text:
ALL BEHIND YOU,

WINSTON

To Eileen, as always, and to Milton,
my constant companion during the writing of this book.
'This too, I know, that England does not love coalitions.'

Benjamin Disraeli, 16 December 1852

'We are trying to form a Government that should rally all the nation and set forth the energies of the people. I have not the slightest doubt about our victory, but I have no doubt at all as to the price that will have to be paid or the effort that will be needed.'

Clement Attlee, address to Labour Party conference,
morning of 13 May 1940

'Well, Ralph, what do I do next?'

Ernest Bevin to his Tory junior minister,
Ralph Assheton, on his first morning at the
Ministry of Labour, 14 May 1940

## **Contents**

  1. List of Illustrations
  2. Acknowledgements
  3. Prologue
  4. 1 'A Ministry of all the Talents'
  5. 2 'No longer two nations but one'
  6. 3 The Beaverbrook Effect
  7. 4 'A troglodyte existence'
  8. 5 'A New Magna Carta'
  9. 6 'Uncle Fred's Recipe for Survival'
  10. 7 'Riding the dung cart'
  11. 8 'The Ascendancy of Stafford Cripps'
  12. 9 'Ringing the bells of victory'
  13. 10 'Slaying the five giants'
  14. 11 'A grand job to be done for the nation'
  15. 12 'Should we tell the Russians?'
  16. 13 'Buzz bombs and flying gas mains'
  17. 14 'A light shining on every helmet'
  18. Postscript
  19. References
  20. Bibliography
  21. Index

## Guide

  1. Cover
  2. Start of Content
  3. Table of Contents
  4. Index

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## **List of Illustrations**

[The Cabinet in the garden of 10 Downing Street on 24 October 1941, together with military chiefs and other officials.
 _Front Row (from left):_ Ernest Bevin, Lord Beaverbrook, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, Sir John Anderson, Arthur Greenwood and Sir Kingsley Wood.
 _Back Row (from left):_ Sir Edward Bridges (secretary to the War Cabinet), Sir Charles Portal (Chief of Air Staff), Sir Archibald Sinclair, Sir Dudley Pound (Admiral of the Fleet), A.V. Alexander, Lord Cranborne, Herbert Morrison, Lord Moyne, David Margesson, Brendan Bracken, General Sir John Dill (Chief of the Imperial General Staff), General Sir Hastings Ismay (Military Secretary) and Sir Alexander Cadogan (Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs).
© AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image1)

[Churchill's long and varied political life made him uniquely qualified to lead a wartime coalition. His air of defiance and optimism rallied the nation in a way no other could.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image2)

The famous Low cartoon in the _Evening Standard_ on 14 May 1940, portraying national unity in the war effort. Striding out with Churchill are his Labour colleagues Attlee, Bevin and Morrison. Close behind (from left) are Chamberlain, Greenwood, Halifax, Sinclair, Duff-Cooper, Alexander and little Leo Amery.
© DAVID LOW, EVENING STANDARD, 14 MAY 1940, THE BRITISH CARTOON ARCHIVE, UNIVERSITY OF KENT, www.cartoons.ac.uk

[Churchill visits a bomb-damaged home at the height of the Blitz in late 1940. He could provide stirring words on these occasions, but was also easily moved to tears by what he witnessed.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image4)

[Sir Archibald Sinclair, Liberal leader and Secretary of State for Air. He had fierce tussles in cabinet with Lord Beaverbrook during the Battle of Britain.
© PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO](backmatter05.xhtml#image5)

[The irrepressible and unconventional Brendan Bracken, Churchill's close confidant and a successful Minister of Information.
© MARIE HANSEN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image6)

[Lord Beaverbrook was at the forefront of propaganda to mobilise the Home Front in the dark days of 1940. This was one of hundreds of posters produced by the Ministry of Information.
© THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES/SSPL/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image7)

[Churchill leaves Downing Street with Sir John Anderson after a War Cabinet meeting in May 1940. Anderson was an indispensable figure: towards the end of the war Churchill advised the King that if he and Eden were killed, Anderson (then Chancellor) should become Prime Minister.
© FOX PHOTOS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image8)

[The redoubtable Ernest Bevin at his office in the Ministry of Labour. Emergency legislation gave him absolute control over the working lives of every Briton.
© HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image9)

[Lord Halifax, then Foreign Secretary, and Anthony Eden, War Secretary, leave Downing Street after a tumultuous War Cabinet meeting on 28 May 1940. Halifax had just presented the case for suing for peace with Germany.
© FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image10)

[Herbert Morrison, master of the photo opportunity and the pithy phrase, ferrying a sack of coal outside the Ministry of Supply headquarters in July 1940.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image11)

[The only two women in Churchill's war ministry. Florence Horsbrugh (seated) and Ellen Wilkinson confer in April 1945 during the conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations.
© AUTHOR'S COLLECTION](backmatter05.xhtml#image12)

[Sir Stafford Cripps. In early 1942 he was the most popular politician (bar Churchill) in the country, and even briefly viewed as his possible successor.
© THOMAS D. MCAVOY/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image13)

Lord Woolton, Minister of Food (1940-43) and then Minister of Reconstruction (1943-45). 'Uncle Fred', here taking charge of a soup kitchen during the Blitz, was one of Churchill's best-recognised and most admired ministers.

[As the war developed, Clement Attlee and Anthony Eden formed a powerful axis in the area of foreign affairs - where they saw it as their task to resist some of Churchill's wilder impulses.
© DAVID E. SCHERMAN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image15)

[A preoccupied Lord Beaverbrook prepares to address a conference on the conscription of labour in January 1941: his great rival, Ernest Bevin, in more jocular mood, stands behind him. Other Government ministers present are Oliver Lyttelton (left) and Sir Andrew Duncan, with Bevin's junior minister Ralph Assheton alongside him.
© KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image16)

[Consulting amicably enough early in 1945, but Bevin and Morrison nursed a deep-seated mutual dislike. However, their personal differences did not prevent them joining forces to harry Churchill over reconstruction.
© IAN SMITH/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image17)

[A night off at the Opera House on 1 May 1945 for four of Britain's delegation to the United Nations meeting in San Francisco – Clement Attlee, George Tomlinson (junior minister in Labour department), Ellen Wilkinson and Florence Horsbrugh.
© PETER STACKPOLE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image18)

[Clement Attlee takes tea with his constituents in Limehouse. He grew in stature as the war progressed, valued especially for his efficient committee work and expert chairing of War Cabinets when Churchill was absent.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](backmatter05.xhtml#image19)

David Low's cartoon in the _Evening Standard_ on 12 April 1945 captured the open conflicts that had started to beset the coalition. Bevin and Bracken are pictured, arms in slings after their public (verbal) jousting, while a gnomic Beaverbrook hides under the table.
© DAVID LOW, EVENING STANDARD, 12 APRIL 1945, THE BRITISH CARTOON ARCHIVE, UNIVERSITY OF KENT, WWW.CARTOONS.AC.UK

Victory at last. The War Cabinet takes the applause on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall on the afternoon of 8 May 1945. From the left, Oliver Lyttelton, Ernest Bevin, Churchill, Sir John Anderson, Lord Woolton and Herbert Morrison. © CENTRAL PRESS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

For this book I interviewed a number of individuals who had fascinating civilian and military roles in World War Two: amongst them, a teenage Bevin Boy, a very young secretary in the Cabinet War Rooms, and an underage Home Guard recruit who later went on to become a navigator in a Wellington bomber. Given the passage of time, it was always improbable that I would get to meet a significant, living, former member of Churchill's war ministry – politician or civil servant. But I did interview many people in the course of my research who knew a good deal about the book's main characters, either through family connection or other association. In particular I wish to thank Lord Woolton, Charles Sandemann-Allen, Earl Attlee, Lady Attlee, Lord Beaverbrook, Baroness Linklater, John Thurso MP, John Julius Norwich and Mrs Jane Kerr for their time and their various vital insights into their famous ancestors, and for giving me access to important documentary material. Lord Carrington served in Churchill's 1951–5 administration, and he gave me splendid character sketches of some of the wartime ministers he personally knew who had survived to serve WSC again.

Caroline Balcon and her staff made me very welcome in the Prime Minister's Room in the House of Commons, where one particular crucial, memorable scene takes place – although a number of other War Cabinet meetings were also held there between 1940 and 1945. Equally, I must thank Jane Ford and Nicky Luscombe for allowing me to spend a fascinating few hours looking round Cherkley Court, Lord Beaverbrook's dramatically situated old 'pile' in Surrey.

I am also indebted to a good many others who provided stories, guidance and help of one kind or another – Lord (Michael) Dobbs, Dr Paul Addison, Prof. Stuart Bell, Dr Anthony Seldon, Prof. Robert Self, Kenneth Baxter, Liz Todd, Eric Johnson, Joy Hunter, Derrick Clewley, Peter Fleming, Clive Robey, Nick Kerr, Diana Mackenzie, Martin Kinna, Ashley Cooper and Ben Perkins. Edmund Bradbury was an excellent, assiduous researcher on the subject of the 'Bevin Boys'.

First and foremost, though, this was a book that relies heavily on written memories and government documents of the time. A good deal of the very best archival material of British political life resides in the Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, where I spent very many happy and fruitful hours. I owe a special debt to Allen Packwood and his superb staff who handled all my enquiries with expert efficiency and great good humour. Over at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Colin Harris and his colleagues were equally welcoming and knowledgeable, and I thank them hugely for all their help. I also received great help and advice at the Imperial War Museum, Warwick University, Cambridge University Library, Trinity Library, Cambridge, and the BBC Archives at Caversham.

My excellent agent Andrew Gordon has, as ever, offered wise counsel throughout this project. I must also thank everyone at Aurum for their continuing backing and encouragement – Richard Green, Melissa Smith, Jessica Axe, Jennifer Barr and Katherine Josselyn. My copy editor, Steve Gove, did splendid work in the closing weeks. But most of all I would like to thank my brilliant editor Sam Harrison; I could not have wished for a more incisive mind at work on this book, nor anyone so supportive.

## **PROLOGUE**

Friday, 10 May 1940

'Where is Hitler going for Whitsun?' the leader writer of the _Daily Mirror_ had asked in half-jocular, half-serious vein that morning when writing about Britain's lack of preparation for war. 'To Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland? Or on a round trip through the Balkans – with Musso, perhaps, in attendance, personally conducting his Fuehrer? What would happen thereupon?'

His answer had arrived all too quickly, even as his newspaper was landing on the doormats of millions of British homes. At first light Hitler launched his long-awaited invasion of western Europe, choosing the Low Countries as his entry point. In Operation _Fall Gelb_ , the Luftwaffe carried out sustained attacks on airfields across Belgium and the Netherlands, while daring raids by German airborne troops, dropped by gliders behind enemy lines, captured vital strategic and defence installations in the two countries. Meanwhile the Panzer and infantry divisions of General Fedor von Bock's Army Group B began to advance, meeting little resistance, certainly not from hapless little Luxembourg, protected by just four hundred infantry and twelve cavalrymen.

At this most perilous moment in Europe's history, Britain's political class appeared dangerously divided. The nation was facing its greatest external threat since Napoleon one hundred and thirty-five years before, and it was unclear who could lead it to safety. After a tumultuous week in Westminster, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had been left clinging onto power by his fingertips, with most expecting him to fall by the end of the coming day. 'CHAMBERLAIN TO RESIGN' was the morning headline in the _Daily Express_. 'PM'S LAST BID FAILS' was the _Daily Mirror_ 's take on matters. Only the _Daily Worker_ offered him a glimmer of hope, with 'PREMIER HOPES TO SURVIVE "RE-ORGANISATION"'.

This tall, lean seventy-one-year-old, with greying moustache, curved nose and penetrating dark eyes, had never relished the responsibility of being Prime Minister during wartime. He was naturally shy, and his meticulous mind and social conscience were better suited to the field of domestic reform: improving factory conditions, clearing Britain's slums, empowering local government. His domain was the committee room rather than the grand stage. Exhorting a nation, sending young men to the battlefield and shaping military strategy were uncomfortable duties.

Thus, since the start of his premiership, on 28 May 1937, much of Chamberlain's time had been spent trying to avoid an armed conflict – and not without popular support. His quest for a diplomatic agreement with Hitler had reflected a general yearning for peace; just twenty years on from the end of the last war, and with Britain barely recovered from a worldwide economic depression, few had any real desire to take up arms again. The strategy of so-called 'appeasement' reached its apogee at the Munich conference of September 1938, when Hitler – seemingly satisfied with Germany's annexation of the 'Sudetenland' region of Czechoslovakia – promised to make no further territorial demands in Europe. Upon his return, Chamberlain triumphantly waved a piece of paper, proclaiming he had won 'peace for our time'. But as that conceit unravelled over the course of the next eighteen months, in the face of the Nazis' undisguised aggression, the criticism of his leadership in Parliament – and certain sections of the press – built with increasing vehemence. By the time of Germany's invasion of Poland, on 1 September 1939, his government's failure to put the country on a proper war footing had been exposed as imprudent at best, negligent at worst.

Matters had come to a head on 7–8 May 1940 in an extraordinary two-day debate in the House of Commons. What had been billed as an occasion to analyse Britain's disastrous military campaign in Norway, from where troops had been forced into a desperate evacuation while under heavy attack from the Luftwaffe on 2 and 3 May, had become an inquiry into the entire military record of Chamberlain's Conservative-led national government since the declaration of war on Germany the previous September. Members of Parliament crowded excitedly onto the green benches, the galleries were packed to overflowing, and the atmosphere – in turn tense, raucous and emotional – was unlike anything seen or heard in the chamber before.

From the moment he stood up to present the government's case on Wednesday everything had gone wrong for Chamberlain. His own speech was a poor effort, balancing advantage and disadvantage in the Norway campaign, admitting errors but denying complacency. There was no emotion, no flight of fancy, no glimmer of light atop the mountain. 'He seemed tired and embarrassed,' observed government parliamentary private secretary Henry 'Chips' Channon.

Speaking for His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition had been the Labour Party leader, Clement Attlee. Small, trim and bald, with a sizeable toothbrush moustache and round, steel-rimmed spectacles, he was by nature undemonstrative, and even now, after five years in charge, he still struggled to impose his authority on his colleagues. But that day he had begun the attack on the government with a calm, incisive speech all the more damaging for being unadorned.

Attlee's impressive army record – he had fought bravely in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in the First World War – lent him moral gravity. Referring to that experience in his criticism of the calibre of troops – a good proportion of them 'territorials' – who had been sent to fight in Norway, he had observed, 'We had an experience in the Dardanelles of having young men sent out. They did not last long. It was seasoned men, capable of responsibility and enterprise, who were wanted for this Norwegian affair'. He bemoaned the lack of support from fighter aircraft – 'surely a sine qua non of the whole adventure' – and concluded that the people of Britain 'want different people at the helm' from those who had led them into the conflict.

The leader of the Liberal Party, Sir Archibald Sinclair, focused his criticisms on reports he had received from serving soldiers about a desperate lack of equipment. 'The minister of supply appeared in a press picture in a becoming white fur coat – but the troops at Namsos had no white coats at all. Apparently he had the only one. They had no snow shoes . . . and in the fighting which occurred at Namsos I understand that men were caught up to their waists in snow.' Turning to the shortfalls in the production of guns and planes, he asserted that 'the government is giving us a one-shift war while the Germans are working a three-shift war. Foreigners are shocked by our complacency and by our failure to rouse ourselves out of our peacetime routine.'

In the course of the two days Chamberlain had been assailed by MPs on all sides of the house. Herbert Morrison, the unsuccessful candidate when Attlee became leader of the Labour Party in 1935, and Albert Victor Alexander (usually known as 'A.V.' or 'Bert'), First Lord of the Admiralty in the 1929–31 Labour administration, kept up the pressure from the Labour ranks, while Alfred Duff Cooper made an eloquent adversary among the rebel Tories. The feeble defences mounted by Chamberlain's close confidants in the War Cabinet, Sir Samuel Hoare, air secretary, and Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer, merely imperilled his government further.

It was left, however, to two veterans of the First World War to fatally wound Chamberlain. His old colleague Leo Amery, now the leader of a group of backbench Tory rebels, concluded his speech by quoting Oliver Cromwell's denunciation of the Rump Parliament in April 1653: 'You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.' David Lloyd George, the man who had steered the nation to safety over twenty years before, and bore only loathing towards Chamberlain, struck the final, debilitating blow. 'This was a half-prepared, half-baked expeditionary force, without any combination between the army and the navy,' he told members. 'Here we are in the worst strategic position in which this country has ever been placed.' Echoing Amery the day before, he concluded, 'I say solemnly that the prime minister should give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in this war than he should sacrifice the seals of office.'

Only Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and chairman of the new military co-ordinating committee, made the best of a bad situation, rallying some doubters with his defence of the naval strategy. After much agonised debate, the Labour Party decided to press a division on the motion for the adjournment, effectively provoking a vote of censure on the government's conduct of the war. If they had misjudged the mood, and Chamberlain had won a comfortable majority, his authority might have been enhanced and the chance to oust him would have been squandered. But when the result came, the government's majority of 250 was whittled down to just eighty-one (281 to 200), with a fifth of its backbenchers (around ninety) either voting against the administration or abstaining. Technically, the government had won; morally, it had been an abject defeat, and Chamberlain left the chamber to cries of 'Resign, resign', a few excitable Tory rebels breaking into a chorus of 'Rule Britannia'.

The mood in Downing Street the day after was gloomy and recriminatory. 'Jackals' was Samuel Hoare's contemptuous description of the rebellious backbenchers. Chamberlain himself made efforts to conciliate the dissenters, including an unsuccessful offer of a senior cabinet role to Amery. Sir Herbert Williams, a senior Tory backbencher who led a delegation of supporters to Number 10 after lunch, found the Prime Minister in a demoralised state. 'It was a pathetic interview. He had been terribly shaken both by the debate and the voting. It was as if he had been struck a severe blow, because as we walked into the room he seemed unable to get out of his chair. We stated our case and he listened with great care, and by the time we had finished he was in much better form'.

Later in the afternoon the Prime Minister hosted two crucial meetings in the Cabinet Room. In the first, joined by foreign secretary Lord Halifax, Winston Churchill, and Conservative chief whip David Margesson, he had considered the drastic changes needed to restore confidence.

If there had to be a new leader, Chamberlain's loyal lieutenant Halifax looked to be first in line. The tall, quietly spoken, easy-mannered aristocrat, known as the 'Holy Fox' for his twin passions of religion and fox hunting, was held in high esteem throughout the Tory party. There had been evidence too, in recent days, that senior Labour figures preferred him to the other candidates, principally Churchill. Hugh Dalton, Labour's foreign policy spokesman, had noted in his diary on 8 May, 'I thought, and a number of others shared the view, that there was much to be said for Halifax.' Judging from a letter in _The Times_ that morning from A.L. Rowse, historian and prospective Labour candidate for Penryn and Falmouth, many in the wider party agreed: 'I believe the Labour Movement would serve under Lord Halifax as Prime Minister, who has defined the moral issues of the war as no one else has done and gives the nation the right moral leadership.'

Chamberlain had at last been convinced that Labour – the second largest party in Parliament, commanding 154 MPs out of 615 – needed to be brought into a coalition government. At that moment, too, he had finally appeared ready to relinquish the premiership. 'The PM recapitulated the position, and said he had made up his mind to go, and that it must be Winston or me,' recorded Halifax. 'He would serve under either.' But by the end of the meeting the foreign secretary had effectively talked himself out of the job. He had argued that his position in the House of Lords would prove isolating during wartime; with Churchill running defence matters in the Commons, he would be too far from the 'centre of gravity'. More likely is that, at the very moment of opportunity, Halifax had feared the burden of responsibility would prove too great for him to bear.

Whatever the real reason, his colleagues supported his act of self-denial. 'Winston, with suitable expressions of regard and humility, said he could not but feel the force of what I said, and the PM reluctantly, and Winston evidently with much less reluctance, finished by accepting my view.' And so the question of the future leadership of the country was left to rest. Halifax and Churchill retired to the garden of Number 10 for a cup of tea while Chamberlain kept other appointments. Then at 6.15 p.m. Clement Attlee and his deputy, Arthur Greenwood, arrived, and the three Conservative and two Labour leaders sat facing each other across the Cabinet table.

Chamberlain, revealing nothing of his earlier discussions, told Attlee and Greenwood that a new national government was now a necessity; although he had begun by asking directly if they would join it, and serve under _him_. According to Halifax, the Labour leaders were a 'bit evasive' when faced with this request. Attlee had told Chamberlain, 'Mr Prime Minister, the fact is our party won't come in under you. Our party won't have you and I think I am right in saying that the country won't have you either.'

Pressed by Chamberlain, the Labour leader expressed the opinion that his party would likely serve under another Conservative, but he would need to consult it first. Thus it was agreed that Attlee would convene a meeting of Labour's National Executive Committee the following day, when delegates would be gathering for their delayed party conference in Bournemouth, and put two questions to them. First, would they be prepared to serve in a national government under Neville Chamberlain? Second, would they be prepared to serve under someone else?

On Friday, as the news of the German invasions came in, Whitehall lurched into a flurry of meetings, By seven o'clock Halifax had received the Dutch minister and Belgian ambassador, with their formal requests for help, at the Foreign Office. Over at the Admiralty, the three services ministers – Churchill for the navy, Oliver Stanley for war (the army) and Sir Samuel Hoare for the air force – gathered for an early breakfast together. During the Military Co-ordination Committee meeting that followed, they and the chiefs of staff authorised the dispatch of two additional fighter squadrons to France. They also ordered the execution of Royal Marine, a long-planned operation to mine the River Rhine. Then, at the emergency War Cabinet meeting at 8 a.m., ministers were told that the British Expeditionary Force, 'although not at the highest state of readiness', would soon be on the move towards the Belgian front.

Now, paradoxically, with his government's military and political strategy in ruins, Chamberlain viewed the catastrophe as an opportunity to prolong his premiership. He had retired to bed the previous night in the firm belief that his tenure at Number 10 had just hours to run. But at this time of grave national crisis, he began to reason, a radical and distracting reconstruction of his government would not be in the best interests of the country. 'I propose to remain,' he wrote to one of his senior ministers that morning. 'The next three or four days' battle will determine the fate of civilisation for the next one hundred years.'

This was not vanity on Chamberlain's part, but he had failed to grasp that power had already slipped away from him; that his moment had come and gone. He had a strong sense of patriotic duty, and he genuinely believed that he should continue to lead the country through the next, difficult hours. And he was by no means alone in this: over at the Foreign Office 'Chips' Channon sensed a turn in fortunes for the Prime Minister. 'It was the popular view [here] this morning that Neville was saved, for after all his policy had been vindicated swiftly and surely within twenty-four hours. Had he sent an army to Finland, where should we be now?'

Newly energised, Chamberlain sought to bolster his position. First he turned to Sir Archibald Sinclair – a tricky task as there had been much bad blood between them in the past. When called to Downing Street at ten o'clock that morning, however, Sinclair gave Chamberlain's argument that the political status quo should be maintained a fair hearing. Emerging half an hour later, watched by a crowd of several hundred, he promptly issued a statement to the media which began, 'Recent events have proved the necessity of prompt and radical reconstruction of the British Government, but the opening of the first critical battle in the West is not the moment.' The Liberal leader then walked straight over to the Commons to explain his about-turn to Attlee and Greenwood.

Heartened by his old foe's support, Chamberlain was now telling anyone and everyone that he would carry on – at least for now. 'Neville is inclined to hold up his resignation until the battle is over,' noted Hoare. However, his change of heart was inciting anger in the ranks of the disaffected. Sir Kingsley Wood, Lord Privy Seal in the War Cabinet, and a recent, unexpected recruit to the rebels – having previously been a staunch Chamberlain supporter – had observed the Prime Minister's new mood and relayed his fears to the plotters in their familiar haunts around the clubs and restaurants of Westminster. Brendan Bracken, Churchill's parliamentary private secretary, fumed and told friends, 'It's as hard getting rid of him as getting rid of a corpse.'

Yet there was still the Labour Party for Chamberlain to consider. In his round of calls that morning he had phoned Clement Attlee at the House of Commons, explaining his view that he should continue in office for the time being because of the German attack. 'Not at all,' Attlee had replied; Chamberlain should make way as soon as possible. The Labour leader, Dalton and Greenwood had then addressed the issue of a statement of support Chamberlain had requested the previous evening. The announcement they drafted fell far short of what the struggling Prime Minister needed: 'The Labour Party, in view of the latest series of abominable aggressions by Hitler, while firmly convinced that a drastic reconstruction of the Government is vital and urgent in order to win the war, reaffirms its determination to do its utmost to achieve victory. It calls on all its members to devote all their energies to this end.'

Dalton and Attlee then shared a taxi to Waterloo station, where they were set to join other party delegates on the 11.34 train to Bournemouth. There on the platform to see them off was Herbert Morrison, MP for South Hackney and the powerful leader of London County Council. Morrison planned to delay leaving the capital until as late as possible: 'it would look bad if he . . . was down at Bournemouth when the first bombs fell here'. Such was the level of panic and uncertainty that day.

In Downing Street, the import of the statement Labour had just put out – the withholding of the party's support for the government despite the crisis – had not been lost on those gathering for the day's second meeting of the War Cabinet. Horace Wilson, head of the civil service and Chamberlain's _eminence grise_ , was particularly irate at the wording. Outside the Cabinet Room, Anthony Eden, the Dominions secretary, discussed the political state of play with Chamberlain loyalists Oliver Stanley, war secretary, and Lord Hankey, minister without portfolio. Stanley was 'indignant', having learned that Churchill was pressing for early changes to government, but Hankey's response was more surprising: 'Personally, I think that if there are to be changes, the sooner they are made the better.'

The War Cabinet's discussion centred once again on whether to commence bombing raids on Germany. Chief of the Air Staff Sir Cyril Newall informed those present that while early reports suggested the Luftwaffe had confined their operations to strictly military targets, evidence was now starting to emerge that French towns had been bombed. It was agreed, in principle, that it would be justified for the RAF to start attacking the Ruhr, but a final decision was delayed until 5 p.m. while further information was gathered. Zero hour for the advance of British land forces into Belgium was set for one o'clock. The home secretary, Sir John Anderson, warned his colleagues to expect the arrival in boats of around 300,000 refugees from Belgium and Holland. It was decided to cancel the Whitsun holiday and ask people to return to work, and information minister Sir John Reith was instructed to put out an official announcement later that day.

At 1.40 Chamberlain and his wife Annie headed off to the Dorchester Hotel for luncheon with Lord and Lady Halifax, who were temporary residents there; the party was made up by Sir John Dill, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, and Princess Olga of Greece. Beforehand, a number of Conservative MPs had visited the Prime Minister to apologise for voting against the government on Wednesday. At lunch, Chamberlain seemed outwardly relaxed. Princess Olga found him 'calm and charming', showing 'little effects of the battle that has been waging about him'. He did, however, remain bitter about Lloyd George's personal attack on him in the debate, which had 'surpassed anything he had ever seen in Parliament'.

Chamberlain and his government were still holding on to power. Their fate would be decided in just over an hour's time, a hundred miles away in a basement room in a south coast hotel.

The English weather appeared blissfully unconcerned by the political and military storms that were raging across Europe in spring 1940. 10 May had brought yet another glorious day, bathing Bournemouth in warm and golden sunlight, and many of the Labour Party delegates gathering in the fashionable art deco Highcliff Hotel for their annual conference elected to take afternoon tea in deckchairs beneath colourful awnings on the garden terrace. Inside the hotel, their representatives on the party's National Executive Committee had no time for pleasantries. They had assembled in a large conference room in the basement to consider the future of Chamberlain and his government. For an opposition party that commanded just a quarter of the MPs in Parliament, this was a startling responsibility.

At 3.30 p.m. the chairman, Barbara Ayrton Gould, called the meeting to order. A former suffragette, who had once been arrested and incarcerated in Holloway Prison for her part in a window-breaking campaign in Whitehall, Gould was one of five women in the thirty-strong gathering. The atmosphere in the smoke-filled room was lively, with even normally silent members contributing eagerly to a lengthy debate. The sense that they were about to make history was palpable. That the group would reject any collaboration with a government led by Chamberlain, however reformed, was virtually assured. The Prime Minister was a bogey figure to many in the Labour movement, reviled for helping to defeat the general strike of 1926, resented for his key role in the hated national government of 1931, and condemned for aiding and abetting the introduction of the means test, the intrusive inquiry into the finances of unemployed people who sought benefits.

Chamberlain had formally proposed a coalition with Labour when war broke out, on 1 September 1939, but the offer had been made with little enthusiasm, as he had scant regard for the qualities of the opposition leaders. The feeling was mutual, and the idea had been dismissed with equal contempt by a unanimous vote of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Later, at the end of March 1940 – even before the Norway crisis – Chamberlain had told the King, George VI, of his plan to build a new War Cabinet whose members would be 'concerned with co-ordination rather than departmental duties', and that it was his intention to find places for opposition parties. It was widely rumoured he had offered Labour three seats in that Cabinet, but Attlee had dismissed the proposal and nothing had come of the initiative.

If Labour loathed Chamberlain, there was no deep enthusiasm for either of the alternatives, Churchill or Halifax. But the pendulum now appeared to be swinging in the direction of the former. After the debacle of the Norway debate, Halifax had been tarnished by association with Chamberlain, and the worrying developments across the Channel were convincing Labour's leaders that, in Dalton's words, 'the strongest and most vigorous man' must now lead the country. Attlee put to the executive the two questions agreed at Number 10. The answers to both were unanimous: no to the first, but yes to the second.

It was a momentous moment, this effective toppling of a prime minister. But just as the committee were absorbing the ramifications, a messenger entered the room with equally dramatic news: the Germans were bombing Canterbury.

The information would later turn out to be false. Although this was indeed the very first attack on the English mainland in the war, it was no full-scale blitz. The Kent city had not been hit; a lone plane had dropped five incendiary bombs that had landed harmlessly enough in a farm and a wood near the villages of Chilham and Petham a few miles away. But at that moment the men and women around the table were unaware of this. As far as they were concerned, Hitler had launched his long-feared bombing campaign against the people of Britain. 'It helped some of us to insist that this was a day, not for words, but for action,' reflected Dalton.

A statement was quickly drafted – and agreed unanimously – that read, 'The National Executive Committee of the Labour Party is prepared to take its share of responsibility as a full partner in a new government under a new prime minister which could command the confidence of the nation.' Dalton claimed credit for inserting the words 'under a new prime minister'. He told his colleagues, 'If you don't make it absolutely plain, the Old Man will still hang on.' Crucially, they also made clear among themselves that this was a _decision_ , not a _recommendation_ ; albeit with the proviso that to be binding, it would need the approval of the whole conference on Monday morning. Attlee told the executive he would ring Chamberlain immediately to inform him of the vote, and that he and Arthur Greenwood – not in the room – would thereafter return to London and begin negotiations about a future government.

The Labour leader had just returned to the lobby of the Highcliff at 4.45 p.m. when a phone rang. Chamberlain's private secretary in Downing Street was on the line: did the Labour leadership have answers to the Prime Minister's two questions? By way of response, Attlee read out the resolution. With a taxi waiting, he then asked Dalton if he would remain in Bournemouth and act as a liaison between him and the executive. He arrived at the station just in time to catch the 5.15. His party had made its decision; events had been set in train.

While the private secretary was taking down Attlee's statement in one corner of Downing Street, in the nearby Cabinet Room ministers were half an hour into their third meeting of the day. They had already been told about the Kent bombs, and now they were being updated on how German paratroopers had seized Rotterdam airport, paving the way for the landing of troop-carrying aircraft. General Sir Edmund Ironside, chief of the Imperial General Staff, struck an optimistic note. Although parachutists had clearly been dropped widely in Belgium, there had been no rush of armoured divisions across that country's border and he was doubtful whether a full-scale invasion was actually taking place.

As progress reports on the action along the Western Front were being completed, the private secretary came into the Cabinet Room and handed Chamberlain the dictated note from Bournemouth. The Prime Minister glanced at it, his expression unchanging, then put it to one side while he continued with the meeting.

Then, at around 5.30, with the main business on the agenda over, the Prime Minister brought up the 'additional' item. He revealed the contents of the piece of paper he had just been handed, reading out the Labour Party's statement that they would serve under an alternative Conservative leader. With some emotion in his voice, he told his ministers he now proposed to go to the Palace and offer his resignation to the King.

That evening, after the main BBC bulletin of the day at 9 p.m., Chamberlain made his final broadcast to the nation as Prime Minister. Eight months earlier, his speech announcing war with Germany had been a flat, uninspiring affair. Now he found the right words, showing magnanimity in his hour of defeat and displaying surprising emotion and resolution in the face of a formidable foe. Mindful of the public's unease over the recent discord in Westminster, he began with a pledge of unity. 'He [Hitler] has chosen a moment when, perhaps, it seemed to him that this country was entangled in the throes of a political crisis and he might find it divided against itself. If he has counted upon our internal divisions to help him, he has miscalculated the mind of this people.' Chamberlain acknowledged that 'some new and drastic action must be taken if confidence was to be restored to the House of Commons and the war carried on with the energy and vigour essential to victory'. The action needed, he made clear, was the formation of a national, coalition government, with Labour and Liberal Party members joining the Conservatives. Then, for the first time, the country learned who was to be their new war leader. 'His Majesty has now entrusted to my friend and colleague, Mr Winston Churchill, the task of forming a new administration on a national basis, and in this task I have no doubt he will be successful.'

Churchill's accession, after what had been, to all intents and purposes, a parliamentary coup, undoubtedly gladdened the hearts of many beyond Westminster. And within its walls, too, there was much excitement – although some contemplated the prospect of his premiership, and the government he was to lead, with trepidation. Rab Butler, Lord Halifax's ministerial colleague at the Foreign Office, declared that 'The good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold off to the greatest adventurer of modern political history.' But within the ranks of Churchill's long-standing supporters there was a mood of elation. 'What a moment to take on! He will indeed have to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm,' recorded his friend Violet Bonham Carter.

A few minutes before Chamberlain began his address to the nation, Attlee and Greenwood had stepped off the train at Waterloo, to be met by the _Daily Herald_ journalist Maurice Webb and a naval officer from the Admiralty. The Labour leaders now learned, for the first time, the effect of their vote four hours earlier. Chamberlain had resigned, and the new Prime Minister wished to see them immediately. Thus they set off to the Admiralty, to play their part in forming the coalition government that would win the war.

## Chapter One

## **'A Ministry of all the Talents'**

10 to 15 May 1940

In May 1936 Winston Churchill, then a backbencher, had pressed the Conservative-led national government of Stanley Baldwin to sharpen its defence policy in the face of the aggressive intent of Japan, Italy and, above all, Germany. The MP for Epping, in the latest of a series of speeches on rearmament, told the House of Commons that a new ministry of supply was needed to co-ordinate the work of the three service ministries – army, navy and air force – and put them on a stronger footing. To accusations that he was warmongering, he responded, 'Is there a man in the House who would not sacrifice his right hand here and now for the assurance that there would be no war in Europe for twenty years?'

Baldwin and Churchill had been close allies in government in the 1920s, as Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively, before drifting apart over the issues of dominion status for India and rearmament. In the face of this latest attack, Baldwin, who regarded Churchill as an exasperated uncle might view an unruly nephew, confided to the deputy Cabinet secretary, Thomas Jones, a pointed insight into the character of his old ally: 'When Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle gifts – imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said "No one person has a right to so many gifts", picked him up and gave him such a shake and a twist that he was denied judgement and wisdom. And that is why while we delight to listen to him in this House we do not take his advice.'

Four years on, even as Churchill finally reached the 'top of the greasy pole' – as Benjamin Disraeli had once put it – those doubts still persisted among many at Westminster. While his courage, drive and charisma were undeniable, and it could be hoped that age – he was now sixty-five – had brought him the wisdom Baldwin had felt was lacking, politicians of all parties still viewed Churchill as troublesome, and worried about his impetuosity and egotism. 'Winston the adventurer' had an innate relish for warfare, born of the feats of his famous ancestor John, Duke of Marlborough, and his own military exploits in Cuba, India and Sudan. On the eve of the First World War he had written to his wife Clementine, 'I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that? The preparations have a horrible fascination to me. I pray to God to forgive me for such fearful moods of levity.' On 10 May 1940 this was a great strength, but also a potential danger. He had been proved right about the threat posed by the Nazis, so it was grudgingly accepted that he at least ought to be given the chance to lead his country against it. He was not trusted, however, and he began his premiership very much on trial.

In forming a coalition government it certainly helped that Churchill's own career had never been circumscribed by party affiliation. He had entered Parliament in 1900, as the Conservative MP for Oldham; a predictable choice, given the Tory circles he had moved in, and the example provided by his father, Randolph, who had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury's administration in the 1880s. But Winston had become disaffected with the Tories, vigorously denouncing their association with wealth and property. He had left the party in 1904, after which had followed twenty years with the Liberals under the premierships of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George. In 1924, however, increasingly alarmed by the spread of socialism and the rise of the Labour Party, he had 're-ratted' to the Conservative fold; his return had been greeted reluctantly, although he had remained there ever since.

Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper magnate who was a close friend and kindred spirit, once put Churchill's shifting loyalties in this characteristically blunt, if inflated fashion. 'He has been everything in every party. He has held every view on every question. He has been apparently quite sincere in all his views. Perhaps he has convinced himself. But he is utterly unreliable in his mental attitude.' If Churchill had a consistent political vision, it was wrapped up in a sense of Britain's historical continuity stretching back way beyond the Victorian era into which he was born. For him, the history of England was that of the onward march of individual liberty; fought for at home, but also spread throughout the world with the British Empire. As a domestic politician, he adhered to Edmund Burke's view that 'a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation'. Hand in hand with that awareness of the necessity for occasional reform went his upholding of the ideal of 'noblesse oblige', by which enlightened men of his (aristocratic) class had a clear public duty to govern justly, and address the sufferings of the poor and disadvantaged.

Whatever political label might be bestowed on him – liberal, reactionary, eighteenth-century Whig, Victorian Tory paternalist – Churchill's experience in government was unmatched. Having gained his first post as under-secretary of state for the colonies in 1905, he had thereafter, in both Liberal and Conservative administrations, served in almost every important Cabinet and government position, bar that of foreign secretary. After a reforming stint as President of the Board of Trade, during which he introduced unemployment insurance and labour exchanges (1908), Churchill had gone on to become home secretary (1910), First Lord of the Admiralty (1911), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1915), Minister of Munitions (1917), Secretary of State for War and Air (1919), Secretary of State for the Colonies (1921) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924), before finally returning to the Admiralty in 1939 in Chamberlain's War Cabinet.

Discussions about his 'judgement' often harked back to his first spell at the Admiralty, to the Gallipoli campaign in early 1915. As First Lord he had conceived a bold plan to forge an indirect route to victory from the east, while the two sides were bogged down in interminable trench warfare on the Western Front. The Royal Navy was to force its way through the Dardanelles Straits and take Constantinople, thus knocking Turkey out of the war, securing a supply route for Britain's hard-pressed ally Russia, and inspiring the Balkan states to join the Allied war effort against Austro-Hungary, thereby pressuring Germany.

When the naval assault foundered and the subsequent land attacks disintegrated into a bloody mess on the Gallipoli peninsula in early 1916, with up to a quarter of a million Allied casualties, the generals and politicians ran for cover, leaving the architect of the campaign to shoulder nearly all the responsibility for its failure. Among those who led the retreat from the battlefront in December 1915 had been Major Clement Attlee of the 6th South Lancashire Regiment. The last-but-one man to be evacuated from Suvla Bay, he refused to pin the blame on Churchill. Many years later he would say of Gallipoli that 'the strategic conception was sound – the trouble was that it was never adequately supported'.

