The Churchill Girls

The Story of Winston and Clementine's Daughters

Rachel Trethewey

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780750993395, 9780750993241
• eBook ISBN: 9780750997065
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

'Winston's daughters Diana, Sarah and Mary witnessed some of history's most defining moments … Now it's time for their stories to be heard.' – The Mail on Sunday

Bright, attractive and well-connected, in any other family the Churchill sisters – Diana, Sarah, Marigold and Mary – would have shone. But they were not in any other family, they were Churchills and neither they nor anyone else could ever forget it.

From their father – 'the greatest Englishman' – to their brother, golden boy Randolph, to their eccentric and exciting cousins, the Mitford Girls, they were surrounded by a clan of larger-than-life characters which often saw them overlooked. Marigold died when she was very young but her three sisters lived lives full of passion, drama and tragedy …

Diana, intense and diffident; Sarah, glamorous and stubborn; Mary, dependable yet determined – each so different but each imbued with a sense of responsibility toward each other and their country. Far from being cosseted debutantes, these women were eyewitnesses at some of the most important events in world history, including at the Second World War Conferences of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. Yet The Churchill Girls is not a story set on the battlefields or in Parliament; it is an intimate saga that sheds light on the complex dynamics of family set against the backdrop of the tumultuous twentieth century.

Accomplished biographer Rachel Trethewey draws on unpublished family letters from the Churchill archives to bring Winston and Clementine's daughters out of the shadows and tell their remarkable stories for the first time.

1

Diana:
The Gold Cream Kitten

When Winston Churchill’s first child, Diana, was born, he wrote to his wife, Clementine:

I wonder what she will grow into, and whether she will be lucky or unlucky to have been dragged out of chaos. She ought to have some rare qualities both of mind and body. But these do not always mean happiness or peace. Still I think a bright star shines for her.¹

Winston firmly believed in destiny, but was it really written in the stars what life would be like for his daughters? Were they predestined to follow a course charted for them by fate, step-by-step to its inevitable conclusion, or did a unique combination of characters playing off each other have consequences none of the main protagonists could have foreseen? Did nature or nurture turn the Churchill girls into the women they became? Piecing together what shaped their ends involves tracing their stories from the beginning, and that started when two exceptional people met and fell in love.

When Winston Churchill married Clementine Hozier at St Margaret’s, Westminster, on 12 September 1908, it was the most important political wedding of the decade. Politicians from across Parliament joined the congregation as Winston’s former headmaster, Dr Welldon, told Clementine that her role and the influence she exerted in her husband’s future public life would be so important it would be ‘sacred’.² Never off duty for long, during the signing of the register in the vestry the groom discussed politics with David Lloyd George. Afterwards, Winston’s Cabinet colleague told a friend he had ‘never met anyone with such a passion for politics’.³

Winston never hid his ambition and it seems that, when Clementine married him, she understood what she was signing up to. Like her husband, she believed he was a man of destiny and she saw her role as supporting him to achieve his potential.⁴ However, Clementine was never just some flimsy, submissive wife. Intelligent and strong-willed, she was special too. Her husband loved her deeply, but he also respected her and realised how lucky he was to have her. She was her own person, and was a shrewd judge of character with her own political views. She challenged him and her emotional intelligence made her worth listening to.

As well as mutual respect, an emotional neediness brought them together. Neither Winston nor Clementine had ever come first with anyone before they met and the knowledge that they were at last the centre of another person’s world gave them the stability they both craved.⁵ The closely bonded couple had much in common. They both had unhappy childhoods and complicated relationships with their parents and, inevitably, their lack of positive role models was to affect their parenting.

Clementine’s father, Sir Henry Hozier, was from a wealthy brewing family while her mother, Lady Blanche Ogilvy, was the daughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie. The couple had four children, Kitty, Clementine and the twins, Bill and Nellie, but it was rumoured that none of them were fathered by Henry. Apparently, Blanche had at least nine lovers, so the paternity of her children was hard to pinpoint. There were various candidates for Clementine’s biological father, but it seems most likely to have been Bertie Mitford, the 1st Lord Redesdale.⁶ As Bertie was married to Blanche’s younger sister, it was a liaison which verged on the incestuous even by her promiscuous standards.

After Clementine’s parents separated in 1891, she had an insecure childhood. Blanche was always short of money, so in a quest to make economies she moved her family to Dieppe in France. She could not have chosen a worse place. As she was a gambler, the lure of the local casinos soon attracted her, and she was often in debt.

Although Clementine had inherited her mother’s strong features, they had little else in common. Blanche favoured her vivacious eldest daughter, Kitty, and showed little affection to her serious-minded second child. However, despite their mother’s blatantly divisive behaviour, the two sisters became inseparable.

The most formative moment in Clementine’s early life came in 1900 when Kitty developed typhoid. She watched as, in just a few weeks, her vibrant sister was transformed into a wraith. The memory of the person she was closest to dying at the age of nearly 17 would haunt Clementine when she had children of her own. She had seen for herself that the worst thing possible could happen and fate could be cruel. Rather than deal with the complex emotions triggered by Kitty’s death, both Clementine and Blanche just kept a stiff upper lip and carried on. Although they were both bereft, rather than consoling each other, Blanche turned all her attention on to her youngest daughter, Nellie.⁷

Clementine grew up to be very different from her mother. Rather than inheriting Blanche’s spendthrift tendencies, she was always careful with money. Perhaps in reaction to her mother’s decadence, Clementine had a puritanical streak and she was to be a faithful wife throughout her long marriage to Winston. No doubt she also intended to be a very different mother from Blanche, but sadly, she repeated many of the same mistakes with her own children.

