill had spoken that day to Eden himself. He had asked Eden, so Shuckburgh reported, to let him leave office 'as privately as possible. Only one speech.' Two days later Churchill was seventy-eight; but Gladstone had still been Prime Minister at eighty-seven.
Eden pressed Churchill to say when he would resign. At Chequers on December 7 Churchill spoke to Eden of the speeches 'I could make more easily if I were not Prime Minister.' But he would give no promise and set no date. His mind was still set on a visit to Eisenhower. He wanted to fly, but Lord Moran warned about the risk of such a long flight; even with a pressurised cabin, he warned, Churchill's circulation might be impaired. Churchill decided to go by sea, and on the evening of December 30 left Waterloo by boat-train for Southampton, where he once more went on board the Queen Mary. While on board ship, on New Year's Day 1953, Churchill told Colville that he, Colville, 'should assuredly live to see Eastern Europe free of Communism'. Colville died in 1987, two years before the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.
The Queen Mary reached New York on January 5. As Eisenhower would not be inaugurated President for another two weeks, Churchill had decided to meet him privately in New York. The two spent two hours alone together. While in New York, Churchill visited his mother's birthplace, 426 Henry Street, Brooklyn.
At a second meeting with Eisenhower on January 7, Churchill urged the President-elect to go with him as soon as possible after his inauguration to meet Stalin. Eisenhower declined; Churchill could go to Moscow, he said, but he would prefer meeting the Soviet leader on neutral territory, say in Stockholm. Eisenhower also asked Churchill if he would have any objection to his meeting Stalin alone. 'It would have been objected to strongly during the war when our contribution in forces was about equal,' Churchill replied. 'Now I don't mind. But don't be in a hurry. Get in your reconnaissance first.'
On the morning of January 8 Churchill flew in the President's aircraft to Washington, where Truman, in the last days of his Presidency, received him at the White House and was then his dinner guest at the British Embassy. On January 9 he flew from Washington to Jamaica, where he stayed for nearly three weeks. There, as well as painting and swimming, he continued work on the final volume of his war memoirs. He also reflected on his American visit; at dinner one night he described Eisenhower as 'a real man of limited stature'.
While Churchill was still in Jamaica, Eden confided in Shuckburgh, 'He doesn't think the Old Man will ever go.' On January 29, ignoring his doctor's earlier worries, Churchill returned to England by air. One of his first Cabinet interventions after his return was to argue in favour of the abolition of rationing for chocolate and sweets. The Minister concerned was insistent that if this were done, stocks of sugar would run out. Churchill refused to budge, however, and on February 5 the ration was abolished. Within six months, there was a glut of sugar.
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On March 5 it was announced on Radio Moscow that Stalin was dead. Churchill at once saw a chance of starting some form of dialogue with Stalin's successors, to whom he sent a message of 'regret and sympathy' on their leader's death. 'I have a feeling,' he telegraphed to Eisenhower on March 11, 'that we might both of us together or separately be called to account if no attempt was made to turn over a leaf, so that a new page could be started, with something more coherent on it than a series of casual and dangerous incidents at the many points of contact between the two divisions of the world.' But Churchill's telegram crossed with a letter from Eisenhower, in which the new President rejected any meeting at the summit for fear that it would provide the new Soviet Government with 'another propaganda mill'.
Churchill did not allow Eisenhower's attitude to stop him: on March 28 he showed Eden a draft letter which he wanted to send to Molotov, to set up at least a meeting of Foreign Ministers. In his draft, Churchill suggested Vienna as the meeting place. But when he finally told Eisenhower of this more limited initiative, the President was still sceptical. On April 11 Churchill telegraphed a third time to Eisenhower, to try to convince him that some meeting at the summit should take place. 'Great hope has arisen in the world,' he wrote, 'that there is a change of heart in the vast, mighty masses of Russia-and this can carry them far and fast, and perhaps into revolution.' A day later Churchill telegraphed again: 'A new hope has, I feel, been created in the unhappy, bewildered world. It ought to be possible to proclaim our unflinching determination to resist Communist tyranny and aggression, and at the same time, though separately, to declare how glad we would be if we found there was a real change of heart and not let it be said that we had closed the door upon it.'