So when the Labour leader arrived at the Admiralty late on Friday, 10 May 1940, to start negotiations over the new coalition, he bore no resentment over the new Prime Minister's past military 'adventures'. And since Labour had jettisoned its pacifist foreign policy, he and his deputy Arthur Greenwood had stood shoulder to shoulder with Churchill in opposition to appeasement.

For his part, Churchill recognised the debt he owed Labour for administering the final, knockout blow against Chamberlain. He knew he needed all the friends and allies he could find, as many in his own party were furious at Chamberlain's departure and willing him to fail. On a deeper level, at this moment of national crisis, he understood that his administration had to command the broadest possible support. As the talks commenced, therefore, Attlee and Greenwood would find him in receptive mood.

Few rooms in Whitehall resonated with such history as the magnificent Admiralty Board Room. It was here on the night of 6 November 1805 that an exhausted, sweat-stained officer had arrived to tell William Marsden, first secretary to the Admiralty, 'Sir, we have gained a great victory, but we have lost Lord Nelson.' A huge portrait of the admiral, painted in 1799 by Leonardo Guzzardi after the Battle of the Nile, occupied a large portion of one wall.

The three men who sat down to business, overlooked by Nelson, on that Friday evening in May 1940 hailed from a wide spectrum of British life. Churchill was blessed with the accident of privilege. After his upbringing in the monumental surroundings of Blenheim Palace, cosseted by servants, he had been naturally drawn into high society through his vivacious mother, Jennie, while his father Randolph's dealings at the very top of government had given him some early awareness of politics. For a man with Churchill's talents and pedigree, entry into the inner sanctums of British life had been virtually guaranteed.

Labour's leaders came from humbler backgrounds, although Attlee's, in particular, had not been disadvantaged. The son of a respected London solicitor, he had at first followed the natural course of a comfortable, conventional middle-class life: attending Haileybury College, a public school; reading history at Oxford; and being called to the bar by the Inner Temple. His 'conversion' to socialism had come only after his first exposure to the raw poverty in London's East End while helping out at a boys' club in Stepney. Greenwood, by contrast, had received a more obvious Labour upbringing. The son of a painter and decorator from Hunslet, Leeds, he had been educated at the local board school before winning a scholarship to Yorkshire College (later Leeds University), where he had studied history and economics. While Attlee, the social worker, had helped to improve basic living conditions among the poor of London, Greenwood, the teacher, had sought to raise aspirations when lecturing for the Workers' Educational Association in Leeds.

Both men had cut their teeth in government as members of Ramsay MacDonald's ill-fated 1929–31 administration. As Minister of Health, Greenwood had been one of its more successful members, improving widows' pensions and introducing the Housing Act (1930), which permitted slum clearance and rebuilding. Attlee had served in the less significant roles of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Postmaster General. Yet when Labour eventually called time on the leadership of the pacifist George Lansbury in 1935, it was the diffident Attlee who topped the ballot, with the gregarious Greenwood third (after Herbert Morrison). Even so, the tall, thin Greenwood, with his ready smile and hearty laugh, was undoubtedly one of the country's best-liked politicians; his weakness, which was by now well established, was drink. Attlee, sober, seemingly shy, with a laconic manner of speaking, was less affable and harder to read. His critics had repeatedly underestimated him, however; his quiet leadership had been efficient and effective, not least during the dying days of the Chamberlain administration.

Attlee and Greenwood had arrived for their negotiations with Churchill determined to claim Labour's reward for toppling Chamberlain, but not to be obstructive. 'I was very conscious that in the First World War there had been a lot of haggling over places,' Attlee recalled. 'It seemed to me that this was the reason for some of the failures of the military show then, and I was determined we would not haggle this time.' In the event there was no need for him to worry. Both he and Greenwood were offered places in a War Cabinet of five, and Churchill reassured them that Labour would be allocated more than a third of the positions in the government. For a party with just a quarter of the seats in Parliament, these were rich spoils.

The sticking point was the future of Neville Chamberlain. Churchill had originally wanted to offer his predecessor – who remained leader of the Conservative Party – the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, a prospect that horrified not just Labour, but the various groups of Tory rebels. Instead he now proposed to make him Leader of the House of Commons. But again, Attlee 'was absolutely opposed to that. I didn't think the House would stand it and certainly our people wouldn't.' Churchill quickly dropped the idea, although it was eventually agreed Chamberlain would stay in the War Cabinet in the still important role of Lord President of the Council.

There was swift agreement about the 'service' ministers: Sir Archibald Sinclair (air), Labour's A.V. Alexander (navy) and Anthony Eden (War Office). Then the discussion moved on to the home and economic portfolios, with Churchill indicating he was keen to have Herbert Morrison, Hugh Dalton and particularly Ernest Bevin on board. Mobilising the country's workforce for the war effort would be crucial, and popular consent could not be gained by appointing Tory ministers tainted by the hardship and unemployment of the 1930s. Churchill saw Bevin, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, and a giant in the Labour movement, as the man best placed to command the respect of the working class. Attlee agreed to sound out 'Ernie' in the morning. Bevin was not an MP, so if he were willing to join the government he would quickly need to be found a constituency.

'It is probably easier to form a Cabinet, especially a Coalition Cabinet, in the heat of battle than in quiet times,' Churchill would observe later. 'The sense of duty dominates all else, and personal claims recede.' The process was further oiled by Attlee's pragmatism. He did not press Churchill to include colleagues he believed fell short of the mark. So there was no position for Frederick Pethwick-Lawrence, former Financial Secretary to the Treasury: 'too old', was Attlee's judgement (at sixty-eight he was just three years older than the Prime Minister). Nor did he recommend a place for so senior a figure as Hastings Lee-Smith, former President of the Board of Education: 'too slow'. These were 'bourgeois' MPs – like himself – and Attlee was keen to ensure a strong working-class representation in the new government.

Amicable and productive, this first session of coalition-building went on until the early hours. Attlee and Greenwood then left to report the results, by telephone, to their colleagues at the Labour conference in Bournemouth; Churchill, with no similar party obligations, conferred with his inner circle before retiring to bed at 3 a.m. It had been a 'pleasant talk', he reflected later; there would be much more of it in the days to come.

The new Prime Minister received a sympathetic press on Saturday morning. 'our war premier churchill' was the front-page headline in the _Daily Mirror_ , whose leader writer asserted that 'He is one of those who have never been deceived by the character and purpose of our treacherous enemies.' In similar vein, the _Daily Express_ opined, 'No man is better fitted to form a wartime Cabinet. He understands the mind of Hitler. He is capable of developing the powers of ingenuity and resource that this war demands. He will answer daring with daring.' The most glowing praise of all came, perhaps unexpectedly, from the _Manchester Guardian_ , which asserted that Churchill 'has the confidence of the nation even more than had Mr Lloyd George when he became prime minister [in 1916]'.

Around Westminster, in offices emptied of civil servants for the Whitsun bank holiday, anxious ministers spent a lonely day waiting for a telephone call or, even better, a summons from the Admiralty. Meanwhile, the clubs and restaurants in St James's were unusually busy. Groups of MPs sat around disseminating the latest rumour and gossip – as well as the occasional hard fact – about the composition of the new government.

At 11 a.m., following fresh discussions with Churchill at Admiralty House, Attlee returned to the Commons and phoned Ernest Bevin at Transport House (the TGWU's headquarters on Smith Square), where the union boss had arrived to collect his papers before his journey down to Bournemouth. Bevin told Attlee he approved of Labour's decision to join the Tories in coalition. 'You helped to bring the other fellow down; if the party did not take its share of responsibility, they would say we were not great citizens but cowards.' But on the idea that he should join the government, as Minister of Labour, he wavered: 'You have sprung it on me.' When they met face-to-face a few hours later, in Attlee's office, Bevin confided his fears that the Ministry of Labour would remain 'a glorified conciliation board'. The Labour leader assured him that it would be central to the war effort with added, substantial powers, so Bevin agreed to talk it through with the Trades Union Congress that weekend.

Over at the Liberal Party's headquarters in London's Gayfere Street, Sir Archibald Sinclair was delighted to receive an offer to become Secretary of State for Air, although he was perturbed that such a senior role did not merit a place for himself – and thus his party – in the War Cabinet. He wrote to Churchill, 'this is a formidable difficulty, and unfortunately it is emphasised by the fact that I gave this as my reason for refusing the invitation of your predecessor at the beginning of the war'. Sinclair would be assuaged, however, by assurances that he would be invited to War Cabinet when there were 'major questions of policy' to discuss, and that this would be made clear when the announcement of his position appeared in the newspapers.

At 5.30 p.m. Attlee phoned Dalton and his colleagues in Bournemouth to keep them abreast of developments, and to seek the approval of the National Executive Committee for the government posts he had been offered. Herbert Morrison was unimpressed, saying 'it didn't sound like a Government which would stand up any better than the last one, and that it would not impress the public'. Others on the NEC wanted assurances that MPs with backgrounds and expertise in industry would find places in the new government. On this, Attlee, after consultation with Churchill, was able to satisfy them, and at 6 p.m., by a vote of 17 to 1, the committee finally agreed that Labour should join the coalition under the terms offered.

So at 9 p.m. on Saturday night, the first appointments to the new government were released to the press. The five-man War Cabinet was to comprise Churchill (Prime Minister and Minister of Defence), Chamberlain (Lord President), Attlee (Lord Privy Seal), Lord Halifax (Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) and Greenwood (Minister without Portfolio). The others were Sinclair (Secretary of State for Air), A.V. Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Anthony Eden (Secretary of State for War). From these appointments seasoned political onlookers deduced that Churchill had learned two key lessons from his experience in government in the previous war. First, the smaller a War Cabinet the more quickly and efficiently decisions could be made. Second, having witnessed the then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's failure to control his generals on the Western Front, he was determined that military policy should stay in the hands of politicians, not soldiers or sailors. To the latter end, appointing himself Minister of Defence as well as Prime Minister made him the permanent chair of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, which included the service ministers (war, air and the Admiralty) and their chiefs of staff. In addition, it would emerge that Churchill was also to lead the Chiefs of Staff Committee, where he could deal with the heads of the armed services directly, in the absence of their political masters.

At noon on Sunday, Churchill's first appointees were summoned to Buckingham Palace to be formally sworn in to their new offices. Of these, Eden was the one with reason not to be entirely satisfied with his position. At the outbreak of war, he was disappointed not to be given a service ministry; now he had one, but without a place in the War Cabinet where many felt he belonged. The charming, idealistic yet hard working forty-three-year-old already had significant government experience, as Lord Privy Seal with a special brief for the League of Nations (1933–5), and then as foreign secretary (1935–8). While Churchill had his own group of loyal followers in the House of Commons dubbed 'The Old Guard', Eden had his devotees too – derisively named 'The Glamour Boys' by the irritated Tory whips.

Eden had resigned as foreign secretary in protest over Chamberlain's negotiations with Mussolini, and then established his place firmly in the anti-appeasement camp by opposing the Munich agreement. Now, with the army in what he described as an 'inglorious state', he was apprehensive about his new role and anticipated his relationship with Churchill would be 'choppy'. But for the moment he was content to knuckle down to the job and wait patiently for preferment.

Due to some novel convention, Eden – together with Sinclair and Alexander – found themselves taking the oath of office before Neville Chamberlain, instead of the King. The war secretary found his former leader in a depressed state. 'He looked ill and was clearly hating it all. He said that he was staying in the new Government with a heavy heart.'

One of the most crucial appointments still to be made was the Minister of Supply. Britain's armed services needed equipping comprehensively and urgently, and early on in their discussions Churchill and Attlee had identified Herbert Morrison as by far the most suitable candidate for the job. In his interview with 'Mr London' that afternoon, the Prime Minister left the Labour man under no illusion about the burden about to be placed on his shoulders. 'He said, I don't offer you cheerfulness: I don't offer you good fortune: I don't offer you quick successes,' was Morrison's memory of the conversation. Churchill added, 'I offer you nothing but tears and blood and sweat and toil,' a sentiment that would become familiar to a number of Cabinet ministers over the next twenty-four hours. 'Nevertheless, he did it in such a way,' Morrison remembered, 'that, although it was a most cheerless invitation to a life of anxiety and stress and trouble, you just felt you would have been a worm if you had said "No" – and that's how he meant it to be.'

Over at the Ministry of Information, Sir John Reith learned that he was to be moved on from his job – and out of the Cabinet – before he actually received the official call from the Admiralty. 'How filthy this treatment – and what a _rotten_ government,' was the reaction of this fiercest of Churchill's critics, on hearing of his departure on BBC radio's evening news. His replacement, Alfred Duff Cooper, was a popular choice, however, widely admired as a principled politician (he had resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty over the Munich agreement) and a gifted writer and journalist.

Just three other appointments were released to the press that evening: Morrison's, together with those of Sir Kingsley Wood as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord George Lloyd, a diehard imperialist, as Secretary of State for the Colonies. But one other was as good as signed and sealed: Churchill had devoted a good part of the weekend to wooing Lord Beaverbrook for the post of Minister of Aircraft Production, and the peer had left Admiralty House having given his word that he would accept the job.

Their deliberations with Churchill complete, Attlee and Greenwood travelled back to Bournemouth so that Attlee could prepare his speech to Labour's conference, the party's ultimate authority, the following day. His one remaining task was to inspire Labour's rank and file to rally behind the new coalition.

Monday's newspapers by and large approved of the emerging team. Beaverbrook's _Daily Express_ described Sir Archibald Sinclair as not 'merely an affable aristocrat with a gift for oratory' but a man 'of force and fire who sticks to his principles'. Anthony Eden's 'liking for innovations' would be a virtue at the War Office, while Herbert Morrison's was 'a most admirable appointment' for a man who had 'managed the London County Council with great skill'. Elsewhere, the response bordered on the eulogistic. For the _Yorkshire Post_ the new government was 'in itself a vivid symbol of national solidarity. Every type of home in the land from the country mansion to the meaner back-to-back home in Leeds or Manchester may feel itself represented in it . . . this is something much more than a Ministry of All The Talents; it is a ministry embracing all that is sturdy and true in British democracy.'

That morning Attlee addressed Labour's annual conference. His agreements with Churchill had already been endorsed by every other key body in Labour's complex bureaucracy – including the general council of the Trades Union Congress and the executive of the parliamentary party – and few doubted that he would get the backing of the delegates assembled in Bournemouth. But there remained scope for embarrassment from Labour's hard left and pacifist wings. As it was, Attlee made short work of them, declaring that he had 'little patience with those who today, in face of these tremendous events, talk clap-trap about imperialist wars and so on'. He assured his audience Labour was joining the government 'as partners and not as hostages', although he warned bluntly, 'We shall none of us get all that you want.'

Attlee was not a gifted orator, but he spoke with a quiet resolve and eloquence that befitted the occasion. The final flourish was that of the principled internationalist. 'Friends, we are standing here today to take a decision not only on behalf of our own movement, but on behalf of Labour all over the world. We have to stand today for the souls in prison in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, yes, and in Germany . . . life without liberty is not worth living. Let us go forward and win that liberty and establish that liberty forever on the sure foundation of social justice.' He left the stage to resounding applause and a standing ovation, and the vote on the NEC's recommendation – taken in his absence, after he had hurried from the hall to hear the Prime Minister's speech in the Commons that afternoon – was won overwhelmingly, by 2,413,000 votes to 170,000.

While Attlee was speaking in Bournemouth, Churchill, still ensconced at the Admiralty, had been interviewing prospective members of the new Government. Around mid-morning three candidates took their seats in the dining room adjacent to his study to await their call. The trio were markedly different from each other in character and background, the embodiment of the _Yorkshire Post_ 's talk of a 'symbol of national solidarity'.

The most experienced was Leo Amery, aged sixty-six, an old friend of the Prime Minister's from as far back as their schooldays at Harrow. In their first meeting, Churchill, the bumptious new boy, had inexplicably pushed Amery, head of the house, into the swimming pool, although no grudges had arisen from this unpromising encounter: young Winston would write Leo's English essays for him, while Leo had reciprocated by helping Winston with his Latin prose. A few years later they had both been journalists during the Second Boer War – Amery for _The Times_ , Churchill for the _Morning Post_ – and at one point had narrowly escaped capture together.

Elected to Parliament as Conservative MP for Birmingham South in 1911, Amery had held Cabinet posts as First Lord of the Admiralty and colonial secretary under Andrew Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin respectively. During the 1930s he had joined Churchill in advocating significant rearmament. But the two old friends, despite mutual Tory instincts, disagreed about much else – free trade, the gold standard and especially the best future for the dominions and colonies of the British Empire. On the latter subject, Amery favoured self-government for India, an idea anathema to Churchill.

Second in line outside the Prime Minister's study that morning was Malcolm John MacDonald, aged thirty-nine, MP for Bassetlaw, and son of Labour and then national government Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Like Churchill, he was used to being reviled by large sections of his former party, having deserted it to follow his father into the National Labour ranks in 1931. MacDonald and Churchill differed on nearly every political issue, but Churchill appreciated the younger man's personality – bright, entertaining with a marvellous sense of humour and an explosive laugh. MacDonald played as hard as he worked, and had many friends in London's theatreland, including Laurence Olivier, Ivor Novello and actress and singer Dorothy Dickson.

The third interviewee was Ellen Cicely Wilkinson, aged forty-nine. Labour MP for Jarrow and a writer of polemical novels, she was known as 'Red Ellen' – a moniker that owed as much to the flaming colour of her hair as to her commitment to socialism. The daughter of a cotton worker from Manchester, Wilkinson's fiery soapbox oratory had won Churchill's admiration; during his discussions with Attlee two days earlier, he told the Labour leader he was 'very keen' to have her in his government. Like the Prime Minister, she had spotted the dangers of Nazism very early on. In 1933, she had written a pamphlet entitled _The Terror in Germany_ , outlining Nazi outrages against ordinary people, and she had served on a legal enquiry into the faked Reichstag fire. (The Nazis duly took note and denounced her as 'a red-haired agitator'.)

Wilkinson emerged from her audience with Churchill as parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Pensions. Amery was disappointed, however. Because of his seniority and his influence, he had been hoping for a post central to the war effort. It had been intimated to him the day before that he would be made Secretary of State for the Dominions, with added responsibilities as the Prime Minister's deputy to the military chiefs of staff. Instead he was offered Secretary of State for India; an important job, but ultimately bound to bring him into conflict with Churchill, and not a post that would take him into the War Cabinet.

When MacDonald followed Amery into the office, he was surprised to see Churchill striding up and down, head bowed in deep thought, hands clutching the lapels of his jacket, as if in the throes of a speech to the House of Commons. The Prime Minister looked up quizzically, then resumed pacing, before turning to face MacDonald. 'My dear Malcolm,' he declared, 'I'm glad to see you. I've nothing to offer you except . . .' and then, after a brief hesitation, 'blood and toil, tears and sweat.'

After a moment or two the Prime Minister emerged from his declamatory diversion and snapped back into friendly informality. 'I want you to be Minister of Health in my government,' he told MacDonald, explaining it would be a crucial role once Hitler launched an all-out attack on Britain and the casualties swelled. As MacDonald left the room and passed through the private secretary's office, he stopped to chat to Amery, who had lingered on. 'Did he also offer you blood and sweat and toil and tears?' the new India secretary asked. To MacDonald's affirmative, Amery observed, 'He must be rehearsing his speech for Parliament this afternoon.'

When Churchill stood up to address the Commons for the first time as Prime Minister, a few hours later, the words were not long in coming. Those with an appreciation of oratory past detected resonances of Garibaldi's speech to his 4,000 legionaries as the French were poised to enter Rome in 1849. 'Let him who wishes to continue the fight against the foreigner follow me,' the Italian freedom fighter had urged his troops. 'I cannot offer him either money or food. I offer him hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death.'

Of his new government, Churchill said it had been necessary to appoint the War Cabinet and the service ministers in just a single day 'on account of the extreme urgency and rigour of events'. Moreover, it was 'the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that it should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties'. After the speeches had finished, and the vote had been taken, the result was 381 to 0.

The House gave a welcoming cheer as Churchill led his new team of ministers into the chamber from behind the Speaker's chair. Attlee, Alexander and Sinclair sat to his left, while Kingsley Wood and Morrison flanked him on the right, leaving room for one more body on that side. A few moments later Neville Chamberlain entered the House and filled the space, his ecstatic reception easily overshadowing that given to his successor. Later, when one of the Chamberlain loyalists, Patrick Spens, MP for Ashford, referred in his speech to 'Our leader, the lord president of the council', there was a further outburst of applause for the deposed Prime Minister – with which Churchill, demonstrably and loudly, joined in. This vehement demonstration of loyalty was proof, if any was needed, of the long road Churchill still had to travel to win the trust of his party.

The new Prime Minister's handling of the appointment process was not without setbacks. Oliver Stanley, dismissed as war secretary, had been offered the alternative, if lesser, post of Dominions secretary by way of consolation, but had also been reminded of his shortcomings. 'You may be right when you say I lack drive and initiative,' Stanley responded hotly, 'but if I do, I ought not to be a Minister, and if you think I do, then you ought not to ask me to be one.' Nor was the former war leader, Lloyd George, in a mood to succumb to blandishments. Despite the seventy-seven-year-old's irritation at Churchill's decision not to offer him a place in the War Cabinet (because he refused to work with Chamberlain), he had made it known that he would be willing to take on the Ministry of Food. But Lord Woolton, a Chamberlain appointment, was already in place, and on advice from others Churchill was not minded to move him. When Lloyd George was offered a different role, as Minister of Agriculture, he turned it down.

Churchill received better news from another, more vital quarter. After much discussion with union colleagues in Bournemouth, and reassurances from Attlee and Greenwood, Ernest Bevin decided to write to the Prime Minister and accept the post of Minister of Labour and National Service. Here, arguably, was the most telling proof that the new government would indeed be as broadly based as possible; no truly national coalition would have been complete without a leading trade unionist.

All his life Churchill had been a ferocious critic of socialism: a 'monstrous and imbecile conception which can find no real foothold in the brains and hearts of a sensible people'. And yet the pragmatist in him recognised that in wartime a planned sharing of resources across society would be essential. During the First World War, in a speech to his Dundee constituents, he had dared to use the 's' word in favourable terms. For the purpose of destroying the German military system, he had told his audience, 'Our whole nation must be organised – must be _socialised_ , if you like the word.' He knew that he needed someone in his cabinet to do that 'socialising' for him in the fight against Hitler, and the choice of Bevin was little short of inspired.

What was more remarkable was that these two men were old adversaries, and had never been more so than during the general strike of 1926, when workers across industry downed tools in protest against the worsening lot of Britain's coal miners. Bevin blamed Churchill, then at the Treasury as chancellor, for having destroyed the chances of a peace settlement between trade union leaders and the pit owners. He concluded from that bitter experience, making reference once more to Churchill's ill-fated Dardanelles campaign, 'It is not that Mr Churchill is not a brilliant man, but it is not safe to leave the destinies of millions of people in the hands of a man with an unstable mind, a man who can fly off at a tangent as he did in the war, with such terrible results for millions of men.'

By May 1940, however, Churchill and Bevin had put their differences aside and were working well together, driven by the common aim of defeating Germany and bound by the necessities of wartime. Churchill had recently sought Bevin's assistance in mobilising part of the trawler fleet for war service as minesweepers and auxiliary minelayers, and it had been willingly given. Bevin had also recruited a 'flying column' of dockers who could be moved from one port to another to ensure the swift delivery of food, munitions or raw materials for the war industries.

Bevin accepted in a letter to Churchill on 13 May, on condition that the post should have the widest possible brief. 'It is imperative that its position and place should be strengthened in order to deal with the problem of labour organisation and supply, and the Ministry must therefore be in a position to make its contribution to the actual organisation of production so as to secure the right utilisation of labour, and not merely be regarded as an institution to supply the personnel.'

The first full meeting of the new War Cabinet, scheduled for 6.30 the same evening, was held in its traditional gathering place in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, the heart of British government decision-making ever since Sir Robert Walpole, the original First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister was a derogatory term in those days) had taken up residency in the 1740s. Just inside the entrance to this 'cramped, close space', as Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister in the 1880s, described it, stood two Corinthian columns, supporting a moulded entablature which wended its way around the entire room. Dominating the rest of the space was a 25ft table around which stood twenty or so curved, leather-upholstered mahogany chairs, dating back to William Gladstone's time. Only the Prime Minister's seat, with its back to the mottled grey marble fireplace, had arms. Cabinet ministers were allotted a chair according to rank, and black blotters inscribed with their titles marked their places.

On two of the walls were large bookcases that housed the Prime Minister's library. On the wall at the far end of the room a huge map displayed the state of the war. Above the fireplace, on the adjacent wall, a portrait by the French artist Jean-Baptiste van Loo captured the physical likeness, and much of the character, of Number 10's first occupant; from here Sir Robert, the coarse, convivial political manipulator, with his thick, arched eyebrows, brown eyes, protruding lower lip, double chin and ruddy complexion, dressed in the black and white robes of the chancellor, kept proud watch over his successors.

Nineteen gathered around the Cabinet table that evening. On Churchill's left sat Chamberlain, and next to him Attlee and then Duff Cooper. To the Prime Minister's right were the Cabinet secretary Sir Edward Bridges, General Hastings 'Pug' Ismay (Churchill's military secretary) and Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall. Directly facing Churchill, across the table, was Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary. On his right was Sir Alexander Cadogan, permanent under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, with A.V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir Dudley Pound, First Sea Lord, further along. Left of Halifax were Arthur Greenwood, Anthony Eden and General Sir Edmund Ironside. At the head of one end of the table sat Sir Archibald Sinclair and Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Jacob, assistant military secretary to the War Cabinet: at the other end were home secretary Sir John Anderson (a Chamberlain appointment whom Churchill had been content to retain), Minister of Shipping Robert Hudson, and Captain Angus Nicholl of the Royal Navy (the fourth member of the Cabinet secretariat present).

The meeting began with much uncertainty about Germany's next move. Ironside was in no doubt that 'the battle that could decide the Empire was beginning'; it was clear the enemy's heavy armour continued to advance at various points across the Western Front. But as yet there were no signs of infantry columns mobilising in support. It was impossible to determine whether the main German effort would be directed 'through Luxembourg against the left of the Maginot Line, or through Maastricht'.

Thereafter the discussion moved on to the unresolved question of whether this was the right time to bomb Germany. Churchill led a lengthy debate, putting the pros and cons. There was moral justification: 'the enemy by the many atrocities he had already committed, had given ample justification in the eyes of the world for an attack on the Ruhr'. Then there was the military rationale: an attack now would force the Germans to retaliate when they were unprepared to do so, and before Britain's fighter and bomber strength had been worn down by prolonged operations. Sir Cyril Newall, the prime advocate of bombing the enemy's industrial heartland, believed the military initiative needed to be wrested away from Germany; in this he won support from Arthur Greenwood, who thought 'the arguments in favour of making the attack were very strong'. But ranged against them were Chamberlain, Sinclair and Halifax. The ex-Prime Minister led the way, saying all the RAF's fighters and bombers should be concentrated on supporting the army in Belgium and France. He worried that if and when the Germans retaliated, they would find the defences of Britain's aerodromes and aircraft factories in too weak a state to resist.

Sinclair too was concerned about Britain's weakness in the air. The air staff had calculated that sixty fighter squadrons were needed for an 'adequate' defence of the country, and at present there were just thirty-nine. Halifax felt that 'it was in the interest of the nation in the weaker position, especially if it had great potential development, to refrain from exposing that potential to damage'. He would be 'gravely uneasy' if the decision were made to bomb Germany at this time. The Prime Minister summed up by saying that in view of the 'balanced arguments' for and against an attack, it would be best to postpone a decision for a further three or four days. By that time it would be clear 'whether the great battle had started or not'.

After two hours, and a final word from Churchill that he planned to write to the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, to ask for war material, in particular fighter planes, the meeting closed. First impressions of the new personnel were mixed. 'Do Greenwood, Attlee, Sinclair and Alexander strengthen the party so?' wrote the sceptical Cadogan. According to Halifax, 'there is no comparison between Winston and Neville as a chairman'. But Ironside, for one, had been impressed by the contributions of the new recruits. 'Attlee, Greenwood and Alexander are definitely better than the men we had before.'

By 15 May the greater part of Churchill's government was in place, with just a handful of positions – mainly of His Majesty's Household – to be filled. There would eventually be eighty-four members of the national coalition: forty-eight Conservatives, eighteen from Labour, five Liberals, six Liberal Nationals, two from the National Labour Organisation, three Nationals and two Independents. Appropriately, the pair who had drawn up the suggestions for much of this great coalition were to all intents and purposes sworn foes: Churchill's parliamentary private secretary Brendan Bracken, a slick, energetic and amusing operator, had been the new premier's loyal political supporter and close friend for the greater part of twenty years, while Captain David Margesson had been an urbane, charming, prefectorial chief whip to four successive prime ministers.

Behind Margesson's back, Bracken would disparagingly refer to him as 'The Parachutist', in reference to how this arch Chamberlainite had now landed in the enemy camp, but together they collaborated effectively. Harold Nicolson, who was one of the final appointments, as junior minister to Duff Cooper at the Ministry of Information, was given an entertaining account of the Cabinet-making process.

[Bracken] sat up until three in the morning with David Margesson going through lists. Winston was not in the least interested once the major posts had been filled, and kept on trying to interrupt them by discussing the nature of war and the changing rules of strategy. Meanwhile they would come back to their list, and Brendan would say, 'Well what about So-and-So?' Margesson would reply, 'Strike him out. He's no good at all.' 'Why then,' Brendan would ask, 'did you appoint him?' 'Oh well,' Margesson said, 'he was useful at the time.'

It was Bracken, though, who was the more proactive during the selection process, often slipping scribbled submissions on to Churchill's desk at the Admiralty. 'Humble Suggestions', read one, proposing Chamberlain for a job of 'Co-ordinating Economics', Conservative Captain Euan Wallace as a peer and Secretary of State for Scotland, and Labour's Hugh Dalton as Minister for Shipping. These were among the ideas that never came to pass, but many others did.

With the Labour members on board, Churchill's ministry was a far more diverse group than the previous administration, with marked contrasts of generation, class, education, occupation and region. The classic public schools still had plenty of representatives – a third of the coalition government (twenty-eight) had been educated at Eton and Harrow – but there were also alumni from the likes of Stockwell Road Board School (Herbert Morrison), Barton Hill Elementary School (A.V. Alexander), Penyrheol Board Elementary School (David Grenfell, Labour's secretary for mines), Ardwick Higher Elementary Grade School (Ellen Wilkinson) and Leeds Grammar School (Conservative Patrick Munro, Lord of the Treasury).

An aristocrat may have led the government, and there were still numerous descendants of politicians, diplomats, administrators and soldiers in its ranks, but working-class MPs – urban and rural – had also found places. Six of the latter had been miners – two of them, George Hall (Labour's Under-secretary of State for the Colonies) and David Grenfell, had gone down the pit at the age of twelve – while Sir Walter Womersley, Conservative MP for Grimsby, had been employed to drive a horse and cart at a Bradford mill when only ten. The coalition included the son of a blacksmith (A.V. Alexander), the son of a grocer (Labour education minister James Chuter Ede), a fisherman's boy (Ernest Brown, Liberal National Secretary of State for Scotland), a draper's apprentice (Labour's Joseph Westwood, Brown's junior minister), a police constable's son (Herbert Morrison) and, most notably, the son of an agricultural labourer and a domestic servant (Ernest Bevin).

Parliament in 1940 was largely composed of the generation of MPs who had fought in the First World War. They had all lost family and friends in the conflict, and their views had been profoundly shaped by their gruelling experiences on the Western Front and in other theatres of war. Thus Churchill's government contained several men who had performed with great courage on the battlefield. Seven had won the coveted Military Cross: Anthony Eden, Herwald Ramsbotham (President of the Board of Education), William Morrison (Postmaster General), Sir Edward Grigg (Under-secretary of State for War), John Jestyn Llewellin (Minister of Aircraft Production), Ernest Brown and Harold Balfour (air minister), who had flown Sopwith Camels for the Royal Flying Corps.

Hugh Dalton, Labour's Minister of Economic Warfare, had won the Italian government's Medaglia al Valore Militaire when serving with the Royal Artillery, in recognition of his 'contempt for danger' during the retreat that followed the Battle of Caporetto. The Liberal National Geoffrey Shakespeare (junior minister in the Dominions ministry) had like Clement Attlee fought with great distinction at Gallipoli, while Harold Macmillan and Alfred Duff Cooper had displayed similar bravery under fire in the trenches in Flanders. Herbert Morrison had shown courage of a rather different kind. Blind in one eye from birth, his disability would have granted him exemption from service in the First World War, but instead he had chosen to register as a conscientious objector on socialist grounds, applying to do civilian work for the national benefit, as a gardener at Letchworth Garden City.

What Churchill's ministry lacked, in any numbers, were women. They were still uncommon in frontline British politics, the breakthrough having come only as recently as 1929, a year after universal suffrage, when Margaret Bondfield was made the first ever female Cabinet member, as Minister of Labour, by Ramsay MacDonald. Churchill chose just two women for his administration: Ellen Wilkinson and Florence Horsbrugh, MP for Dundee, who was appointed parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Health. A third, Janet 'Jennie' Adamson, MP for Dartford, was made a parliamentary private secretary – a non-governmental role – at the Ministry of Pensions. But there were some outstanding candidates among the other twelve who sat among the 615 MPs in the House of Commons. The talents of the redoubtable social reformer Eleanor Rathbone (Independent), who had also been an early critic of Nazism, could have been harnessed to the government cause. And although there was already one Lloyd George – Gwilym, the second son of the former Prime Minister – in the government, a place might equally have been found for his sister Megan, Liberal MP for Anglesey.

Churchill had historically been uncomfortable with the presence of women in the Commons, though. The only female politician in his social circle, indeed, was Violet Bonham Carter, Asquith's daughter, whom he had given a key role in his anti-fascist group 'The Focus' in the 1930s. Bonham Carter, one of the most effective parliamentary speakers of her day, had been introduced to Churchill at a dinner party in 1906 and they had remained close friends ever since.

There was one other key recruit to the administration: Churchill's long-standing scientific adviser, the eccentric Sir Frederick Lindemann, Professor of Experimental Philosophy at Oxford. To his close-knit circle of friends, which included the Churchill family, 'the Prof' was loyal, affectionate and generous. But to others – especially scientific rivals – he could be chilly, arrogant and boastful. He had a deep dislike for the country of his birth, Germany, and his political views were from the far right, with a firm belief in inherited wealth, inequality and white supremacy. Teetotal, vegetarian and non-smoking, he was an outstanding sportsman, a tennis player who had won tournaments all over Europe and even competed at Wimbledon in both the singles and doubles tournaments in 1920.

The Prof's scientific method was both practical and imaginative. During the First World War he had worked out how a pilot might extract himself from a spin by personally testing his theory, learning to fly and risking his own life in the process. His great value to Churchill – other than feeding Winston's curiosity about science – was his ability to translate long, complex tracts and papers into short, succinct notes, perfectly tailored to Churchill's preferred tool of written communication, the brief minute. For this reason, at the beginning of the war, Churchill had asked the Prof to form a small statistical branch at the Admiralty to analyse and interpret data bearing on naval matters. There Lindemann had gathered around him a group of young, brilliant men from the universities (mainly economists and a scientist or two). When Churchill moved to Downing Street, so Lindemann and his 'boys' went with him, though here the scope of their work was greatly enlarged. They were now to evaluate all the key trends in the war economy: manpower requirements, armaments output, ship production, the losses inflicted on shipping in the Atlantic, food production and rationing.

The Prof was by no means the only outside expert Churchill drafted in to the heart of government. Indeed, one of its key features would be the crucial (yet often unnoticed) roles that 'technocrats' played on the Home Front – men such as shipping specialist Lord Leathers, industrial administrator Andrew Rae Duncan and banknote manufacturer Lord Wyndham Portal. Like Lloyd George in the previous war, Churchill valued the fresh invention and imagination these men brought to the dusty corridors and the often closed minds of Whitehall, and if he could place them in ministerial positions, he would.

As the Prime Minister surveyed his government, he proclaimed it to be the most broadly based in British political history. 'From Lord Lloyd of Dolobran on the right to Miss Ellen Wilkinson on the left,' he would proudly tell anyone who asked.

On Tuesday, 14 May, the day after his 'blood, toil, tears and sweat' speech in the House of Commons, the _Evening Standard_ published the latest cartoon by David Low, the left-leaning New Zealander whose relationship with Churchill had been a chequered one until the two men were united by their opposition to appeasement in the 1930s. By now, Low believed Churchill was the only man with the energy and appetite to sustain Britain through the battle ahead. To that end, and with the purpose of helping to bolster public morale, he drew a cartoon entitled 'All Behind You, Winston' _._ It depicted the Prime Minister rolling his sleeves up and marching determinedly forward, followed by Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, Chamberlain, Halifax, Greenwood, Sinclair, Eden, Amery, Duff Cooper and Alexander – the Cabinet appointees to that date. Behind them loomed endless ranks of men and women, the people of Britain, marching in their wake, seemingly willing their political leaders on to meet the danger.

It was an inspiring image, although its optimism was at odds with the reality of events on the continent. France and Belgium were now under the most severe strain from the advancing German army, and if they were to fall, the invasion of Britain would surely follow. Churchill and his ranks of ministers had a herculean task on their hands.

## Chapter Two

## **'No longer two nations but one'**

14 May to 5 July 1940

The defence of western Europe was unravelling at terrifying speed. By nightfall on day one of Operation _Fall Gelb_ , almost all of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was under German occupation. Four days later, the Luftwaffe's relentless bombing of unprotected Rotterdam persuaded the Dutch to surrender. In Belgium, after the early capture of the Liège forts – including the massive Eben-Emael, reputedly the strongest in the world – the Allied armies were in retreat; Brussels would hold out no longer than 17 May.

Meanwhile, in France, the Maginot Line, eighty-seven miles long and the most extensive, elaborate system of defensive fortifications ever constructed, had been exposed as a folly. The German high command had merely ignored it, instead sending its finest Panzer divisions crashing through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes, with its thick woods and narrow winding roads. There the ten weakest, least-trained, worst-equipped divisions of the French army proved incapable of holding the line, and the RAF's efforts to destroy the vital bridges over the River Meuse failed. By 15 May, the way was clear for the Wehrmacht to push on deep into France, and cut off and surround the Allies' withdrawal from Belgium.

Day after day, Churchill and his ministers faced desperate demands from the French government to send more fighter planes across the Channel to aid the beleaguered Allied troops. On 15 May Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding was invited to the War Cabinet to make his case for resisting those entreaties. It was a compelling performance; he dramatically pulled from his pocket a graph illustrating the scale of losses of the Hawker Hurricane, Britain's prime fighter plane. Pointing to a red line on the diagram that clearly plummeted downwards, he told ministers, 'This red line shows the wastage of Hurricanes in the last few days. If the line goes on at the same rate for the next ten days, there won't be a single Hurricane left in France or England!'

The War Cabinet's thoughts had already begun to turn from the defence of western Europe to the protection of Britain. A growing fear of the arrival of German paratroopers – fed by lurid newspaper reports – had spurred the war secretary, Anthony Eden, to propose a volunteer force to defend the country's small towns and villages. In a BBC broadcast on 14 May he asked for men aged between seventeen and sixty-five to call at their local police station and offer their services. 'I expected the response . . . to be prompt. In fact it was overwhelming, the first recruit arriving within four minutes of the end of the broadcast,' he recalled. Within twenty-four hours, no fewer than 250,000 had registered to join his Local Defence Volunteers (later renamed the Home Guard).

