This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous and influential politicians of the 20th century - Winston Churchill..
Churchill is a figure around whom many myths have developed. Dozens (if not hundreds) of statements are unjustifiably attributed to him, and many fables are told about his life. However, Churchill was an extraordinary person, and often what seems like an incredible fiction turns out to be a real fact of his biography. At the request of "BBC Russian Service» we examined several common statements about the life of a politician.
Churchill was a US citizen
Mostly not true. According to modern laws, he would have the right to do this: Winston Churchill’s mother was an American, Jenny Jerome, the daughter of a successful New York financier Leonard Jerome. She often visited Europe, and one day, in August 1873, during a regatta on the Isle of Wight, the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) introduced her to the young aristocrat Randolph Churchill.
Within a few days the couple announced their engagement, and in April 1874 the wedding took place. That same year, their first child, Winston, was born. In our time, he could have received two citizenships: British through his father and American through his mother. However, before 1934 American citizenship abroad was transmitted only through the paternal line. Only in 1994 did the US Congress pass amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gave the right to U.S. citizenship to people born abroad to American mothers before 1934. However, Churchill had long since died by that time.
But the politician had honorary US citizenship (which, however, did not give any rights, privileges and responsibilities of ordinary citizenship). He received it on April 9, 1963 decree President John Kennedy. A special passport of an honorary citizen was even made for Churchill - at a ceremony in the White House it was presented to the politician’s son, since Churchill himself was unable to come to America due to poor health. Churchill became the first person to receive honorary US citizenship. After him, this title was awarded to more seven people, but almost all - posthumously.
Churchill was born in the women's toilet during a dance
Mostly not true. Winston's mother was actually at a ball at Blenheim Palace when she went into labor and was unable to make it to her assigned bedroom. However, she gave birth not in the toilet at all, but simply in one of the rooms palace, which was used as a dressing room that day.
The circumstances of Churchill's birth are described in most detail in the trilogy The Last Lion writer and historian William Manchester (this work is considered the most detailed biography of the politician).
Manchester writes: “That evening the annual St. Andrew's Ball took place at the palace. To everyone’s surprise, including her husband’s, [Jenny] appeared in a loose dress and with a ball book. She was dancing when the contractions started. Randolph wrote to his mother-in-law: “We tried to stop them, but to no avail.” Actually, the time has come to choose a place for childbirth. Her great-niece Anne Leslie later described the search. Accompanied by servants and Randolph's Aunt Clementine, Lady Camden, she stumbled out of the party, which seemed to have gone on merrily without her, and staggered "past the endless suite of drawing rooms, through the library, 'the longest room in England,'" towards her bedroom.
She didn't have time. She lost consciousness and was carried to a small room off the great hall at Blenheim. It once belonged to the first Duke's chaplain; today it was the women's dressing room. Sprawled, she lay on velvet capes and feather boas, which were deftly pulled out from under her when the ball ended and the cheerful guests left. It was a long night, with servants running back and forth with poultices and towels.”
The cloakroom myth probably arose due to a translation error, since in English the word cloakroom has two meanings: “dressing room” and “toilet” (as a euphemism).
Churchill was an experienced mason and built his country estate himself
Half-truth. Churchill was not an avid athlete (although he was a good fencing and polo player), but he found physical labor extremely useful. He believed that this was the best rest from mental labor. And of all the options for physical labor, he liked the craft of a mason most of all.
He, of course, did not build a country estate - Churchill bought the ancient Chartwell estate in 1922, and all its alterations were carried out by the then fashionable architect Philip Tyden. But the politician himself built brick fences in the estate garden and even took part in the construction of a small playground cottage for your daughters.
One of them, Mary, later recalled: “While my father was building the red brick walls that now surround the garden, he came up with a great idea: to build a small one-room house. It was intended for both of us, but Sarah, who entered the boarding school in 1927, quickly lost interest in it. This is how this charming building came to be known as Marykot.”
