Dinner With Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table (26 page)

Born Lady Diana Manners, widely rumoured not to be the
daughter
of the Duke of Rutland, she was considered a great beauty. In 1919, she married Duff Cooper, who subsequently became a Conservative politician. Lady Diana Cooper (as she preferred to be known) was a friend of Churchill’s for many years. The Prime Minister appointed Duff Cooper British Ambassador to France in 1944, where she shone as an outstanding and gracious and,
sometimes
provocative, Ambassador’s wife. She died in 1986.

Head of the Government Hospitality Fund, to which all requests are made for food and wines for foreign guests visitors to Chequers etc.

Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, 1939–42, during which time he oversaw crushing victories against the Italians at Taranto and Cape Matapan. First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from 1943 until 1946.

Having served in the 1940 Norwegian campaign, Cunningham was joint naval commander of the unsuccessful Dakar expedition against Vichy French West Africa. Thereafter he succeeded Sir Andrew Cunningham first as commander of the Mediterranean fleet and then as First Sea Lord from 1946 to 1948.

Damaskinos was the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Athens and All Greece from 1941 until his death in 1949. During the German occupation of Greece, he had risked death by publicly condemning the persecution of the Jews. He was installed by the Allies to rule Greece as regent on behalf of the exiled King George II and endeavoured to hold the country together as it splintered into civil war between royalist and communist insurgents, prior to the monarchy’s return.

Mistress of William Randolph Hearst. Born in 1900, she was a dancer and Hollywood actress whose films included
Cain and Mabel
and
Ever Since Eve
. She died in 1961.

US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1937–38, whose attempts to improve relations with Stalin led him into many gullible actions – including excusing the Purges – while at his post. His book,
Mission to Moscow
, adapted into a film, provided pro-Soviet propaganda for America’s wartime ally.

American diplomat. He held various consular posts, served as
Ambassador to Afghanistan between 1941–42 and 1949–51 and was also Minister to Iran 1939–44. He was Ambassador to Iceland, 1944–46, and to Sweden 1946–47.

British diplomat who was Principal Private Secretary to Anthony Eden from 1943 to 1945 and then to his successor at the Foreign Office, Ernest Bevin until 1948. He was later Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and to France. He was the UK’s Permanent Representative at the UN from 1954 to 1960 during which time he had to represent British interests over the Suez Crisis.

Niece and biographer of the Edwardian British Prime Minister and First World War Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, whose 1917 Declaration promised support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Dugdale (1880–1948) was herself a passionate Zionist.

US Secretary of State,1953–59. Dulles intensified the Communist containment policies of his Democrat predecessor, Dean Acheson, threatening massive nuclear retaliation in the event of a Soviet strike, a policy sometimes described as “brinkmanship”. He constructed the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATOTO) for mutual defence. Although he connived in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran, he strongly opposed
Anglo-French
-Israeli action against Nasser’s Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Ill health forced him to retire as Secretary of State in April 1959 and he died the following month. His famous dictums included “the United States of America does not have friends, it has interests”.

British Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. He resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1938 because of Neville Chamberlain’s meddling and offered measured criticism of appeasement. Secretary of State for War in 1940, he succeeded Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary later that year. Long seen as Churchill’s natural successor, he was repeatedly frustrated by Churchill’s failure to step aside in his favour until 1955 by which time Eden’s own judgment and health were under strain, resulting in the fiasco of the Suez Crisis in 1956 and his resignation as Prime Minister in 1957. He married Churchill’s niece, Clarissa in 1952. Died, 1977.

US President, 1953–61. As Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, 1944–5, Eisenhower had ultimate responsibility for planning the invasion of Western Europe and with the war’s conclusion was also initially in charge of the defeated Germany in America’s occupied zone. He was Chief of Staff of the US Army from 1945 to 1948 and Supreme Commander of NATOTO from 1950 to 1952 before focusing on politics.

White House chief butler, 1931–53. A black man from Indiana, he hoped to be a musician, but a temporary job at the White House diverted him to his career in the domestic service of four US presidents. After retirement, he published his memoirs in 1960 and died aged 94.

Novelist. Born Cecil Smith in 1899. Churchill was a particular admirer of his Napoleonic War novels about a fictitious Royal
Navy captain, Horatio Hornblower, which began to be published from 1937. Moved to the United States and died in 1966.

British King, 1936–52. He was born in 1895 and unexpectedly succeeded his brother when Edward VIII abdicated in 1936. Shy and suffering a stammer, he soon overcame initial doubts about Churchill’s suitability when he became Prime Minister in 1940. Churchill reacted to the news of the King’s death in 1952 with the solemn response: “Bad news? The worst!”

Soviet Marshal of Aviation, 1943, and the following year, Chief Marshal of Aviation.

British public servant and friend of Churchill. He was Private Secretary to Churchill when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1924 to 1929, and Secretary of State for War from 1942 to 1945. Died in 1964, aged 74.

Born Edward Wood, he was Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931 and succeeded his father as Lord Halifax in 1934. As Foreign Secretary from 1938 to 1940, he was not uncritical of Neville Chamberlain’s Munich diplomacy but went along with it. He probably enjoyed greater support among Conservative MPs than did Churchill in May 1940 but accepted Churchill as Prime Minister. At the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, he argued in the War Cabinet for a negotiated peace to be brokered through Mussolini. In December 1940, Churchill removed him from the Foreign Office by making
him Ambassador in Washington DC. Halifax was a devout Anglican and a keen fox-hunter, hence his nickname, the “Holy Fox”.