Earlier, the home secretary, Sir John Anderson, had been forced to respond to the public's growing fears about spies and collaborators. On 11 May he had agreed to detain all male Germans and Austrians – numbering around 2,000 – who lived in coastal areas between Scotland and Hampshire. On 17 May, he reluctantly extended detention to encompass a further 7,000 borderline cases and recent arrivals.

At a salutary meeting on Saturday, 18 May the War Cabinet acknowledged that in order to fight a dictatorship, a democracy like Britain had to be prepared, in some respects, to act like its enemy. Neville Chamberlain, in charge of strategy on the Home Front, had drawn up plans for a scenario in which Britain had to hold out against the Nazis alone, without any prospect of help from America. He conceded it would be 'impossible and undesirable immediately to effect a complete and revolutionary change in the whole structure and social system of this country'. But it was imperative, he told ministers, 'that we should abandon our present rather easy-going methods and resort to a form of government which would approach the totalitarian'.

Chamberlain worried that the 'drastic' legislation his Lord President's Committee envisaged would come as a shock to British people unless they had been prepared for it. He recommended that Churchill broadcast to the nation the following day to 'indicate we were in a tight fix and that no personal considerations must be allowed to stand in the way of measures necessary for victory'. And this the Prime Minister duly did, telling his listeners, 'After this Battle of France abates its force there will come a battle for our island, for all that Britain is and all that Britain means. In that supreme emergency, we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic, to call forth from our people the last ounce and the last inch of effort of which they are capable.'

Chamberlain and his officials had liaised closely with Ernest Bevin over the 'totalitarian' measures required, as their implementation would fall to his ministry. The details were revealed to the House of Commons, on 22 May, in the revised Emergency Powers (Defence) Bill, which was presented by Clement Attlee as Bevin was not yet an MP. The new Minister of Labour was to be given, by rule of law, powers that a dictator would have envied. Specifically, the bill required 'persons to place themselves, their services, and their property at the disposal of His Majesty, as appear to him to be necessary or expedient for securing the public safety, the defence of the Realm, the maintenance of public order, or the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty may be engaged, or for maintaining supplies or services essential to the life of the community'.

As Attlee put it, 'The Minister of Labour will be given power to direct any person to perform any services required of him.' _Time_ magazine observed, with some levity, 'Horny-handed Ernest Bevin could – if he chose – walk into London's stuffy Athenaeum Club, tap the Archbishop of Canterbury on his bald pate and order him to Sussex to dig trenches.' _The Times_ reflected, more gravely, that the measures 'came near to suspending the very essence of the Constitution as it has been built up in 1,000 years. Our ancient liberties are placed in pawn for victory: nothing less than the destruction of Hitlerism will redeem them.' Yet the bill passed through the Commons and the Lords with only the merest murmurs of opposition. Indeed, it took just two hours and thirty-four minutes to gain Royal Assent.

Bevin could now say with some legitimacy that he had absolute authority over the lives of every civilian between the ages of fourteen and sixty-four. He was confident, however, that coercion would not be needed and that 'voluntaryism' alone would mobilise Britain's workers to deliver that victory.

By 22 May German forces had reached the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais. The Wehrmacht's Panzer divisions had scythed their way across northern France, splitting the Allied armies and trapping the best French units and most of the British Expeditionary Force in a small coastal pocket. Despite help from the Royal Navy and the RAF, Boulogne surrendered on 25 May. The following afternoon, after five days of heroic defence by troops led by Britain's Brigadier Claude Nicholson – who had been ordered not to evacuate, but to fight on to the end – Calais fell too. That left Dunkirk as the only available exit port, and here the retreating 400,000 strong British Expeditionary Force now headed.

The War Cabinet had to face the consequences of the impending fall of France. General Lord Gort, commander of the BEF, had warned that his army would almost certainly lose all of its equipment and doubted whether more than a small proportion of men could be evacuated. Already the chiefs of staff had been asked to draw up a paper envisaging a French surrender and considering how Britain could fight on without most of her army. Euphemistically titled 'British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality', the report deemed Britain's remaining forces and civil defence utterly inadequate to the challenge of repelling the Wehrmacht should it ever come ashore.

The chiefs' central conclusion was that 'the crux of the whole problem is the air defence of this country'. They calculated the Luftwaffe's numerical superiority over the RAF at something like four to one. It was vital that the war effort concentrate 'primarily on the production of fighter aircraft and crews, and the defence of those factories essential to fighter production should have priority'. Ultimate survival depended on America, however. One of the report's key assumptions was that 'The United States of America is willing to give us full economic and financial assistance, _without which we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success_ ' (emphasis original).

With the military situation so dire, the War Cabinet began a critical discussion of whether to fight on alone, or consider the circumstances in which the country might sue for peace. A battle of wills developed between Churchill, the advocate of the former path, and Lord Halifax, who coolly, logically and persistently presented the case for the latter. Neville Chamberlain positioned himself somewhere in between, while Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood – to begin with – listened rather more than they spoke. The issue dominated most of five War Cabinet meetings held over Sunday, 26 and Monday, 27 May, with debate centred on whether to accept Italy – hostile, but still neutral – as a mediator in negotiations. 'We had to face the fact that it was not so much now a question of imposing a complete defeat upon Germany but of safeguarding the independence of our own Empire and, if possible, that of France,' the foreign secretary asserted.

Mindful of Chamberlain and Halifax's continuing political sway, Churchill was careful, at least initially, to appear not to reject the idea of talks. He 'doubted whether anything would come of an approach to Italy, but the matter was one which the war cabinet would have to consider'. And at the end of a lengthy, four-hour meeting on Sunday afternoon – held following discussions with the French premier, Paul Reynaud, who had flown over from Paris – he still seemed to equivocate: 'Herr Hitler thought that he had the whip hand. The only thing to do was to show him that he could not conquer this country. If, on Monsieur Reynaud's showing, France could not continue, we must part company. At the same time, he [Churchill] did not raise objection to some approach being made to Signor Mussolini.'

In truth, he was entirely hostile to the idea. At the second of three War Cabinets that day, he first allowed Sinclair, Attlee and Greenwood to make the case against negotiations. Sinclair told Halifax bluntly that it would be a 'futile' exercise. 'Being in a tight corner, any weakness on our part would encourage the Germans and the Italians, and would tend to undermine morale both in this country and in the Dominions.' Attlee weighed in with the view that 'the suggested approach would be of no practical effect and would be very damaging to us'. Greenwood's language was even stronger: 'If it got out that we had sued for terms at the cost of ceding British territory, the consequences would be terrible . . . it would be heading for disaster to go any further with those approaches.' Churchill then stepped in to make his position abundantly clear. He said he was 'increasingly oppressed with the futility of the suggested approach to Mussolini, which the latter would certainly regard with contempt . . . at the moment our prestige in Europe was very low. The only way we could get it back was by showing the world that Germany had not beaten us.' Chamberlain remained undecided, cautioning that Halifax's strategy should not be abandoned just yet.

The foreign secretary was furious at the meeting's events and the ambush he had walked into. 'I thought Winston talked the most frightful rot, also Greenwood, and after hearing it for some time I said exactly what I thought of them, adding if that was really their view, and if it came to the point, our ways would separate.' Halifax told Sir Alexander Cadogan, also present at the meeting, that 'I can't work with Winston'. Cadogan sympathised, but attempted to steer him away from thoughts of resignation: 'Nonsense; his rhodomontades probably bore you as much as they do me, but don't do anything silly under the stress of that.' When Churchill and Halifax talked further, in the garden at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister was 'full of apologies and affection', attempting to smooth things over. But nothing had been resolved, and the two men merely regrouped to continue their political struggle the next day.

A partial news blackout on the progress of the battle across the Channel had led the British public to believe that the German advance was still being strongly resisted. So when the announcement came on BBC radio, on the morning of Tuesday, 28 May, that King Leopold III of Belgium had ordered his troops to surrender, the Ministry of Information's Home Intelligence officers reported that people were 'stunned, bewildered, anxious and recriminatory'.

At the morning's War Cabinet, information minister Duff Cooper urged his colleagues to be more 'frank' about the desperate plight of the British Expeditionary Force. Unless the grim reality was spelt out, 'public confidence would be badly shaken and the civil population would not be ready to accept the assurances of the Government of the chances of our ultimate victory'. In his latest update on the evacuation from Dunkirk, the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound told ministers 11,400 men had so far made it back to Britain, and a further 2,500 were on their way. But the prospects of getting a significant number of the remaining 400,000 British soldiers to safety were not great. Churchill took Duff Cooper's advice and went to the House of Commons early in the afternoon to make a brief but sombre speech. He told MPs that the situation of the British and French armies, attacked on three sides and from the air, was 'extremely grave' and that the surrender of the Belgians 'adds appreciably to their grievous peril'. He concluded with the ominous words, 'The House should prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings.'

Two hours later the ongoing debate about whether Britain should go it alone shifted from Number 10 to the Prime Minister's room behind the Speaker's chair in the Commons. At 6.15 p.m. twenty-five anxious ministers crammed into the small, archetypal Westminster Palace chamber, with its dark wooden panels and flocked wallpaper. One of those present, Malcolm MacDonald, later painted a vivid picture of the scene. 'The sky out of doors was a mixture of blue heaven and grey clouds, which caused sunbeams to keep alternately slanting brightly and dissolving gloomily through tall windows into the room – a display of Nature's indecisive mood of mixed optimism and pessimism which seemed appropriate to the occasion.'

Churchill urgently required this 'outer' Cabinet to come to his aid. The War Cabinet had just vacated the room, after another hour and a half of intense debate over Halifax's peace initiative. The arguments had again swung back and forth between Churchill and the foreign secretary, with Attlee, Sinclair and Greenwood once more backing the former's clear rejection of negotiation, while Chamberlain continued to hover in the middle, unconvinced any approach should be made immediately, but prepared to accept that 'it might be that we should take a different view in a short time, possibly even a week hence'.

The meeting had ended in some testy exchanges. Greenwood brusquely concluded that he 'did not feel that this was a time for ultimate capitulation'. An irked Halifax responded that there was 'nothing in his suggestion [that] could even remotely be described as ultimate capitulation'. Churchill's last comment had been that 'the chances of decent terms being offered to us at the present time were a thousand to one against'. By now, with Chamberlain inching towards his side, he was determined to bring the argument to a swift end. If the wider Cabinet could be persuaded to give him a unanimous endorsement, it would provide him with the ammunition he needed to finally overcome Halifax and dispel all notion of a negotiated peace.

Addressing that group of twenty-five, he summoned a commanding performance. He first laid bare in some detail the history of the disastrous military campaign, before, with his journalist's eye, vividly capturing the current scene on the beaches at Dunkirk as the evacuation took place under a great pall of black smoke, deliberately augmented by a cloud of artificial cover from the British ships in order to conceal from the German planes the scale of the withdrawal. The RAF, he assured them, was holding off the German fighters and making great inroads into the enemy's bombing strength, but he was being as realistic as he could bear. He was hopeful of evacuating 50,000; if 100,000 could be saved, it would be a 'magnificent performance'.

Outlining the case for negotiation, he admitted that Hitler might well be ready to offer peace, as he had gained all he wanted in Europe – for the moment – and had no particular ambition to conquer Britain. On the face of it, this could appear an honourable settlement for a beleaguered nation. But it would be idle to expect the German dictator to stop at that; sooner or later, once Britain had been disabled and disarmed, Hitler would request her fleet, her naval bases, and much more. Ultimately she would become a slave state, with a Nazi puppet – 'Mosley or some such person' – in charge.

Churchill then reviewed Britain's prospects if she continued to fight. An early invasion could not be ruled out, but the Royal Navy was in good shape, and could inflict considerable reverses on the Germans once they attempted the crossing. Massive bombing assaults from the Luftwaffe should be expected, and people must expect to live and work for days on end in air raid shelters underground; but the RAF, so capable until now, would surely respond effectively. In the last resort, if there was to be a long, drawn-out siege, vast sections of the population might be evacuated across the Atlantic Ocean. Britain should never surrender, and in the blackest possible scenario her remaining forces would continue the war relentlessly from Canada and other friendly countries, with 'confident certainty' of ultimate victory, even if such an eventuality was still years away.

As he reached the climax of his half-hour speech, the Prime Minister put his position to the room in language that evoked Cicero's Third Philippic to the Senate in 44 BC. Two thousand years earlier the great Roman orator had sought to stiffen sinews against another dictator, Mark Antony: 'If the final episode in the history of the Republic has arrived, let us behave like champion gladiators: they met death honourably: let us . . . see to it that we fall with dignity rather than ignominy.' Now, Churchill declared, 'We shall go on and we shall fight it out, here or elsewhere, and if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.'

After this peroration, there were loud murmurs of approval. Churchill told his ministers that they were free to resign, with every mark of friendship from him, if they disagreed with his decision. None came forward. 'We had a little question and answering after that and then left, all of us tremendously heartened by Winston's resolution and grip of things,' Leo Amery reflected that night. 'He is a real war leader and one whom it is worthwhile serving under.' Malcolm MacDonald felt it was 'the most unforgettable hour', describing how, with 'a gleam in his eyes during his passages about fighting on the beaches and in the streets, he spoke of himself carrying a gun and shooting at the enemy – almost as if this would be the most enjoyable moment in his whole life'. For Hugh Dalton Churchill was 'the only man we have, for this hour'. Patting him on the shoulder in appreciation, Dalton suggested that the Low cartoon of 14 May should be placed on the wall of the Prime Minister's room. 'Yes, that was a good one, wasn't it,' a smiling Churchill acknowledged. There was just one (silent) dissenter. Churchill's old foe John Reith, the new Minister of Transport, felt the speech had been 'dramatic, unreal, insincere', and that his fellow ministers had been guilty of 'some rather humbugging and sycophantic remarks'. But his was a lone, jaundiced voice that day.

Immediately after the twenty-five left the room, the other four members of the War Cabinet, again joined by Sinclair and Sir Alexander Cadogan, returned. Churchill wasted no time in driving home his advantage. He revealed that the rest of the Cabinet had expressed no alarm at the reversals in France, and instead had shown 'great satisfaction' at the prospect of Britain fighting on. Pointedly, he told them he did not recall ever having heard such a gathering of politicians express themselves 'so emphatically'.

His plan worked: Halifax's resistance was overcome. It was agreed that the French government should be told the idea of peace talks had been rejected, and that 'in reaching this decision we were looking at the matter from the point of view of France as well as ourselves'. Sir Edward Spears, Churchill's personal representative to the French Prime Minister, was at Monsieur Reynaud's side when the communiqué arrived in Paris, and saw the 'magical' effect it had on him. Reynaud had been under pressure from his own war cabinet to pursue the Italian option, but the news from London 'evidently reinforced his own inner conviction that this was the right course to pursue, and he straightaway vetoed any further communication being sent to Rome'.

Nineteen-year-old RAF auxiliary pilot Hugh Spencer Lisle Dundas, of 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron, was having breakfast at RAF Leconfield on Wednesday, 29 May when he received orders to leave immediately and make the 220-mile trip to RAF Rochford, near Southend. Upon arrival at the fighter base that afternoon, he and his colleagues were instructed to relieve a hard-pressed regular squadron and soon found themselves plunged into the Battle of Dunkirk. As his Spitfire circled the beaches, Dundas was totally unprepared for what he saw.

'I had perhaps an unreal view, at that age, of what war was about, and it wasn't until I saw the mess at Dunkirk that I began to get a glimpse of reality.

'It was a terrifically confused and murky scene. There was this enormous pillar of smoke rising from some oil tanks that had been set on fire and, although levelling off, went down the Channel for a distance of 75 to 100 miles, and underneath that there was a lot of haze and general mayhem. Clouds, smoke – I think that was one of the reasons why the army didn't think the air force was there half the time.'

Down in the harbour, Ron Tomlinson and his brother Alan arrived in a 40ft motor yacht named _Tom Tit_ that they had stolen for the task in Ramsgate harbour. It was their second day of relief work at Dunkirk after a stint in the trawler _Tankerton Towers._ Altogether they made sixteen trips, all on one engine, taking on fifty soldiers each time and offloading them onto bigger cargo, passenger and paddle boats for the trip back to England. Ron's perspective of the conditions was markedly different from that of Hugh Dundas: 'You couldn't have had a better day for it, the sea was dead calm, just as if it had to happen for this special occasion.

'The soldiers were all whacked out, we could see they had had a very tough time. It was a bloodbath on the beaches – I've seen it once and I never want to see the like again.'

When the evacuation concluded on Tuesday, 4 June, a total of 338,226 British and French troops had been rescued, 240,000 from the harbour and 98,000 from the beaches. At 3.40 p.m., Churchill stood up in the House of Commons to relay the unexpectedly good news. As he often did, he had rehearsed his speech in the garden at Number 10 that morning, striding up and down with Lord Halifax and his junior minister Rab Butler in tow, uttering, 'We shall fight them on the beaches.' But before he reached that stirring line, he warned MPs that 'our thankfulness at the escape of the army and so many men . . . must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster'.

Nor was it over. When the German tanks reached the French coast, at Abbeville on 20 May, they had split the British Expeditionary Force in two. The troops escaping through Dunkirk were those who had been trapped north of the German armies, but a significant number remained stuck south of the River Somme, including the 51st Highland and 1st Armoured Divisions. These were pressed into action alongside their French counterparts when the Wehrmacht launched phase two of the Battle for France, codenamed Operation _Fall Rot_ , on Wednesday, 5 June, attacking along the line of both the Somme and Aisne.

The Allied soldiers fought tenaciously, despite the Germans' far greater numbers and firepower. Soon enough, however, the thin, 160-mile 'Weygand Line' had broken and there was nothing to stop the inevitable German assault on Paris. The British troops, along with part of the French army, began to pull back to the coast, and Operation _Cycle_ was mounted to evacuate them from the ports of Le Havre and Saint Valery.

On Monday, 10 June, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, committing 1.5 million men, 1,700 aircraft and six capital ships to the Axis cause. Italy was relatively weak in terms of men and materiel, but the Italian dictator was determined to take a share of the spoils. On the same day, General Weygand told the war cabinet he intended to declare Paris an open, undefended city, supposedly free from enemy attack under international law. When the proclamation was made three days later, three-fifths of the French capital's five million residents simply fled.

Thursday, 13 June was also the date of Churchill's fifth – and final – trip across the Channel to Tours, where the retreating French government had based itself. The occasion was a meeting of the Supreme War Council, and accompanying the Prime Minister were Halifax, Beaverbrook, Cadogan, General Ismay and the interpreter Captain Berkeley. They arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm, and to a welcome that seemed symbolic of both the state of the war and Anglo-French relations. 'Tours airfield had been heavily bombed the night before; but we landed safely and taxied around the craters in search of someone to help us. There was no sign of life, except for groups of French airmen lounging about the hangars,' Ismay recalled.

Churchill rebuffed requests from the French to be released from their obligations not to make a separate peace with Germany, and he pledged to lobby President Roosevelt to make a crucial last-minute intervention. The meeting ended on an emotional note, with Churchill saying this was almost certainly the 'darkest hour' for the Allies. 'Whether or not this be so,' he went on, 'my conviction that Hitler and all that he stands for will be smashed, and that Nazism will not reign over Europe, remains entire.' Reynaud responded that his confidence remained equally firm, 'else he could not endure to go on living'.

Yet events were swiftly outstripping the actions, let alone the wishes, of the politicians. Operation _Cycle_ had been completed at dawn that day, with around 15,000 British and Allied troops evacuated, although six thousand men from the Highland Division had been forced to surrender. The following morning Parisians awoke to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing that a curfew was being imposed for 8 p.m. that evening. German tanks had rolled into the city and a giant swastika now flew beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

At 8.20 p.m. General Alan Brooke, commander of the remaining British Expeditionary Force of around 150,000, managed to get through on the telephone to Downing Street to challenge Churchill over the idea of any new initiatives or reinforcements. Brooke had been back in France for just twenty-four hours, and yet he already knew his task was hopeless. Churchill reminded him that he had been sent to France 'to make the French feel that we were supporting them'. 'I replied that it was impossible to make a corpse feel, and that the French Army was, to all intents and purposes dead, and certainly incapable of registering what was being done for it,' Brooke recalled some years later. The argument continued back and forth down the line for half an hour. 'He gave me the impression that I was suffering from "cold feet" because I did not want to comply with his wishes,' wrote Brooke. 'At last, when I was in an exhausted condition, he said "All right, I agree with you".'

Now orders would begin to go out for the final withdrawal of troops. Codenamed Operation _Aerial_ , it was a task comparable in scale to Dunkirk and in many ways more complicated, spanning as it did ten days and eight different ports. British military operations on the continent had effectively been brought to an end.

Around the same time as Churchill had been trying to stiffen the resolve of the French cabinet in Tours, three men had sat down to lunch in an elegant flat in Mayfair, London, to discuss a plan to achieve the same objective by very different means.

Leo Amery and Arthur Salter, Independent MP for Oxford University and a junior minister in the Ministry of Shipping, were the guests of Jean Monnet, the French diplomat who headed the Anglo-French Co-ordination Committee – a body charged with furthering the two countries' economic needs in the war against Germany. Monnet and Salter were old friends, having worked together at the League of Nations during the 1920s, and both were ardent believers in European political union. Encouraged by Amery, the two men now seized the moment of crisis to put their beliefs into practice. It could be argued that Britain and France had not been bound together in any real constitutional, economic, linguistic or geographical sense since July 1453, when the Battle of Castillon effectively ended the Hundred Years' War and sent the two countries firmly on their separate paths; what was needed now was a 'dramatic gesture emphasizing our unity'. So Monnet and Salter set to work on a memorandum that would plot a truly revolutionary course for the future.

On Friday, 14 June, Amery began lobbying in support of their plan. Following a ministers' meeting chaired by Churchill, he thrust a copy of Salter's paper into the Prime Minister's hand, highlighting one of its less controversial ideas – a joint British/French War Cabinet. Amery followed this up in a talk with Attlee, and later that evening dispatched further copies to Neville Chamberlain and Lloyd George.

By the 15 June meeting of the War Cabinet, the first full draft of the what was titled the 'Franco-British Union' was ready for consideration. Chamberlain read some extracts aloud; he agreed, with much of the thinking, although it took 'too gloomy a view' in certain passages, and he remarked that the idea of joint parliaments and a joint cabinet 'did not seem to be very fully thought out'. Of the others present, Churchill and Sinclair remarked only that the Supreme War Council already provided a forum for the two cabinets to meet. With the complete collapse of France looming, their major preoccupations were whether to release her government from its agreement not to make a separate peace with Germany, and the possibility, even at this eleventh hour, of persuading America to intervene in some shape or form. Nevertheless, time was granted for further modifications.

When Monnet and Salter submitted their final draft to Amery, late that evening, the India secretary was startled by their ambition. 'I thought it a little fantastic, with its references to the absolute unification of the two nations including such things as customs and currency.' Among those who cast their eyes over the document at Downing Street the following morning were Churchill's special adviser Sir Desmond Morton and the visiting French government representative Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle. Conversation about the proposal continued over lunch at the Carlton Club. 'It is an enormous thing,' Churchill told de Gaulle of the proposed union. 'Yes,' the general replied. 'But the declaration can be made immediately. With things at the point they are, you should neglect nothing which can sustain France and maintain our alliance.'

At that, Churchill returned to Downing Street and summoned a special meeting of the War Cabinet for 3 p.m., where the document was unveiled. Its contents were quite breathtaking. Paragraph two stated baldly, 'The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one. There will thus be created a Franco-British Union. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France.'

All customs were to be abolished, and there was to be a single currency. There would be one single war cabinet, one parliament, and a constitution would be drawn up 'providing for joint organs of defence and economic policy'. The armies of Britain and France would be placed under a single, supreme command.

It finished with a flourish. 'This unity, this union, will concentrate the whole of its strength against the concentrated strength of the enemy, no matter where the battle may be. And thus we will conquer.'

The eight politicians round the table, faced with this proposal for a political revolution – the establishment, in effect, of a new country – responded with remarkable equanimity. Sir Archibald Sinclair expressed his 'warm support', and said he was in favour of anything that would tighten the alliance between the two countries. Lord Halifax said risks had to be taken, and the only phrase with which he would take issue was 'France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one'. Only Viscount Caldecote, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, seemed to worry unduly. If the document was intended to cover the peace after the war, then it raised issues which were 'too stupendous' to consider at such short notice.

Churchill told his colleagues his first instinct had been against the idea, but that in such a serious crisis the War Cabinet must show imagination; a spectacular initiative was needed to shore up the French. After some discussion, the plans for the abolition of customs and the establishment of a single currency were dropped, as was the idea of a single parliament, although joint sessions of the two might take place from time to time. It was agreed, however, that a written constitution could be drafted, provided it was kept to 'very broad lines'.

After further minor amendments, Salter and Monnet's plan was approved. The resulting document, 'The Declaration of Union', was astounding, in some ways inspiring. When De Gaulle – who had embraced it 'with an air of unwonted enthusiasm' – read its contents over the telephone to Reynaud in Bordeaux, the French premier was so astonished that he asked, 'Does he agree to this? Did Churchill give you this personally?' De Gaulle then handed the receiver to the British Prime Minister, who assured Reynaud the document was the decision of the whole Cabinet. 'He was transfigured with joy,' recalled General Edward Spears, who was standing next to the French leader. 'The sense of the generosity of the offer was overwhelming, the sincerity of the gesture completely convincing.'

The atmosphere in the private secretary's office at Number 10 was also one of elation. John 'Jock' Colville was Churchill's assistant private secretary at the time, having performed the same role for Neville Chamberlain, and would be a vivid chronicler at the heart of government over the ensuing years. With barely disguised excitement, he pondered mischievously, 'Who knows, we may yet see the "Fleurs de Lys" restored to the Royal Standard!'

That night Churchill, Attlee, Sinclair and the chiefs of staff were to be transported by the cruiser _Galatea_ to Concarneau, off the coast of Brittany, to discuss with Reynaud and his colleagues the prolonging of the battle – and the future of this new nation. They got as far as Waterloo, where a special train had been primed to depart for Southampton at 9.30 p.m. Not long after they had taken their seats, Churchill received a hand-delivered note from a private secretary informing him that the trip was off because of a 'ministerial crisis' in Bordeaux. What he discovered, on returning to Downing Street, was that Reynaud had been ousted from power. Despite the support of President Albert Lebrun, he had run into a wall of criticism over the declaration, led by eighty-four-year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain from the pro-armistice grouping.

The French Prime Minister had read the document to his cabinet twice, to be greeted on each occasion by silence. As he recounted, 'Some were astonished, others taken aback, more were hostile.' Pétain described the proposal as 'fusion with a dead corpse'. In the end, a motion from deputy premier Camille Chautemps that 'The Declaration of Union' should be rejected won the day, by thirteen votes to eleven. Reynaud resigned. Pétain, his successor, immediately announced his intention to seek a separate peace.

The resulting armistice was signed on Saturday, 22 June. Hitler carefully choreographed the moment to humiliate France, deliberately setting it at Compiègne, in the very same railway carriage – brought out of its museum for the occasion – in which German representatives had surrendered to their French conquerors in 1918. The Führer even sat in the same chair from which Marshal Ferdinand Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, had dictated terms to Matthias Erzberger, secretary of state and head of the German delegation.

When he received the details of the armistice at Chequers that day, Churchill hurried back to London for an emergency Cabinet meeting at 9.30 p.m. There he condemned Hitler's 'murderous' terms, which included the takeover of Paris, the complete disarming and demobilising of the French army, and the payment of compensation by France to Germany for the full cost of the occupation. But what interested the War Cabinet most, as it contemplated the battle ahead, was Article 8, on the subject of the French fleet. Hitler had demanded that all French warships be 'collected' in specific ports, demobilised and kept under German or Italian control. The article continued, 'The German Government solemnly declares to the French Government that it does not intend to use the French war fleet, which is in harbours under German control, for its purposes in war, with the exception of units necessary for the purposes of guarding the coast and sweeping mines.'

No one around the Cabinet table that night placed any faith in this assurance. The prospects for the battle at sea now looked bleak. The Italian ships in the Mediterranean could cut across Britain's lines of communication to the Middle East and India; while the Japanese might see this as the right moment to attack the British Empire in the Far East. For the French fleet now to join Hitler would mean the Royal Navy was stretched and threatened across all the world's oceans, and less able to defend Britain against invasion.

Churchill's mind was already racing ahead to the practicalities of dealing with the problem. He voiced particular worry about two new battleships, _Richelieu_ – the most powerful afloat in the world – and _Jean Bart_. The former was en route for Dakar in French West Africa, the latter to the Moroccan port of Casablanca. The Prime Minister suggested the Royal Navy could track them on the high seas and pull alongside to 'parley' with their captains. If they refused to negotiate, they should be treated as traitors to the Allied cause. 'The ships might have to be bombed by aircraft from the _Ark Royal_ or they must be mined into their harbours . . . in no circumstances must they be allowed to escape.'

The key to the affair was presumed to be Admiral François Darlan, the commander of the French navy. But Darlan was now minister of marine in Pétain's government; the final decision was ultimately out of his control. 'We could not afford to rely on his word,' Churchill told the War Cabinet on 22 June. 'However good his intentions, he might be forced to resign and his place taken by another Minister who would not shrink from betraying us.'

All the while, the War Cabinet remained mindful of attitudes across the Atlantic. On 15 May, in his first significant communication with President Roosevelt as Prime Minister, Churchill had asked for the loan of forty or fifty destroyers. The request had been turned down, and not simply because the Neutrality Act limited America's ability to provide aid for Britain and France: the White House had to consider the risk that these ships would end up in German hands. Roosevelt was watching and waiting to see how the war progressed. By 29 June, Washington was urging the British government to take decisive action to prove it had the resolve to continue the fight against Germany. As Lord Halifax reported, 'any action which we might take in respect of the French Fleet might be applauded in the United States.' So was launched Operation _Catapult_ , designed to secure the 'neutralisation' of the French fleet either by taking the ships under British control, or by destroying them.

Happily, the new battleships, _Richelieu_ and _Jean Bart_ , proved to be no immediate threat. The former, shadowed by a British naval squadron, was by now stationed at Dakar, and _Jean Bart_ , still to start her engines, was safely tucked away in Casablanca. And at Alexandria, where the battleship _Lorraine_ , four cruisers, three destroyers and a submarine were berthed, the French commanding officer, Admiral René-Émile Godfrey, would eventually accede to a diplomatic solution. But there would be no such amity at the port of Mers-el-Kébir in French Algeria. Here, under the command of Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, were the First World War-era battleships _Provence_ and _Bretagne_ , the more modern _Force de Raid_ battleships _Dunkerque_ and _Strasbourg_ , the seaplane tender _Commandant Teste_ and six destroyers.

On Tuesday, 2 July, Admiral Sir James Somerville, in command of 'Force H', the task force sent to 'neutralise' the French fleet, received the final text of the ultimatum he was to deliver to Gensoul. It stated that the French admiral could either join with the British; be escorted to internment at a British port; sail under escort for demilitarisation in the Caribbean; or scuttle his ships. In difficult negotiations the following day Gensoul rejected all of these options outright, despite numerous visits from the French-speaking captain Cedric Holland, Somerville's representative.

At 4.46 p.m. on 3 July, Somerville received a communiqué from the Admiralty instructing him 'to settle matters quickly'; French reinforcements were on their way. He wasted no time. At 5.15 p.m. Somerville signalled that if his proposals were not met within fifteen minutes he would have to destroy the French ships. Again Gensoul rejected the ultimatum, saying 'the first shot fired would alienate our two navies and do untold harm to us, and that he would reply to force by force'. Holland left the battleship at 5.25, and half an hour later the Royal Navy began its bombardment.

The first salvo smashed into the side of the _Bretagne_ , inflicting fatal damage that consigned the battleship to the depths, along with 977 of its crew. The _Dunkerque_ was crippled, with two hundred dead and many injured. The destroyer _Provence_ ran aground, and _Mogador_ was also badly mauled. The battleship _Strasbourg_ was a rare survivor, making it back to Toulon and into French hands. The final death toll of French sailors was 1,297, with around 350 wounded.

When Churchill stood up in the House of Commons at 3.54 p.m. on 4 July to explain the action, he expressed his 'sincere sorrow' over the decision he and the War Cabinet had taken. He concluded, 'I leave the judgment of our action, with confidence, to Parliament. I leave it to the nation, and I leave it to the United States. I leave it to the world and to history.' Finally, he affirmed that 'The action we have already taken should be, in itself, sufficient to dispose once and for all the lies and rumours which have been so industriously spread by German propaganda and Fifth Column activities that we have the slightest intention of entering into negotiations in any form and through any channels with the German and Italian governments. We shall, on the contrary, prosecute the war with the utmost vigour by all the means that are open to us until the righteous purposes for which we entered upon it have been fulfilled.'

With that call to arms, he sat down. The whole House rose to their feet and cheered loudly, waving their order papers and handkerchiefs in appreciation.

The ovation lasted for two minutes, and at the end of it Churchill was visibly moved, tears rolling down his cheeks. 'This is heartbreaking for me,' he told former war minister Leslie Hore-Belisha as he left the chamber. Reflecting on the significance of Mers-el-Kébir, Leo Amery concluded, 'It will wake the world up to a realization that we are now fighting for our lives and have taken our gloves off.'

Britain had lost an ally, but had gained the respect of America. The Battle of France – the battle with France – was over. Now the Battle of Britain would begin.

## Chapter Three

## **The Beaverbrook Effect**

10 July to 7 September 1940

At 1.50 p.m. on Wednesday, 10 July 1940, Flying Officer Thomas Peter Kingsland Higgs received the order to 'scramble' and climbed into his Hurricane at the Croydon satellite airfield. He and his eight fellow pilots from 111 Squadron had been instructed to join the battle against the largest number of German bombers yet observed over the Channel; the Luftwaffe was clearly bent on destroying a merchant convoy bringing vital supplies of food and raw materials to Britain.

Peter, aged twenty-three, had been in service with 111 Squadron for little more than six weeks. He had learned to fly while reading for a degree in modern history at Merton College, Oxford, before joining the Royal Air Force as a direct entry commission in October 1938. Peter's squadron leader John Thompson was a strong advocate of the relatively new, terrifying and highly risky 'head-on' tactic for confronting a bomber formation. This required the pilot to fly through the pack of enemy planes at a speed of 500 miles per hour, leaving time for no more than a three-second burst of gunfire. The aim was to provoke an instinctive reaction to break ranks in the bombers' pilots, and thus cause them to collide with their compatriots. Even if the Germans swerved safely, the formation would be broken up, and the British fighter planes could then pick them off one by one.

Peter was about to join a massive dogfight involving more than a hundred aircraft. The sky between Dover and Dungeness quickly became a twisting, turning melee of fighters, vapour trails snaking in all directions, but with neither side gaining the upper hand.

Then Peter and the other eight Hurricane pilots rolled into the attack with the head-on manoeuvre, their seventy-two .303 calibre machine guns spewing tracer bullets. As anticipated, the German planes dodged the incoming fire and their orderly 'V' formations disintegrated. The scattering bombers rained their payloads all over the Thames Estuary, but of 150 bombs dropped, only one hit the convoy; 111 Squadron's daring tactic had saved the lives of scores of sailors.

As the Hurricanes tore through the German formation once more, Peter 'rammed into' a plane piloted by the Luftwaffe's _Staffelkapitän_ , Hauptmann Walter Krieger. The collision sheared off the wing of the Hurricane and Peter was sent spinning out of control into the Channel. When a rescue launch arrived on the scene not long afterwards it was able to pick up Krieger and one of his colleagues, but there was no sign of Peter. Reports suggested his parachute had failed. The Air Ministry stated simply that 'Two British machines were lost, but the pilot of one was safe.'

The next day's newspapers were jubilant. 'RAF'S BATTLE SCORE – 37,' shouted the front-page headline in the _Daily Mirror_. 'THREE SPITFIRES ATTACK FIFTY – AND WIN,' proclaimed the _Daily Express_. The ministry claimed the RAF had shot down fourteen German machines and so seriously damaged twenty-three others that they were unlikely to reach home. Although the real statistics may have been a little less comforting, the propaganda value of the air force's success over the Channel was immense, both militarily and psychologically. It also sent out a reminder to the Americans, a week after Mers-el-Kébir, that Britain was up for the fight.

A month later, Peter Kingsland Higgs' body was found washed ashore on the Dutch coast at Noordwijk. He was the first British pilot to die during the first heavy engagement between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over English soil – effectively, the beginning of the Battle of Britain.

On the same day Peter died for his country, Lord Beaverbrook was seeking to engage the people of Britain more closely with the pilots' struggle. With his fertile mind and flair for publicity, the Minister of Aircraft Production would, in the coming months, come up with several schemes to promote the idea of a 'People's War'. On this occasion, he issued an appeal to the nation's housewives to scour their homes for every piece of aluminium they could find – from pots, pans and kettles to vacuum cleaners, bathroom fittings and cigarette boxes – and hand it over to the local headquarters of the Women's Voluntary Service, from where the donations would be dispatched to smelting facilities and turned into material for Spitfires and Hurricanes, Blenheims and Wellingtons. 'Very few of us can be heroines on the battlefront,' Lady Reading, head of the WVS, said in a BBC broadcast that evening, 'but we can still have the tiny thrill of thinking as we hear the news of an epic battle in the air, "Perhaps it was my saucepan that made part of that Hurricane."'

If the dominant Luftwaffe was to be defeated, 'The Beaver', as he was known to all and sundry, had to ensure Britain produced planes at a rate significantly quicker than ever before in the history of the aviation industry. Working closely alongside him, to deliver the pilots, ground staff, weapons and supplies to keep the machines flying, was Sir Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air. Both had a long-standing interest in aviation. Sinclair had been an accomplished pilot in the pioneering days of aviation, and at one point during the First World War he had come close to enlisting in the Royal Flying Corps; Beaverbrook too had tried his hand in the cockpit, before settling for the safer option of merely owning aircraft. Unfortunately, despite a mutual fascination with their subject, and beneath a surface cordiality, the two were at odds and Sinclair had already incurred Beaverbrook's wrath. The first major clash within the Cabinet was under way.

There could scarcely have been two characters more dissimilar in background, appearance, moral outlook, political views or method. Here was the old order versus the new: an inheritor of wealth and privilege in contrast to a self-made millionaire; an establishment insider pitted against a buccaneering outsider; an idealist alongside a hustler.

Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair was high-minded and patriotic. He had the courteous, if slightly aloof, manners of the aristocratic Highland gentleman, and he liked to retain Edwardian standards of dress, notably with his trademark wing collar. Endowed with striking good looks, he might have been 'the complete tragic actor . . . with long black hair, deep-set greenish-brown eyes and a pale face'. His assured manner and natural charm had won him the respect of men and the admiring looks of women. But his life had not always been easy: orphaned at an early age, the young Sinclair had led a wandering existence, without a regular guardian or a settled home. Fortune had arrived in 1912, however, when – on the death of his grandfather, a Liberal Party politician – he had acquired, at the age of just twenty-two, a baronetcy, and with it the ownership of 120,000 acres at the northernmost tip of Scotland. Not that he had previously been a stranger to high society: his aunt, Mrs Owen Williams, knew Edward VII and Sinclair himself mixed in influential political circles under the wing of Liberal leader Herbert Asquith and his daughter, Violet.

