![]() “Of course,” he said honestly, “that was long before my time.” To the best of his belief, Sir Winston had never been unfaithful (Churchill Archive Centre, file CHOH 1/DEKE). Like Colville, Kelly laughed off the Maxine Elliott story, saying it wasn’t the boss he’d known. In 1947-57 he’d worked at Chartwell, Churchill’s home, sorting out the muniment room for his official biography - “to make Cosmos out of Chaos,” as Churchill put it. I knew Denis Kelly well, corresponded with him, and published an imaginative article of his about conversing with the ghost of Sir Winston. The only real evidence Colville offered was the Kelly episode, but “The Castlerosse Affair” doesn’t tell us what Kelly thought. Still they insist that “Colville’s claim of an affair was, at least, plausible.” ![]() “On the face of it,” the authors state, “Pearson’s and Spence’s claims do not look well supported.” But Pearson did not make the claim - he denied it. my mother told me.” Decades ago, biographer George Malcolm Thomson speculated that the couple “may have enjoyed a ‘romantic friendship.’” In 2016 Lyndsy Spence, Castlerosse’s biographer, wrote that there was “much repeated gossip,” citing Pearson. The television program is replete with family tittle-tattle: “It was known…. Before the Kelly episode, that is the only way he could have heard about it.Īnd that is how everybody heard about it. The best “The Castlerosse Affair” can offer is that “he believed it” and “would not have made the allegation lightly.” In my experience he was not above repeating chatter among his social set. Moreover, Colville did not even meet Churchill until 1940, years after the supposed indiscretions. He did not refer to Castlerosse, which is hardly dispositive. In the 1980s I had several conversations with Colville, whom I loved and respected as a “keeper of the flame.” I do not pretend they were of any great importance, but we did discuss Lord Bath’s belief in Churchill’s affair with Maxine Elliott. Did he admit his sin and ask forgiveness? Hotly deny it? Would a man revealed to his wife as a philanderer say nothing? Neither Colville nor the authors tell us. Colville, in response, tried to play it down….” (Actually, Colville says he told her, “I bet he didn’t,” in effect contradicting himself.)Īll this begs a rather obvious question: What was Sir Winston’s reaction? After all, Colville says, he was right there. she was frightfully anxious about it for months…. “She had never previously thought that Winston had been unfaithful…. “Clementine read the correspondence and went pale,” the article states. (This is inaccurate other historians had heard it, but dismissed it as unprovable.)Ĭolville said he was having tea with Winston and Clementine when literary assistant Denis Kelly approached with what Colville said were love letters from Castlerosse. In a 1985 interview with the Churchill Archives Centre, Sir John “Jock” Colville disclosed the “evidence,” which we are told no one previously listened to. Now the Castlerosse story is back, with an apparently solid source: Churchill’s longtime private secretary. Yet even Pearson, who omitted no scandal, dismissed the idea of a Castlerosse affair with Randolph’s father: “As with so many rumours of this sort, it is unprovable either way.” The only source for that quote is John Pearson’s Citadel of the Heart, a scathing tell-all about the Churchill family. Was there anyone beside Maxine? I asked him. He could offer no proof, save his own circle of friends. She was then in her seventies, but Lord Bath placed the affair in the early 1900s. Elliott was a lifelong friend, whom Churchill visited at her Riviera villa, Chateau d’Horizon, in the 1930s. He told me that Sir Winston, famously loyal to Clementine, had “strayed only once” - with the American actress Maxine Elliott. Late in his life I came to know Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath, a Churchill admirer and collector. Rumors of it have been around ninety years - with conflicting dates and two different women. “The Castlerosse Affair” declares that Churchill’s philandering, “hidden until now, was something in the nature of a bombshell.” It was neither hidden nor a bombshell. ![]() But if you’re going to besmirch their marriage, you need to present facts. Winston Churchill would have saved liberty without his wife Clementine, if not quite as effectively. Why is “Churchill’s Secret Affair” (the television title) important? Who cares? It matters because the Churchill marriage was admirable and historically significant.
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