Speaking at Glasgow on April 17, to a meeting of Scottish Conservatives, Churchill made his hopes public; 'Is there a new breeze blowing in the tormented world?' he asked. Three days later he was buoyed up by an announcement from Washington that Eisenhower was willing to consider discussions with Russia on points of substance; this was 'a bold and inspiring initiative', he told the Commons that day. At the very moment when opportunities seemed to be opening up in foreign policy, however, Eden was taken gravely ill, the result of an operation that had gone wrong. In a second operation on April 29 he nearly died. In despair, he flew to Boston for a third operation. Churchill decided to take charge of the Foreign Office himself, as he had done during Eden's earlier illness. To the British diplomat, Pierson Dixon, with whom he lunched on May 2, Churchill commented, about the crisis in Laos, that he had been able 'to remain ignorant about these outlandish areas all his life; it was hard that they had come to tease him in his old age'.
That spring, Churchill accepted the Queen's request that he become a Knight of the Garter; henceforth he was 'Sir' Winston. To Pamela Lytton he wrote, in answer to her letter of congratulation: 'I took it because it was the Queen's wish. I think she is splendid.'
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On May 5 Churchill informed Eisenhower that if the American President would not go to Moscow, he, Churchill, was quite prepared to go alone. 'I am not afraid of the "solitary pilgrimage" if I am sure in my heart that it may help forward the cause of peace, and even at the worst can only do harm to my reputation'. Churchill added: 'I have a strong belief that Soviet self-interest will be their guide. My hope is that it is their self-interest which will bring about an easier state of affairs.' Of the men now ruling Russia, only Molotov had any contacts outside Russia. 'I am very anxious to know these men,' Churchill told Eisenhower, 'and talk to them, as I think I can, frankly and on the dead level. It is only by going to Moscow that I can meet them all.'
On May 11 Churchill set out in the Commons his reasons for wishing to try to open up talks with Stalin's successors, and to do so 'without long delay'. It might well be, he said, that 'no hard and fast agreements would be reached, but there might be a general feeling among those gathered together that they might do something better than tear the human race, including themselves, to bits'.
Churchill's speech angered the Foreign Office, 'since it was felt', Colville later recalled, 'that a friendly approach to Russia would discourage the European powers working on the theme of western union'. Eden recalled a year and a half later how angry he had been, reading it on his sickbed. The Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Selwyn Lloyd, was, however, 'enthusiastic' about it. The French Prime Minister, René Mayer, anxious not to be excluded from any summit, asked Eisenhower for a pre-summit meeting. On May 20 Eisenhower telephoned Churchill to ask if France could be included in the next high-level meeting of Western leaders. Churchill at once agreed, suggesting Bermuda as a meeting place, but a political crisis in France delayed any decision from Paris for more than three weeks.
Politics and foreign affairs were set aside in the last week of May, as Britain prepared to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II. On May 27 Churchill, resplendent in his Garter robes, gave a pre-Coronation dinner at 10 Downing Street. The Coronation itself took place on June 2. 'He was very tired when the day came, almost reluctant to go,' Jane Portal later recalled. But go he did, riding with Clementine to Westminster Abbey in a closed two-horse carriage. When the ceremony was over, wearied by his exertions, Churchill left the procession as it went back to the Palace, and turned his carriage into Downing Street.
But there was no respite from work. On the afternoon of June 3 he took the Chair at the opening meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers at No. 10, welcoming them to London and giving them a survey of the world scene. The Soviet leaders must, he said, be deeply worried about the danger of an atomic war, since, once such a war began, 'the mighty ocean-land in Russia and Siberia would quickly become uncontrollable and, once the peoples realised that they were free to do as they liked, and could no longer be controlled by the central machinery of Soviet Government, they might show their preference for living happily by themselves, without allegiance to a unified Soviet State'. It was important to find out what Soviet intentions and policies were. To this end, Churchill told the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, it was his intention to hold 'informal talks' with the Soviet leaders as soon as possible.