It had been around this time that Sinclair first encountered Churchill, at the Maidenhead home of Maxine Elliott, an American actress and theatre owner. Despite a sixteen-year age difference – Churchill was then thirty-nine – the two men had discovered much common ground. Sinclair's mother, like Jennie Churchill, had been an East Coast American, and he too had lost his father to venereal disease. As boys, both had been nurtured by nannies, and as young men they had pursued similar careers, enrolling at Sandhurst and training as cavalry officers. Each had also struggled with a speech impediment – Churchill with a lisp, unable to pronounce his 's's, Sinclair with a slight stammer.

They had formed a natural, instinctive bond, never quite one of equals because of the differences in age and experience, but deep-seated nonetheless. 'They delighted in one another's society even when both poured out a Niagara of words, as often happened, simultaneously,' observed their mutual friend Violet Bonham Carter. Indeed, in later years, Sinclair's oratorical skill would be compared favourably with Churchill's. 'He [Churchill] is like a great liner ploughing through the storm,' wrote the correspondent for the _Manchester Evening News_ , 'while Sinclair is like a sailing vessel which rides the waves. He is more graceful in his lines and more buoyant.' Churchill, quick to recognise this talent, had become Sinclair's political godfather, encouraging him to stand for Parliament.

In November 1915, following the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, Churchill had found himself out of the War Cabinet. Rather than languish in the outer ranks of government, he had chosen to head for Flanders, and upon being appointed lieutenant colonel in the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, stationed close to the front line near Ploegsteert Wood (referred to as 'Plugstreet'), he had demanded – and got – 'Archie' as his second in command. Unlike Ypres to the north, or Loos to the south, there were no major set-piece battles at Ploegsteert. It was attritional work, neither safe nor easy, but it didn't involve 'going over the top'; the Royal Scots Fusiliers were holding the line. Nonetheless, fifteen men were killed and 123 injured in the trenches under Churchill's hundred-day command, while he and Archie narrowly escaped two shelling attacks on their HQ at Laurence Farm.

After the war, their friendship had evolved into a political relationship. From 1919 to 1921, Sinclair served as personal military secretary to Churchill at the War Office and then, in 1921–2, as his private secretary at the Colonial Office. Thereafter their paths began to diverge. The 1922 general election saw Sinclair elected as Liberal MP for Caithness and Sutherland, whereas Churchill lost his Dundee seat and started his journey back to the Conservative Party.

Sinclair's first cabinet post, in 1931–2, had been that of Scottish secretary in Ramsay MacDonald's 'national government'. Three years later, while his erstwhile mentor was brooding through his 'wilderness years', he had claimed the greater prize of leadership of the Liberal Party. However, his long allegiance to Churchill was far from over. Despite their political differences, Sinclair shared his friend's fears about the threat posed by Nazi Germany, and as the subject of rearmament began to trouble the Commons the two men maintained a united front, often speaking in close proximity during debates.

At the outbreak of war, in September 1939, Neville Chamberlain invited Sinclair – despite their mutual distrust – to join his government and thus enter into a wartime coalition. Sinclair refused because the offer did not include a seat in the War Cabinet. But when Churchill came calling eight months later with a similar proposal – the Air Ministry, but again, no place in the inner circle – Sinclair did not hesitate to accept.

Beaverbrook was as different to Sinclair in appearance as he was in character. Sometimes crudely described as 'gnome-like', he had a large head, with a short neck, atop a small, slight body. He also had a boyish face, full cheeks and a wide forehead, and his characteristic expression was an impish grin, spread across a wide mouth. He had no apparent sartorial ambitions; his usual daily garb was provided by a wardrobe of undistinguished dark blue suits. And rarely was he described as affable. His best side was energetic, innovative and motivational, especially in public, but behind closed doors his Cabinet colleagues had to contend with an individual who was deeply competitive and manipulative, used to having his way, and prone to nursing resentment when thwarted.

William Maxwell Aitken – as he was then – had first met Churchill around the same time as Sinclair, in 1911, at the dining table of the brilliant barrister and Conservative MP F.E. Smith. But Churchill's friendship with Aitken developed more slowly, and without the master–pupil dynamic; there were just five years between them, besides which, at this stage Aitken, the recently elected Unionist MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, was hitching his political wagon to Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservatives and a fellow Canadian. There was, moreover, little in Aitken's background that would naturally draw him and Churchill together. The latter's upbringing in Blenheim Palace had been a world away from Aitken's childhood in the small town of Newcastle, New Brunswick, where his father, a Presbyterian minister, and his mother, the daughter of a farmer, had raised their ten children. And while Churchill, upon becoming a man, had sought action and adventure in the army, Aitken's battles had been fought around the boardroom table, first in the booming town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then in Montreal, where he had put his growing wealth to work, buying and selling companies, investing in the newspaper and magazine trade, and becoming involved in ventures in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

What they shared – beyond a similar restless drive to live life as principal actors on the world stage – was an aversion to official education. Both had been unruly, mischievous boys, with a mutual dislike of traditional subjects such as mathematics and the classics; at sixteen, Aitken failed an examination for Dalhousie University because he declined to sit the Latin and Greek papers. Like Churchill, though, his self-education, through voracious reading, was extensive, with the Bible – especially the Old Testament – providing his moral instruction, Edmund Burke his political lodestar, and the likes of Rudyard Kipling, Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells and Somerset Maugham sources of light relief.

When Aitken moved to Britain in 1910, the options for 'colonials' in London were either to be meek or polite, in which case they were likely to be ignored, or aggressive and eccentric, thus making themselves rare and admirable freaks. Aitken was quickly perceived as the latter, 'dislocating the pattern of British society, rupturing the continuity, pushing traditions and institutions around'. By 1940, as Lord Beaverbrook (he had been ennobled in 1917), his meteoric progress into the heart of British life had included a spell in the Cabinet during the First World War (he was the original Minister of Information) and a role as kingmaker to the highest office in the land (he claimed credit for helping to propel his hero Bonar Law to the premiership in 1922). But his greatest achievement – and the source of much of his political power – had been his transformation of the _Daily Express_ group, a previously dull set of newspapers, into well-written, opinionated, mass-circulation daily journals.

When Churchill became Prime Minister, he had been intimate friends with both Sinclair and Beaverbrook for a quarter of a century, but while his affection for 'Archie' knew no bounds, 'Max' had taken root – like a little devil, some said – in his soul. In the tightest of moments, when high policy had to be decided, Churchill trusted Beaverbrook's instincts more than those of any other man. So, in preparation for the Battle of Britain it was Beaverbrook he chose to empower and, as a direct consequence, Sinclair whom he emasculated. For the former, he plucked a rib off the Air Ministry and created a whole new body, assuring him of a free hand and full support; with Sinclair, he not only stripped away the productive element of his department, but by himself taking on the role of Minister of Defence as well as Prime Minister, he effectively denied Sinclair any real strategic influence on the war. Churchill never doubted that his preference for Max over Archie was the right one, but in the months to come it would test his government and his friendships with both men to the limit.

When William Crozier, the editor of the _Manchester Guardian_ , went to interview Sinclair at his second-floor office in King Charles Street, just off Whitehall, at 2.45 p.m. on Friday, 26 July 1940, he was alarmed by the secretary of state's appearance. The air war over Britain was in its early stages. 'I asked him if he was keeping well in spite of his strenuous job, and he said very well,' Crozier recorded. 'In point of fact he looked ill, his face was white and I thought fallen as compared with the time I saw him last, and his clothes hung loosely on him.'

The hours Sinclair worked contributed to his strain. A normal working day would stretch from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m., the latter end of his schedule largely designed to accommodate the Prime Minister's nocturnal habits; it was not unusual for the air minister to be summoned to see Churchill at Downing Street in the early hours. After dinner each night Sinclair would return to his office at 9 p.m. and stay there until his paperwork was complete. He made life more difficult for himself by not delegating authority, and by writing overlong memos and letters. Neither could he relax on weekends; he would spend Sunday going through a mass of statistics he had ordered from his civil servants. He was careful, however, not to transmit his anxieties to his colleagues, or to apply to his department the pressure he inflicted upon himself. 'Archie was a grand fellow,' recalled Harold Balfour, his junior minister. 'He was the soul of honour, brave, kind and considerate. In foul weather or fine he would give me his support.'

At Stornoway House, an elegant six-storey townhouse overlooking Green Park, Lord Beaverbrook spared neither himself nor his staff for the cause. The house was his own private residence, which he temporarily converted into the offices of his government department for the first month in the job. A former Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, had been a previous occupant, and Beaverbrook would later joke, 'Grenville lived in Stornoway House and in 1807 abolished the slave trade. I lived in Stornoway House in 1940 and re-established the slave trade at the Ministry of Aircraft Production.' Beaverbrook did not run his department like a trained administrator or politician; he ran it as he ran his business interests, off the cuff and with as much direct personal involvement as possible. Over his desk hung three slogans: 'Committees Take The Punch Out Of War', 'Organisation Is The Enemy Of Improvisation' and 'All Things In War Are Simple, But The Simple Is Always Difficult'.

Evidence of his unconventional style could be seen throughout the building. Upstairs, secretaries and typists were forced to commandeer beds for desks, set up typewriters in the bathrooms, and answer a multitude of telephones that seldom stopped ringing. Downstairs, air marshals and representatives of every branch of the aircraft industry regularly filed in for interviews in the big bow-windowed library, where they would usually find the minister carrying on three conversations at once and, in spare moments, talking into his Dictaphone. Beaverbrook's world was a 'diverting comedy of bell-pushing, a loud harsh voice, and abrupt orders for men and papers'.

He had one overriding objective – to get as many planes as possible built and in the air in the shortest possible time. The RAF had started the war with two excellent fighters, the Hurricane and the Spitfire. The question was whether the factories would be able to turn out sufficient of these aircraft to fill the gaps in the squadrons that would soon result from the German onslaught. So Beaverbrook swiftly abandoned medium-term objectives, statistical planning and any rational allocation of resources. Success hinged on informality, spontaneity and inventiveness.

To that end, senior, conventional figures like Sir Wilfrid Freeman and Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Tedder were pushed into the background, and a group of industrialists were brought in to replace them, men Beaverbrook trusted to apply the necessary drive, ruthlessness and know-how. The most important of these brash newcomers – many of them his past, or present, associates – were Patrick Hennessy and Trevor Westbrook. Hennessy, an exuberant forty-two-year-old Irishman, had helped oversee a surge in sales as general manager at Ford Motors. Westbrook, a notoriously volatile character, had been dismissed in March as general manager of the Vickers-Armstrong aircraft works at Weybridge, Surrey, after a quarrel with his director. Such was his standing among the 7,000 employees that there was a brief strike in sympathy over his departure.

The old production wing of the Air Ministry, based in Harrogate, north Yorkshire, had by no means been neglectful of the RAF's needs. But Beaverbrook's new administration identified a number of ongoing problems. There was a shortage of materials and components on the production line; both a repair organisation for damaged aircraft and an adequate system for the repair of engines were lacking; and, meanwhile, numerous aircraft stood idle for lack of vital instruments. Hennessy and Westbrook began quickly to address these failings, with their master at their shoulder, day and night.

'It was the most exciting time of my life,' Hennessy recalled. 'We broke all the rules.' Beaverbrook formed action squads to enter likely stores of spare parts and remove them, despite furious protests. He commandeered aircraft to fly to France to pick up damaged engines and components for use in repairs. He even commissioned the Standard Motor Company to manufacture a light armoured vehicle – nicknamed the 'Beaverette' – to defend his factories.

Beaverbrook imposed his will at every level of the ministry. Managers and foremen in aircraft plants were liable to be roused in the dead of night and told, 'If we're up, there's no reason why you shouldn't be.' Other departments – notably Ernest Bevin's Ministry of Labour and Herbert Morrison's Ministry of Supply – were often circumvented in the rush for men, materials and constant production. Beaverbrook's aggression and cunning were perfectly illustrated in early July, when he instructed Hennessy to order two shiploads of special steel alloy from Edgar Lewis, a contact of his in Pittsburgh, in the United States. All orders of this kind were supposed to go via the British Purchasing Commission in Washington, and from there to be handled by the Ministry of Supply, but Lewis was told simply to stamp this delivery for the Ministry of Aircraft Production and to send it to Liverpool. When the shipment reached the now bombed-out north-west port, it could not be taken ashore. Hennessy recalled Beaverbrook saying he would get John Reith to arrange it.

'The Beaver then put on one of his great persuasive acts. "You are the man who can do something vital and important for the country – nobody else. These ships and their contents can save us. Help me."' This appeal to Reith's vanity worked a treat, and he promptly gave the necessary orders through his transport ministry to have the material moved out and delivered to the aircraft factories.

A few weeks later Hennessy received a call from Beaverbrook, who told him to report at once to his country house, Cherkley Court. There he found his boss with an irate Herbert Morrison, who was on the point of resigning. 'What have you landed me in? Why have you bypassed my department? Explain,' demanded Morrison. Hennessy, after a knowing glance from Beaverbrook, shouldered the blame and told Morrison he had ordered the steel alloy himself, and was unrepentant because the aircraft industry could not afford to wait. Morrison soon withdrew his threat to quit.

Beaverbrook's focus on the aircraft production figures was unwavering. Every Saturday afternoon he would have the weekly charts brought to his room at Stornoway House. After reading them, he would send them by dispatch rider to the Prime Minister, who would usually be at Chequers. If they were good, Beaverbrook would get a reply by letter; if they were outstanding, he would receive a telegram. On 27 May 1940 he submitted the latest tally to Churchill with an apology for sending such a depressing account, but pointing out that with 325 fighters built, as opposed to the 261 originally estimated, it was at least an improvement. Acknowledging the progress in a letter he wrote to Sinclair on 3 June, Churchill also rebuked the air minister over his disclosure to the War Cabinet that day of a shortage of pilots: 'Lord Beaverbrook has made a surprising improvement in the supply and repair of aeroplanes, and in clearing up the muddle and scandal of the aircraft production branch. I greatly hope that you will be able to do as much on the Personnel side, for it will indeed be lamentable if we have machines standing idle for want of pilots to fly them.'

It would be a recurring theme of the next few months: praise, on the whole, for Beaverbrook; admonition, from time to time, for Sinclair. Both, in reality, were making massive contributions to the battle raging in the skies.

Back in early January, with Chamberlain still ensconced at Number 10, Beaverbrook had invited Sinclair to dinner. 'I would like to have you alone as I want to tell you of my grievances against the present conduct of the war,' he explained. 'By all means, let us compare grievances!' Sinclair replied. This initial rapport had continued, reaching its zenith on the first weekend of Churchill's premiership, when they held amicable discussions about how their departments would work together. Within weeks, however, all that early goodwill had evaporated. Beaverbrook was putting it about to Churchill's aides that 'the Air Ministry was a rotten ministry' and that Sinclair was 'a thoroughly bad minister, who was hoodwinked by his subordinates'.

Sinclair faced two disadvantages when vying with Beaverbrook for the Prime Minister's favour. The first was Churchill's historic enmity towards the Air Ministry, which he felt was bureaucratic, slow to embrace innovation, and top-heavy at senior level. He distrusted the air marshals, and would bypass ministers by asking Professor Lindemann and his Statistical Office to provide him with information on which to judge the progress on pilots and planes.

The second problem was the difference in Churchill's bonds with the two men. Sir Ronald Melville, the air minister's private secretary, suggested that 'Churchill treated Sinclair like a son and Beaverbrook like a father – relationships which were never likely to produce an effective partnership'. Perhaps familiarity led Winston to treat the younger man, his former adjutant, too casually, with a 'half-serious levity'. Herbert Morrison, observing the dynamic in Cabinet, saw it as merely affectionate: 'Churchill had his favourites among his ministers for gentle leg pulling. One was Archibald Sinclair, who always took it very well.' Others viewed the Prime Minister's behaviour rather differently. John Moore-Brabazon, Minister of Transport and later Beaverbrook's successor as Minister of Aircraft Production, thought 'the abuse and insults Winston heaped upon him [Sinclair] were unbelievable, which was strange, for he was devoted to Archie, and had a very real affection for him. But never in the smallest way did Sinclair show his resentment to these outrageous assaults; they seemed to pour off him like water off a duck's back.'

The patient, long-suffering Sinclair respected and admired Churchill and was willing to absorb any manner of punishment from him. '[H]e receives at least three violent prods from the PM every day, demanding immediate explanations of this and that and a variety of immediate actions,' wrote Hugh Dalton. 'This, he says, is the PM's way and it has much to be said for it, from the point of stimulation.'

Inside Cabinet, Sinclair found himself short of real allies. His persistent, if well founded, criticism of appeasement had made him enemies in Halifax and Chamberlain. 'Archie Sinclair at the Air Ministry seems to be a major disaster,' Halifax opined on 12 May, even before Sinclair had had time to show his worth. In a letter to his sister Hilda on 15 June, Chamberlain wrote: 'Max makes the most bitter complaints of Sinclair who he is, he says, nothing but "blah". He is blocked by him at every turn and can't say anything bad enough of him. I told him that I had always had a very poor opinion of Sinclair and had told Winston so . . .'

Churchill liked to play Beaverbrook and Sinclair off against one another, believing that the creative tension this generated spurred the two men on. 'There is one thing about the warfare between AM [the Air Ministry] and MAP [the Ministry of Aircraft Production] which is helping the public interest, namely that I get a fine view of what is going on and hear both sides of the case argued with spirit,' he told Sinclair. He said much the same thing to Beaverbrook on 15 December. 'I am definitely of the opinion that it is more in the public interest that there should be sharp criticism and counter-criticism between the two departments than that they should be handing out ceremonious bouquets.'

In this developing battle Beaverbrook invariably had the upper hand. He could decide what types of aircraft were produced and in what numbers; the Air Ministry had no say until the Beaver's department had delivered the planes to the squadrons. But even this was not enough for Beaverbrook. The Air Ministry had developed a carefully planned programme for its reserve aircraft, and another for those planes allocated for training; it also exercised strict control over the stocks of engines stored for future use and the quantities of spare parts required at each operational airfield. Beaverbrook demanded influence – if not the final say – in all of these areas. On the latter he affirmed: 'Better a stringency in spares and a bountiful supply of aircraft than a surplus of spares and a shortage of aircraft.' When Sinclair attempted to retain control of the stock of spare parts, Churchill rebuked him. 'I earnestly trust you will see Lord Beaverbrook's wishes are met fully and immediately in the matter of these spares. I really could not endure another bickering over this, considering the gravity of the situation.'

Early on in the feud, Beaverbrook resorted to a tactic that would become common during his time in Churchill's war ministry, that of resignation. He tried it first on 30 June, saying, 'I am not suited to working with the Air Ministry or Air Marshals.' Churchill would have none of it, replying, 'I require you therefore to dismiss this matter from your mind, and to continue the magnificent work you are doing on which to a large extent our safety depends.'

Some of the Beaver's complaints against Sinclair and the Air Ministry were valid, but others were synthetic. This was a man who liked to be in control at all times, to impose his will on others; he relished conflict, he needed an opponent, and if there wasn't a dispute available, he would create one. When the good-natured, imperturbable Sinclair declined to step into the ring, it merely infuriated Beaverbrook. He was punching thin air. He had one of his assistant secretaries, E.G. Compton, keep a list of 'Noes' from the air minister. By early September 1940 there were eleven, which he attached to a letter he proposed to send to Lord Halifax. 'I am distressed by the situation in which I find myself at the Cabinet. My colleagues and I are not working well together,' the letter started. 'It seems to me that when you have a good Minister of Aircraft Production, you should treat him as such, trusting his judgment in matters which concern his own Ministry. In fact, it is my view that I should have complete authority over aircraft and that I should not be obstructed in my business, either by debates in the Cabinet or by difficulties from the Air ministry.' It ended with the now familiar threat: 'I have reached the conclusion that the Prime Minister should find a Minister who will get on more agreeably with his colleagues.' In the end, Beaverbrook thought twice about it and never sent the letter.

Whatever the merits of these political tussles, it gradually became apparent that Beaverbrook's ruthless methods were paying off, with a dramatic increase in the numbers of fighters produced: 446 in June, 496 in July and 476 in August. It came just in time, for on 1 August, in Führer Directive No. 17, Hitler told his military commanders that the first phase of probing and reconnoitring the British defences was over. Now the plan was to 'intensify air and sea warfare against the English homeland'. This time, the directive stated, the attacks would be aimed at RAF squadrons, their airfields and their supplies, and also against the aircraft factories, particularly those making anti-aircraft equipment.

This new assault was codenamed _Adlerangriff_ ('Eagle Attack'). Indifferent weather persuaded Göring to delay _Adlertag_ until Tuesday, 13 August, but when 'Eagle Day' finally came 1,485 sorties were launched against a multitude of targets on the south coast and further inland. The Luftwaffe's aim was to deal Fighter Command a crippling blow, so the raiders paid particular attention to Eastchurch – mistakenly believing it to be a key Fighter Command base, when it was actually a station of Coastal Command, the RAF's maritime arm – the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, and airfields in the area of Middle Wallop (Sector HQ for Wales and the West Country) such as Boscombe Down, Worthy Down and Andover.

The biggest single disaster occurred at RAF Detling in Kent, where there was no air raid warning and no alarm. The Stuka bombers caught airmen queuing for their evening meals. Sixty-seven base personnel were killed, the hangers set ablaze, and twenty-two bombers destroyed – some of them ready for a mission. By the end of the day Fighter Command had lost forty-seven aircraft of various kinds on the ground – but its losses in combat numbered only thirteen, and ten of those pilots had survived. Though damaging, Göring's blow had missed.

At 10 Downing Street the mood was one of elation: 'I heard the astonishing result of today's air battle: seventy-eight German planes destroyed for certain and we only lost three pilots,' recorded Jock Colville. 'This is indeed a victory and will do much for the public morale.' That was true, but _Adlertag_ was just the first of many strikes at the RAF over the critical month that followed, and by now Churchill was preoccupied not just with the need for more planes, but also with a lack of pilots. 'W[inston] is convinced that the shortage is partly due to the Air Ministry's policy of keeping too many pilots for training and ground jobs,' Colville wrote that same day. 'Beaverbrook and Archie Sinclair are, as ever, at it hammer and tongs.'

For those watching the life and death struggle between the fighter planes from the ground, the distant battle had, at times, an ethereal, dreamlike quality. It was a peerless summer; the skies were consistently clear and flawlessly blue. 'You lay in the tall grass with the wind blowing gently across you and watched the hundreds of silver planes swarming through the heavens like clouds of gnats,' recorded the American journalist Virginia Cowles on a visit to Dover. 'You could see the flash of wings and the long white plumes from exhausts; you could hear the whine of engines and the rattle of machine-gun bullets. You knew the fate of civilisation was being decided fifteen thousand feet above your head in a world of sun, wind and sky. You knew it, but even so it was hard to take in.'

At the War Cabinet meeting on 14 August there was considerable excitement when Sinclair relayed a dramatic police report detailing how the first contingent of German parachutists, forty-five in all, had landed in different parts of the country – Scotland, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire. In one case, a box containing maps and instructions had been found. Churchill suggested a reward should be offered for the invaders' capture, a proposition rejected by his colleagues in favour of a more general publicity campaign. The next day, however, the home secretary, Sir John Anderson, discovered that all was not as it appeared. The landing had been a hoax; there were no German infiltrators, but up to eighty parachutes had been dropped as part of an enemy plan to sow confusion and undermine morale. It all added to the jittery mood pervasive in Whitehall.

Thursday, 15 August also marked the Luftwaffe's most determined effort yet to saturate the British defences. With 1,000 fighter planes and 800 bombers at their disposal, the Germans unleashed a concerted onslaught against major towns and cities on the north-east coast of England. The theory was that eight hundred German aircraft would pin down the RAF in the south, leaving the unguarded airfields, aircraft factories, radar stations, ports and shipping in the north wide open to attack. But what German intelligence had failed to anticipate was the strategic foresight of Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who had earlier moved seven Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons north to counter this very eventuality.

The less experienced radar operators in the north initially put the number of enemy planes on approach at thirty, which was quickly revised to over fifty. In fact there were sixty-five Heinkel He III bombers and thirty-four Messerschmitt Bf 110s on their way from bases in Norway, and fifty Junkers Ju 88s from Denmark. Fighter Command's 13 Group scrambled the Spitfires of 72 Squadron Acklington to meet the enemy and once the full scale of the onslaught was known, 605 Squadron Drem's Hurricanes and 41 Squadron Catterick's Spitfires went to join them. Marshalled with skill and flair by the officer commanding 13 Group, Air Vice-Marshal Richard Ernest Saul, the attack was turned back. In all, twenty-three German aircraft were shot down that afternoon, while just two RAF pilots were injured. RAF Driffield was destroyed, however, with seventeen deaths and the loss of twelve Whitley bombers, and in the worst of the civilian casualties eleven were killed and forty injured by Heinkel bombs in Dawdon, County Durham. Even so, this 'Battle of Tyneside' represented a severe setback for Göring; never again was a daylight raid attempted on the north English coast.

Further south, the battles raged on into early evening, with fierce dogfights over Swanage, Portland and the Straits of Dover, and constant attempts by the Junkers and their escorts to hit the airfields around Middle Wallop. This was also the day when London received its first foretaste of the Blitz. As the Messerschmitt fighter bombers tried to escape pursuing Hurricanes, two German planes crashed into the heavily populated suburbs around Croydon and Purley. The Bourjois perfume factory was hit and sixty people were killed, 180 injured.

When word of the day's dramatic events was transmitted to Downing Street, Churchill, 'consumed with excitement', together with General Ismay and Lord Beaverbrook, decided to head out to Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory, near Stanmore, to watch developments from the RAF's nerve centre, the central operations room. At one moment, with the lights that denoted planes in action flashing continuously, it became clear to the trio that every single available RAF squadron was engaged, with nothing in reserve. 'I felt sick with fear,' recalled Ismay.

Once the Prime Minister was satisfied the battle had turned in Britain's favour, he returned to Number 10 and reported to his staff that there had been well over a hundred German losses – in fact, the final revised figure would be seventy-six – with just thirty-four machines and eighteen pilots lost on the British side. He asked Colville to relay the good news to Neville Chamberlain, who was recuperating after illness at his country home. 'The Lord President was very grateful to you,' Colville said to the Prime Minister. 'So he ought to be,' replied Churchill. 'This is one of the greatest days in history.' The following afternoon he was back at Stanmore. The effects of two days spent watching Britain's defences on the brink, protected by this small group of skilled airmen, left him drained. 'Don't speak to me: I have never been so moved,' he told Ismay. A few minutes later he leaned forward and said, 'Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.'

He carried that vivid phrase with him into the House of Commons on 20 August, making his tribute to the RAF the rousing centrepiece of a masterly summary of twelve months of war. Just as emboldening as the powerful rhetoric, though, was Churchill's news of increased co-operation with America, first through negotiations over the use of British defence bases in Newfoundland and the West Indies, and second in the form of the delivery by the US of vital guns and ammunition to replenish Britain's stocks after the Dunkirk disaster. 'Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along,' the Prime Minister reassured MPs on the growing transatlantic alliance.

The task of winding up the debate, five long hours later, fell to Sinclair. The support act ensured the mood of optimism did not wane. First, he saluted the performance of each branch of the armed services – the 'power' of the navy, the 'dogged fighting spirit' of the army, and the 'superb prowess and audacity' of the pilots and crews of his own Royal Air Force. Next, he paid tribute to the fighter and bomber pilots who had rallied to the cause from all parts of the Empire, and from the conquered nations in Europe. Then, Sinclair mocked Goebbels over his 'hard lying' about British casualties: 'If the German claims had been true, the British navy would now have consisted of four submarines and sixty-three destroyers, minus three aircraft carriers, twenty-one cruisers and seventeen battleships. This ghost navy certainly puts up a wonderful defence of our coasts and trade!'

Sinclair concluded with a vow that would prove a hostage to fortune in later years. 'We shall never use our powers in the air as an instrument of mass terrorism. Our blows are, and will continue to be, directed against the enemy's aerodromes, aircraft factories, aero-engine factories and other centres of his military industry and supply. Wherever the instruments of cruelty and oppression are forged . . . there the strong arm of the RAF will reach out.'

In that Commons speech of 20 August, Sinclair had responded to criticism by one MP, John Moore-Brabazon, of Churchill's recent promotion of Lord Beaverbrook. Noting the acclaim expressed by most other MPs for his adversary's 'energy, devotion and drive', Sinclair had concluded that 'The House would scarcely [have been] surprised' at Beaverbrook's elevation to the War Cabinet.

Whatever his characteristically loyal public utterances, privately Sinclair was fighting his bitterest battle yet with Beaverbrook, this time over the issue of the training of pilots. Sinclair believed that a steady supply of qualified pilots could only be guaranteed if they could train free from the limitations imposed in Britain by lack of space and the threat of enemy attack; far better to send them abroad, to the open skies of the prairie and the veldt in Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as part of the new Empire Air Training Scheme. There they could train safely in Anson and Battle aircraft no longer considered worthy of the front line. But with Britain anticipating invasion, Beaverbrook bitterly opposed the movement of even one pilot, one aircraft, out of the country. The idea that inexperienced airmen tended to crash more often was not one he ever countenanced. 'As far as he was concerned, even one man throwing a bomb out of a training aircraft was better than nothing,' reflected Sir Ronald Melville.

This row over the training of pilots abroad dominated many a War Cabinet meeting in July and August. On the day Sinclair spoke in the Commons, Beaverbrook had composed his strongest critique yet of the proposal. 'The Air Ministry anticipates a transfer overseas of 2,500 aircraft in the last half of the year. This cannot be done. It would congest the ports and overburden terminal facilities. And the packing required would be a wilful squandering of valuable material.' As for the airmen themselves: 'The departure of good pilots, now flying instructors here, is a serious consideration. At present, we can call upon these men in emergency to serve the country as operational pilots. They are a valuable reserve.

'Similarly, training machines represent a last reserve of aircraft. If we send them abroad, we dissipate this reserve.' Halifax noted: 'Max . . . always paints a gloomy picture in Cabinet in order to restrain the Air Ministry from sending aircraft out of the country.' But now Beaverbrook added a psychological objection to his case, playing on Churchill's role as the defiant leader of a besieged homeland. 'There have been many rumours concerning evacuation of Canada in the past, and also about Government and other intentions in future. There have been suggestions about the Fleet. The departure of a large Air Force, partly to the American continent, would cause a renewal of false rumours in many directions.'

Matters came to a head in the War Cabinet meeting on Friday, 30 August. 'We must take a long view and consider our preparations for the air battles of 1941,' Sinclair argued. 'Navigation and night flying were arts in which our pilots had an undisputed technical superiority over the Germans, but the latter were making a big bid to catch us up. Our advantage might disappear if we confined our training of pilots to this country, under the hampering conditions of German air attack and an English winter.' Once again, Beaverbrook made it plain that he was opposed to any pilots or machines being sent out of the country. He did not accept that Ansons and Battles were obsolescent machines: 'Our reserves of these aircraft might yet save us in the event of invasion.'

The minutes of the discussion show that Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood lent some support to Sinclair, saying that the War Cabinet should not concentrate on the 1940 campaign so exclusively as to 'find ourselves unable to wage the campaign of 1941'. Churchill's compromise – favouring Beaverbrook – was that the position would be reviewed in a month's time, but that the scheme should be postponed until December. His concession to Sinclair was that one navigational training school could go to South Africa, but the air minister was clearly frustrated. 'We had no time to waste if we intended to gain the supremacy of the air in 1941. The decision of the War Cabinet might well make it impossible to recover lost ground.' He insisted he had a responsibility to Parliament for the training of the RAF.

Churchill's curt response was that, first and foremost, Sinclair's responsibility was to him and the War Cabinet. At that, Sinclair walked out, asking Churchill, as he left, if he could see him privately later in the day. 'Archie came back much, much earlier to the office than anybody expected that day,' recalled Melville. 'He was absolutely white and quivering with anger. The reception that Beaverbrook had got at the Cabinet was so favourable that he had no alternative but to say that if this happens, I shall leave my position as Secretary of State for Air.' Resignation was usually Beaverbrook's tactic; for the placid Sinclair to be stirred to such anger was rare indeed.

Churchill brought both men together at the weekend and managed to broker a settlement. Sinclair's paper for the War Cabinet of Monday, 2 September showed he had won agreement to send just nineteen pilots and thirty-eight planes (Ansons) abroad that month, but the figures increased in October (38 pilots, 102 planes), November (85, 124), December (95, 181) and January 1941 (86, 124). The uneasy compromise agreed by Churchill by and large stuck. While the Battle of Britain raged, some airmen with relatively few hours of flying experience had to be pushed into action earlier than the air marshals and Sinclair wanted. In the longer term – particularly during Britain's bombing war on Germany – the Empire Training Scheme would pay major dividends.

On Tuesday, 3 September, the Combined Intelligence Committee reported 'sudden and startling' increases in the concentration of barges in coastal ports and waterways on the other side of the Channel. British photographic intelligence had spotted fifty vessels at Ostend, a hundred and forty at Terneuzen and ninety at the south end of the Beveland Canal. On that same day General Wilhelm Keitel, commander-in-chief of the German armed forces, issued a directive setting out the revised timetable for Operation _Sealion_ , Hitler's master plan for the invasion of the United Kingdom. The earliest date for the departure of the transport fleet was to be 20 September, with 'S-Day' on the 21st.

Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe had begun to prowl by night. Assaults were made on Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Liverpool and Newcastle, and they were starting to test the spirit and resilience of the population. Twenty-three-year-old Liverpudlian Doris Melling, shorthand typist and hospital library assistant, recorded in her diary, 'Everyone getting very mad about these raids. Apparently we are just here to be hit at. It said in one of the papers that it was a fine sight to see the Spitfires taking off after the Germans. I dare say it is. I would like to see it around here.' Yet the damage had scarcely begun. That the lives of Doris and the other inhabitants of Britain's towns and cities were about to become far more dangerous was signalled by Hitler himself on Wednesday, 4 September in a surprise speech in Berlin's _Sportpalast_ , where an adoring audience of thousands, largely made up of female workers, had come to hear the Führer open his second wartime winter relief campaign.

Hitler was clearly incensed by the RAF's pinprick raids, which had culminated in an attack on Berlin on 25 August. As the American correspondent William L. Shirer observed, 'The Berliners are stunned. They did not think it could happen. Göring assured them it couldn't.'

The Führer told his crowd that for three months he had held back from ordering any retaliatory action, 'thinking that they would stop this nonsensical behaviour. Mr Churchill has taken this to be a sign of our weakness. You will understand that we shall now give a reply, night for night, and with increasing force.' In mocking fashion, Hitler continued, 'The English are wondering when the attack is going to begin. The English ask: "Why doesn't he come?"' Hitler then stepped back, raised his arms and said: 'Be calm. Be calm. He's coming. He's coming.'

On Friday, 6 September, at Chequers, Churchill played war games with his guests Generals Ismay, Alan Brooke and Sir John Dill. 'First of all he placed himself in the position of Hitler and attacked these shores while I defended them,' Brooke recorded. 'He then revised the whole of the air-raid warning and gave us his proposals to criticise. Finally, at 1.45 we got off to bed.' The following evening, Hitler himself made good what he had promised three days earlier. Air raid warnings would be irrelevant: the Führer had sent an armada of bombers to lay London waste.

## Chapter Four

## **'A troglodyte existence'**

7 September to 31 December 1940

On Saturday, 7 September, the peace of a late summer's evening in the ancient village of Horsell, Surrey, was shattered by the unaccustomed sound of the bells ringing out at the twelfth-century church of St Mary the Virgin. Traditionally one of the most evocative, comforting rituals of country life, the bells had not been heard in the parish – or anywhere else in Britain – since 13 June, when a government ban had been imposed. Now it was a sound to strike fear into local inhabitants, as it had been designated as the first official warning that an invasion by the Germans was under way.

Sixteen-year-old Derrick Clewley and his father William made their way to the old oak tree on the corner of Brewery Road and Arthur's Bridge Road, with no idea if they were about to encounter enemy parachutists – or even, perhaps, German Panzer tanks. Young Derrick was a member (although technically a year under age) of the local branch of the Home Guard, Britain's one-million-strong volunteer army, formed as a second line of defence, principally in coastal areas and in towns and villages in the south and east, where it was expected that the Wehrmacht would begin its attack. On their way out, Derrick and his father had grabbed from behind the garage some pea sticks, designed only to prop up plants. Armed with these inadequate weapons, they headed off to join twelve others in confronting the enemy.

In a state of apprehension and some confusion, the men of the Horsell Home Guard waited at the oak tree for a couple of hours before it became clear that there were no German tanks or paratroopers advancing on the village after all. Eventually they drifted off back to their homes and turned on the wireless, hoping for more information on the invasion – if, indeed, there really was one.

That evening the codeword 'Cromwell', ordering 'action stations' for the coastal divisions, had been issued by General Headquarters Home Forces to the Eastern and Southern Commands. Having also been sent to all formations in the London area and to the 4th and 7th Corps in General Headquarters Reserve, instructing a state of readiness at short notice, it had been repeated, for information, to all other commands in the United Kingdom.

The message was to prepare for an invasion, _not_ that it was under way. But in Horsell – and some other parts of the Home Counties – Home Guard commanders, acting on their own initiative, had decided to ring the church bells regardless. Unsurprisingly, rumours began spreading: not only were parachutists landing, but German E-boats were approaching the south coast.

Sadly, the rumours were correct: the Germans were coming – but not by sea.

During a meeting at 5.30 that afternoon in Downing Street, the chiefs of staff had decided to activate Operation _Cromwell_ after being presented with compelling evidence that the invasion could happen at any time in the next three days. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound was in the chair, joined by Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall, General Sir John Dill (the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff – CIGS), General Sir Alan Brooke (commander in chief, Home Forces) and Major-General Frederick Beaumont-Nesbitt (director of military intelligence).

It was Beaumont-Nesbitt who outlined the reasons to expect an attack on Britain. A large number of barges and small ships had been moved to ports all along the Belgian and French coasts, from Ostend to Le Havre; the Luftwaffe, based between Amsterdam and Brest, had been substantially augmented by the transfer of 160 long-range bombers from Norway, while short-range dive bombers had been redeployed to forward airfields in the Pas de Calais region; a few days earlier four Dutch spies, captured on landing in a rowing boat on the south-east coast, had confessed to having been sent to report on the movement of British reserve formations in the areas of Oxford, Ipswich, London and Reading; and finally, the moon and tide conditions would be most favourable for a seaborne invasion between 8 and 10 September.

All this intelligence, yet none of it led them to suspect what was happening right then, just four miles east of where they sat. As the military chiefs discussed whether they should deploy a massive fog screen in the English Channel to help repel invaders, the Luftwaffe's bombers and fighters were causing devastation in the East End of London.

Nearly 500 bombers – Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers – escorted by 600 Messerschmitt fighters, had flown to the capital over the Channel in an astonishing block 20 miles wide, filling 800 square miles of sky. Although Fighter Command eventually committed twenty-one squadrons to the air, the element of surprise allowed the Luftwaffe to strike with relative impunity, ultimately raining down more than three hundred tons of high explosives and many thousands of incendiaries in the first hour and a half of the raid.

First the sky was filled with huge clouds of smoke that billowed into the air from burning oil storage tanks, then it turned an iridescent orange from the light of the blazing fires which raged uncontrollably among the goods yards and warehouses along the banks of the Thames. Tugs and barges were set alight and sank in the river, while the strong wind whipped up by the heat caused small flaming planks of wood to be tossed around like matchsticks. The fires raged as far upriver as Tower Bridge where St Katherine's Dock, which lay almost opposite, was engulfed in flames.