US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1943–46, and to Britain, 1946. Harriman was Roosevelt’s special envoy to Europe and, as such, was greatly engaged in Anglo-American diplomacy prior to his appointment to Moscow. Late in life, in 1971, he took
Anglo-American
partnership further by marrying Pamela, the ex-wife of Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph.

The daughter of a peer who held the Military Cross and bar, Pamela Digby met Randolph Churchill in 1939 while she was a translator in the Foreign Office. They married in 1939 but their relationship deteriorated after Randolph was posted to Egypt, and they divorced in 1946. Among her many male consorts during this time was the broadcasting pioneer William S. Paley, who described her admiringly as “the greatest courtesan of the century”. Another of her wartime conquests, Averell Harriman, eventually became her third husband in 1971. She was appointed by Bill Clinton as US Ambassador to France in 1993 until her death in 1997.

British diplomat. Born 1893. Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, 1941–43. Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, 1943–46 and Deputy Under-Secretary there, 1946–48. Ambassador to France, 1948–54. Ennobled, 1954. His diaries, edited by his son, were published in two volumes after his death in 1968.

American press magnate. Born in 1863, the son of a senator, he stood unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York in 1905, subsequently becoming a Congressman. His business methods and seclusion at his private mansion at San Simeon made him a model for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. He died in 1951.

Churchill’s secretary. Born in 1900, she was a talented violinist who helped organise the Girl Guide movement in India. When she returned to Britain in 1937, she became Churchill’s secretary at Chartwell, and was his personal private secretary during the war. She was the curator at Chequers from 1946 to 1969.

Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff Committee whose memoir,
War at the Top,
provides a fascinating insight especially into the state of British military unpreparedness in the early stages of the war.

Churchill’s secretary. She joined the Downing Street secretariat in 1938 while Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister and from 1943 was part of Churchill’s pool of secretaries, accompanying him on tours abroad. She continued working as a Downing Street secretary after Clement Attlee became Prime Minister, which she described “as the difference between champagne and water”.

The President’s principal diplomatic adviser during the Second
World War, and, because he lived almost permanently at the White House, was sometimes seen as even more influential than the Secretary of State. Hopkins worked with Roosevelt to develop the New Deal relief programmes in the 1930s. With war in Europe, the US President sent Hopkins to assess Britain’s chances and – after Churchill himself – nobody did more than Hopkins to convince Roosevelt that Churchill was a strong leader of a country that needed American backing and Lend-Lease assistance. Hopkins was also present at the major wartime conferences at Teheran, Casablanca and Yalta. He died in 1946, aged 55.

Churchill’s nurse and personal attendant from 1958 until Churchill’s death in 1965.

US Secretary of State, 1933–44. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had called for stepping-up American rearmament and supporting Britain, albeit while keeping America out of the European war. Much of his work during the war was spent drawing-up plans for the post-war world, including the role of the UN. He retired from the State Department because of ill health, dying in 1955.

Churchill’s gastro-enterologist. He often wrote to Churchill with sensible recommendations on dieting, exercise, smoking and the drinking of brandy rather than port. He saw active service in North Africa and at the age of 70 he founded the British Digestive Foundation. Died in 1981.

President of Turkey, 1938–50 and Prime Minister of the country,
1923–27 and 1960–65. He maintained Turkey’s neutrality during the Second World War despite endeavours by Hitler and Churchill to enlist Turkey’s support.

British general, known as “Pug”. He served with the Camel Corps in the First World War and became Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1938. During the Second World War he provided an essential link between Churchill and the military Chiefs of Staff. First Secretary-General of NATOTO, 1951–7. Died 1965.

Worked as a censor for the transatlantic telephone link during the Second World War and recently wrote a lively memoir of her work listening into the conversations between, among others, Churchill and Roosevelt.

Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet. After the war he went into broadcasting and was Director-General of the BBC from 1952 to 1960.

US Ambassador to London, 1937–41. Prominent leader of Boston’s Irish-American community. He did not disguise his belief that Britain would be defeated. His sons included John F. and Robert Kennedy, both of whom he outlived.

Experienced British diplomat. As Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1942–46, he worked hard to build good relations with
Stalin. He attended key conferences at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. Ambassador to the United States, 1946–48. Created Lord Inverchapel in 1946 and died in 1951.

Economist. He was a critic both of demanding war reparations from Germany after the First World War and of Churchill’s economic policy in 1925. Keynes argued that mass unemployment could be cured by the government’s management of demand. He was a Treasury civil servant during the Second World War and led British negotiations with the United States over Lend-Lease and the post-war international economic order at the Bretton Woods Conference, 1944. Died 1946.

US Chief of Naval Operations during the Second World War. Despite the requirements of working with America’s allies, he never hid a deep-seated mistrust of the British. At the Casablanca Conference he almost hit General Alan Brooke. He was not greatly impressed by democratic politicians of any stripe.

Canadian Prime Minister, 1921–30 and 1935–48. Leader of the Liberal Party from 1919, Mackenzie King was the dominant figure in the first half of Canada’s twentieth century. During the 1930s he had made clear Canada’s reluctance to join a European war unless Britain was directly attacked, but in 1939 he mobilised his country for a full-hearted commitment, which included not only a massive deployment of Canada’s armed forces but also generous financial aid to Britain, while always retaining his dominion’s right to independent action. He died in 1950, aged 75.