Winston’s relationship with his parents was equally problematic. His recent biographer, Andrew Roberts, describes his mother and father’s treatment of him as ‘verging on the abusive’.⁸ His father, Lord Randolph, was always a harsh critic of his eldest son. When Winston was 20, Lord Randolph died from a rare brain disease. For the rest of his life, the younger Churchill wished they had known each other better and been closer. Winston hero-worshiped his father and wanted to emulate his career to prove his underestimation of his potential wrong. He dreamed of having a son who would one day enter Parliament with him and form a political dynasty.

Winston’s high-spirited American mother, Jennie Jerome, was no more nurturing than his father. When he was a child, she neglected him to pursue her all-consuming social life. Winston was abandoned at a school he hated.⁹ Despite his begging letters, Jennie rarely visited or even wrote to her lonely little boy.¹⁰ So, lacking maternal love, Winston turned to his nanny, Mrs Everest, who gave him the emotional support and devotion he needed to thrive. He was determined not to repeat the mistakes his parents made with his own children. He did break the pattern by being a very loving father, but his over-indulgence of his only son was to be as detrimental as his own parents’ neglect.

Deprived of a stable home in his childhood, Winston could not wait to start a family. When Clementine became pregnant shortly after their wedding, he was delighted. The couple moved into a town house at 33 Eccleston Square, London, and prepared for the arrival of their baby. Winston’s younger brother Jack’s wife, Goonie (Gwendoline), was also expecting and the two young wives became firm friends. After Goonie gave birth to their first child, John George (known as Johnny), Winston wrote to Clementine telling her what an easy time her sister-in-law had, hoping this would reassure his nervous bride. He added that he did not like to think about her having to go through such a painful experience but that it would be worth it for the joy the baby would bring.¹¹ Fortunately, the birth was straightforward and on 11 July 1909 Diana was born.

Drawing on a combination of the pet names Clementine and Winston used for each other – ‘Kat’ or ‘Cat’ for her, and ‘Pug’ or ‘Amber Dog’ for him – their baby daughter was soon known as ‘the Puppy Kitten’ or, because of her auburn hair, the ‘Gold Cream Kitten’.¹²

From the start, Diana looked more like her father than her mother. When David Lloyd George asked Winston, ‘Is she a pretty child?’, he replied proudly, ‘The prettiest child ever seen.’ To which his friend responded, ‘Like her mother, I suppose.’ Winston answered, ‘No. She is the image of me.’¹³

Setting a pattern which would continue throughout her children’s childhood, shortly after the birth, Clementine went away. While she convalesced in a cottage near Brighton, Diana was left in the care of Winston and her nanny in London. Showing her priorities, Clementine wrote to her husband saying that she missed them both, but especially him.¹⁴

Although leaving her baby daughter sounds strange to modern readers, Clementine’s behaviour was not unusual for her era. Many upper-class Edwardian mothers spent much of their time apart from their children, delegating their care to nannies. For some, it enabled them to pursue a hedonistic existence, but for Clementine the reasons were far less frivolous. Self-preservation rather than self-indulgence made her go away. Throughout her life she suffered from anxiety and frequent holidays seemed to be the only way she could cope with her demanding husband and motherhood. Over the years, Winston accepted that she needed to get away. He understood that it was her way of regaining her emotional balance. It also allowed her to reassert her own identity which was in danger of being crushed by living with such an egocentric husband.¹⁵

With Clementine away, Winston became a surprisingly involved father for his generation. Whenever she was absent, he happily stepped in, displaying an enthusiasm for everyday experiences that she lacked. He enjoyed officiating at bath times and reading Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit to his first-born at bedtime. Admittedly, he was not expected to shoulder the same responsibility as his wife and could opt in and out of family life as he pleased, but he relished being a father. Even when he was particularly pressured at work, he took his duties seriously. In between making important political decisions, he spent time carefully choosing just the right present for his daughter.¹⁶ It seems that he found involving himself in family life a way to switch off from his work.

Refreshed after her convalescence, Clementine collected Diana and took her to stay with her Stanley relatives at Alderley Park, Cheshire. Diana was a particularly pretty baby, which pleased her competitive mother. She reported with pride to Winston about how their daughter compared with the six other infants who were visiting. She wrote, ‘None of them are fit to hold a candle to our P.K. or even to unloose the latchet of her shoe.’¹⁷ She was delighted when the staff at Alderley considered Diana to be ‘the finest specimen’ ever to visit.¹⁸

However, during their stay, Clementine became concerned that her baby daughter seemed unwell. Understandably, after the tragedy of her sister’s death, she became anxious when her baby showed the slightest signs of illness, and naturally inclined to worry; as a first-time mother she lacked confidence and preferred to rely on their nanny’s judgement rather than her own.¹⁹ Throughout her children’s childhood, when she was with them she fussed about their health.²⁰ She veered between being over-protective in some ways and then strangely under-protective in others. As she was un...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: The Early Years
• Part Two: The War Years
• Part Three: The Post-War Years
• Acknowledgements
• Select Bibliography
• Notes
• Picture Sections