This was indiscriminate terror bombing: although London's dockland infrastructure was the main target, the Nazi hierarchy scrupled not at all over the fate of the thousands who lived in the area. The working-class residents of Southwark, Bermondsey, East and West Ham, Poplar, Plaistow, Barking, Hackney, Rotherhithe and Stepney were pummelled, and the area around Limehouse was particularly badly hit.

The lucky ones headed for their basements. Some sought protection beneath the table in the front room or under the stairs, while others found communal safety in the brick-built street shelters. Not many houses had gardens, so there were few domestic shelters in which to take cover. Large numbers of shocked and frightened East Enders decided to trek away from the danger. Some went eastwards to Epping Forest and the open country of Essex, where thousands camped out in makeshift tents. Others headed west, towards the centre of London, where it was believed the shelters were deep and safe and the bombing less severe.

When the day raiders had finished their work, the night assault began. At 8.20 p.m. the second wave of 250 bombers – this time without a fighter escort – crossed the Sussex coast at Beachy Head. With their target lit by the vivid glare of a hundred dockside fires, their task was, if anything, even easier.

Barrage shooting by the anti-aircraft batteries being forbidden, and many of the guns having been moved to protect the aircraft factories, Londoners heard only a few brief and pitiful bursts of shellfire to relieve the drone of the planes and the steady crash of the bombs. In all they endured eight hours of bombing, and when the all clear sounded at 4.40 a.m. on Sunday, the toll was 436 killed and over 1,600 injured. Fighter Command had managed to bring down forty-one German planes, but had lost twenty-three of its own fighters, with six pilots killed and seven injured.

Early the next morning, Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky and his wife took their car and drove from Kensington to the East End to survey the damage at first hand. They encountered 'crowds of frightened people, trying to salvage something from their broken property . . . terrible cries coming from somewhere below, from the foundations of houses collapsed into heaps of stones and earth . . . mothers sobbing over the mutilated bodies of their children . . . men cursing with furious glances at the sky'.

As he peered into the ruins of a three-storey house, Maisky spotted a child's cot in an alcove, miraculously hanging in the air, suspended by its corner from the wall. 'On the cot lay a large doll with a red ribbon in its hair . . . one's heart momentarily froze with the thought, "Where is the mistress of that doll?" I could not forget this scene, so simple and so pathetic.'

Government ministers spent Sunday surveying the wreckage of the East End, taking soundings on the work required to clear the debris, the urgent need to house the homeless, and how to prepare for future attacks. Malcolm MacDonald, Minister of Health, visited West Ham, where a shaken group of five councillors demanded a general evacuation of the area – a demand with which MacDonald, not wishing to appear to panic, was unwilling to comply.

The Prime Minister headed for the docks, where he found fires still raging and scores of houses reduced to rubble. He stopped at an air raid shelter in which forty people had been killed, and a large crowd mobbed him. General Ismay, accompanying Churchill, feared the residents might harbour resentment over a lack of protection. Instead, they appreciated his visit in their hour of distress. 'Good old Winnie,' they cried. 'We thought you'd come and see us. We can take it. Give it 'em back.' Churchill, as so often in these situations, was moved to tears. Londoners would indeed have to take it, though: the Luftwaffe returned that evening, killing a further 412 and severely injuring 747, and would continue to come for a further fifty-six consecutive nights.

Such a prolonged offensive came as a surprise to most in Whitehall. The bombing war had been anticipated, but it had always been supposed that it would consist of lightning raids, carried out in the daytime – much like the First World War. It was for this reason among others that deep shelters had been ruled out: they would be too far apart to provide quick access, and there would be an increased risk of a major accident as hundreds of people attempted to use the stairs down to them at the same time. Now, the sustained bombardment began to reignite the arguments for using – or building – underground shelters; although those arguments were heard neither in Parliament, where London MPs seemed reluctant to criticise the government except in secret session, nor in the mostly compliant national press. Instead the case for deep shelters found its champion in the communist-backed _Daily Worker_ , where Professor J.B.S. ('Jack') Haldane wrote a series of campaigning articles.

Haldane was a flamboyant geneticist and physiologist, one of the first effective popularisers of science. As befitted a communist, he took a collectivist approach to the bombing threat and insisted that bunkers built deep underground were the answer. Not only would they provide protection from high explosive bombs, but they would meet the psychological need of humans under attack to go below ground and support each other in times of stress. Haldane had been a witness to the aerial warfare of the Spanish Civil War and the success – as he saw it – of the Republican defenders of Madrid and Barcelona in establishing a network of over 1,400 deep, 'bombproof' shelters.

The government's case continued to be made by Sir John Anderson. The home secretary's coldly analytical approach was concerned with one straightforward technical problem above all else: how best to protect the citizen from splinter, blast and falling debris. He felt that questions of psychological comfort were beside the main point.

The philosophy behind the government's shelter strategy was one of individualism, as opposed to Haldane's collectivism, and the 'Anderson shelter' epitomised that approach perfectly. 'The hard core of the problem is to provide protection for the citizen in, or close to his own house,' insisted the man who gave it its name. Here, within the corrugated steel panelled walls of this vaulted structure, 6ft high, 4ft 6in wide and 6ft 6in long, the 'common man' and his family – maybe squeezing in a friend or two – could shelter from the bombs, at home or in his own garden. The shelters had been made free to all householders who earned less than £5 a week, while those with a higher income had to pay £7. By the outbreak of war one and a half million had been erected, and during it a further 2.1 million were put up.

Anderson had made clear his views on Haldane's alternative when he spoke in a Commons debate on air raid shelters on 21 December 1938. In the blunt, unconsciously patronising tone that could lead him into trouble on parliamentary occasions – sounding more like the instructing senior civil servant he had once been than the engaging politician he was now supposed to be – he declared: 'Apart from the difficulties and delays involved in any extensive scheme for deep bombproof shelters, I do not think we are prepared to adapt our whole civilisation so as to compel a large proportion of our people to live, and maintain their productive capacity, in a troglodyte existence deep underground.' Thus the government was committed to a policy of 'dispersal'. Individuals and their communities were to take refuge at home in the shelters that bore Anderson's name, in brick-built communal street shelters with reinforced concrete roofs that might house twenty to fifty people, in trench shelters in public parks, or in other medium-sized refuges based around the workplace.

The _Daily Worker_ had consistently harried the home secretary over this thinking. In April 1939, after Anderson rejected Haldane's 'Finsbury Plan' for deep shelters in that district, the newspaper informed its readers, 'you have received your death sentence'. And on 7 September the following year, the morning before that first London attack, the paper had returned to the fray with a front-page article on safety in Birmingham, headlined 'shelter scandal in much raided city'. Now, as the Blitz wore on, it was able to resume its campaign as the evidence began to accumulate in its favour.

Just hours after the King had visited Bethnal Green on Monday, 9 September, in a successful morale-boosting tour of the East End, the public mood took a less deferential turn. Around 5,000 local residents attempted to storm the entrance of the unfinished Bethnal Green tube station, and were only beaten back by the combined efforts of the police and the Home Guard. By now the idea of using the London Underground for dormitories had taken hold and it would never be relinquished.

Churchill was no natural advocate of deep shelters, but on 12 September, just five days into the attack on London, he began to give the idea serious consideration. As Captain Euan Wallace, Conservative MP for Hornsey and the new senior commissioner for London's civil defence, wrote in his diary that night, however, 'This proposal was very carefully discussed when I was Minister of Transport and turned down for a variety of reasons. Reith [the current transport minister] has been asked to recapitulate them for the benefit of the Prime Minister.' Reith discussed the tube dilemma on the telephone with Churchill at 11 p.m.; he, like Wallace, was not keen to open up any part of London's transport system to those he described as 'refugees'.

The next morning, after a breakfast meeting at the Home Office with Sir John Anderson, Reith walked back to his office at the Ministry of Transport only to discover that the building was on fire, smoke billowing from the roof, after a bomb strike.

The German bombers hit an even more prestigious target just a few hours later. The War Cabinet meeting, which was being held underground in the recently reinforced Central War Room on King Charles Street, beneath the Treasury, was halfway through proceedings when a message was delivered to Churchill to say that Buckingham Palace had been dive bombed. The King and Queen were safe, but it had been the closest of escapes for the royal couple. 'There was . . . a tremendous explosion, and we and our two pages who were outside the door, remained for a moment or two in the corridor away from the staircase, in case of flying glass,' was the Queen's description. 'Then came a cry for bandages, and the first aid party rose magnificently to the occasion, and treated the three casualties calmly and correctly.' One of those badly hurt, Alfred Davies, who had been working below the chapel, later died of his injuries.

Just before this dramatic interruption, the War Cabinet had been discussing the question of opening up the tube during air raids. Malcolm MacDonald warned his colleagues that people in certain parts of London were 'showing reluctance' to use Anderson and street shelters. They preferred underground shelters, such as the basements of churches, schools and public buildings. But these were becoming overcrowded, and outbreaks of infectious disease were feared.

Sir John Anderson was having none of it. He told his colleagues firmly that the public had been 'educated' to use the various shelters available, and that there was enough accommodation for the majority of the population. His meeting earlier that morning with Reith had won him a valuable ally, as the transport minister added that he had examined the arguments, but he too remained convinced the tube must be kept free for transport services. So the Anderson strategy continued. The authorities actively discouraged shelter in the Underground, and some station gates were even locked and guarded, while soldiers evicted 'trespassers' at others. But morale in the blitzed areas was in serious danger of cracking.

In Berlin that same day, Hitler had met with Field Marshal Erhard Milch and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder to plot the way ahead. He was determined that the air attacks should continue without interruption, at the expense of Operation _Sealion_ , the long-planned land invasion of the United Kingdom. 'Even though victory in the air should not be achieved before another ten or twelve days, Britain might yet be seized by mass hysteria,' he suggested. 'If, within the coming ten or twelve days we achieve mastery of the air over a certain area, we could, by a landing operation, compel the enemy to come out with his destroyers against our landing fleet.'

The stage was set for what would prove to be the deciding hours in the Battle of Britain. On Sunday, 15 September the Luftwaffe launched its biggest attack yet against London, hoping along the way to draw out the RAF and deal it a fatal blow. But its huge force of 1,100 planes faced an aggressive, defensive line of fighters under the expert command of Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park at 11 Group Headquarters in Uxbridge. All the RAF planes were up in the air quickly thanks to the radar system, which the Germans consistently underestimated.

The raids continued throughout the day, the Luftwaffe flying a staggering thousand sorties against the capital. 11 Group put up its entire force of twenty squadrons, and called for assistance from 12 Group (covering the Midlands) and 10 Group (the south-west). In all nearly forty RAF fighter squadrons – 480 aircraft – were engaged in fierce combat at any one time.

Churchill had been at RAF Uxbridge most of the day and watched nervously – but mightily impressed – as Park and his colleagues plotted their moves. Having returned to nearby Chequers for his customary afternoon nap, he was awoken at 8 p.m. to be given the astonishing news that 187 German planes had been brought down, for the loss of no more than twenty-five RAF fighters and twelve pilots. Lord Beaverbrook, on hearing of the day's events, telephoned Peter Howard, one of his investigative journalists on the _Daily Express_ , and exclaimed triumphantly, 'This day our country has won a victory that will be recorded in the annals of history in the same terms as Trafalgar or Waterloo are recorded.' In fact the figures were inflated, as they often were in that period. The real German combat losses were eventually calculated as fifty-six planes – as opposed to twenty-eight on the British side – with eighty-one aircrew killed, thirty-one wounded and sixty-three taken prisoner. Fighter Command's dead numbered twelve, with fourteen injured and just one taken prisoner.

Nonetheless, it had been a well-planned, well-executed defence from the RAF. Yet despite this success, most of Churchill's ministers believed an invasion was still probable. The following day, 16 September, General Raymond E. Lee, military attaché at the American embassy, gauged opinion from Sinclair, Eden and Beaverbrook. Sinclair felt 'Hitler will invade because of prestige reasons, and because he must do it now or never.' Eden thought 'it will be in the next fortnight', while Beaverbrook said simply: 'Hitler will attack.'

They were all wrong, although they would not know it for some weeks. On Tuesday, 17 September, Hitler held a meeting in the Chancellery in Berlin with Göring and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, at which he reluctantly decided to postpone Operation _Sealion_. He ordered the dispersal of the invasion fleet, which included some two thousand barges held in Belgian, French and German harbours. The Führer did, however, dictate that the bombing of London should continue, and over wider areas than ever before.

The skill and resilience of the RAF, combined with the inclement weather, had put a stop to Germany's invasion plans. But rumours and misleading intelligence would continue to keep politicians on both sides of the Atlantic on edge for several more weeks. Indeed, on the morning of Sunday, 22 September, President Roosevelt sent a message to Churchill reporting that 3 p.m. that very day was zero hour for the attack.

Churchill telephoned Eden, who was quietly going through some papers in the study of his rented house in Dover. The war secretary told the Prime Minister it was wet and windy, hardly good conditions for a crossing, and that he felt safe enough. But even so, he decided to step outside and take a closer look. 'I went to the top of the hill which overlooked the Channel and afterwards sent a further message, reporting it was so rough that any German who attempted to cross would be very seasick.' Such sangfroid would be required in large doses over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile resentment towards the government's shelter policy continued to build. A dramatic expression of it came on the evening of Saturday, 14 September, when a crowd of fifty East Enders – men, women and two children – marched into the Savoy Hotel after an air raid alert and occupied the basement shelter.

'If it's good enough for the rich it's good enough for the Stepney workers and their families,' declared their leader Phil Piratin, the tenacious Jewish communist who had brought 100,000 Londoners on to the streets in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. The police were called, but a tense confrontation was eased when the hotel manager was content for the invaders to stay.

The group settled themselves into armchairs and deck chairs, and on the unoccupied floor space of the shelter, while the bewildered waiters brought them pots of tea, bread and butter. Piratin announced that he and his colleagues would pay only 2d a head – the same price as that displayed at a Lyons Corner House – rather than the Savoy's usual minimum charge of 2s 6d.

The demonstrators left peaceably enough when the all clear sounded less than half an hour later. But the incident received more publicity than the government would have liked; the London correspondent of the American broadcaster CBS described the events vividly to his millions of listeners the next day. Meanwhile, the Nazi paper _Völkischer Beobachter_ relished Churchill's discomfort: 'Londoners have become cave dwellers. Life has stopped. The working population is fleeing from the east and south of the city to the West End. Desperate men and women have stormed the luxurious Savoy hotel.'

At Monday's War Cabinet an aggrieved Churchill brought up the Savoy incident, saying that 'episodes of this kind could easily lead to serious trouble'. Sir John Anderson acknowledged that there were signs of organised demonstrations from East Enders in the West End. Together, he and Churchill convinced the Cabinet that 'strong action' should, if necessary, be taken to prevent further demonstrations.

Yet thousands of Londoners were ignoring Anderson's strictures to stay close to home. Many began queuing up at the various deep tube stations at midday to buy a 1½d ticket to gain access to a platform to sleep on for the night. The high point of the flight to these stations came on Friday, 20 September, when an estimated 117,000 headed underground.

On Tuesday, 17 September Professor Haldane had led a deputation of the National ARP Co-ordinating Committee to the Home Office, pleading for the government to step up deep shelter protection. The following day the _Daily Mirror_ joined the _Daily Herald_ and the _Daily Worker_ in fierce attack on the current policy, this time targeting its fire on the Ministry of Health. 'There is still time – but not too much – to get on with further evacuation schemes and with provision of deep shelters hitherto rejected, with unparalleled obstinacy, by Sir John Anderson,' its editorial boomed.

That same day Anderson defended his shelter strategy effectively in a secret session of the Commons. But with Churchill becoming increasingly concerned and preoccupied by the issue – his wife Clementine was receiving many letters on the subject, and had started to visit shelters unannounced – the home secretary was coming under severe pressure to change course. A conference he held to try to convince newspaper editors of his position was a disaster. In uncompromising fashion, he told them he would not embrace a policy of deep shelters and advised them to halt their campaign against him. 'Is that the policy of the Government?' asked one of those present. 'Do you think I should have said what I have said were that not so?' was Anderson's angry response.

His generally aloof attitude would cost him dear. The workings of the popular press were alien to Anderson, and he was unwilling to woo reporters and editors to win their support. He should not have been surprised when the _Daily Worker_ published a cartoon of him, showing him running for a deep shelter pursued by members of the public demanding their own entry. Over his shoulder was a shotgun and a brace of game birds – a reference to an earlier report by the paper that in the first week of the Blitz he had gone on a shooting holiday in Scotland.

Lord Horder, doctor to Kings George V and VI and chairman of the British Medical Association, had been asked by Anderson to quickly draw up a report on the state of London's shelters. In just four days he and his committee had travelled the length and breadth of the city to visit every kind of refuge. Despite pockets of good practice, his findings gave cause for grave concern.

He was disturbed by conditions in many of the public shelters, both purpose-built and improvised. The crypt shelter below St John's Church in Bethnal Green was 'dusty, dirty and gloomy . . . there was an unpleasant smell and the ventilation of the whole shelter was not good'. In Charrington's Brewery in Stepney where 1,800 men, women and children gathered, 'the atmosphere at 8.50pm was like the tropics and extremely close . . . the noise of people talking was tremendous and the children were quite unable to sleep. They showed signs of tiredness and being on edge and many of them were crying bitterly.'

Like Anderson, Horder believed that scurrying to shelters every night was bad for people – and for morale. Yet when he submitted his early findings, having witnessed the growing discontent at first hand, he conceded that 'we must take into account the herd instinct of the masses and their desire in the face of danger for human companionship'. To that end, he grudgingly conceded among his recommendations that 'the possibility of using the Tube system for shelters during the night should be considered, provided that this does not interfere with the traffic'.

The problem, though, was now as much about perception as it was about policy. The impression was of an unbending government unable or unwilling to address people's fears. Anderson may have commissioned the Horder Report and begun to put its recommendations in place, but the public's confidence in him – driven by the relentless press criticism – was at a low ebb. If the still new government's reputation was to be preserved, it would have to sacrifice him.

Not that the home secretary was totally without supporters. The popular humorist, novelist and playwright A.P. Herbert composed this little poem in his honour, and it appeared in the _Sunday Graphic_ in October.

You will not mind as many do,

The foolish things the clever say.

You saw the grim decisions through,

The sticky jobs all came your way.

But millions, from your armoured nest,

Emerging safe, defiant, free.

Will say 'John Anderson knew best,

'And we can be as tough as he.'

But the Prime Minister no longer needed a tough guy. What he wanted was a charismatic leader who was close to Londoners and would invigorate them through these grim times; a capable parliamentarian who could defend the government's evolving strategy; and a minister who could win over the disgruntled press.

The failing health of Neville Chamberlain – stricken with cancer – presented Churchill with an opportunity to reshape his government at just the right moment. And so he made the obvious choice. He asked Herbert Morrison to move from the Ministry of Supply to become home secretary and Minister of Home Security.

Having gone into hospital in late July for what he believed was a routine colostomy operation, Chamberlain discovered he was actually suffering from terminal cancer of the bowel.

After convalescing throughout August, he returned to work in early September, warning Churchill that he would 'not attain full efficiency all at once'. In the event, he chaired one War Cabinet on 12 September and attended his final Cabinet meeting in the Prime Minister's room at the House of Commons on Wednesday, 18 September, bowing out after over seventeen years of virtually continuous service. Churchill paid him generous tribute in their exchange of letters, applauding his 'unshaken nerve and persevering will', and acknowledging that 'the help you have given me since you ceased to be my chief tided us through what may well prove to be the turning point of the war'.

In the reshuffle of 3 October Anderson took Chamberlain's place in the War Cabinet as Lord President of the Council; his removal from the Home Office had hardly been a demotion. Joining him at the top table were Ernest Bevin (a universally popular appointment) and Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer (an underwhelming choice in the eyes of many). Thus – with Beaverbrook's elevation in early August – the War Cabinet now comprised eight, compared to the original five back in May.

Bevin's upward move may have stolen many of the headlines the following day, but it was Herbert Morrison's that captured the imagination. 'No one should be better able to deal with London's air raid problems than Mr Herbert Morrison,' reflected the _Yorkshire Post_. 'A municipal leader and administrator of proved quality . . . Londoners in particular may feel that they have a man whom they know and trust in charge of their "front line",' _The Times_ ' editorial declared. 'When I heard you had been appointed Home Secretary I went home and slept soundly,' proclaimed Ritchie Calder, campaigning journalist on the _Daily Herald._

Though their son was born in Brixton, Morrison's father (a police constable) and mother (a maid servant) had been pure East End cockneys, and he had inherited all the best characteristics of that breed of Londoner – a quick mind, a clever tongue, wit and joviality. His childhood had been difficult; having lost his right eye when just three days old, he had left elementary school at fourteen, taking jobs as an errand boy, 'live-in' shop assistant and telephone switchboard operator. But his ferocious self-education included Marx, Engels, Herbert Spencer, Darwin and – his favourite – _Riches and Poverty_ by Sir Leo Chiozza Money, a compelling assessment of the unequal distribution of wealth in Britain. Morrison discovered a gift for public speaking through a chance soapbox appearance in Brockwell Park, south London, and a career in politics first began to develop in 1906 when he joined the Independent Labour Party.

A founder member of the London Labour Party, Morrison became Mayor of Hackney in 1920, and three years later entered Parliament as MP for South Hackney. He was an effective Minister of Transport in Ramsey MacDonald's 1929–31 administration, and in the 1930s – when out of Parliament – he cemented his reputation and his political power base while leader of London County Council, overseeing the development of the capital's housing, health, education and transport services. Highly ambitious, he was hugely disappointed to be beaten for the leadership of the Labour Party by Clement Attlee in 1935.

Now in his early fifties, Morrison was one of the better recognised politicians – short in stature, he had a deeply lined face, with a wave of unruly hair parted to the left, and an earnest expression that would break out into a pleasing, if slightly self-satisfied, smile. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, and would tilt his head on one side so as to focus better with his single eye.

At the Ministry of Supply Morrison had found himself being pulled first one way and then another by competing claims for raw materials and labour from his senior colleagues – and fierce rivals – Bevin and Beaverbrook. But his ebullient self-confidence and energy had impressed many, and was coupled with a happy knack of inventing snappy phrases with which to stimulate production in the factories. 'Go To It', with its later variant 'Stick To It', was a sub-editor's delight. He was a naturally gifted communicator, by voice or by word, and a constant presence on newsreels and in newspapers – way ahead of the majority of his colleagues in understanding the vital importance of public relations.

But on pure policy, the new home secretary knew that at best he could only tweak the government's approach. So in his first major broadcast on Sunday, 3 November – ironically the first night since the start of the Blitz when the air raid sirens did not sound – he made it clear that 'anything like a universal policy of deep shelter, for the whole population or the greater part of it, is beyond the bounds of practical possibility'. The 'offensive' war effort had to come first. Steel, cement and bricks, not to mention labour, were needed for munitions and aircraft factories and aerodromes.

Morrison paid tribute to the 85 per cent of Londoners, the 'quiet, determined people' who did not crowd into big shelters, who slept in their own homes, in Anderson shelters or in communal domestic shelters. But he knew he had to assuage the critics, so he promised to use a good deal of whatever resources remained to carve out new tunnels linked to the tube system for more deep shelter places (100,000 in six months was his estimate in a Cabinet paper), as well as building more communal brick surface shelters, strengthening the Anderson shelters, and adapting a large number of 'strong modern buildings' in London for shelter both above ground and at basement level.

In the meantime, he began to further implement Lord Horder's recommendations, which included a ticketing system and the allocation of bunks (over 1.7 million had been ordered) for the regular occupants of the larger shelters, plus chemical lavatories, better ventilation, lighting and running water. Permanent canteens were to be introduced in the big shelters, while regular entertainment in the form of night classes, film shows and music was being organised.

Predictably, the _Daily Worker_ excoriated Morrison, saying his broadcast 'promised his listeners more bunks and ladled out more bunkum'. Most of the other papers tended to agree with the _Yorkshire Post_ , however, that the new home secretary was tackling the whole shelter problem with 'realistic energy'.

Morrison was not alone in his task. Supporting him were two of the most able and empathetic members of the coalition. That they were also both women – the only members of their sex in Churchill's ministry – made their accomplishments even more admirable.

'I do so like that little spitfire,' Harold Nicolson observed of Ellen Wilkinson on 20 November. 'She and Florence Horsbrugh are really the only two first-class women in the House. I should like to see both of them made Cabinet ministers.'

With Churchill at the helm, that prospect was unlikely. Yet, despite their political differences, he was shrewd enough to see the value of having Labour's Ellen Wilkinson at the Home Office at such a sensitive time. This ex-communist who had led the Jarrow March, the 'Fiery Particle' admired for her energy, dynamism and passionate oratory, was just the person he needed on board to restore public confidence in his administration's shelter policy. And the appreciation was mutual. 'After I had been interviewed by Mr Churchill I felt I had been in the presence of a very great man and a very great leader,' Wilkinson said following her appointment to the government in May. She was moved from the Ministry of Pensions to become one of Morrison's three parliamentary secretaries and given specific responsibility for shelters.

Florence Horsbrugh had successfully made the transition from the Chamberlain to the Churchill government, retaining her post as junior minister at the health ministry. This daughter of an Edinburgh chartered accountant first came to public attention in the First World War, when her pioneering work in developing a network of kitchens and canteens won the approval, among others, of Queen Mary, and gained her an MBE.

Elected MP for Dundee in 1931, she had consistently impressed her colleagues with confident speeches in Parliament, delivered in a fine, contralto voice. In 1936, dressed in an evening gown of brown velvet, she became the first woman to move the address in reply to the King's Speech – the new monarch Edward VIII's first opening of Parliament. 'WOMAN TRIUMPHS IN THE COMMONS, SETS BARE ARMS FASHION' was the faintly condescending headline in the _Daily Express._ A woman who preferred low tones to highlights, understatement to exaggeration, Horsbrugh had brought to her tasks in the health ministry an 'impressive mixture of ministerial authority, political sagacity, feminine gentleness and maternal fussiness'.

She had already played a crucial role in civil defence, helping to arrange the successful evacuation in September 1939 of one and a half million women and children from the major cities – one of the biggest social experiments in British history. Now, with mass evacuation over – although much smaller numbers were leaving London again – Horsbrugh turned her attention to the victims of the Blitz. Specifically, she had to organise the casualty clearing services in London, set up hostels for those rendered homeless and ensure the smooth running of rest centres, while – liaising closely with Wilkinson – she was responsible for health and sanitation in the shelters. She would also completely restructure the British Civil Nursing reserve.

On her first evening in office Ellen Wilkinson headed for the notorious Tilbury shelter in the underground goods yard beneath the railway arches in Stepney. Originally established by the local authority as a safe haven for 3,000 people, on some nights it was occupied by as many as 16,000. At first there was no sanitation and poorer families were forced to occupy floors covered with excrement and discarded margarine.

'This has been tidied up a bit, hasn't it,' Wilkinson remarked to the warden upon arrival. 'It's a palace to what it was,' he replied. As she made her way round the shelter, she stressed to the reporters accompanying her the three 'S's: 'safety, sanitation and sleep'.

'My job is to put to bed each night, outside their own homes, one million people,' was Wilkinson's typically vivid description of her task. The new minister's first foray into the East End certainly impressed Hilde Marchant, journalist and East End commissioner: 'No distasteful corner, no story of misery was overlooked . . . I liked her energy and her natural touch with these people.'

Up to then, Wilkinson's war had been dogged by illness and injury. At the end of July she had undergone an appendix operation at St Mary's Hospital, London. Barely was she up and about again before she suffered a minor fracture of the skull when a lorry hit her car in the blackout on 5 August. Wilkinson had an especially keen sympathy for the plight of those forced to use the shelters, because, just a few days after that first round of visits, a bomb destroyed her own flat in Guildford Street, Bloomsbury. She was eventually rehoused at Hood House in Dolphin Square, but continued to spend many nights in a bed in her office as she refused to enter the deep shelters used by Members of Parliament.

Wilkinson and Horsbrugh now saw a lot of each other, both when out and about inspecting civil defences in London and across the table in Whitehall in various Cabinet committees. They frequently clashed, although not always because of their ideological differences (which were largely subdued at this stage of the war); more because of their very contrasting personalities.

Wilkinson had inherited her father Richard's quick temper as well as his keen sense of justice. Although generous and warm-hearted to a fault, a lack of inches and a certain awkwardness of manner were perhaps responsible for her occasionally pugnacious and aggressive manner. Horsbrugh, by the same familial token, exhibited the qualities of precision and love of facts shown by her accountant father Henry. Tall, smiling and unflustered, it was only when irritated that she adopted what the more cruel commentators described as her 'maiden aunt' demeanour.

Their first clash, just two days after Wilkinson's appointment to the Home Office, came over the subject of the possible compulsory evacuation of London's children. Wilkinson felt parents would be content for their offspring to leave the city if the government simply made it clear that it was their duty; Horsbrugh pointed out that a quarter had indicated they would refuse to send their children away, so a stricter policy of compulsion was required.

'There seems to be the making of some pretty passages at arms between these two ladies,' observed Captain Euan Wallace, 'and it is interesting to contrast Miss H's solid sympathetic commonsense with the rather theatrical statements of the new Under Secretary.'

As Göring's Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers pounded other industrial centres, the two women's work took them further outside London. The shipbuilding centres of Barrow, Hull, Clydebank and Belfast were heavily bombarded, as were the ports and manufacturing cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth, Sheffield, Cardiff, Nottingham, Portsmouth and Southampton. And then there was the smaller town of Coventry, with its population of just under a quarter of a million.

The Luftwaffe had already targeted many of the metalworking industries of the West Midlands, and had visited Coventry sixteen times between 1 October and 8 November. Ernest Bevin had personally complained to Churchill about the 'undefended state of the town', while the chiefs of staff had recognised that 'the morale of the workers in Coventry has unquestionably deteriorated as a result of enemy air attacks'.

On the evening of 14 November 1940 Hitler launched Operation _Mondscheinsonate_ (Moonlight Sonata) – quite probably in retaliation for a recent RAF attack on Munich – with the intention of destroying the cathedral city's factories and industrial infrastructure with deliberate disregard for the damage inflicted on residential and cultural areas.

Around five hundred German planes rained down torrents of bombs, 500 tonnes of high explosive and 36,000 incendiaries, turning the centre of the city into a firestorm. Around two-thirds of its buildings were destroyed – including the iconic fourteenth-century St Michael's cathedral – and 4,300 families were made homeless. The tram system was destroyed. Almost every factory, if not actually hit, was put out of action by the complete obliteration of water, gas and electricity supplies.

Amid such destruction, a precise accounting of the death toll proved exceedingly difficult. Much later, it was estimated that 568 were killed in the raid with another 863 badly injured; thousands had managed to escape, either by trekking out of the city to nearby towns and villages, or remaining safe in the seventy-nine public air raid shelters. Florence Horsbrugh took her car and drove into Coventry on Friday, before the flames had died down. There she joined Herbert Morrison and his wife Margaret, who had by coincidence been staying at nearby Himley Hall with the regional commissioner Lord Dudley when the bombs started to fall. Lord Beaverbrook also paid a visit to the blitzed city that afternoon, worried about the effect of the attack on its vital aircraft production factories.

The following day the King arrived to lend his psychological support to the shocked population. In his field marshal's uniform, he spent five hours picking his way through the smoking mountains of rubble and talking to survivors, who reported that he was moved to tears by what he witnessed. 'I was horrified at the sight of the centre of the town,' George VI recorded in his diary that night, 'the cathedral, hotels, shops, everything was flat and had been gutted by fire. The people in the streets wondered where they were, nothing could be recognized.'

After he departed, Morrison, Horsbrugh and Lord Dudley met to plot the way ahead for the stricken city. Morrison ordered up the Pioneer Corps to clear the damage, mobile canteens were brought in, and a house-to-house distribution of bread and milk started. Royal Engineers began work to restore the electricity supply, which they achieved within three days. Horsbrugh's main challenge was to find beds for the thousands who were now homeless. Some were billeted with obliging families in unscathed houses, while others stayed outside the city with relatives, or strangers who let out rooms for very low rents.

Morrison told the War Cabinet on Monday, 18 November that 'local people had been shaken by their experiences, and had been bitter at what they regarded as the lack of active defences. Nevertheless, they had kept their heads.' He reported that, on the whole, damage to munitions production was less extensive than at first feared.

While the home secretary was the visible face of the government during the Coventry crisis, Horsbrugh, largely unheralded, went about her business, quietly dealing with the housing and health issues and enabling the distraught residents to put together their lives again. The _Daily Mirror_ described her role as 'mothering the city', and a few years later her boss Malcolm MacDonald acclaimed her as 'one of the heroines of the Battle of Coventry'.

Morrison and Horsbrugh – and Wilkinson too, although not directly involved in the reconstruction efforts in Coventry – learned valuable lessons from that terrible experience. An army of firewatchers was swiftly instituted; the major administrative reform of establishing the first National Fire Service would soon follow.

Churchill and his ministers were themselves increasingly driven underground as the German bombers kept on coming. Of the seventy-two War Cabinet meetings held between September and December, thirty-four took place in the Cabinet War Room, seventeen in the House of Commons, and just twenty at 10 Downing Street. One of them – on 3 October – was at 'Paddock', codename for the government's reserve meeting place in west London should it be forced to leave the principal emergency Cabinet War Rooms beneath the Treasury in Whitehall.

'Paddock' was a vast subterranean complex built directly beneath the Post Office Research and Development Station in Dollis Hill, Willesden. It was a two-storey building, forty feet underground, with a five-foot layer of concrete forming a protective roof and making it near impossible to destroy. Its warren of thirty-seven rooms included a mix of offices, kitchens and living quarters, together with a long map room, teleprinter room and cabinet room (with BBC studio adjoining it), and one room which had pinned to its door the words 'Captain David Niven'. No one was ever sure, but it was thought that the actor, a friend of Churchill's, would be called upon to impersonate the Prime Minister in radio broadcasts, to maintain the pretence he was still running the country in London – even if by then he had been forced to flee to Canada or America.

But Churchill disliked what he felt was the damp, oppressive atmosphere of 'Paddock', and was reluctant to contemplate the life of a 'troglodyte'. After October's meeting, it was used by the War Cabinet – who gathered there in March 1941 – just once more in the war.

The Prime Minister, his wife and staff had by now abandoned Number 10 as living quarters, and moved instead into a set of rooms known as the 'Number 10 Annexe', over the Cabinet War Rooms in the Board of Trade building. These were above ground, overlooking St James's Park, but protected inside with steel girders and outside with steel shutters.

Beleaguered as he was, nevertheless Churchill's political pre-eminence was reinforced on 9 October when, at a party meeting at Westminster's Caxton Hall, he was elected unanimously as leader of the Conservative (and Unionist) Party in succession to Chamberlain. Lord Halifax, presiding, suggested that the outgoing leader might have failed to preserve peace but the 'historian will, perhaps, record . . . a more informed and balanced judgement than is always attainable today'.

On 9 November Neville Chamberlain died at his home at Highfield Park in Hampshire. At the service at his local church of St Michael's in Heckfield the next day, the village vicar took as the text of his sermon 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God'. Four days later Chamberlain's ashes were interred alongside those of fellow Conservative Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law in the nave at Westminster Abbey; among the pallbearers at his funeral service were Cabinet colleagues Churchill, Lord Halifax, Sir Kingsley Wood, Sir Archibald Sinclair and Clement Attlee.

As the year drew to a close, the Prime Minister was asked to consider the merits of fresh proposals from the Ministry of Home Security for a new shelter to protect the public in their own homes. At 6 p.m. on Tuesday, 31 December, he strode into a room in 10 Downing Street where he was greeted by Herbert Morrison and his scientific adviser, thirty-nine-year-old Professor John Fleetwood Baker, already carving out a reputation as an innovative structural engineer.

Churchill was asked to cast his eye over two competing prototypes for a household shelter. One was a steel construct with a cross-section in the shape of a gothic arch, covered all over with steel plate and with flaps closing the ends. In the opinion of Professor Baker it was a 'death trap'. Its design, however, was based on a sketch Churchill himself had drawn for Morrison a few weeks earlier.

The other one, Professor Baker's invention, was a flat-topped, cage-like 'table shelter', with a steel roof, welded wire-mesh sides, and a metal lath 'mattress' type floor. This, Baker demonstrated to Churchill, would absorb energy far better than the arch design, and escape from it – via the sides – would be much easier. It was 6ft 6in long, 4ft wide and 2ft 6in high, and could accommodate two or three people. It would also be very economical to manufacture in bulk, and could be put together with just a spanner and a hammer.

Morrison and his keen young designer put the case for the flat-topped shelter persuasively and at some length, and eventually won over their listener. Churchill – always receptive to scientific expertise and himself a skilled bricklayer – was fascinated by the structural theory behind the construction.

Any allegiance to his own back-of-the-envelope proposal now disappeared. He eventually thumped the top of the table shelter. 'That's the one, make 500,000 in the next three months and give them to the people. Show them that it is safe, blow a house up on one, put a pig in it, put the inventor in it,' he said, digging Baker in the ribs.

Thus was born the 'Morrison shelter', as it came to be known. Introduced within three months, it would prove an invaluable extra means of protection against the German bombs, and would also play its part when new weapons were targeted on London homes later in the war. By the end of the year Morrison could justifiably claim that 'the worst of the overcrowding in the big shelters is now a thing of the past'. Two hundred thousand new bunks had been installed, and Lord Horder's new standards of cleanliness had been fully rolled out. The big programme of tunnel construction to shelter thousands more Londoners was well under way.

Morrison never overturned the original shelter strategy – he merely modified it. But the perception was that he and his industrious group of ministers had rolled back the tide of government indifference and stubbornness. And that, to the public, made all the difference.

## Chapter Five

## **'A New Magna Carta'**

1 January to 11 March 1941

On four days in late January 1941 the War Office carried out one of those 'paper' exercises, so beloved of military planners, designed to envisage as authentically as possible a real-life scenario. Codenamed Operation _Victor_ , it imagined nothing less than a full-scale German invasion of Britain, with the enemy first carrying out a diversionary landing in Ireland before launching assaults on the south and east coast by sea, land and air.

Ingeniously put together by Brigadier Sir Ronald Weeks, it even featured an imaginary speech by the Prime Minister to be delivered on the eve of invasion, presumably from an underground bunker outside London. 'The crazy villain who has brought so much suffering upon the world has now set foot upon our outposts and, very shortly now, will break himself and end his own wicked tyranny in a disastrous attack upon this island,' the premier would say in an attempt to rouse the nation.

Jock Colville read out the doomsday broadcast after dinner at Chequers to an amused Churchill and his guests. 'The PM promised he would produce a far better one in the event,' recorded Colville. 'If he did have to make such a speech he would end it, "The hour has come; kill the Hun".'

The threat of invasion had in fact receded markedly since late October, when a Bletchley Park decrypt of a Luftwaffe transmission disclosed that Hitler had ordered the dismantling of crucial air loading bays in Holland. As a result Churchill and his chiefs of staff were persuaded that an assault on the British Isles had become highly unlikely, the War Office summary at the end of that month concluding that 'the invasion of UK has been either abandoned or postponed until 1941'.

