Photo: Karsh of Ottawa
As Britain waits to discover who will be its next prime minister, few have noticed that today is the 70th anniversary of our greatest premier taking office. 10 May 1940 was an extraordinary day. At dawn, Nazi Germany invaded Holland and Belgium. By nightfall, Winston Churchill had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister.
Churchill's appointment followed days of intense political drama, beating by far the events of May 2010. Chamberlain had been weakened by the failure of his appeasement policy, but it was the disastrous attempt to thwart Germany's invasion of Norway that sealed his fate. The Labour opposition refused to serve in a coalition government headed by Chamberlain. Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, recognised he wasn't a war leader. So Winston took his place in history, as Britain's very survival was at stake.
The night before, Churchill told his son Randolph, "I think I shall be prime minister tomorrow". In the morning, with Nazi stormtroopers racing through the low countries, he cast the thought aside. But destiny was on his, and our, side. As he returned from Buckingham Palace as prime minister, Churchill had tears in his eyes as he told his detective that he was very much afraid it was too late. "We can only do our best." But as we went to bed at 3am the following day, he reflected a profound sense of relief. "I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial."
Contrary to legend, it took time for Churchill to win over the Conservative party - Rab Butler, for example, said the clean tradition of British politics had been sold to the greatest adventurer in modern political history. He though Winston's accession was a disaster. Andrew Roberts and John Lukacs both show how hard Churchill had to resist pressure from the Tory grandees such as Lord Halifax to open talks with Mussolini and Hitler that fateful May.
Anyone keen to know what it was like working with Churchill during those extraordinary days must turn to John Colville. Colville was one of Winston's private secretaries for most of the war years, and paints a vivid picture of Britain's greatest prime minister in The Fringes of Power, his Downing Street diaries. He describes the formation of "one of the greatest administrations which has ever governed the United Kingdom". Colville says Churchill was entirely unpredictable. He could be utterly inconsiderate, but won unswerving loyalty. Yet his humanity and humour shine through: when Colville took a telegram to the prime minister in June 1940, as France was on the brink of surrender, Churchill declared, "Another bloody country gone west, I'll bet,"
Churchill himself wrote of those desperate days in his history of the second world war. He describes his last visit to France before nemesis struck. Arriving in Tours, he found the airport had been heavily bombed the night before, but his aircraft and escorts landed safely despite the craters. No one from the French government was there to meet him, and he borrowed a service car and drove into the city. He found a cafe, which was closed, but was given a meal after explanations. Eventually, French premier Reynaud arrived for anguished discussions about whether Britain would support France if she were to seek peace terms with Germany - an idea Churchill rejected.
That perilous flight set the pattern for the rest of the war. Churchill pioneered face to face 'summit' meetings with other leaders. Brian Lavery's wonderful book Churchill goes to war recounts the amazing journeys the prime minister undertook between 1940 and 1945, crossing the Atlantic repeatedly and flying across enemy-held North Africa to visit Stalin in Moscow. In the words of the chief of the imperial general staff, Alan Brooke, "We had travelled all night in poor comfort, covering some 2,300 miles an a flight of over 11 hours ... and there he was, as fresh as paint, drinking white wine on top of two previous whiskies and two cigars!"
Whoever becomes prime minister in May 2010 will have an easy ride by comparison.
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