Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill by David Stafford

Author:David Stafford [Stafford, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th Century, Biography & Autobiography, Great Britain, History, Leaders & Notable People, Politics & Government
ISBN: 9780300234046
Google: KXyRwgEACAAJ
Amazon: 030023404X
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019-09-10T03:00:00+00:00

S U M M E R

ELEVEN

‘WHERE ARE WE GOING IN EUROPE?’

Ireland was burning, the miners were striking, and the dole queues lengthening. But the annual rituals of Ascot, Wimbledon, and Test Match cricket against Australia were played out as usual. With the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey, the ‘great silence’ of collective grief was finally ending. Churchill had already experienced the Riviera’s return to its usual pleasure-seeking routine. Now it was London’s turn to embrace renewal. Nothing better symbolized this celebration than the first Anglo-American Polo Test Match to take place since before the war. Held at Hurlingham Park, the ‘spiritual home’ of polo in Fulham in south-west London, it was another symbol of the intensifying sense of transatlantic friendship so firmly embraced by Churchill in his address to the English-Speaking Union. The captain of the American team was an Oxford Blue.

On a Saturday afternoon shortly after his Commons speech on the Middle East, he and Clementine joined hundreds of enthusiastic spectators including a generous sprinkling of dukes, duchesses and other ranks of the nobility to enjoy the first of the two matches. It was also a grand royal occasion. The first of the Windsors to arrive was the Prince of Wales, followed shortly afterwards by Queen Alexandra, his grandmother and widow of King Edward VII, as well as several of the royal princesses. Then at three o’clock, in blazing sunshine and greeted by the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards, the King and Queen arrived in their luxurious open carriage drawn by two bay horses. The King wore a silk hat and dark frock coat, while the Queen was dressed in a gown of hyacinth blue satin covered by a heavily beaded black and silver cloak and sporting a double necklace of pearls. Joining them in the Royal Box were the Duke of York – the future King George VI – and the Duke of Connaught, the elderly third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who as a young army officer based in Montreal had helped repel a Fenian raid from across the border with Vermont. Making it clear that such hostile episodes were firmly interred in the past, that Anglo-American friendship was now the name of the game, and that the Canadian-American border was friendly and open, the American ambassador and his wife sat comfortably next to royalty in the Royal Box.1

Accompanying the Churchills were Philip Sassoon as well as the ubiquitous Freddie Guest, who regularly helped organize the annual Commons versus Lords polo match. Since his Sandhurst days, horses had engaged some of Churchill’s deepest passions. He had emptied his pockets hiring horses from nearby livery stables for point-to-point races and steeplechases. Gazetted at age twenty to the Fourth Hussars, a cavalry regiment, he had spent hours in the riding school and stables. He loved the glittering jingle of the cavalry squadron manoeuvring at the trot. Famously, he had taken part in the 400-horse cavalry charge of British troops at the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan in 1898 and seen more than twenty of his comrades killed.

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