With that fear cast aside for the moment, the question of how to persuade the United States to more actively back the war effort, and, in doing so, prevent Britain from sliding inexorably towards bankruptcy, became the British government's paramount concern. Fortunately President Roosevelt's special envoy, Harry Hopkins, had seen enough in the first two weeks of a visit to Britain to report back favourably to the President. He planned to inform Roosevelt that Britain was prosecuting the war with great resolve, and to advise him that the financial means to enable her to continue so doing should be made available as quickly as possible.

Despite their long careers close to the apex of power in their respective countries, Churchill and Roosevelt had met just once, in July 1918, at a dinner hosted by Churchill's friend F.E. Smith, at Gray's Inn, London, for Allied ministers prosecuting the First World War. Roosevelt, very much the honoured guest, had been assistant secretary in the US Navy Department, while Churchill was then Minister of Munitions, rebuilding his reputation after the Dardanelles fiasco. It had not been an auspicious meeting. In later years Churchill could remember nothing of the encounter, but the reverse was certainly not the case. 'I always disliked him since the time I went to England,' Roosevelt told Joe Kennedy, the American ambassador to London, in conversation in 1939. 'At a dinner I attended he acted like a stinker.' His opinion would hardly have been improved by an article Churchill wrote in the _Evening Standard_ in December 1937, in which he characterised Roosevelt's New Deal as a 'ruthless war' against private enterprise, destined to lead America back into the 'trough of depression'.

Since the end of the First World War, Anglo-American relations in general had been marked by a large degree of unease and mistrust. Britain had hoped that the United States – now the world's leading creditor nation – might agree to a general cancellation of war debts, but President Woodrow Wilson and the American banks had made it clear they expected to be repaid in full. The chill between the former allies had only worsened as each adopted what the other perceived as protectionism.

But on security and foreign policy, Churchill's consistent opposition to appeasement and his stand against the Munich agreement struck a chord with Roosevelt, a commander-in-chief who grasped that America could not hide from the rest of the world's troubles. 'Passionately though we may desire detachment, we are forced to realize that every word that comes through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought, does affect the American future,' he told his people in a speech from the White House on the day Britain declared war on Germany. Indeed, it was Roosevelt who had initiated the relationship between the two men, with a letter on 11 September 1939: 'How glad I am you are back again in the Admiralty . . . I shall at all times welcome it if you will keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about.' Thereafter a regular trickle of correspondence passed between them, and this grew – when Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940 – into a veritable torrent; one that would flow through the next five years of the war.

On 15 May, as the German army swept through the Low Countries and advanced on France and Belgium, Churchill warned Roosevelt: 'I trust you realise, Mr President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long. You may have a completely subjugated Nazified Europe established with astonishing swiftness, and the weight may be more than we can bear.'

With the powerful rhetoric came specific requests. Churchill asked for the 'loan of 40 or 50 of your older destroyers', 'several hundred of the latest types of aircraft', anti-aircraft equipment and ammunition, a substantial quantity of steel, a visit from a United States squadron to police the Irish ports, and finally a request to 'keep that Japanese dog quiet in the Pacific, using Singapore in any way convenient'. Even at this stage, however, Churchill knew what a struggle it would be to pay America for such huge quantities of materiel, and in a phrase towards the end of the telegram he presaged events many months down the road. 'We shall go on paying dollars for as long as we can, but I should like to feel reasonably sure that when we can pay no more, you will give us the stuff all the same.'

Back in November 1939, the President had won a significant victory over America's isolationists with the passage of a fourth Neutrality Act. This had been presented as a peace measure, but in fact it had allowed the American government to sell war materials to 'belligerent' nations, provided they paid cash and carried the goods away in their own ships. The intent had been to aid Britain and France, countries with substantial foreign exchange reserves and large merchant fleets, but even then Roosevelt had been unable – and unwilling – to hand over 'the stuff' unless payment had already been made, and often punitive conditions were attached. By May 1940, wary of the significant isolationist opposition in Congress and reluctant to try to sway public opinion until he calculated the time was right, there was no likelihood of him soon declaring America a non-belligerent. In an opinion poll published on 29 May, only 7.7 per cent of respondents favoured entering the war there and then.

Thus Churchill's request for fifty destroyers of First World War vintage, wanted as escorts for merchant convoys, was initially turned down. Roosevelt cautioned, 'A step of that kind could not be taken except with the specific authorisation of Congress, and I am not certain that it would be wise for that suggestion to be made . . . at this moment.' But as the summer wore on, as the RAF resisted the Luftwaffe so impressively, and the Royal Navy further demonstrated Britain's intent to fight on at all costs with the sinking of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, Roosevelt and his advisers increasingly came to the conclusion that Britain was no lost cause.

By this point Churchill and the War Cabinet had become anxious about the rate of attrition in merchant shipping in the Atlantic from dive-bomber and submarine attacks. A large building programme of destroyers and anti U-boat craft was under way, but no ships were due to come off the production line until well into 1941. In a plaintive telegram to Roosevelt on 30 July, Churchill listed the ships hit over the previous ten days: _Brazen_ , _Codrington_ , _Delight_ , _Wren_ all sunk, and _Beagle_ , _Boreas_ , _Brilliant_ , _Griffin_ , _Montrose_ and _Walpole_ damaged. 'I cannot understand why, with the position as it is, you do not send me at least 50 or 60 of your oldest destroyers.'

Fortunately, Roosevelt was slowly coming round to a plan to give Churchill what he wanted. For some time certain non-interventionists had been promoting the idea – first proposed by the _Chicago Tribune_ – that Britain should hand over some of her colonies in the western hemisphere in return for the cancellation of her First World War debts. Now an organisation called the Century Group, linked to the interventionist Committee to Defend America and with strong connections to the White House, took up that idea but turned it into something much more palatable to Britain in her hour of need. The destroyers should be offered in exchange for naval and air concessions in British possessions. When the initial framework for a deal was eventually worked out, it proposed the transfer of fifty destroyers plus a number of motor torpedo-boats and planes, in return for leases on British naval and air bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad, St Lucia and British Guiana.

Spurred on by Sir Philip Lothian, Britain's ambassador to Washington, foreign secretary Lord Halifax urged his fellow ministers not to haggle over the conditions of the deal. 'We are already heavily in debt to America as a result of the last war, and . . . we shall shortly be still further in her debt as a condition of winning the present war. We have no hope of ever repaying the enormous sums which will be involved, nor do well-informed Americans ever expect this of us . . .'

But there was considerable disquiet among several members of the War Cabinet about this sacrifice of British interests. Lord Lloyd, the colonial secretary, and Lord Caldecote, the Dominions secretary, fretted about the considerable loss of sovereignty; the former said caustically of Britain's ambassador to the US, 'All this is the doing of Philip Lothian. He's always wanted to give away the Empire and now he has the perfect opportunity to do so.' A.V. Alexander at the Admiralty argued that any concessions to the Americans would encourage them to concentrate on the defence of their own hemisphere and neglect help to Britain. All three put together a draft Cabinet paper demanding a more substantial quid pro quo, including an even greater number of destroyers, the abolition of the 'cash and carry' clauses of the Neutrality Act, and the promise of landing rights on Hawaii for an eventual British trans-Pacific air service.

Churchill himself was particularly perturbed by a telegram from Roosevelt asking for a public guarantee that if Britain were overrun, the Royal Navy would neither be surrendered nor sunk; he was equally annoyed by an American suggestion that Britain transfer her ships to Canada in the event of defeat. The Prime Minister believed that such assurances were quite out of the question, partly because they conceded too much to the United States, but primarily because he feared that further public mention of the matter would unsettle domestic morale at a perilous time. 'Only a war alliance,' he wrote, could justify 'any stipulations about the disposition of the fleet.'

As he studied the final drafts of the agreement over the following days, Churchill reluctantly and at times grudgingly acquiesced to the bulk of America's demands. 'Those bloody destroyers,' he frequently muttered to advisers, and recalled the story of the girl who remarked to the magistrate, 'And all that for twopence and an orange!' Eventually, after a fraught few days' negotiations, agreement was reached that the British territories would be made available on ninety-nine-year leases, with no rent to be paid.

The 'Destroyer-Bases Deal', as it became known, was sealed on 2 September by an exchange of notes between US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British ambassador Lord Lothian. Its practical value was limited; only nine of the mothballed ships were actually put into service by the Royal Navy before the end of the year, and these were far less seaworthy than anticipated. The symbolic value was crucial, though. In Rome Italian foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano thought the day of direct American involvement in the war was close at hand, while in Berlin the provision of the destroyers was seen as 'an openly hostile act against Germany'.

In London, however, despite the comfort given by the deal, concern persisted about the broader financial situation. On Thursday, 22 August, the Chancellor, Kingsley Wood, had presented a deeply depressing paper to the War Cabinet entitled 'The Exchange Position', which made no attempt to disguise the country's plight. He told colleagues he was seriously perturbed by the rate at which gold and exchange resources were disappearing, and that they should be 'fully aware of the dangerous financial possibilities of the near future'. Britain's total reserves amounted to just £490 million, compared to £775 million at the beginning of January. At the current rate of losses Britain would run out of gold by the end of December, and, in addition to that, holdings of United States securities totalled just £200 million – although these were 'almost unsaleable' at present.

The Chancellor held out little hope that America would loosen the purse strings. 'It appears prima facie unlikely that American financial aid, when forthcoming, will be given without conditions and without limit.' Measures were already being taken to press the governments of Belgium, Holland and Norway for some of their gold, spirited away to safety after the Nazi invasions. Even more drastically and humiliatingly, the Chancellor suggested he might order the requisitioning, up and down the country, of wedding rings and other gold ornaments; but he calculated that would not produce any more than £20 million.

Herbert Morrison, Minister of Supply, warned that it would be a very serious matter if his department had to slacken the rate of orders to America. It would be better to take a gamble on the financial side, rather than risk losing the war. Beaverbrook backed him, saying 'we ought to do everything in our power to fill American factories with British orders. No American Government would dare to tell those factories to cease production, with all the consequences in the shape of unemployment and industrial derangement.'

'American sympathy is an amazing thing,' an exasperated Lord Woolton recorded in his diary. 'Newspapers, broadcasts, American conversations are all full of it, but still they won't allow their ships to come into England carrying either food or munitions, and they still don't give us one dollar's worth of goods unless we pay cash for them.'

For all their private resentments, the War Cabinet knew they had few – if any – cards to play in financial negotiations with the Americans. By December Sir Kingsley Wood was telling Sir Frederick Phillips, the senior Treasury official based in Washington, 'We are deeply concerned at the possibility of finding ourselves at the end of February with all reserves exhausted after having drawn upon French and allied gold . . .'

'Well, boys, Britain's broke: it's your money we want.' A frank admission, and especially startling when uttered by Philip Henry Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, the supposedly discreet representative of Her Majesty's government in Washington. When he touched down at LaGuardia Airport in New York City on Saturday, 23 November, the Ambassador was met by a phalanx of reporters, eager for the British government's current assessment of the war, especially now that relations with America had been put back on an even keel following the re-election a few weeks earlier of President Roosevelt.

The press pack who followed him out of the airport picked up further comments, in particular that 'available gold and securities had been virtually used up and that this factor figured in the calculations for 1941'. Whether he used the actual words 'Britain's broke', however, is uncertain. The phrase the British newspapers reported consistently over the next few days was 'Britain is beginning to come to the end of her financial resources.' The semantics mattered less than the message, of course, and Lothian had put that across with all the nous of a former journalist with the _Daily Chronicle_ and _Christian Science Monitor._ He never intended to make a direct appeal for immediate credit, merely to intensify the public debate. His remarks generated front-page headlines in newspapers all over the US, and the American public were genuinely shocked to learn that Britain's economic circumstances were so dire.

Back home, his remarks irritated some in the War Cabinet, prompting Churchill to send an admonitory telegram: 'I do not think it wise to touch on very serious matters in newspaper interviews to reporters at the landing stage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer complains that he was not consulted about your financial statements, and Treasury does not like their form.' But despite the mild reproof, Churchill knew the value of his ambassador. Lothian had played a major part in the negotiations over the destroyers, encouraging his reluctant Prime Minister to cede British sovereignty over the bases for the greater prize of closer American involvement in the war.

Lothian had been Chamberlain's appointment (on the strong recommendation of Lord Halifax) in August 1939, and, despite their shared belief in the primacy of the British Empire, he and Churchill had had their differences. Lothian, in 1919, had incurred Churchill's wrath when, as Lloyd George's private secretary, he had persuaded his master to reject the then war secretary's scheme for larger-scale intervention in the Russian Civil War. He had also been on the opposing side in the appeasement debate. In 1935 he had returned from meeting Hitler and Göring to declare that 'Germany does not want war and is prepared to renounce it absolutely . . . provided she is given real equality.' A subsequent reading of _Mein Kampf_ , with the Munich Crisis providing a further dose of reality, persuaded him to completely re-evaluate Hitler and his motives.

Fortunately, Churchill recognised that here was a man who loved America and Americans; who knew the country as well as any other British politician or diplomat. As a young man Lothian had travelled extensively throughout the United States just before the First World War and had promoted from early on the idea of an Anglo-American alliance. He had established valuable contacts with politicians, judges and journalists, and had even met President Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin's distant cousin.

Previous occupants of the British embassy had given it a reputation for unmerited swagger and fusty aloofness, the old colonial masters still frowning on their upstart conquerors. Lothian blew away all the cobwebs with his aristocratic charm and self-confidence, and by common consent was the most popular ambassador since the charismatic Lord Bryce in 1913. 'He was not so deeply troubled, or rather confined, by their [English] public school and caste system,' observed General Raymond E. Lee, America's military attaché to London.

Tall, fair-haired, with a broad forehead and high-arched Roman nose, Lothian was invariably rumpled but never dishevelled. Though born into a devout Roman Catholic family – he had once considered the priesthood – he was now a committed Christian Scientist (inspired by Lady Astor) and allocated an hour or two every day to religious reading.

While in England earlier in November, Lothian had spent time with the Prime Minister, drafting a long letter to Roosevelt that he hoped would correct powerful American misconceptions about Britain's position and strength, and stir the President and his advisers – who had been distracted over the past month or so – into examining their conscience over Britain's plight. The principal areas of need Lothian and Churchill identified were support from the US in acquiring Irish naval bases, help in guarding Singapore, more ships, and the loan, gift or, at worst, sale at a reduced charge of weapons and aircraft.

By 2 December, after many consultations and revisions, a draft was ready for the War Cabinet. On the same day, President Roosevelt left Washington bound for a post-election Caribbean cruise on the USS _Tuscaloosa_ , taking with him only his immediate staff and his special adviser, Harry Hopkins. Churchill informed his ministers of Lothian's advice that the letter should be held back a week and only delivered to the President when he was fully settled and relaxed on his cruise.

War secretary Anthony Eden thought the section on Britain's munitions production painted too optimistic a picture. Churchill retorted that if it were painted too darkly, isolationist elements in America would say it was 'useless to help us, for such help would be wasted and thrown away'. Lord Halifax wondered if now was the time to ask for more than fifty destroyers – but A.V. Alexander advised against it, saying it would be unwise in view of America's own limited destroyer strength.

When the letter was finally sent on 8 December it was 4,000 words long, covering in great detail the whole of the war situation from the North Sea to Gibraltar to Suez and Singapore. Most of it – on Churchill's insistence, and against Lothian's advice – was concerned with shipping and the dangers to Britain's merchant fleet from persistent attacks by bombers and U-boats.

Only in the final three paragraphs was the broad financial crisis explained. But this was also the most blunt and dramatic section of the document. 'The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies . . . I believe you will agree it would be wrong in principle and mutually disadvantageous in effect if, at the height of the struggle, Great Britain were to be divested of all saleable assets, so that after the victory was won with our blood, civilization saved, and the time gained for the United States to be armed against all eventualities, we should stand stripped to the bone.'

The style was Churchillian, but the logic was Lothian's. The Ambassador seemed to be at the height of his powers. Then a few days later Alistair Cooke, special correspondent for _The Times_ , arrived at the embassy in Washington to interview Lothian. The door was opened by the butler, who responded to Cooke's request gravely: 'I'm terribly sorry, Sir, that will be quite impossible. The Ambassador died early this morning.'

It was known Lothian had been taken ill because the night before his colleague at the embassy, first secretary Nevile Butler, had been forced to step in and deliver an important set-piece speech before the American Farm Bureau in Baltimore. The shocking manner of his death, however, only emerged days later.

Lothian had clearly been fatigued over recent months, sometimes falling asleep in important meetings, but this had been put down to overwork. Then, on Sunday, 8 December, he had fainted, and over the next few days had remained in very poor condition with internal pains. He had made it clear, however, that because of his religious beliefs he did not want a conventional doctor to tend to him, but would rely instead on treatment from a Boston 'healer' whom he had known for many years. Three of his personal staff were also Christian Scientists, only reinforcing his determination not to turn to medicine for an illness that, to his faith, was real to the material world, yet unreal to the world of the spirit.

Lothian had grown steadily weaker and badly short of breath, and had died at 2 a.m. on Thursday, 11 December, the cause eventually given as uremic poisoning. Back in London the government was stunned: 'it is a blow over the heart,' wrote Harold Nicolson. In public, in the House of Lords, Lord Halifax applauded Lothian's 'instinctive sense and sureness of touch on all questions that arose . . . no-one, I think, has ever served this country at Washington more wisely'. Privately, Halifax was bitter at the manner of his colleague's death, observing that he was 'another victim for Christian Science'; while Churchill, in similar vein a couple of days later, said it was a 'monstrous thing' that Lothian had not allowed a doctor to be called. 'I had at last come to like Philip, after years of prejudice.'

The Prime Minister's first choice replacement for this critical job was Lloyd George, whom he had tried to persuade to join his government back in May. His 'knowledge of munitions and his fiery personality' marked him out, Churchill observed to Jock Colville, adding that he would find him a place in the War Cabinet so he would have equal status with Halifax. But Lloyd George declined the offer, ostensibly on the advice of his doctor, Lord Horder, who believed the strain would be too great for the seventy-seven-year-old.

Lord Cranborne and Sir Archibald Sinclair briefly entered Churchill's thoughts, but eventually he alighted on Halifax. Though the Foreign Secretary had no appetite for the post, Churchill thought the appointment of such a senior figure in Washington, at a critical period for Anglo-American relations, would impress the White House. Moreover, it would finally rid him of a powerful rival who still – even with the passing of Chamberlain – enjoyed enough support in the Conservative Party to cause trouble for Churchill if the war started to go badly. The resulting vacancy would also enable him to bring his own man, Anthony Eden, into the Foreign Office, where he could keep a close eye on him.

Halifax initially resisted Churchill's entreaties. On Thursday, 19 December he recorded, 'It is an odious thought if he decides for me.' This was a man who was English to his marrow, an upper-class Tory comfortable in his accustomed surroundings of high office, church and country retreat. America, its history, its culture and its people were alien to him; it had to be explained to him at one luncheon why the White House, the most famous building in the United States, had acquired its name. 'I got the distinct idea that he did not know the war of 1812 had ever happened,' General Raymond E. Lee observed.

Desperately, Halifax pushed other candidates: 'The US would like a Liberal! This supports perhaps your possibility of A.S [Sinclair]'; and then 'Another suggested to me last night was Woolton, who is said to have many of the more important qualities.' But it was all to no avail. In a conversation with the Prime Minister after Lothian's funeral, Halifax was persuaded, indeed instructed, to take the job. It was 'an opportunity . . . to do a piece of work that would reflect great credit on me personally', Churchill told him, while also suggesting that there were 'certain currents of opposition against my being at the Foreign Office and that, from my own point of view, I should gain by taking the other work'.

In Washington, enthusiasm for the appointment was in short supply. Henry Morgenthau Jr, Treasury secretary, brought Roosevelt's attention to an article in the _New Republic_ entitled 'The Halifax Blunder'. The editorial commented, 'We still hold that America deserves to be something more than a pocket in which to store old appeasers; many Americans will want to know what sort of war this is – the answer now given them is a poor one.'

For Clement Attlee, it was a clear advantage to see the back of the last of the appeasers. But Hugh Dalton regretted his departure: 'I have worked very hard at my personal relations with the Viscount and now all those hours of studied suavity will have been thrown away. I have now got to make a new start, on somewhat different lines, with Master Anthony.'

On 17 December President Roosevelt, tanned and relaxed after his Caribbean cruise, and having absorbed all the arguments put by Churchill and Lothian, decided to host a press conference at the White House. He proceeded, in the folksy language that the public found so reassuring, to propose a radical change to America's financial relationship with Britain.

The President told his audience that his desire now was to 'get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign' and substitute for it 'a gentleman's agreement to repay in kind'. After all, he repeated, the arms and munitions that America lent would not only be for Britain's defence, but would also be the best, immediate defence of the United States.

Roosevelt invoked an inspired homily to help the public understand the new arrangement he had in mind, and the moral force behind it. It is as if you have a neighbour whose house is on fire, he explained. The neighbour comes running to you and shouts over the garden fence, 'Neighbour, neighbour, my house is on fire, help me out, lend me your garden hose.' Well of course, being a good neighbour, you lend the garden hose to your neighbour and he puts out the fire – and then he gives you the hose back.

If that analogy was unpicked, it made little sense. The 'hose' represented tanks that in all likelihood would be blown up, planes that would be shot down and ships that would be sunk, so how could it be handed back in any shape at all? But in these early moments of 'Lend-Lease' – as it would swiftly become known – the disarming nature of Roosevelt's metaphor obscured any ambiguities it contained. Britain would be doing America's work while enabling her to stay out of the war, and that was what mattered; handing back the 'hose' – or payment – could wait until later.

This piece of homespun invention showed early signs of going down well with the public. The President sought to build on the momentum in one of his 'fireside chats' on 29 December. Emphasising that American security – and her chances of staying out of the war – were dependent upon British survival, he warned that current industrial efforts were insufficient. In a telling phrase, he described the role America should now play: 'We must be the great arsenal of democracy,' he told listeners.

This apparent commitment to full, unequivocal aid was music to the ears of the British government, facing at that moment a bill for arms purchases to the value of $1,000 million, with combined gold and dollar reserves of only $574 million with which to pay. But the words were still yet to be matched by deeds, as far as Churchill and his colleagues were concerned. Two days after Roosevelt's fireside chat, the heavy cruiser USS _Louisville_ was en route to the naval base of Simon's Town, near Cape Town in South Africa, to take on board the $50 million of Britain's gold reserves held for safe keeping there since early in the war.

The Prime Minister was affronted by this latest heavy call on Britain's dwindling liquid assets. 'I am much puzzled and even perturbed by the proposal . . . to collect whatever gold there may be in Cape Town,' read the initial draft of a telegram he planned to send to Roosevelt. 'This would inevitably become known to the world, and it would wear the aspect of a sheriff collecting the last assets of a helpless debtor.'

It was the frustration of a man still desperately anxious about Britain's financial predicament, not the usual familiar and deferential language he employed to the President. And in the end, Churchill thought better of it, erasing the grumbling passage. He wanted to get the pitch and tone of his first message of the New Year just right, so he asked Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Eden, the new foreign secretary, and Lord Beaverbrook to join him on New Year's Eve at the Number 10 Annexe and help compose the telegram.

The quartet began their message with a straightforward thank you. 'We are deeply grateful for all you said yesterday. We welcome especially the outline of your plans for giving us the aid, without which Hitlerism cannot be extirpated from Europe and Asia.' But worries remained. 'What would be the effect upon the world situation if we had to default in payments to your contractors, who have their workmen to pay? Would this not be exploited by the enemy as a complete breakdown in Anglo-American co-operation?' But, they added reassuringly, 'We shall be entirely ready, for our part, to lay bare to you all our resources and our liabilities around the world, and we shall seek no more help than the common cause demands.'

Their work done and the telegram dispatched, Kingsley Wood and Beaverbrook headed off into the night. Churchill took Eden on to the roof and together they looked at the stars and the new moon, and kept an eye on the enemy air activity. 'It was raining and the firing that evening was slight,' Eden noted. 'I could not help wondering what fate would have in store for us before the next New Year's Day came around.'

Churchill and his ministers need not have worried. Just twenty-four hours after he had delivered his 'arsenal of democracy' fireside chat, Roosevelt sat down in the White House to get things moving with two men who were already integral to Anglo-American financial diplomacy.

One was Henry Morgenthau Jr, US Secretary of the Treasury since 1934, who had played a crucial role in framing the New Deal legislation. The only Jew in the Cabinet, he was also one of Roosevelt's closest friends. The other, representing Churchill's interests, was one of the unsung allies of his administration: Arthur Blaikie Purvis, a London-born industrialist who had been given leave of absence from his position as president of Canadian Industries Limited to take up work as Britain's key buyer of war supplies.

A sharp-faced man with an eager air, fair hair and big, black, bushy eyebrows, Purvis had come a long way from his humble beginnings in Tottenham. Having won a scholarship to the local grammar school, he had been forced to leave at the age of thirteen on the death of his father, William, whereupon he had started as a five-shillings-a-week office boy in the City. At nineteen he had moved to Glasgow, to join the Nobel Explosives Company (later ICI), and by the age of twenty-four was in charge of the company's New York office. During the First World War he had been responsible for buying explosives for the company throughout America, and had made one of the largest war purchases, $25 million of acetone, which at the time was in acute shortage in the United Kingdom.

From mid-1940 Purvis, 'a man of the highest integrity with no enemies and, indeed, no critics', had been given a free hand in his role as director-general of the British Purchasing Commission to secure whatever contracts he could from US firms for his country's war effort. On two dramatic days, 16–17 June, in New York, he had pulled off one of the greatest deals of the war. At the time American factories had been choked with orders for arms for France, but it had become clear that within a few hours Marshal Pétain would sign an armistice and that those contracts would be frozen and lost to Britain – a nation whose army had discarded all its munitions on the beaches of Dunkirk. This really was the proverbial race against time. So Purvis had scoured the city to round up the three French officials who dealt with the purchases, and by late evening had managed to gather them all in his apartment. There he got to work drafting and redrafting the contracts, until by 3 a.m. they were ready for signature.

The War Cabinet's instructions had been that Purvis should buy only the limited number of armaments the country needed – and could afford – but the French insisted Britain should take on all of the contracts, or nothing. With no time to consult London, Purvis hesitated momentarily, and then signed away $612 million, at a stroke of the pen doubling Britain's dollar liabilities. Lord Woolton admitted to the House of Lords a few weeks later, 'Never have wider powers to commit this country been delegated to any Mission, and indeed it is true also to say that no Mission has ever carried so grave a responsibility.' Purvis's decisive, unilateral action had ensured his country acquired the tanks, guns and planes necessary to continue to wage war.

Now, in the Oval Office with Roosevelt and Morgenthau, Purvis prepared carefully for the start of the Lend-Lease negotiations. Nominally he reported to a small inner War Cabinet grouping of three: Beaverbrook, A.V. Alexander and Sir Andrew Duncan, the new Minister of Supply. He had guessed the President would want to know the precise value of the goods Britain needed, but Duncan's department, the co-ordinating ministry in Whitehall for munitions, had so far failed to give him an accurate estimate. So Purvis and his staff had done the arithmetic and come up with their own figure – a staggering fifteen billion dollars. When he nervously handed a balance sheet containing the sum to Roosevelt, he was relieved at the President's calm reaction: Roosevelt told Morgenthau to ready himself to draw up the necessary legislation for when he gave it the 'green light'.

The isolationists on Capitol Hill and their supporters in the press had by no means given up the fight. On 1 February the _Chicago Daily Tribune_ , which had dubbed Lend-Lease the 'Dictator Bill', pounced upon a meeting held between Lord Halifax and Senator Walter F. George, chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations and a key player in steering the bill through Congress.

The _Tribune_ claimed the new British ambassador had 'urged quick action on the measure' and its massive front-page headline screamed 'HALIFAX STEERS F.D.R. BILL'. In fact Halifax had merely enquired about the bill's timetable, in what was more of a social encounter than one involving serious diplomacy. The embarrassment to the Lend-Lease cause was momentary, but Halifax learned his lesson. 'It is an example of how boggy the ground may easily become,' he ruefully reflected that night.

Back in England, Roosevelt's personal envoy Harry Hopkins was about to arrive on a fact-finding mission. The former social worker, one of the principal architects of Roosevelt's 'New Deal' legislation, had been tasked with taking a long, hard look at Churchill's government to assess whether the President would get value for money from the largesse he was about to put Britain's way via Lend-Lease. As well as assessing the state of Britain, Hopkins was there to establish a relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt. As he told Ed Murrow, the Columbia Broadcasting System's London correspondent, he wanted to 'try to get an understanding of Churchill, and the men he sees after midnight'. On his first weekend Hopkins was invited to stay at Ditchley Park, the home of Conservative MP Ronald Tree and now Churchill's alternative weekend retreat 'when the moon was high' – i.e., when Chequers was too conspicuous to night bombers. There he met the key figures in the Prime Minister's entourage – including Bracken and Lindemann – and he felt for the first time the full force of Churchill's personality.

After dinner on the Saturday night, the party made their way into the beautiful library, with its marble fireplaces, bookshelves right up to the cornices, six Georgian armchairs, immense sofa, and two Alfred Munnings paintings hung over the mantelpiece.

Churchill launched into a lecture of exceptional virtuosity, even by his standards. Oliver Lyttelton, President of the Board of Trade and one of his rapt audience, judged it to be one of his very best: 'His sonorous eloquence, his sense of history, of man's destiny and Great Britain's part in it were enthralling.' The monologue ended with just the sort of folksy image Roosevelt would have admired, of a humble labourer returning home at night, 'smoke curling upwards from his cottage home in the serene evening sky', content in the knowledge that there was no secret police to knock upon his door and disturb his leisure. 'A government with the consent of the people, and man's freedom to say what he will – war aims other than these we have none,' the Prime Minister concluded.

Asked how the President would respond to all this, Hopkins replied in an exaggerated drawl, 'Well Prime Minister, I don't think the President will give a damn for all that.' Lyttelton recoiled: 'Heavens alive, it's gone wrong, thought I. There was another pause, and then Harry said, You see, we're only interested in seeing that Goddam sonofabitch, Hitler, get licked.' The gathering dissolved into laughter, and driven by Churchill's loquaciousness and Hopkins' dry humour, the Anglo-American alliance made great strides. That same weekend Churchill read the preliminary text of the Lend-Lease Bill, and told Hopkins it 'had made him feel that a new world had come into being'.

When Hopkins picked up his pen in his suite at Claridge's three days later, he had already made up his mind. 'The people here are amazing from Churchill down, and if courage alone can win – the result will be inevitable,' he wrote to Roosevelt. His view of where the power lay was unequivocal. ' _Churchill_ is the government in every sense of the word . . . I cannot emphasize too strongly that he is the one and only person over here with whom you need to have full meeting of minds.'

Hopkins stayed in England for six weeks. In his final thirty-page cabled report to the President, he concluded, 'The most important single observation I have to make is that most of the Cabinet and all of the military leaders here believe invasion is imminent. They are straining every effort night and day to meet this. They believe that it may come at any moment, but not later than May 1.'

Back in Washington, the congressional hearings on the Lend-Lease Bill saw the Republicans attack the President for assuming quasi-totalitarian powers. Equally there were many who feared Britain was about to take America for a free ride, just as she had done after the First World War when she had failed to meet all her debts. But Roosevelt prevailed. On 8 February the House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 260 to 165. By the time it reached the floor of the Senate it was clear that the sound and fury from the isolationists was fading away. But the White House wanted further commitments from the British government to ensure its final passage. If Britain was to qualify for unlimited, open-ended aid, she had to be seen to be hurting, and 'stripping' herself of her remaining financial resources.

Morgenthau had asked Purvis and Sir Frederick Phillips, head of the Treasury mission in Washington, to examine direct British investments in America, such as Shell Oil, American Viscose, Lever Brothers, Dunlop Tire and Brown & Williamson Tobacco, and advised that some should be sold off to convince American politicians – and the American public – of Britain's good faith. The War Cabinet were reluctant to commence the sale, but Lord Halifax, the recipient of much of the pressure in Washington, began to see that it was vital. He sent a startlingly frank telegram to Churchill, stating that 'we should, without delay, hand over to America our remaining financial resources in that country'. All that could be hoped for were half-decent prices, and not a knockdown sale.

Roosevelt followed this up by sending a message to Churchill on 4 March, requesting a spectacular sale that would demonstrate to Congress that Britain was doing all she could. Six days later Morgenthau was running short of patience. He paid an unsolicited call on the British ambassador, dragging him out to dinner at Casey's and demanding swift action. 'A financial problem – not too easy to solve,' noted Lord Halifax in his diary that night. But after a late-night call to one adviser, Robert Brand of Lazard Brothers, and conversations the next day with another, Sir Edward Peacock from the Bank of England, it was decided to 'offer up' the Viscose Corporation of America, a firm that was 97 per cent owned by the British company Courtaulds.

Viscose, Britain's largest and most profitable holding, would eventually be sold for $54 million, only about half of its market value. This satisfied Morgenthau, but the humiliating sale angered the British government, in particular its key economic adviser, John Maynard Keynes. He accused Morgenthau of 'stripping us of our liquid assets to the greatest extent possible _before_ the Lend-Lease Bill comes into operation, so as to leave us with the minimum in hand to meet during the rest of the war the numerous obligations which will not be covered by the Lend-Lease Bill'.

Keynes was right. Morgenthau was a good friend to the 'English' (as he always referred to Britain), but not without reservations, and he was always first and foremost a staunch defender of American interests. He had an eye on the future and the battle for world markets after the war, so he had little desire to leave Britain with bountiful caches of gold and dollars. In fact by 11 March she was holding just $12 million in unscheduled reserves. But this was the day the financial lifeline finally arrived, as President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill into law, having achieved a comfortable margin of success, 60 to 31, in the Senate a couple of days earlier, followed by an equally decisive 317 to 71 victory in the House of Representatives, to which the bill had been sent back for a final time to consider some Senate amendments.

Churchill had history in mind when he addressed the House of Commons the following day: 'The Government and people of the United States have in fact written a new Magna Carta, which not only has regard to the rights and laws upon which a healthy and advancing civilisation can alone be erected, but also proclaims by precept and example the duty of free men and free nations, wherever they may be, to share the responsibility and burden of enforcing them.'

Lend-Lease as Magna Carta was not Churchill's idea. That part of his speech had been written by an enterprising official at the Foreign Office, Professor Thomas North Whitehead, an economics graduate from Trinity College, Cambridge, who, two days later, wrote a paper for his minister, Rab Butler, that took the notion one step further. The Lincoln copy of Magna Carta had been in America for the past two years, on display in the British Pavilion of the New York World Fair before moving to the Library of Congress.

'Many thousands of Americans have waited daily in long queues to view it with a reverence and pride scarcely believable,' wrote Whitehead. So why not offer it as a gift to the American nation? 'It would represent the only really adequate gesture which it is in our power to make in return for the means to preserve our country.' But more than that, it might have significant political advantages. 'The immediate effect of such an action would be greatly to increase the emotional interest of Americans in this country, which would thereby assist the President in his task of carrying public opinion with him in giving us increasingly greater assistance.'

Whitehead suggested that the dean and chapter of Lincoln be offered one of the 'less perfect' British Museum copies of the great charter, together with war bonds of £100,000 towards the upkeep of the cathedral, or, alternatively, just paid a straight £250,000 in bonds. The gift could be announced by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, or alternatively by the King in a special broadcast. An appropriate handover ceremony would follow in Washington.

Roosevelt had been delighted when Magna Carta had arrived at Congress in late 1939, joking that there might have been criticism if it had been 'turned over to the executive branch of the government, i.e., the King John of modern days'. In the Library of Congress, however, 'the precious document has been retained in the safe hands of the barons and the commoners'.

Ministers were now enthused by Whitehead's idea. 'I have always wanted to do this,' noted Anthony Eden. His suggested overture was, 'will you accept it as a symbol and a seal of our compact to fight to the last against the forces of evil?' Rab Butler, his bright young junior minister, agreed, noting that the handover would require an Act of Parliament that 'would give an opportunity for airing democratic principles here'. This was 'as good a psychological moment as any' to make the gift.

Churchill asked Butler to bring the matter before the War Cabinet on Monday, 17 March. But at that meeting opinion was divided. Some felt if it was to be done, it should be done quickly; others doubted whether it would make much impact on public opinion in the United States, but worried that it might attract unfavourable reaction in the Dominions.

Butler was told to go away and make discreet inquiries of the dean and chapter of Lincoln. Meanwhile Leo Amery, who had not attended the War Cabinet but had quickly learned of the proposal, wrote to Churchill informing him that two years earlier _he_ had put a very similar idea to Neville Chamberlain, who had doubted if the dean could be persuaded to give up the charter. Nonetheless, Amery pointed out that Lincoln Cathedral needed a lot of money for restoration and believed 'it ought not to be impossible to overcome their resistance'.

The India secretary suggested nothing should be done at that moment and instead offered up 15 June, Magna Carta Day, as a much more auspicious occasion for the gesture. The Prime Minister, in his view, should announce the gift in a special broadcast to America and the Empire, extolling Magna Carta 'as the foundation of our common liberties'. 'I prefer this,' Churchill noted to Butler. 'Will you get in touch with Mr Amery to discuss the gift with him?'

So discreet were the enquiries, however, that history does not record the views of the Dean of Lincoln, R.A. Mitchell. The copy of Magna Carta sent to America remained in the Library of Congress until it was returned to its home in early 1946. Whitehead's imaginative idea had come to nothing.

## Chapter Six

## **'Uncle Fred's Recipe for Survival'**

11 March to 21 June 1941

A week after the signing of the Lend-Lease Act, Churchill paid court to the latest important American to arrive in London, the new United States ambassador, Republican New Yorker John Winant. The venue was the Savoy Hotel, although in keeping with the sober times the occasion was a luncheon rather than a lavish dinner.

The hotel's maître chef de cuisine for the past twenty-two years, François Latry, was renowned for the extravagance of his dishes; he had once filled crayfish with foie gras and braised turbot in vintage burgundy for the table of writers Arthur Conan Doyle and Hilaire Belloc. Now, however, he had to adapt his talents to the strictures of the times, and the Ministry of Food was using his expertise and imagination to create a series of new recipes.

That afternoon one of those dishes was placed in front of the Prime Minister and his fellow guests, who included most of the Cabinet, various press proprietors and other high-ranking men in British public life (the Pilgrims Society, which was hosting the luncheon, was a male-only body). It was an early outing for a very different kind of pie, consisting of boiled diced vegetables – potato, parsnip, cauliflower, swede and carrot – in a gravy flavoured with spring onions and thickened with oatmeal, under a wheatmeal crust.

Monsieur Latry had christened this stodgy if nutritious offering 'Woolton Pie', in honour of Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food; _The Times_ published the recipe a few weeks later, and it would become a symbol of austerity in the kitchen. 'Steak and kidney pie without the steak and kidney,' joked the man who inspired the dish. Churchill's palate was attuned to richer fare, however. '[I thought] it was extremely good,' Woolton noted. '[But] when it was offered to the Prime Minister, he sent it away, and asked for some cold beef. I told him afterwards that I thought he treated my pie with less than respect, and he replied "Yes, I thought it was one of your synthetic productions".'

Fortified by the meat, Churchill went on to make 'an absolutely first-class speech, full of vigour and imaginative phrasing', helping to bind the new ambassador to the British war effort. Of equal importance with the Prime Minister's dazzling oratory, though, was the fact that the two most instantly recognisable – indeed, the two most popular – members of the government had shared a joke, an indication of a developing relationship. Britain needed them both working in unison in the ongoing struggle for control of the Atlantic seaways; Churchill, as Minister of Defence, to deploy the right resources to fight it, Woolton, as the guardian of the nation's larder, to ensure that the essential supplies that got through would prevent the country from starving.