To build the cottage, Churchill hired professional masons, but worked alongside them. In 1928 he wrote to Stanley Baldwin: "Spent a wonderful month working on a book and building a cottage: 200 bricks and 2000 words a day."
After a photograph of Churchill at work appeared in the press, James Lane, mayor of Battersea and founder of the Amalgamated Building Workers' Union, invited him to join their ranks. Despite being skeptical about his construction skills, Churchill agreed, filled out an application, paid the membership fee and was officially accepted into the union. His membership card read: “Winston S. Churchill, Westerham, Kent. Profession: mason,” and the place of work was listed as the Chartwell estate.
However, Churchill's entry into this organization caused a violent reaction among union members. Many were outraged that the politician who had led the suppression of the 1926 general strike was accepted into their ranks. Ultimately, this debate led to the union's executive committee revoking Churchill's membership.
Churchill deliberately allowed Coventry to be bombed to cover up the decipherment of the German code by British intelligence
Not true. This information was disseminated by British military intelligence officer Frederick Winterbotham. During World War II, he and his colleagues led a program to break the code used by the German army and transmit the resulting information to the British command.
In 1974, Winterbotham published the bookUltra's Secret”, in which he stated: Churchill was informed that the target of the next massive German air raid would be Coventry, at about 15:00 on November 14, about four hours before the start of the bombing. However, the Prime Minister did not order the evacuation of people or take special measures to protect the city so as not to compromise the source of important information.
While working on the book, Winterbotham could only rely on his memories: archival materials of that time were still classified. The texts of reports to Churchill from the Air Ministry were made public only in the 1980s. A report dated November 12, based on partial transcripts, mentioned five areas as possible targets for the upcoming German Operation Moonlight Sonata, and Coventry was not among them. This city (along with Birmingham) was mentioned as a possible target for an imminent heavy bombing by a German military pilot who was captured by the British on November 9. But intelligence was skeptical about his information, continuing to consider London and the surrounding area the most likely target of attack.
On the afternoon of November 14, Churchill received a secret report from the head of the Secret Intelligence Service. Historian Frederick Taylor in his bookCoventry: 14 November 1940", after analyzing a whole series of evidence and memories, comes to the following conclusion: most likely, this report did say that the attack would be directed not at London, but at another place, but it did not necessarily specifically indicate Coventry. However, the historian notes: even if Churchill knew about the upcoming bombing of Coventry, with the level of communications at that time, it was simply impossible to organize the evacuation of a large (about 250,000 inhabitants) city busy with everyday affairs in a matter of hours. And Coventry’s air defense has already been strengthened since November 7th.
Churchill appeared naked in front of American President Roosevelt
Most likely true. Evidence of this is preserved in the memoirs of Churchill’s bodyguard Walter Thompson and one of his secretaries, Patrick Kinna.
How writes Churchill biography researcher Richard Langworth, the story took place at the end of 1940 - beginning of 1941, during the politician’s visit to the White House. Roosevelt stopped by Churchill's room to share with him an idea: to call the international organization he wanted to create after the war the United Nations. Churchill, at that moment, had just emerged from the bath and was, as the president’s closest aide Harry Hopkins put it, “pink and radiant, just like his mother gave birth.” Seeing Roosevelt in front of him, the politician was not at a loss and said: “As you can see, Mr. President, I have nothing to hide from you.”
Langworth notes that Churchill himself neither confirmed nor denied the veracity of this story. On the one hand, upon returning to Great Britain, he told King George VI: “Sir, I believe I am the only man in the world who has received a head of state in his mother’s day.” On the other hand, in response to a direct question from Roosevelt’s biographer Robert Sherwood, the politician evasively said that he “never received the president without at least wrapping himself in a towel.”
Winston Churchill drank a bottle of Armenian cognac every day
Not true. The politician really loved cognac. The website of the International Churchill Society even indicates brand the drink he preferred to others was French Hine.
