Churchill's Britain by Peter Clark

Author:Peter Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909961753
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Oh how shall I its deeds recount

Or measure the untold amount

Of ills that it has done?

From China’s bright Celestial land

E’en to Arabia’s thirsty sand

It journeyed with the sun.33

Four teachers in particular had an influence on him. One was Robert Somervell, whom Churchill remembered as a delightful man. Churchill responded to the teaching of English literature and entered for the school Shakespeare prize, coming fourth out of twenty-five contestants. Somervell inspired Churchill with the essential structure of “the ordinary British sentence – which is a noble thing”.34 Somervell kept one extended essay that Churchill wrote in 1889 about an imaginary invasion of Russia twenty-five years in the future, in 1914. In 1945, Somervell’s son, Donald, presented the manuscript of the essay to the school. Donald was born at Harrow while Churchill was a pupil. He later became Solicitor General and Attorney General in governments between 1933 and 1945, and he was home secretary in Churchill’s caretaker government of 1945 before retiring as Lord Somervell of Harrow.

On his arrival at Harrow, Churchill joined the Officers’ Training Corps and, in his last two years, he was in the ‘Army Class’ of which L. M. Mori-arty was master-in-charge. Moriarty taught history, and in his adult life Churchill told him that his love of history had been acquired or developed in Moriarty’s Army Class. Both were keen fencers and even fenced with each other. In 1892, aged seventeen, Churchill became the public schools’ fencing champion. His father was always dismissive of his elder son, and Churchill craved for his parents’ affection and approbation. The finals were at Aldershot, and Churchill was very anxious that his father should attend. But Lord Randolph had better things to do. “I cannot possibly get to Aldershot on the 7th as it is Sandown races which I must go to.”35 But he did send a postal order for £1.

Churchill studied French with a Monsieur Minssen and spent some holidays in France with him, meeting French army officers. Churchill was fairly fluent in French, though purists mocked his accent. In early letters to his mother, who had very good French, he sometimes dropped into accurate French, and in one he frenchified his name as “Winston de Montéglise”.36 In 1940, he addressed the French nation in a broadcast in French (“Français, c’est moi, Churchill, qui vous parle”) and, in old age, his French was good enough for him to read Balzac in the original.

Churchill also appreciated his teacher of mathematics, C. H. P. Mayo, who made the subject interesting.

His first (English) publications were in the school magazine, The Harrovian. Churchill, however, was not a model student. He did not enjoy team sports, preferring activities – such as fencing – in which he relied on his own prowess. He augmented his funds by getting his celebrity parents to send him lots of samples of their signatures, which he sold off to his fellow pupils. His parents were probably happy to oblige, as it reduced the pressure on their son’s constant demands for extra pocket money.

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