Things had not always been so relaxed between the two men. Woolton had been Chamberlain's appointment, in April 1940, and after his first meeting with the new Prime Minister six weeks later he had been left with the distinct impression that Churchill doubted his ability to do the job: 'It was clear that he had very little confidence in me and I heard some time afterwards that he had said to some of his friends, "We shall have to be ready with a rescue squad for Woolton".' Churchill seemed unconvinced that his food minister could handle the administrative burden of controlling a staff of over 13,000 and, more crucially, did not think this businessman would operate effectively in Parliament and in the full glare of the public spotlight.

For the next six months Churchill and Woolton met occasionally in Cabinet, but mostly communicated by note and letter. It was not an auspicious start. The Prime Minister, whose instincts were against rationing and only accepted it grudgingly as a necessary evil, fired off a number of stinging missives to his food minister whenever he thought new restrictions were excessive. On 12 July, Churchill objected to Woolton's instructions to hotels and restaurants to shorten their menus and to serve either a fish or a meat course, but not both: 'Is it worse for the country for a man to eat a little of three or four courses of food, daintily cooked out of scraps, or a good solid plate of roast beef? Is it more patriotic to avoid luxury by having the food, whatever it is, badly cooked? Is it wrong to eat up the luxury foods which are already in the country, or ought they to be wasted? This is just the sort of criticism that will be raised in Parliament.'

Woolton stood firm, writing in reply the next day: 'My mail, which I read every morning, shows that the working class is concerned that the rich and poor should be treated alike, and the reason why I introduced the phrase about luxury feeding into my broadcast was in order to balance the rationing of tea and margarine, which understandably affects the poorer classes the most.' Churchill had the last word, of course, retorting sardonically, 'Almost all the food faddists I have ever known, nut eaters and the like, have died young after a period of senile decay. The British soldier is far more likely to be right than the scientists. All he cares about is beef . . . the way to lose the war is to try to force the British public into a diet of milk, oatmeal, potatoes etc, washed down on all gala occasions by a little lime juice.' Having made his point, the Prime Minister pressed his case no further. Indeed, Woolton's exhortation on 'luxury' eating – 'I am asking you for a hard life', he told his radio audience – would eventually be extended in May 1942, with an order restricting the price of a meal in a restaurant to a maximum of 5s, and limiting it to three courses.

Woolton held his ground on numerous other issues. But he was, to an extent, intimidated by Churchill. 'I always felt like a small boy when he used to reprove me for having taken action without consulting either him or the Cabinet.' His business career had been devoid of the dead hand of government bureaucracy, and he was apt to make swift decisions on the spot without going through the various committees.

'Lunched with Woolton. He isn't very happy in government and doesn't propose to stay after the war,' observed Sir John Reith in late July. Beaverbrook sought to reassure the Food Minister that he was 'one of the PM's favourites', while the Chief Whip, David Margesson, soothed his worries by telling him, 'Churchill is not really interested, in spite of his long experience, in any of the civil or social problems. His whole interest is in war organisation – hence his lack of interest in the Ministry of Food.' But by late November 1940 Woolton was fretting that he had been given only one proper tête-à-tête with the Prime Minister, and – perhaps because of this distance – in private he was entertaining serious, and extremely gloomy, reservations about Churchill's government.

Woolton had asked if he could make a speech warning that shipping space for non-essential foods might have to be given up for military purposes that winter. 'The Prime Minister wrote back the sort of letter a headmaster might send to a 5th form boy, telling me that I had all the powers and to ration – showing that he had completely failed to understand anything about the food situation . . . There is no centralised government in the country, and no control . . . Chamberlain succeeded in getting a personal allegiance from the members of his Government, because although he was not strong he was absolutely reliable and trustworthy. There's no allegiance to Churchill; there's nobody in the Government whom the public would trust.'

Just before Christmas 1940, Woolton decided to take the initiative and wrote to Churchill requesting an interview, saying the time had come for the Prime Minister to learn more about the food situation. Invited to lunch at Chequers on Boxing Day, Woolton 'saw a new Winston, in the midst of his family, where the relationship was obviously that of the father and not of the Prime Minister'. More significant was the lengthy discussion afterwards, when Woolton's complaints about the shortcomings of the Economic Policy and Food Committees were listened to carefully, and the Prime Minister – who had laid out on the table a host of documents and diagrams illustrating the threat to Britain's merchant convoys – was 'receptive and helpful'. One of the outcomes of their talk was the setting up of an import executive, a group of ministers headed by Sir Andrew Duncan (Minister of Supply), whose remit was to improve shipping, the repair and the control of ships, and the unloading of food at the country's docks.

That Boxing Day meeting was a turning point for Woolton. Rather than being assured of it by others, he could now see for himself that he had the essential confidence of the Prime Minister. Disputes would continue – Churchill's attitude to the rationing of food was very different, and he would often bring in his scientific adviser Professor Lindemann as a counterweight to Woolton – but though he was unlikely to invite his food minister to Number 10 for a late-night brandy and cigar, the Prime Minister recognised his huge value to the government. In fact, he might even have felt a tinge of jealousy at the attention that Woolton had attracted, and the plaudits he was increasingly receiving. Churchill was undeniably the leader of the nation, the great orator loftily inspiring the people and maintaining their spirit, but Woolton was the consummate communicator, dispensing advice and encouragement on the radio on a daily basis as the country tried to make ends meet.

He seemed a natural performer, as if born to the role. But in truth, he had been equipped for his task by a lifetime of experience in the real world, far removed from Westminster.

Frederick James Marquis was born on 23 August 1883 in a terraced house in Salford, near Manchester, the only surviving child of Thomas Robert, a wandering saddler, and his ambitious wife Margaret. He attended Ardwick Higher Grade School, where his government colleague Ellen Wilkinson was later educated – he would lecture her when he returned for a brief spell as a pupil-teacher. After winning a county council exhibition to Manchester Grammar School, he initially developed a keen interest in the arts, studying Greek in order to qualify for a Cambridge scholarship. The story told was that the day eighteen-year-old Frederick was informed he had won the place, his father confided in him that the doctor had given him just six months to live. The son tore up the letter and stayed at home to look after his fading parent; as it turned out, the invalid was to survive another forty-four years.

Instead of journeying to the gleaming spires, young Marquis went to the University of Manchester, graduating in 1906 with a combination degree (mathematics, chemistry and science), and returning in 1910 to take up a research fellowship in economics; he was awarded his MA two years later. The formative moment of his life arrived a couple of years after that when he was living in digs in the slums of Liverpool, as a member of the city's university 'settlement' – a reformist movement aimed at bringing together the volunteer middle class and the poverty-stricken working class. His next-door neighbour in grim Park Street, a 'woman of some refinement both of speech and appearance', was found dead, her body having lain undiscovered for several days. The coroner's shocking verdict was that she had died of starvation. Woolton would recall many years later, 'Few things affected my life more surely . . . here was a problem of poverty on our very doorstep. We were young men . . . expounding economic history and theory – yet here we were, living in this sordid street, the surrounding houses of which were insanitary and verminous, where the sickening smell of overcrowded humanity was such that, as I write now, it still seems to nauseate me.

'Was the problem that confronted and disturbed us economic or moral or endemic to human nature? Here was a challenge to a youthful mind.'

Marquis was determined to play his part in confronting that poverty. He was soon made warden of the university settlement, where he showed his reforming zeal by establishing a free dental care unit and maternity and prenatal clinics. Around the same time he also assumed management responsibility for the David Lewis Hotel and Club Association in Liverpool, where local retail firm Lewis's provided cheap beds for the homeless, recreation in a 'people's palace' – comprising a club, library, billiard room and temperance bar – and a large theatre.

Through the work during the First World War of his new wife, Maud, and women doctors in the university settlement's innovative maternity clinic, Frederick witnessed at first hand the remarkable results social action could bring. Infant mortality per thousand families was reduced to a third of the previous local average, through a careful scientific approach to child welfare, diet in particular. These were lessons Marquis would apply in his work in the next war.

The young Clement Attlee was also deeply involved in social work at that time, at the Toynbee Hall 'settlement' in London's East End. The two, who would sit round the Cabinet table three decades later, met briefly in 1909, when Attlee listened to Woolton deliver a paper on his work in Liverpool. Both would publish books on their experiences: Woolton's _Recreation for the Poorest_ in 1913, Attlee's _The Social Worker_ in 1920.

Attlee sought political solutions to the poverty he encountered through the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Marquis, too, leaned leftwards for a period and was especially impressed by the work of Beatrice Webb of the Fabian Society on reform of the Poor Law. But an encounter with the founder of the ILP, the legendary Keir Hardie, helped push Marquis in the opposite direction to his future coalition colleague.

Hardie came to speak at a meeting hosted by the Liverpool University settlement, and afterwards was invited to dine at the home of one of its wealthy supporters. After a lavish supper, Hardie approached Marquis and told him this was a 'very dangerous house for a young man to be in'. When the young social worker asked him why, Hardie replied, 'I am a vegetarian, a teetotaller, a non-smoker, and I always sleep on a hard bed. I have reduced my wants to a minimum and no one can buy me.' Those words left a big impression on Marquis: 'Here was an ardent reformer and a Puritan, but not a deep thinker.' He realised that, unlike Hardie, he had no difficulty reconciling socialist principles with the possession of wealth, or indeed the pursuit of it. 'The other thing that Mr Keir Hardie did not notice was that the love of power was probably at least as great a temptation as the love of luxury.'

By the end of the First World War – during which he was a civil servant in the War Office, turning out boots for the Allied armies – Marquis's engagement with democratic socialism had cooled. He resigned his membership of the Fabian Society, now believing that the abolition of poverty could only be achieved through business efficiency. Social problems would be solved by reducing the cost of living and by increasing employment; better labour conditions should be pursued, not only out of human decency, but because they would bring in more profit.

This philosophy he preached, and practised, during a long and highly successful career at Lewis's department store, which he joined in 1920 and where he swiftly rose through the ranks, becoming a director in 1928 and chairman in 1936. Marquis forsook a political career, but increasingly established himself as one of the 'great and good'; a respected voice at the interface between business and government. He was appointed to committees studying the future of the General Post Office, civil aviation, overseas development, industry and air raid shelters. On the latter, a controversial subject before the war as well as during the Blitz, he backed Sir John Anderson in pointing out the dangers of 'psychological dependence' on deep shelters.

Knighted in 1935, Marquis was awarded a peerage in 1939 for his services to industry, taking the title Baron Woolton after the leafy Liverpool suburb in which he lived. His connections to government had grown strong but that did not stop him, in the spring of 1938, from announcing that Lewis's – a largely Jewish-run firm – would boycott German goods in protest over the annexation of Austria. Woolton was summoned by Chamberlain to Downing Street, where he received a 'high-powered rocket . . . I was told that the Prime Minister strongly disapproved of my action and that I had no right to interfere in the foreign policy of the Government.'

With war looming, however, no sensible government was going to ignore the skills of one of the most highly regarded businessmen of his day. Woolton was first given the post of honorary technical adviser on textiles to the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha. Simply put, he was the 'Army's wardrobe master', charged with clothing the nation's soldiers for battle. 'It was the most difficult job I have ever done in my life, and the one that caused me the greatest anxiety,' he would later claim. But by drawing on experience from his previous wartime role, and utilising all his contacts in industry, the task was completed within four months: over a million khaki suits, overcoats and pairs of boots, delivered and ready for action.

A natural progression followed, with Woolton's appointment as director-general at the Ministry of Supply, overseeing the provision of equipment and stores for the war machine. Then, in April 1940, he stopped being one of the government's 'back room' boys, as he described it, and was handed the key Home Front appointment of Minister of Food. On just his second day in the job, in a speech at the Queen's Hall in central London, Woolton launched the National Food Campaign and delivered the first of many memorable sound bites. He appealed to his audience of mainly women to mobilise themselves on the 'Kitchen Front', to eschew the comfortable habits of peacetime and to avoid waste. Sixty shiploads of tea a year could be saved if the maxim 'one spoonful for each person . . . and none for the pot' were adopted.

'I made it clear that "food" was going to be a difficulty which Government and people alike would share.' The philosophy of the 'settlement' would now be translated into executive action. Woolton would be a constant visitor to the nation's kitchens.

'Seldom have I seen a face with so much benevolence,' remarked the portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh after his first session with Lord Woolton. His camera captured a tall, grey-haired, affable-looking man with a commanding presence, who carried an exaggerated air of 'urbanity and polish' with him while in the company of his cabinet colleagues, but resembled a kindly if occasionally stern uncle in his dealings with the general public. Indeed, as his many millions of radio listeners got to know him, 'Uncle Fred' became his sobriquet.

Some of those who sat round the table at his Cabinet committees – like Herbert Morrison – found his manner on occasions 'somewhat portentous' and 'rather exasperating'. But his junior ministers thrived on the responsibility – and freedom to make decisions – that he gave them. 'Lord Woolton was not only a great administrator, but he knew how to treat his Under-Secretary as few ministers ever do,' remarked Robert Boothby. Most government colleagues agreed with the general verdict of Oliver Lyttelton, Minister of Production, who described him as 'A man of transparent honesty. I can recall no instance of him saying an unkind word about anyone. It was because of these great qualities that his associates worked happily under him.'

By the time Woolton moved into the Ministry of Food's headquarters in April 1940, rationing was already well under way. First to be hit – on 8 January – had been bacon and ham (which were limited to 4oz a week), butter (4oz) and sugar (12oz). Then on 11 March meat was rationed too – in shillings and pence rather than pounds and ounces, beginning at 1s 10d. An opinion poll carried out by the British Institute of Public Opinion in November 1939, after Woolton's predecessor William 'Shakes' Morrison had announced the introduction of rationing, showed that 60 per cent thought it was necessary, as against 28 per cent who were opposed and 12 per cent of 'don't knows'. Woolton could draw on this bedrock of support when further austerity measures had to be introduced. The public appreciated that there would be no queues for essential foods and that they would get the ration without fail, while the system seemed fair enough as it was the same for everyone, rich or poor.

Woolton was also fortunate to inherit a fairly well-run ministry under the experienced permanent secretary Sir Henry French. Its main failings were a poor public image and low staff morale. Woolton's strategy for dealing with the latter was to set off round the offices in Portman Square, meeting each and every employee and hearing at first hand their concerns. 'I made the staff feel that we were engaged on a task that was essentially a personal one for the people of this country; that our high organisational efficiency had to prove itself by demonstration on the breakfast table in millions of homes.' After that, his door was always open to those with either suggestions or complaints.

Soon after taking over Woolton persuaded King George VI to tour the ministry, where the monarch met civil servants and inspected the Chart Room, the hub of the whole organisation. 'That short morning visit did more good for the internal morale . . . than anybody could have done in a year,' Woolton reflected. Another early move was to put up a sign over the staff entrance that read, 'We not merely cope, we care'.

He set out to rectify the ministry's indifferent public image with the help of Howard Marshall, its first ever director of public relations. Marshall shared Woolton's interest in improving conditions for the disadvantaged, and was concerned in particular for the lot of poor tenants. In the 1930s he had joined a national campaign against slum housing, even co-writing a book on the subject. But it was the sound of his deep, warm, unhurried voice commentating on Test Match cricket on BBC Radio for which he was best known. His insight into the game was sharp, yet just as important was the air of expectation and drama he brought to a great sporting occasion. On 23 August 1938 millions had crowded around their radios, riveted by his thirteen-hour description of Len Hutton's world record score of 364 at The Oval. Marshall's conversational, lyrical style drew audiences in, making listeners feel as though they were sitting across the table from a friend.

Woolton's growing prowess on the radio drew heavily on Marshall's technique. 'I always kept a picture in front of my mind of the man in a cottage house, sitting without a collar, with slippers on, at the end of the day's work, with children playing on the rug, with his wife washing up in an adjoining room with the door open; that was my audience – and it was interrupted by a ring on the front door bell, and a visitor arriving in the middle of my broadcast. If I was fortunate, and successful, the man said, "Sit down and shut up; we are listening to Woolton".'

Listen to him they certainly did. From July 1940, as rationing tightened even further, his avuncular presence was hardly ever absent from the airwaves. Woolton was no stranger to the routine and practice of public relations from his time at Lewis's department store, of course, but his experiences as a social worker and a teacher gave him a keen understanding of the 'ordinary folk' huddled round the wireless, who in turn felt he recognised their concerns.

The BBC established a short programme called _The Kitchen Front_ , over which the Ministry of Food retained substantial control. It was broadcast six mornings a week, at 8.15 after the morning news, to a listening public of 5.5 million. Hosted by familiar cookery experts such as Marguerite Patten, it gave housewives ideas on how to stretch very little a long way, explaining how to make cakes without flour, sugar or lard, rissoles without beef, and tea without tea leaves. Wasting any kind of food was subliminally portrayed as unpatriotic. Not only that, on 12 August 1940 a Waste of Food Order was introduced, with a maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment or a fine of £500, for squandering precious rations. Later the ministry introduced _Food Flash_ information films in cinemas. These lasted just fifteen seconds and relayed simple, unambiguous messages designed to encourage thrift.

Woolton and Marshall assailed the public with adverts in newspapers, bright posters, catchy phrases and rhymes. 'The only way to influence the public mind through leaflets and posters is by direct, simple statement,' Woolton asserted, so the likes of 'Grow Your Own' (onions), 'Waste Not, Want Not', 'Eat Up Your Greens' and 'Keep a Pig' were born. Cartoon characters such as 'Potato Pete' and 'Dr Carrot' appeared in the pages of every woman's magazine, encouraging children to eat their vegetables, and there was even a popular ditty that featured Uncle Fred himself:

Those who have the will to win,

Cook potatoes in their skin,

Knowing that the sight of peelings,

Deeply hurts Lord Woolton's feelings

It was sung by Betty Driver, whose Lancashire hotpot would later find a place in most housewives' recipe books. Well-known music hall artistes like 'Gert and Daisy' – Elsie and Doris Waters – and Tommy Trinder were also recruited to the cause, appearing with Woolton on public platforms.

The Ministry of Food occasionally veered from information and exhortation to sheer propaganda, as in the case of the carrots and the RAF ace. Woolton responded to an oversupply of carrots – 100,000 of them – by suggesting that the RAF's exceptional night-flying was due to its pilots consuming, via the vegetable, large amounts of carotene, which improved their night vision. He impressed on the public that they would see much better in the blackout if they followed their heroes' lead and took in extra quantities of vitamin A by doing the same.

The vehicle for this benign deception – in truth the introduction of airborne radar was the main reason for the pilots' success – was twenty-three-year-old Flight Lieutenant John Cunningham, who was quickly dubbed 'Cat's Eyes' as the number of enemy aircraft he downed steadily mounted. It was a nickname Cunningham privately loathed, especially because he gave substantial credit for his twenty-plus kills to his brilliant onboard radar operator 'Jimmy' Rawnsley. Nevertheless, he went along for the ministry's ride. 'CARROTS DFC IS NIGHT BLITZ HERO' was the headline in the _Daily Express_ when Cunningham received his first medal. Herbert Morrison – himself well versed in the tricks of public relations – thought the episode a 'masterstroke' on the Food Minister's part.

Effective publicity was one thing, but if Woolton was to save Britain from malnutrition he also needed the very best scientific advice. The nation's diet was now likely to be hugely dependent on home agriculture. With such limited resources, how could he supply all the calories and vitamins needed to sustain not only the country's fighting services but also its heavy manual workers, its housewives, babies, children and pregnant and nursing mothers? The Food Minister was fascinated by the rapid advance of science in the area of nutrition, and sought to recruit the best and the brightest. Among others, he brought in to advise him Sir Henry Dale, Nobel Prize winner in physiology in 1936, and Lord Horder, the King's physician.

Already in place as the ministry's chief scientific adviser was the noted biochemist Jack Drummond, and it was he who drew up the sound nutritional principles that guided Woolton's wartime decision-making. In pioneering work in the early 1930s, Drummond had succeeded in isolating pure vitamin A. His involvement with the new science of nutrition, combined with his interest in gastronomy, led him to undertake a comprehensive study of the English diet stretching back over five hundred years. In 1939, on the eve of war, he published the results of his work in a book – co-authored with Anne Wilbraham, later his second wife – called _The Englishman's Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet._ This eminently readable mix of social history and biochemistry demonstrated that malnutrition was not just a social issue, but would be a pressing wartime concern, too. It was vital in particular to identify the correct food that would fortify soldiers on the battlefield and workers in the munitions factories.

Prior to his appointment, Drummond had sent a memorandum to the Ministry of Food outlining what would turn out to be his and Woolton's basic strategy. In it, he recognised that any wholesale experiment in creative nutrition had to work hand in hand with national habit and tradition. With that in mind, he advocated the provision of bread of high nutritive value (the National Wholemeal Loaf, disliked by the public), an increase in the consumption of potatoes, oatmeal, cheese and green vegetables, the supply of not less than a pint of milk a day to expectant and nursing mothers (and to all children up to the age of fifteen) and the fortification of margarine by adding vitamins A and D. He also ensured that pregnant women and the youngest children – in the almost complete absence of citrus fruits – received rations of blackcurrant and rosehip syrup as an alternative source of vitamin C.

Valuable as Drummond's advice proved, however, hard political choices had to be faced. The advantage in the Atlantic lay firmly with the U-boats and the Luftwaffe, which by spring 1941 were inflicting huge losses on Britain's merchant convoys. Woolton's larder was shrinking dramatically.

On Wednesday, 26 February, Convoy OB 290, sailing off the west coast of Ireland, was attacked by four Focke-Wulf Condor bombers. Seven merchant ships with a total capacity of 35,107 tons were sent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The following day, the U-47, commanded by the legendary Günther Prien, took advantage of the resulting chaos to penetrate the remaining escorts in the convoy and sink three more. It was Germany's greatest single triumph of the main Atlantic campaign.

The success of the Condors so far out to sea, the havoc caused by the concentration of U-boats between Britain and Iceland, and the impunity with which two battle cruisers from the German navy, _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ , were operating along the convoy routes, were all preying on Churchill's mind. On the night of the OB 290 disaster, Brendan Bracken suggested to Jock Colville that the Prime Minister should not be told, as it would prevent him from sleeping. But at 3 a.m. Churchill asked Colville what the latest information was from the Admiralty. When Colville relayed the news, commenting that it was 'distressing', Churchill replied: 'Distressing! It is terrifying. If it goes on it will be the end of us.'

With setbacks in North Africa and the Balkans, there was much to concern the Prime Minister at this point in the war. But it was the 'supreme menace' of the U-boats that now dominated most of his waking hours. Woolton was no less concerned: Britain was hugely reliant on imports of food. Two-thirds of it was brought in from overseas, requiring twenty million tons of shipping a year. Fifty per cent of meat was imported, 70 per cent of cheese, sugar, cereals and fats, 80 per cent of fruits and 91 per cent of butter. Of this, one-sixth of meat imports, one-quarter of butter imports and half of all imported cheese came from New Zealand alone. A giant map of the world on the wall of Woolton's office showed the great distances food had to travel to reach the shores of Britain: meat, butter and cheese, for example, journeyed up to 13,500 miles, sugar 4,000 to 11,200 miles, milk products 2,700 to 13,500, jam 6,000 to 12,000, tea 11,500, rice 11,200, wheat 2,700 to 11,000, palm oil 9,000 and oranges and lemons 1,500 to 6,000.

Before the war Britain's total imports of food and raw materials, excluding oil, had amounted to 60 million tons. Professor Lindemann's Statistical Branch calculated that by the end of 1940 this had fallen to 45.4 million tons, and in 1941 the country was on course to lose another 15 million tons. Woolton's monthly report on the 'Food Situation' to the War Cabinet in January 1941 made for grim reading. Part one was headlined, with some understatement, 'Arrivals Much Below Programme'. At 914,000 tons the amount imported was 29 per cent lower than the revised 1940/41 schedule, and there was a plea from the Food Minister for more tankers to be allocated to carry wheat and oilseeds. There were plenty of potatoes – a 'substantial surplus' from the 1940 crop – but the outlook for animal protein foods was 'poor'. The weekly meat ration had been reduced from 1s 2d to 1s, and consumers 'did not accept corned beef willingly'. Home production of bacon was calculated to plummet from the February rate of 4,000 tons a week to half that by August. Fresh and frozen fish was in short supply because of the suspension of sailings from Iceland.

Even if the convoys survived the German attacks, unloading their cargo was becoming ever more difficult. The Luftwaffe's latest onslaught was aimed at the docks, leaving the Port of London (which handled a quarter of Britain's imports) closed for a time, while Glasgow and Liverpool were particularly badly hit. By May, all but twelve of the latter's deep-sea berths were damaged. At the beginning of March, more than 1.7 million tons of shipping was out of action and awaiting repair, while a further 930,000 tons was undergoing repair while loading. The convoys that made it into port encountered the problem of congestion. Too many were arriving at the same time, and in late January Churchill received a minute from Lindemann pointing out that these delays were making 'the average round voyage last about one and a half times as long as formerly'. The Statistical Branch estimated that a saving of fifteen days in the turnaround of ships could deliver the country an extra five million tons of imports.

In his speech welcoming the new US ambassador on 18 March – at the lunch where he first tasted 'Woolton Pie' – Churchill had done his level best to draw America further into what he was starting to refer to as the Battle of the Atlantic. He revealed to his audience that German submarines and cruisers were raiding as far west as the forty-second degree of longitude, two-thirds of the way across the ocean. Lord Halifax, in Washington, then tipped off the US State Department that one of these cruisers was already well inside America's 600-mile neutrality belt. 'The fire will catch,' Churchill assured William Crozier, when the editor of the _Manchester Guardian_ visited him in the Annexe two days later for an off-the-record interview. But whether it would be as straightforward as a declaration of war by the United States after one of her ships was sunk, he could not say.

In the meantime Britain had to survive on her own. Churchill had already, on 6 March, drafted a Battle of the Atlantic directive, setting out what could be done over the next four months 'to enable us to defeat the attempt to strangle our food supplies and our connection with the United States'. He ordered that the fight should be taken to the U-boat and the Focke-Wulf 'wherever we can and whenever we can'. 'Extreme priority' should be given to providing ships with Hurricane fighters – launched by catapults – to combat the German bombers. He suggested that faster boats capable of speeds between twelve and thirteen knots might be 'liberated' from convoys for a while, as an experiment. He wanted the 'maximum' defence to be provided for the ports under attack – Mersey, Clyde and Bristol – and wished to hear back about the details within a week. And – responding to Lindemann's minute – he required 'every form of simplification and acceleration of repairs and degaussing, even at some risk' to be applied in order to reduce the 'terrible slowness of the turnaround of ships in British ports'.

Such was his concern for the convoys that the Prime Minister decided to set up another ad hoc committee – one of his favourite responses to an ongoing weakness in the war effort. The Battle of the Atlantic Committee held its first meeting at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, 19 March with Churchill in the chair; the ministers attending were Beaverbrook, Bevin, A.V. Alexander, Sinclair, Moore-Brabazon (transport minister), Margesson, Sir Andrew Duncan and Lord Woolton. All the measures ordered in the directive of thirteen days ago were discussed, with emphasis on the need to quicken the turnaround of ships in port. 'Every effort must be directed to this end,' Churchill demanded.

Over the coming weeks, this committee would see the Prime Minister's mood become darker, more demanding, more bullying than in virtually any other setting of the war. For the long-suffering General Ismay, who attended many of these tense encounters, Churchill was 'perhaps too impatient and self-willed to be an ideal chairman', but at least he compensated with 'enthusiasm, drive and imagination'. Others thought very differently. According to Moore-Brabazon, these were the most unpleasant meetings he ever attended. 'The issue was grave, but the way Churchill treated everyone was almost unbearable. He usually appeared after his early afternoon sleep in the vilest of tempers, and having such a problem to face did not improve it. He behaved as if he were a bullying schoolmaster. Everyone, in his opinion, was a halfwit; and if anyone said anything he was jumped upon and snubbed.'

The Prime Minister's black moods were an understandable response to a grim outlook. The attacks on the convoys, setbacks in Libya, Crete and Greece, and now the systematic assault by the Luftwaffe on Britain's cities, exposed the country's continuing isolation. On Good Friday, 11 April, having decided to get out of London to see the damage for himself he visited Swansea, inspecting detachments of civil defence workers in a city whose centre 'had not a house standing'. The following day he arrived in Bristol, where many homes were still smoking from a severe raid the night before. Colville observed that they 'walked and motored through devastation such as I had never thought possible'.

Back in Westminster, the odd murmur of discontent about the direction of the war was now being heard. Lord Hankey, a powerful Whitehall figure for many years, but now banished by Churchill to relative obscurity as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was often the recipient of these complaints. He collected two of them on 1 May. First, General Sir John Kennedy, director of military operations, approached him on Horse Guards Parade. 'He at once tackled me about the Supreme Control of the War; said he was very anxious about it; believed we should lose the war if it was not put right.' Then a few hours later, on Park Lane, he encountered Sir Robert Menzies, the Prime Minister of Australia. 'He burst out at once about Churchill and his dictatorship and his cabinet of "Yes-men".'

Minor sniping in the House of Commons – mainly from old supporters of Chamberlain – irked Churchill sufficiently that he decided to call a vote of confidence. The debate effectively turned into a dramatic rhetorical battle between the leader of the current war and the winner of the last. In an hour-long speech, Lloyd George focused his criticism on Churchill's management of his cabinet: 'The Prime Minister must have a real War Council . . . he is a man with a very brilliant mind, one of the most remarkable who have graced this House with their presence. There is no doubt about his brilliant qualities, but for that very reason . . . he wants a few more ordinary persons, against whom he can check his ideas, who are independent, who will stand up to him and tell him exactly what they think.'

In response, Churchill was contemptuous: 'It was not the sort of speech which one would have expected from the great war leader of former days, who was accustomed to brush aside despondency and alarm . . . it was the sort of speech with which, I imagine, the illustrious and venerable Marshal Pétain might well have enlivened the closing days of Monsieur Reynaud's Cabinet.'

'Never have I heard him in such brilliant form,' observed 'Chips' Channon. Others admired the performance, but were not totally convinced by the content. 'Winston . . . made an effective speech from a debating point of view, but said little to convince me that he knew much more about how to win the war than myself,' reflected Conservative backbencher Sir Cuthbert Headlam.

Nevertheless, the government motion was carried by a resounding 447 votes to 3 (with Lloyd George himself abstaining). It was exactly a year since the debate that brought about Chamberlain's downfall and this time his successor comfortably vanquished his critics. 'He went to bed early, elated by his forensic success,' noted Colville.

Three days later that euphoria turned to despair. On the night of 10 May the chamber of the House of Commons, the epicentre of British democracy and Churchill's spiritual home for forty years, was destroyed by German bombs. When the Prime Minister visited the scene with Beaverbrook the next day he was overcome with emotion at the destruction wrought to the chamber, Pugin's great gothic masterpiece. The spot where he and Lloyd George had jousted over the future conduct of the war had been obliterated; the Speaker's Chair lay hidden among twisted girders and huge chunks of fallen masonry; the green-padded benches were charred and drenched, and there was no sign of the famous dispatch box from where he habitually displayed his mastery.

For five minutes he stood silently among the smouldering ruins and gazed around, all the while grinding his walking stick into the cinders. 'At last he moved, and in the dim light I could see that tears were running unchecked down his cheeks,' observed Guy Eden, political correspondent of the _Daily Express_. 'Turning abruptly to an official, he controlled his voice with an effort and said quietly; "This Chamber must be rebuilt – just as it was. Meanwhile, we shall not miss a single day's debate through this".'

The barrage of Luftwaffe bombs that fell on the Palace of Westminster was replicated all over the capital, and the damage to historic property was as nothing compared to the fate of ordinary Londoners. This was the deadliest attack in the whole of the Blitz, lasting over seven hours and killing 1,500 people, destroying 11,000 homes and setting off over 2,000 fires. The next day one-third of London's streets were impassable, all but one railway station line was blocked, and only two bridges over the Thames were usable.

The sheer randomness of life and death during wartime was never more evident. In Clapham, fifteen-year-old Maggie Meggs got out of bed to tell her parents they had to leave the house. 'Something bad is going to happen,' she insisted. Muttering at the whims of teenagers, Mr and Mrs Meggs escorted their daughter to their Anderson shelter. On their return they found a two-foot spear of glass embedded in Maggie's pillow. In Walworth, nineteen-year-old Hereward Barling was guiding a doctor to an incident in Rodney Road when a bomb dropped. The doctor survived; Barling was killed instantly.

Although in public he scorned his critics, Churchill had been contemplating making changes to his government for some time. On land, the main concern of the War Cabinet was the Western Desert in Libya and Egypt and the need to provide General Archibald Wavell, commander-in-chief Middle East, with both the political backup and improved military resources to withstand the fierce counter-attack from General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps _._ Randolph Churchill, recently elected MP for Preston, had suggested to his father that a minister of state in the Middle East should be appointed to lighten Wavell's load. The Prime Minister turned to his old friend Oliver Lyttelton, whom he had first met in the trenches during the previous war.

Lyttelton was first and foremost a successful businessman, notably as managing director of the British Metal Corporation. But Churchill wanted this witty, urbane holder of the Military Cross by his side in wartime, so he found him a safe seat as MP for Aldershot – he was returned unopposed – and then a post in government as President of the Board of Trade. Over a champagne lunch in the Annexe, Churchill jokingly encouraged Lyttelton with the prospect that he would become the 'Satrap of the Middle East' and 'hold the gorgeous East in fee'. A place in the War Cabinet was also dangled before him, and – having been assured that its other members backed the appointment – Lyttelton accepted.

Another old friend Churchill wanted nearer the heart of government was Beaverbrook. The Beaver had left the Ministry of Aircraft Production, exhausted, in April, and since then had been kicking his heels as a minister of state with loosely defined powers of supervision over war production. Too much of his time was spent gossiping about colleagues. Urgency was a prerequisite of good wartime government and this one was singularly lacking in it, Beaverbrook told William Crozier in an off-the-record interview in late May. He praised John Anderson as 'bold and bloody', but criticised Ernest Bevin, saying he took ten days to make decisions on important schemes, while Sinclair, although a 'nice man', was merely a defender of the air marshals. 'No-one has a true sense of urgency except Churchill himself,' he concluded.

Unfortunately the post Churchill offered to Beaverbrook was Woolton's, at the Ministry of Food. Sacrificing his most effective minister made little sense, regardless of his desire to have his closest political ally back in a role with 'direct executive authority'. Beaverbrook immediately turned him down. 'I do not know anything about food, and cannot grasp the problem in a short time,' he wrote to the PM on 2 June. 'Experience is needed. I have none. It is not even a production job.'

Three days later Churchill was still toying with the idea, wondering if Beaverbrook might be persuaded to reconsider if Food was combined with Agriculture. He summoned Woolton, his ploy being to suggest that Woolton seemed tired of being Minister of Food, and then to hold out the prospect of a fresh brief.

'Truth to tell, I'm a little tired of it . . . but I don't think it's a good thing to take another job because you're tired of the one you've got, unless the new one is one for which you've a special qualification or desire,' Woolton recorded. 'I had neither for the one that was offered to me, and I told the PM that I thought it was a good thing to have continuity of control in food supplies during a war.'

Churchill acknowledged defeat in a letter to Beaverbrook later the same day. He was not in a position to offer him stewardship of a Ministry of Agriculture and Food, 'as it does not appear that Lord Woolton has any desire to relinquish his work at Food – a difficult task which he does very well'. The hunt for a worthwhile role for Beaverbrook went on.

In late March 1941, George Orwell thought, the crisis now coming 'is going to be a crisis of hunger, which the English people have no real experience of . . . it will be devilish difficult to get the people to face hunger when, so far as they can see, there is no purpose in the war whatever, and when the rich are carrying on just as before'. By the summer jam and sweet spreads, cheese and eggs had all been put on the ration. Churchill had strongly objected to the former, in another lively War Cabinet meeting, but had been forced, in the end, to give way when Woolton's proposal met with otherwise unanimous support around the table.

Fortunately, Orwell's prediction proved unduly pessimistic. The innovations devised by Woolton and his team were going from strength to strength, keeping the spectre of starvation well away from the door. In the towns, the 'British Restaurant' (originally the drab-sounding 'Community Feeding Centre', until renamed by Churchill), a basic cafeteria run by local government or voluntary agencies to provide cheap, filling meals, was expanding month by month. In the countryside, the 'Pie Scheme', run by the Women's Voluntary Service, supplied meat pies to agricultural workers.

In the Battle of the Atlantic, moreover, the Royal Navy had pulled off a remarkable series of coups that began to make life much easier for the merchant ships bringing in Britain's food supplies. In early March, Operation _Claymore_ saw the capture of the German trawler _Krebs_ , yielding two Enigma machines and the settings for the naval codes for the previous month. This allowed the cryptographers at Bletchley Park to read German naval communiqués by April. Then on 7 May, the destroyer HMS _Somali_ captured the German weather ship _München_ off the coast of Ireland, along with another Enigma machine and more codebooks. This time the British had won a still greater prize, as the codes were for the following month of June.

Two days later, on 9 May, Operation _Primrose_ gathered in yet more intelligence booty. The German submarine U-110 was attacked by an Allied convoy that included the British HMS _Bulldog_. Damaged by depth charges, U-110 surfaced and was boarded by the _Bulldog_ 's crew, who collected all the papers and charts they could find, and a third Enigma machine. More crucial codes were acquired, together with grid charts that provided vital information on the position of U-boats throughout the Atlantic, and of all German minefields and swept channels. 'Hearty congratulations,' the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, signalled to Captain Joe Baker-Cresswell of HMS _Bulldog_. 'The petals of your flower are of rare beauty.'

In April 1941 British shipping losses were 688,000 tons. In June, with the German naval codes broken, that figure was down to 432,000, and by July it had plummeted to 121,000 tons. On 31 May, together with the US secretary of commerce Robert Hinkley and special envoy Averell Harriman, Woolton watched the first consignment of food to arrive under Lend-Lease being unloaded at a British port: four million eggs, 120,000 pounds of cheese and 1,000 tons of flour. The minister had his picture taken with the dockers unloading the ship. 'To celebrate I broke my own regulation – and handed over, for division amongst the unloading staff of two hundred and forty, a twenty-pound cheese.'

American largesse in food and munitions was one thing, but the War Cabinet's ultimate goal of bringing the US into the war still proved elusive. On 21 May SS _Robin Moor_ was sunk by German submarine U-69 in the tropical Atlantic as she made her way to Mozambique without a protective convoy. But though President Roosevelt told Congress that the Germans had 'flagrantly violated the right of United States vessels freely to navigate the seas', and despite his view that Germany was 'responsible for the outrageous and indefensible sinking', he would not be drawn into retaliation.

Three weeks later, in his first broadcast for five months, Lord Woolton assured his audience that despite the Battle of the Atlantic, the nation's health was as good as ever and the food situation was 'sound'. Stocks of essential ingredients were as replete after twenty months of war as they had been after nine. Even so, he announced that the butter ration was to be reduced from four to two ounces, a cut he was able to sweeten by putting extra jam (one pound) and cheese (two ounces) on the table. 'There wasn't much to tell them, but they like to be reassured occasionally,' he admitted in his diary that night.

The following weekend, on Midsummer's Day, Saturday, 21 June, Woolton joined a crowd of 18,000 at Lord's cricket ground to watch a splendid day's play in a charity match between the Army and the Royal Air Force. Some of England's finest players were on show, including Cyril Washbrook, Charlie Barnett and Denis Compton. 'Cricket gives me a greater sense of relaxation than anything else I can do in London,' Woolton reflected.