On June 5, in Eden's absence, Churchill was host at a Foreign Office banquet for the Queen at Lancaster House. On June 8 and 9 he again presided at the meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. Not until June 12 was he able to go down to Chartwell. But he had still to finalise plans for the Bermuda Conference, at which he hoped to persuade both the Americans and the French to endorse his desire to talk to the new Russian leaders, possibly alone, and if necessary in Moscow. On June 20 he was at Downing Street discussing these plans with Selwyn Lloyd and Pierson Dixon. 'Mentally he is more alert than he was towards the end of the war,' Dixon wrote in his diary. 'As always he did all the work himself in the sense of dictating the telegrams himself after reaching his decision.'
Three days later Churchill was back in London for a dinner at No. 10 in honour of the Italian Prime Minister, Alcide de Gasperi. It was to be his last formal engagement before leaving for Bermuda. At the end of the dinner he made a short speech, mainly about Julius Caesar, the Roman conquest of Britain, and the Roman Legions. Then, when the time came for the guests to leave the dining-room, he rose, to lead them into the drawing room. After taking a few steps, he slumped down on the nearest chair.
Churchill had suffered a stroke. Mary was at once brought to him by a guest who had taken alarm at his pallor; later she recalled that her father 'looked unhappy and uncertain and was very incoherent'. On the following morning, to the amazement of those closest to him, he insisted on presiding at the Cabinet 'even though', Colville recalled, 'his mouth was drooping badly and he found it difficult to use his left arm'. The Cabinet met at noon. None of the Ministers noticed that anything was wrong; Butler later commented that Churchill had been 'curiously and unexpectedly silent as he allowed items to go forward without much comment from himself'. Macmillan thought he was 'very white' and 'did not talk very much'.
After the Cabinet, Churchill lunched with Clementine, Mary and Christopher Soames. 'Winston was extremely tired,' Mary later recalled, 'and once more had difficulty in getting up from his chair.' On the following morning his health worsened. To the last moment he hoped to attend that morning's Cabinet, but by noon he wanted only to go down to Chartwell. There, during the evening, Colville noted, 'his physical powers had deteriorated considerably'.
By the following day, June 26, Churchill's left side was partially paralysed, and he had lost the use of his left arm. Lord Moran, who saw his patient that afternoon, doubted whether he could possibly survive the weekend. But he was well enough that evening to dictate a telegram to Eisenhower, postponing the Bermuda meeting. A press statement issued that night by Moran and Sir Russell Brain announced that Churchill was in need of 'a complete rest'. It did not reveal why.
Recovery was clearly going to be a long and arduous process. But it began almost at once, confounding Moran's Friday alarm. By Sunday, Churchill felt well enough to sit at the head of the table for luncheon. Beaverbrook was his main guest; on the question of commercial television, Churchill told him that there ought to be a free vote in the House of Commons. 'Today he is gayer,' Mary wrote in her diary, 'there is a distinct improvement.' Talking on the following day to Colville, Churchill said 'that he thought probably that this must mean his retirement, but that he would see how he went on, and if he had recovered sufficiently well to address the Tory Party at their Annual Meeting in October, he would continue in office.'
Churchill had set himself a target, four months away. This seemed to aid his recovery. On June 30, a week after his stroke, he welcomed the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook, to Chartwell. 'He was in a wheelchair,' Brook later recalled. 'After dinner, in the drawing-room, he said that he was going to stand on his feet. Colville and I urged him not to attempt this, and, when he insisted, we came up on either side of him so that we could catch him if he fell. But he waved us away with his stick and told us to stand back. He then lowered his feet to the ground, gripped the arms of his chair, and by a tremendous effort-with sweat pouring down his face-levered himself to his feet and stood upright. Having demonstrated that he could do this, he sat down again and took up his cigar.' Norman Brook reflected, 'He was determined to recover.'
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