As for Armenian cognac, he definitely drank it - there is a lot of evidence about this. For example, in memories Soviet military leader Alexander Golovanov, an air marshal since 1943, has a story about a meeting between Stalin and Churchill in August 1942. As Golovanov writes, Churchill did not waste time at the table and drank pepper together with Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Kliment Voroshilov, and then switched to cognac: “Meanwhile, I saw a bottle of Armenian cognac in the hands of the British prime minister. Having examined the label, he filled Stalin's glass. In response, Stalin poured the same cognac for Churchill. Toasts followed one after another. Stalin and Churchill drank equally.”
However, it is unlikely that the politician had regular supplies of cognac from the USSR, especially after the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. The authors of the book "Armenian food: facts, fiction and folklore“Irina Petrosyan and David Underwood tried to find in archival sources at least some information about the supply of Armenian cognac to Churchill, but failed and came to the conclusion that this story was fiction.
The term “iron curtain” meaning “isolation policy of the USSR” was coined by Churchill
Half-truth. Churchill did not coin the term itself, but introduced it into widespread use. Probably the first to use the expression “iron curtain” in this context was Vasily Rozanov in the book “Apocalypse of our time” in 1918: “With a clang, a creaking, a squeal, the iron curtain is falling over Russian history.” This term was later mentioned by Ethel Snowden in her book “Through Bolshevik Russia,” as well as by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in his article “Y2K” in Das Reich.
However, this expression truly sounded throughout the world thanks to the speech that Winston Churchill said March 5, 1946 in the city of Fulton (USA): “Stretching across the entire continent, from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, the Iron Curtain fell over Europe. The capitals of the states of Central and Eastern Europe - states whose history goes back many, many centuries - found themselves on the other side of the curtain. Warsaw and Berlin, Prague and Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia - all these famous cities with all their inhabitants and the entire population of the cities and regions surrounding them fell, as I would call it, into the sphere of Soviet influence.” And although Churchill himself entitled his speech Sinews of Peace, which can be translated as “the sinews (or muscles) of the world,” it went down in history as the “Iron Curtain Speech.”
Churchill said: “Stalin took Russia with a plow and left with an atomic bomb.”
Not true. The author of this phrase is British historian and publicist Isaac Deutscher. On December 21, 1949, on Stalin’s 70th birthday, The Guardian newspaper published an article by Deutscher in which he wrote: “Perhaps a future historian, summing up Stalin’s reign, will write that he accepted Russia plowed with wooden plows and left it equipped with nuclear reactors.” A few years later, on the day after Stalin’s death, an obituary by the same Deutscher appeared in the left-wing newspaper The Manchester Guardian. In it, he repeated his thesis: “The essence of Stalin’s historical achievements is that he got a Russia plowed with wooden plows and left it equipped with nuclear reactors.” The quote was later included in Deutscher's book Russia after Stalin (1953) and even in the Encyclopedia Britannica (Volume 21, 1964).
They began to attribute the quote to Churchill in the USSR because of Nina Andreeva’s sensational article “I can't compromise my principles"(Soviet Russia, March 13, 1988). Later, a refutation appeared in the Pravda newspaper: “The panegyric to Stalin given by her [Andreeva] does not belong to Churchill at all. The famous English Trotskyist I. Deutscher said something similar.” However, this clarification did not cause the same public resonance as the article itself.
Churchill - Nobel Prize in Literature
Is it true. Churchill was not only a politician, but also a writer. In his youth, he contributed extensively to the press: serving as a war correspondent for The Daily Graphic in Cuba, reporting from India in The Pioneer and The Daily Telegraph (later the basis for his book The History of the Malakand Field Corps), and covering the Second Boer War for The Morning Post.
After the start of his political career, Churchill wrote a two-volume biography of his father, a four-volume book about John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, and a memoir, My Early Years. In total, his literary heritage includes about one and a half dozen books, not counting numerous collections of speeches.
Most of his works are documentaries. For non-fiction he received the Nobel Prize in 1953. wording "For mastery of historical and biographical descriptions, as well as for brilliant oratory, serving the defense of high human values." As for fiction, Churchill wrote only one novel and a few short stories.
Cover photo: Churchill Archives Center account X
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