Within hours this feeling of respite from the grind of government would be replaced by sudden relief and optimism, as news came through of events that were to change the entire dynamic of the war.

## Chapter Seven

## **'Riding the dung cart'**

22 June to 7 December 1941

At 7.30 on the morning of Sunday, 22 June 1941, there was a knock on the door of foreign secretary Anthony Eden's room at Chequers. Churchill's valet Frank Sawyers entered and, presenting Eden with a large cigar on a silver salver, announced: 'The Prime Minister's compliments and the German armies have invaded Russia.' Putting on his dressing gown, Eden walked along the corridor to Churchill's bedroom. 'We savoured the relief – but not for me at that hour the cigar – and discussed what was immediately to do.' After almost exactly a year of isolation, Britain – and the British Empire – was no longer alone in facing the might of Hitler's forces.

The invasion came as no surprise to the two men. Indeed, just a week earlier Churchill had warned President Roosevelt, 'from every source at my disposal, including some most trustworthy, it looks as if a vast German onslaught on Russia was imminent'. It should not have come as a shock either to Russia's leader, Joseph Stalin. Persistent intelligence from, among others, his diplomats in Berlin, his best agent, Richard Sorge, in Tokyo, and from decrypts at Bletchley Park (although he was told only that the information came from a 'trusted agent') had alerted Stalin to the near certainty of an invasion sometime in mid to late June. Yet so reluctant had he been to face facts, so willing was he to believe it was disinformation from Western propagandists, that when the moment actually arrived he was too stunned to respond.

He left it to his people's commissar for foreign affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, to rally the nation. In his fifteen-minute broadcast the old Bolshevik, the man whose name was on the non-aggression pact signed with Germany two years previously, told his audience that history was on their side. The Germans would be expelled just as the French were in 1812: 'our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.'

Anticipating the moment – although not certain it would happen that very weekend – Churchill had included among his party at Chequers not just Eden, but the United States ambassador John Winant, and his good friend and Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs Lord ('Bobbety') Cranborne. The American's initial smile of satisfaction at the dramatic news gave way to some doubts. 'Winant . . . suspects it may all be a put-up job between Hitler and Stalin,' observed house guest Jock Colville.

Fifty miles south at Lord Beaverbrook's home, Cherkley Court, there were no such reservations. On hearing the news bulletin, twenty-seven-year-old Michael Foot, one of his lordship's journalist protégés and co-author of the recent, hugely successful _Guilty Men_ (a polemic against the appeasers) _,_ ran downstairs and rummaged through the gramophone cupboard. The household was then roused by the sound, at top volume, of 'The Internationale' ('No more deluded by reaction, on tyrants only we'll make war'). 'I was happy to inform the bleary-eyed household, guests and butlers alike, that they were now allies of the Soviet Union,' Foot recalled.

Eden left for London to confer with Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador, while Beaverbrook hurried over to Chequers to join his War Cabinet colleagues. Churchill also invited Sir Stafford Cripps, his ambassador to Moscow, who had been recalled for consultations a few weeks earlier. At the previous Monday's meeting, Cripps had informed his colleagues that the prevailing view in diplomatic circles in Moscow was that Russia could not hold out against Germany for more than three or four weeks. At dinner on Saturday night Churchill had agreed, saying 'Russia will assuredly be defeated.'

Nonetheless, elated by finding an ally, and despite having been a foe of the communist regime from the moment of its inception, Churchill set out to draft a speech for broadcast that night that would offer unequivocal support to the Soviets. This message would be all the more powerful coming from a fierce ideological adversary, someone who had tried to strangle communism at birth, but it needed to be sent quickly. To that end Churchill chose not to convene a full War Cabinet meeting to confer with the likes of Attlee, Bevin and Greenwood, but instead remained at Chequers to work on the address with Cripps, Beaverbrook and the returning Eden.

Such was the care and attention given to the drafting that it was finished only twenty minutes before Churchill was due to go on air. When it was delivered, he made it clear he would 'unsay no word' of criticism he had levelled against the Soviet regime over the past quarter of a century. But he then went on to lend his support with some of the most vivid, folksy imagery he had used in any of his wartime speeches.

'I see Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes where mothers and wives pray – ah yes, for there are times when all pray – for the safety of their loved ones, the return of the breadwinner, of their champion, or their protector. I see the ten thousand villages of Russia, where the means of existence was wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial human joys, where maidens laugh and children play.'

Advancing upon this bucolic bliss was the 'Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents fresh from the cowing and tying down of a dozen countries'. Churchill's conclusion was that 'Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid . . . it follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people.'

The language was a little too melodramatic for some. Twenty-year-old garage assistant Muriel Green, listening in Snettisham, Norfolk, observed, 'It seems grand they [the Russians] will fight with us. We listened to Churchill's speech. The Gs say they get sick of his rambling descriptions.' But for Maggie Joy Blunt, a thirty-one-year-old architectural writer from Slough, it was one of the 'cleverest speeches' of Churchill's career. 'I smoke my last cigarette to him; think this is the most important day of the century.'

At the Soviet embassy in west London ambassador Maisky listened with special care to the Prime Minister's words. 'After hearing Churchill I thought: "For today I may be content; my wishes have been fulfilled . . . but what help [will Britain give]? In what forms? To what extent?"'

For one man at the table at Chequers that weekend the help had to be wholehearted, and volunteered free of conditions. The following morning Lord Beaverbrook's _Daily Express_ urged the country to offer whatever aid was necessary. 'We are the next on the list, and next autumn is to be the time,' the opinion column suggested. 'Every shot the Russians fire, every bomb they drop helps us; and every shot we fire, every bomb we drop, helps Stalin.'

Beaverbrook, the arch-capitalist, would soon prove to be the communist country's most vocal ally. But for Churchill and the rest of the War Cabinet an enduring aversion to the Soviet Union was hard to throw off, and there was uncertainty over the correct approach towards this new 'ally' – not that that was a word the government used in those early days. It could hardly be forgotten that Britain had gone to war in defence of Poland – one of whose attackers was the Soviet Union. Tories in the Cabinet like Eden and Cranborne felt words of support should be phrased purely in the military context; 'politically Russia was as bad as Germany and half the country would object to being associated with her too closely'.

Churchill was anxious about the stance of his Labour colleagues, and at War Cabinet the day after his broadcast he urged that any speeches they made 'should continue to draw a line of demarcation between the tenets of the Labour Party and those of Communism'. Attlee told him not to worry – he was proposing to emphasise exactly that in a BBC broadcast the following evening. Further reassurance came in the attitude of Herbert Morrison, who said that despite the changed circumstances, he saw no reason to lift the ban on the communist-backed _Daily Worker_. But the image of Russia would gradually be transformed from one of grimly quiescent masses toiling for a harsh, industrialised socialist order, to one of resolute, independent peasants bravely resisting Germany's might.

While the government attempted to get to grips with this change, it stumbled occasionally. The playing of 'The Internationale' was a case in point.

Every Sunday evening before the nine o'clock news the BBC broadcast a popular programme called _National Anthems of the Allies_ ; now the song of a new ally had to be added to the list. But the workers' anthem, this rallying call of communists, socialists and anarchists, was hardly music to Churchill's ears. So on Thursday, 10 July the song forced its way on to the War Cabinet's agenda. Eden and Minister of Information Duff Cooper were instructed to talk to the BBC about playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (dedicated to Field Marshal Kutuzov, who had resisted Napoleon's Grande Armée) instead of the revolution-stirring 'Internationale'. The BBC duly obliged, and three days later the Soviet national anthem vanished from the airwaves.

The press was scornful. The _Daily Express_ noted that the recording of the Tchaikovsky overture was 'poor, overlain with the surging and fading normal to short-wave broadcasts'. Cassandra in the _Daily Mirror_ , under the heading 'Age of Cant', said the Foreign Office's skirmishes over playing 'The Internationale' were 'one of the most amusing and ludicrous farces we have had for some time'. As the British public's solidarity with the Russian people deepened during the life-and-death struggle that unfolded over the following months, so did the clamour for 'The Internationale' to return, which it did, six months later.

On the day the War Cabinet discussed its new approach to the Soviet Union, there was one other pressing item on the agenda – the future of the Ministry of Information itself. Alfred Duff Cooper, the minister in charge, had come to Cabinet that day with a plea – and clear proposals – for more powers to put an end to the erosion of confidence, credibility and influence that had beset his department over the previous twelve months.

The Ministry of Information was based at Senate House, in Malet Street, Bloomsbury, at arm's length from Whitehall. It had enjoyed a brief but colourful existence in the First World War under the stewardship of Lord Beaverbrook, who had strong characters like novelist John Buchan and Liberal MP Charles Masterman to help him raise morale at home and influence opinion abroad.

It was brought back into the fold on 4 September 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Now, for sheer grandeur, albeit in a modernistic style, its headquarters – normally the administrative centre of the University of London – could rival anything in Whitehall. Senate House was a seemingly indestructible building that reeked of boundless authority and ambition. While the Luftwaffe bombs left many homes in adjoining streets in ruins, this pyramidal art deco structure of white Portland stone, standing 209ft tall, remained unscathed and continued to dominate – or 'insult', as one of its occasional employees, Evelyn Waugh, described it – the London skyline. (Another writer was just starting to visualise it as a forbidding 'Ministry of Truth' in a frightening, totalitarian world.)

During the first two years of the war its new inhabitants, politicians and civil servants, had laboured in an anxious, fractious environment. Fairly or unfairly, the Ministry of Information had too often become a byword for confusion, incompetence and impotence among parliamentarians, the press and the public alike. 'Hush, hush, chuckle who dares, another new Minister's fallen downstairs' was a popular little refrain among the 2,500 Senate House employees. Since the start of the war they had witnessed the downfall of both the dull, unimaginative Lord Macmillan and the inflexible, cantankerous Sir John Reith, and now Duff Cooper, comfortably the most suited of the three for the job, was becoming disenchanted at his lack of influence.

A man with a distinguished war record, a politician of principle (witness his resignation over Munich) and an administrator of great experience (at the Foreign Office, War Office, Treasury and Admiralty), the urbane, sophisticated Duff Cooper seemingly had all the requisite qualities for office. He was also a master of fluent, exciting English prose, exemplified in his original and insightful biography of the French diplomat Talleyrand. Indeed, his felicitous broadcasts in the desperate days of May 1940 had been second only to Churchill's. Like his great friend, his romantic, Macaulayesque view of British history permeated every defiant sentence. Perhaps his style was too literary at times for a mass audience, but he was capable too of a more robust, populist touch.

One broadcast – on the evening of 28 May, as the British Expeditionary Force began its evacuation of Dunkirk – had been singled out for praise. The Home Intelligence Report the following day bore testimony to the confidence listeners now placed in the minister. 'His best yet . . . reports indicate that people were impressed by his confident manner and that his speech had a steadying effect . . . the increasing prestige of the Minister and his abilities as a broadcaster are becoming obvious . . . the people are beginning to rely on him to tell them how the situation should be looked at.'

Unfortunately, those days of May and June 1940 were the high-water mark of Duff Cooper's tenure at the MoI. Initially 'delighted' at his appointment – he had just returned from a successful lecture tour of America where he had skilfully promoted the British cause – Duff Cooper found his enthusiasm beginning to drain away in the face of constant wrangling with other government departments, attacks by the press, arguments with the BBC, and, crucially, weak support from Churchill. His natural inclination to provide as much uncensored news as possible was frequently thwarted by the service departments – War, Army, and especially Navy – with the obstructive presence of the Prime Minister looming in the background.

It all started badly for Duff Cooper when an early attempt to gather information on the state of public morale – through the newly created Wartime Social Survey – turned into accusations, fuelled by the _Daily Herald_ , that he 'had instituted a system of espionage which gave certain people the right to pry into the affairs of the neighbours'. The popular press had made much of 'Cooper's Snoopers', as did the odd Member of Parliament. In a lively debate on 1 August, Sir Archibald Southby, Conservative MP for Epsom, likened the canvassing to Gestapo methods in Germany at the start of the Hitler regime.

Invasion had always been on the government's mind in those anxious days of summer and autumn 1940, and exhortation of the public in the face of this impending threat was essential. But the Ministry of Information found itself in trouble for a series of ill-judged, often patronising campaigns. 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' had been the exception, an early, successful anti-gossip exercise at the height of rumours of spies and fifth columnists. It had a lightness of touch to guide it and a brilliant collection of cartoons by the editor of _Punch_ , Cyril Bird ('Fougasse'), to back it up. But then came the disastrous 'Silent Column', the name given to a propaganda exercise urging secrecy in all military matters.

There was nothing new in this, and it appeared eminently sensible in wartime. But the public's tolerance diminished rapidly in the face of a deluge of short cinema films, coloured posters, and quarter-page adverts in 108 newspapers and 72 magazines. These featured a cast of unlikely characters, all portrayed as letting down the country: 'Mr Secrecy Hush Hush', 'Miss Leaky Mouth', 'Mr Pride in Prophecy', 'Mr Know All', 'Miss Teacup Whisper' and 'Mr Glumpot'.

The notion that a loose word here and there should be considered unpatriotic or dangerous rankled with many people. But what really irritated Britons was the enforcement. In one week in July 1940, seventeen people were sentenced and fined a total of 123 weeks and £162 for defeatist chatter. A young engineer, Henry Blessingdon, was jailed for three months and fined £60 for telling a vicar about an airport he had helped to build. A Leicester schoolteacher, Kathleen Mary Bursnall, received a two-month sentence and a fine of £20 for saying to soldiers, 'You are bloody fools to wear that uniform.'

'This is spreading suspicion and unhappiness,' Home Intelligence recorded. People asked, 'If we can't talk, what can we do?' Eventually even Churchill realised these arbitrary arrests were counter-productive. The 'silent column' campaign has 'passed into innocuous desuetude', he told a relieved House of Commons on 23 July.

Then there was the structure and make-up of the ministry itself. 'A monster had been created, so large, so voluminous, so amorphous, that no single man could cope with it,' Duff Cooper later reflected. A handful of civil servants tried in vain to marshal an army composed of some of the brightest minds in the country, including professors, writers, artists, journalists, retired ambassadors, retired admirals, film producers, barristers, anthropologists and theologians. Unfortunately there were just too many brilliant amateurs at Senate House, and too few ordinary professionals.

The Prime Minister's belligerent attitude towards the media presented Duff Cooper with many restless moments during his stewardship of the MoI. Churchill was an avid consumer of newspapers (the first editions would be sent to him every night), but quick to take offence at any personal slight, or criticism of his government. His own experience as a war reporter, which included brushes with the censor and attacks on those in power, had not left him with a relaxed perspective. The _Daily Mirror_ and the _Sunday Pictorial_ were particular targets of his ire, and Duff Cooper often had to play the role of peace-maker and talk the Prime Minister out of intemperate plans for press censorship.

Churchill regularly fulminated against the BBC, too. At a War Cabinet meeting on 6 November 1940 he had described the Corporation as 'the enemy within the gate; continually causing trouble; more harm than good'. John Reith, sitting across the table, had watched a pliant Duff Cooper agree with the Prime Minister that 'more control' was needed and that 'BBC employees ought to be civil servants'.

Then there was the Prime Minister's particular bête noire, J.B. Priestley. When the writer resumed his popular _Postscript_ broadcasts on Sunday, 26 January 1941, he called for a radical declaration of war aims. The population was being asked to 'take it'; 'tell them exactly what they are taking it for', demanded Priestley. 'Do something now. Give us a sign that a new democratic order is on the way.'

Churchill was irritated and three days later wrote to Duff Cooper: 'I am very sorry that you have got Mr J.B. Priestley back, and that his first broadcast should have been an argument utterly contrary to my known views. How many more has he got to do? Have you any control over what he says? He is far from friendly to the Government, and I shall not be too sure about him on larger issues.'

The bizarre flight of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, to Scotland on 10 May 1941 ought to have provided the MoI with a golden opportunity. 'I feel that we should make it quite clear that whatever value Hess may be as a prisoner of war, he is fifty times more valuable as a propaganda carrier. He ought to be our bird before he is anyone else's bird,' wrote an anxious Harold Nicolson.

But the MoI was largely excluded in the Hess affair. Duff Cooper was not even informed of Hess's arrival until two days afterwards. By then, Munich Radio had been the first to broadcast the news and any propaganda value had been severely dented. The War Cabinet – led by Churchill and Beaverbrook – was never persuaded to put out a statement about the deputy Führer. The public were never given the reasons for his arrival, so confusion, ignorance and rumour were allowed to rule.

The ministry's long-running struggle to avoid being sidelined by the service departments came to a head at that War Cabinet meeting on 23 June 1941. Duff Cooper was frustrated that his ministry had become a 'Post Office', merely distributing the news as supplied to it. The war, air and navy ministries had kept a tight grip on the release of news from within their own spheres; the MoI felt useless and powerless as a result.

In cabinet, Duff Cooper discovered to his surprise that he could count on the wholehearted support of Beaverbrook, who perhaps recalled his own struggles in 1918. The new Minister of Supply submitted a memorandum whose central point was a call for all contact between newspapers and government departments to be conducted through the MoI. 'In future, the Ministry of Information becomes the propaganda battle-front, and the Service Ministries are to be regarded as the supply . . . the Ministry of Information [is] to root hog or die.'

Duff Cooper's paper to the same meeting put the matter plainly: 'The Cabinet has to decide whether the head of the Ministry of Information is to be a very important minister . . . or whether he is to be a high official with the duty of carrying out the direction of other departments.' He pleaded in his concluding paragraph, 'Unless it is given the authority which it demands there is danger of [the ministry] ceasing to be an object of ridicule in order to become one only of pity.'

But in his own memorandum Churchill showed no intention of bowing to the central demand. 'The publication of war news from the fighting departments . . . must be subject in the event of dispute to the veto of the departmental minister concerned.' He also insisted that the MoI should not be able to change the form of communiqués from the Admiralty or War and Air Ministries unless those departments were consulted first, and declared that their press officers should continue to have separate dealings with the newspapers.

Beaverbrook was unimpressed by the Prime Minister's views. 'The Ministry of Information comes to the Cabinet for improvement, and it gets a plan that makes things worse . . . I advise enlarging the powers of the Ministry of Information, or abolishing it. The ministry cannot go on in its present form.' But Beaverbrook's protests were to no avail. At the 23 June and 30 June War Cabinet meetings only Lord Cranborne, the Dominions secretary, rallied to his and Duff Cooper's side, the rest supporting the Prime Minister. A despondent Duff Cooper told Churchill afterwards that had it not been wartime he would have resigned.

The end was not far away, however. Duff Cooper left office in mid-July with a final, uncharacteristic act. During a long, boozy lunch with journalists, he was fiercely criticised by William Connor, author of the _Daily Mirror_ 's 'Cassandra' column, for failing to act over a couple of broadcasts made by P.G. Wodehouse, then in France in effective German captivity. The comments appeared to be no more than mild demonstrations of the old writer's remoteness from the real life and mood of the British people; but to the columnist, they were akin to treachery. Greatly riled by Cassandra's taunts, Duff Cooper invited him to respond by way of a broadcast. When the BBC governors saw the script they were horrified, deeming it vulgar, extravagant and almost certainly libellous; they refused to put it on air. Duff Cooper, conscious of his brandy-fuelled lunchtime pledge, felt duty-bound to overrule them by way of a written order, the only one issued to the Corporation in wartime.

'I have come to tell you tonight of the story of a rich man trying to make his last and greatest sale – that of his country,' Cassandra's riposte began. 'It is a sombre story of honour pawned to the Nazis for the price of a soft bed in a luxury hotel.' In a letter to _The Times_ on 22 July Duff Cooper acknowledged the 'distress' caused to many by the broadcast, and admitted that it had been his sole responsibility. 'The Governors indeed shared unanimously the view expressed in your columns that the broadcast was in execrable taste. _De gustibus non est disputandum_. Occasions, however, may arise in time of war when plain speaking is more desirable than good taste.'

As for Cassandra, he told _Times_ readers the following day that over 90 per cent of his readership at the _Daily Mirror_ – 'fighting men, factory workers, miners and ordinary people' – 'completely approved' of what he had said. 'When Dr Goebbels announces an apparently new and willing propaganda recruit to further this slaughter, I still retain the right to denounce this treachery in terms compatible with my own conscience – and nothing else.'

It was a sour end to Duff Cooper's term at Senate House. In July 1941 he was replaced, the Prime Minister offering him a new challenge as the War Cabinet's representative in the Far East. 'He was a curiously inbred political figure and had by now become also rather an idle one. He preferred talking over lunch to doing anything,' was the judgement of Francis Williams, former editor of the _Daily Herald_ and Duff Cooper's press relations officer. Churchill was less damning but more colourful: 'Here is a man with a fine war record, with experience of politics and government, and a fine reputation as a writer. He is just the man for it. And what happened? He failed completely. It just shows that it doesn't do to harness a thoroughbred to a dung cart.'

The cart would now be ridden by an out-and-out newspaperman. Brendan Bracken, Churchill's parliamentary private secretary, was a press proprietor with interests in such quality titles as _The Economist_ , _The Banker_ , _Investors Chronicle_ and the _Practitioner_. Printing the Stock Exchange List (as chairman of _Financial News_ ) and the Bible (as director of publishers Eyre and Spottiswoode) meant he was 'the provider of Mammon and Manna'.

Equally important for any prospect of success was his relationship with the man in Number 10; no one had fought harder to get Churchill into power, and few had such a close and influential political and personal relationship with the Prime Minister. 'They quarrelled like husband and wife,' recalled Harold Macmillan, 'but WSC expected that – and it never lasted or affected their true harmony. Few others had the entrée or privilege to do it with impunity.'

Bracken was one of the more extraordinary individuals to penetrate the inner sanctum of power in British politics. The son of an Irish builder and Republican activist, as an unruly teenager he was despatched to Australia, where he spent a precarious, nomadic three years, working on a sheep farm, travelling widely, reading avidly and visiting religious establishments.

After he returned, aged 18, a career as a teacher was briefly pursued before he beat a path to London, where he began to carve out his career in the newspaper world. Soon, through his native wit and rough charm, he had inveigled himself into the upper echelons of British society, and by 1929 had won a parliamentary seat for the Conservatives at North Paddington.

Bracken's unconventional background was matched by an arresting appearance. He was an imposing, unusual looking man – tall, burly, bespectacled, with a big, pale face, brown eyes and a shock of wiry red hair that stretched over his forehead like a wig. There was a simian-like quality about him that both attracted and repelled. Always there was an air of mystery about 'Dear Brendan', as Churchill affectionately called him: Bracken did not discourage the persistent – if utterly unproven – rumour that he was the Prime Minister's illegitimate son.

Despite the logic of his appointment, Bracken was very reluctant to accept the position. Perhaps he feared losing such privileged access to his master, with the byzantine workings of a troubled department now set to occupy his time. But Churchill persuaded him, cracking a joke to try and make light of the challenge. 'He had the hardihood to say that it was worse than manning a bomb disposal unit,' Bracken reported to his friend Lord Wolmer. He would, however, continue to live at 10 Downing Street and thus remain in close contact with the Prime Minister.

Bracken had set out his views on the future role of a Ministry of Information in a Commons debate on 28 July 1939. 'I hope that the controllers of this Ministry will realise that the world is dazed and bored by propaganda . . . the only effective work the Ministry of Information can do is to establish good relations between the Government and the British and Foreign Press.'

Two days after taking office he held his first briefing with home and overseas media and spelt out his credo even more succinctly. 'I am a pressman. I am interested in news: and if I cannot get news into the papers, the sooner I depart from these premises the better for you, the country and all of us.' The era of inspirational propaganda would soon be over.

The cultivated Edwardian charm of the aloof Duff Cooper gave way to the wisecracking, talkative, plain-speaking Bracken. Churchill's 'chela' might be a rogue, but he was a clever rogue, and he was never dull. A conversation with the new minister would leave the listener astounded by his near total recall of figures and his encyclopedic knowledge of diverse subjects – especially the large houses and churches of Britain. Bracken spoke in public in the same informal manner and conversational tones that made him such an engaging talker in private, which quickly helped him to win the trust and respect of MPs. Although when taking questions in the Commons, he could dismiss them in much the same manner as a 'drill sergeant rebuking an awkward squad'.

On his first day at Senate House Bracken walked into every room and met every occupant, using his retentive memory to store details about them all. On a return visit a few days later, he was able to address everyone correctly by name and position – and tell them whether they still had a future in the department.

The new minister's first impressions of 'Bloomersbury', as he quickly dubbed his new domain, were not favourable. A week later, following a conversation with Bracken, Nicolson recorded that 'he seems to be sacking everybody'. But he was also making some shrewd new appointments, including the promotion of Francis Williams to be his new controller of press and censorship.

As a young reporter Williams, with a colleague, had once bought a horse and caravan and set off on a journey to chronicle the state of England for the editor of the _Daily Herald_ , George Lansbury, who subsequently became leader of the Labour Party. Later Williams worked for Beaverbrook's _Daily Express_ as a financial reporter. Here was a resourceful and experienced newspaperman, one of whose jobs was – when Bracken was unavailable – to argue Churchill out of his worst obsessions about the press.

Another inspired appointment by Bracken was Cyril Radcliffe as the ministry's director-general. Radcliffe, a gifted lawyer, may have been distant in manner but was lucid, tough and eager to engage in intellectual or administrative battle. Bracken's energy and dash combined with Radcliffe's calmness and judgement made them a formidable team. 'The result was that the Ministry of Information assumed a new status,' observed Ronald Tree. 'Instead of being a whipping boy and a butt for the cartoonist, it began for the first time to feel a sense of pride in its achievements, and a force to be reckoned with.'

The vast majority of the press rallied to Bracken's side. They recognised that here at last was a minister who genuinely believed in press freedom, and who would fight robustly for the release of more news from the Foreign Office and the service departments. Bracken persuaded Sinclair's Air Ministry to release details of the numbers of aircraft involved in raids, and he won round the War Office, which allowed journalists to accompany the troops in North Africa for the first time.

As for relations with the BBC, there had been pressure from many quarters early in the war for the Board of Governors to be abolished or its charter scrapped. Churchill had written to Duff Cooper on 17 May 1940, 'I should be glad to receive some proposals from you for establishing a more effective control over the BBC. Now that we have a Government representing the Opposition as well as the Majority, we should have a much freer hand in this respect.'

Bracken had no desire to muzzle the Corporation. He put it on record in the House of Commons on 23 October 1941 that 'in wartime it is necessary and right that the Government should control the policy of the BBC in matters affecting the war effort, the publication of news, and the conduct of propaganda'. But, recognising the popularity and growing strength of the BBC's news coverage, and the vital contribution it was making to fostering national unity and morale, he wanted it to retain a large measure of independence, at least for domestic programming.

For overseas broadcasting he insisted on closer scrutiny. In this he relied greatly upon the skilled diplomat and spymaster Ivone Kirkpatrick, whom he moved from the post of director of the foreign division of the MoI to that of controller of the European Service of the BBC. Kirkpatrick had witnessed the rise and rise of the Nazis as first secretary at Britain's Berlin embassy in the 1930s, and it was he who first interviewed Rudolf Hess soon after Hitler's deputy landed in May 1941. The European Service, which was by now broadcasting in over twenty languages for around thirty hours a day, was essentially a news, not a propaganda, operation. But the boundaries between this and a new body, proposed by Bracken, called the Political Warfare Executive, would become very porous.

The birth of the PWE was announced by Churchill in the House of Commons on 11 September, in suitably clandestine fashion. Little information was given as to the make-up and remit of the organisation, and answers to questions were refused on the grounds of national security. Finally Tory MP Rupert De la Bère asked the Prime Minister: 'What is the difference between a secret question and an awkward question?' Back came the reply, 'One is a danger to the country, and the other is a nuisance to the Government.' He might have said that the PWE was the body tasked with waging psychological warfare on the Germans, through the use of both 'white' (overt) and 'black' (covert) propaganda. The former included leaflets dropped by the RAF over occupied territory and messages broadcast by the European services of the BBC. The latter would come in the form of secret radio stations – eventually around forty – that gave the impression of transmitting from occupied Europe, whereas in fact they were all based on British soil. The PWE would also publish 'black' printed material (leaflets, newspapers, fake astrological magazines and forged ration books), spread rumours, and, later in the war, drop small incendiary devices into Germany with appeals to ordinary Germans to use them against the authorities. At this stage of the conflict, psychological warfare was one of the few weapons Britain could use against her enemy.

Later on, Bracken decided to introduce to the War Cabinet a regular summary of morale and public opinion. In his first report he restated his beliefs about information and propaganda. 'There must be more explanation; not only about the Armed Forces and the war situation, but also about production, labour, wartime restrictions and the big problems that affect the life of everyone today. When the public is bewildered by something new a failure to explain means the risk of driving a wedge between Government and public. We must stop appealing to the public or lecturing at it.'

Bracken brought stability and authority to the MoI. Above all else, it was his relationship with Churchill that was the key to his success. Now the Prime Minister was more willing to try and understand the problems of a department he had once scorned. When Churchill set up a cabinet subcommittee on censorship without consulting Bracken, the minister protested angrily. 'You know perfectly well how glad I shall be to hand over this task to a more competent person. Why could you not have asked for my resignation instead of appointing a committee of inspection?'

The Prime Minister immediately abandoned his plan, replying meekly: 'Now please leave off scolding me on paper, and if you have any griefs come and beat me up personally.'

At the start of November 1941, there was a lull in offensives on the war's principal battlefronts. Hitler's troops had penetrated deep inside the Soviet Union, reaching Leningrad and Kiev, but the German High Command had ordered a halt to Operation _Typhoon_ (the advance on Moscow) as the weather worsened and the roads to the city turned to mud. This gave Stalin's generals the chance to reinforce his defending army with tanks and aircraft from the Soviet Far East and Siberia. Meanwhile, in the North African desert, the summer had seen something of a phoney war, with only the odd skirmish along the Libyan frontier.

There had also been significant progress towards the War Cabinet's prime objective of drawing America into the war. In August in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, the American heavy cruiser _Augusta_ and Britain's newest battleship _Prince of Wales_ had moored side by side, and Churchill and Roosevelt had held their first face-to-face meeting since that brief, unpromising encounter in London in 1918. For four days they talked about help for Russia, the conduct of the desert war in North Africa, the danger of Spain joining the Axis, the threat from Japan in the Pacific and much else besides.

Concrete commitments were made, including American pledges to supply bombers and provide convoy escorts west of Iceland, and a joint agreement on a massive aid package to sustain Russia's war effort. A grand-sounding accord was also signed; the Atlantic Charter was a statement of joint principles and values for the post-war world that included national self-determination, free trade, the disarmament of aggressor nations and an end to territorial aggrandisement. It was an important, symbolic document. Yet the Americans were still out of the fight. While the two leaders were talking in Newfoundland, the House of Representatives had passed the Selective Service Bill – inaugurating the very first peacetime draft – by just one vote.

Then in late September, in his guise as Minister of Supply, but also as an increasingly vociferous champion of Russia, Beaverbrook set off across the Norwegian Sea on the cruiser _London_ for Archangel, from where he flew to Moscow to confer with Stalin, along with American envoy Averell Harriman and General Ismay. 'Make sure you are not bled white,' Churchill warned him. Stalin's more extravagant requests – like asking Britain to send troops to fight in the Ukraine – were rejected. His demand that Britain should recognise Russia's frontiers as they existed in 1941 – incorporating the Baltic States and Poland – was politely listened to. All Beaverbrook was able to offer was materiel – a wealth of it: 500 tanks a month, and 200 fighters and 500 anti-tank guns within nine months.

'Beaverbrook has been a great salesman. His personal sincerity was convincing. His genius has never worked more effectively,' was Harriman's assessment. Sir Archibald Rowlands, another member of the party, observed that Beaverbrook got on 'amazingly well' with Stalin, because they were 'both racketeers' and thus understood each other.

Beaverbrook noted that Stalin drew pictures of wolves while talking and filled in the background with a coloured pencil. After eight hours in continuous conversation, 'We had got to like him – a kindly man with a habit when agitated of walking about the floor with his hands behind his back.'

In a triumphant BBC broadcast soon after he returned, the Beaver fired the first shots in his 'second front' appeal. 'Stalin must be sustained. The Soviet Union must be enabled to enter the spring campaign with adequate supplies of all munitions of war . . . these are the promises we made to Stalin in Moscow in your name. These are the pledges that we shall carry out.'

His diplomatic triumph complete, Beaverbrook returned to the hard grind at the Ministry of Supply. As Minister of Aircraft Production, he had been obliged to work closely with both his predecessor in his new role, Herbert Morrison, and the Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin. By and large his relationship with the former was amicable and mutually beneficial; with the latter, cordiality and effective partnership were sadly lacking. Bevin jealously guarded his position as controller of the nation's manpower; demands for greater productivity and flexibility from 'his' workers were met with great suspicion, especially when they came from the cunning Beaverbrook. Bevin liked to play everything by the trade union rulebook, and had an ingrained suspicion of all capitalists. By contrast Beaverbrook was the improvising individualist, always seeking to cut corners and evade convention, believing extraordinary times required exceptional working hours and practices. Such was Bevin's fury over Beaverbrook's 'meddling' in his domain that at one point he even threatened to launch a prosecution of his War Cabinet colleague, accusing him of breaking the Factory Acts.

This developing battle was unlike the one Beaverbrook had fought with Archibald Sinclair, which had been, at root, a conflict of strategy and policy. The clash with Bevin was one of personality and power, pitting against each other two remarkable self-made men – both vain, egotistical and ruthless – who were unaccustomed to playing second fiddle to anyone. What they were fighting over was control of vast areas of the country's war production.

Harold Macmillan, Beaverbrook's junior minister, likened his master's teasing of his solid Labour opponent to a scene from the bullring: 'Bevin was the bull with many taurine qualities: Beaverbrook was the matador.' For his part, the Minister of Labour made little secret of his dislike for Beaverbrook and his methods. 'Bevin said the PM had called him [Beaverbrook] a magician, so he had replied that the magician's stock-in-trade was illusion,' Sir John Reith recorded.

In August 1940 Bevin and Beaverbrook had spent a weekend together with Churchill (and others) at Chequers, where, after an initial stiffness, they talked civilly enough, despite their obvious differences in outlook. Yet since then the antipathy had grown, such that friends of the two men had become anxious about its effect on the national cause. Efforts were made to bring them together in congenial surroundings away from Whitehall to cultivate a better working relationship. Early in July 1941 Beaverbrook agreed, reluctantly, to invite Bevin and his wife Florence to dinner at Cherkley Court.

The mediator was Trevor Evans, industrial correspondent for Beaverbrook's _Daily Express_ , who was present when the Bevins arrived at 6 p.m., to be greeted formally by Beaverbrook's valet, Albert Nockels. As they passed by Beaverbrook's office to enter the lounge, they would have gazed at an imposing portrait of his lordship, painted in heavy impasto by Harry Jonas in 1919, which depicted the sitter in an armchair, correcting proofs of a copy of the _Daily Express_ with a red pen.

After only four or five minutes, Evans, who was in the office making some calls on Beaverbrook's behalf, was astonished to see Bevin walking ponderously yet purposefully to the front entrance, followed rather meekly by Mrs Bevin. He heard Beaverbrook call Nockels to help the couple on with their coats, and then bid them farewell. Evans later spoke to both men and discovered what had gone wrong.

Bevin had taken a few moments to admire one of the most breathtaking views in all England, out across the resplendent yew woods of the 950-acre parkland to the Mole Valley beyond, with a glimpse of the 150ft spire ('Cubitt's Finger') of St Barnabas' Church along the way. Turning to Beaverbrook, he had remarked, 'What a wonderful scene you have displayed in front of your window.' Beaverbrook, busy prodding the fire into life, had responded with a joke: 'Yes, and when your party gets into power, all you'll do is take it away from me one day!' Whereupon the prickly Bevin had suddenly jumped up and snapped, 'Come on, Flo, let's go. I won't stay here and have the Labour cause insulted.'

In the autumn of 1940, with invasion looking more and more likely, Churchill had suggested to his inner circle that if the government were forced to take to the hills, his favoured triumvirate to lead the resistance would be Beaverbrook, Bevin and himself. A year later that proposition looked fantastical. Such a committee would be destined to go the way of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus; it would be 'very _unsafe_ for Winston', one wag remarked.

Despite Bevin's quick temper, however, Beaverbrook was the greater source of complaint, even threatening to stay away from Cabinet meetings when Bevin was present. He felt powerless with Bevin as chairman of the Production Executive – a clearing-house for overlapping interests in the supply departments – and meetings of this body were frequently stormy. 'Lord Beaverbrook does not attend the Production Executive because he says at two meetings you shouted him down,' Harold Macmillan wrote to Bevin on 10 November. 'He suffers from asthma and, in a shouting contest, he is bound to come off worse,' Beaverbrook pointed out to Churchill that if any disputes between the Ministry of Labour and the supply ministries were referred to the Production Executive – as Bevin wanted – then that would mean 'any dispute with Mr Bevin is to be referred to Mr Bevin'. But a few days later, he had seemingly undergone a complete volte-face, suggesting that a new Production Ministry should be created (as Parliament had suggested) with Bevin at its head. 'I would serve under him for the present and as a means of enabling him to establish his authority,' he told the Prime Minister.

By now Churchill was tiring of the feud, and of Beaverbrook's constant manoeuvring. 'I do not understand why in one breath you object to the Production Executive under Mr Bevin, who you yourself proposed for the Chair . . . and at the same time advocate as a Production Minister the same Mr Bevin of whom you would be a direct subordinate,' he wrote testily on 13 November. 'The Production Executive has no power to overrule you against your will, because you can at once carry the matter to Cabinet or me. On the other hand, for the sake of a quiet life, one would hope that a good many matters would be discussed and cleared up there.' Beaverbrook responded on 17 November, 'I have done everything possible to persuade you that my conduct in relation to Mr Bevin is entirely correct. His complaints against me are founded on pressure for labour which I have directed against him.'

Getting nowhere, the Beaver eventually resorted to an extraordinary personal plea to his foe. In a hastily written letter on 22 November, starting with the unusually familiar 'Dear Ernie', he asked, 'Can we make a platform for you where I can stand at your side? I am sure you can do so if you determine to build it. With your leadership of men and women in the industrial centres, supported by the principal Supply minister, the war effort can be increased.'

It appeared Beaverbrook was suggesting that the two of them should exhort the workers together at factory meetings. Bevin, bemused by his rival's olive branch, was nonetheless having nothing to do with it. 'Dear Max' was the courteous opening, before the somewhat stiff, evasive reply. 'I welcome what you say . . . [but] your reference to making a platform for me puzzles me a little and I am not sure I follow what is in your mind. I have no policy or platform except that of the Government as a whole, arrived at through the War Cabinet, and came into the Government not for any personal position but solely to contribute what I could to our common effort under the leadership of the Prime Minister.'

Beaverbrook tried again, writing that he was 'sorry that I failed to make my meaning clear'. He tried to spell out his offer, but it remained ambiguous: 'It is my hope to persuade you to lead all the people to hard work. It is my belief that you can do more in that direction than anyone else. And there is a desire on my part to serve you in such a movement in any capacity you wish. It is my resolve to support and sustain you to the full in that leadership.' There was no reply from Bevin. But a truce, of sorts, was to hold until the final act was played out early in 1942.

There was a more pressing matter for Bevin to address as 1941 drew to a close – Britain's crippling lack of manpower. 'Voluntaryism' had been the foundation of his policy since the start of the war: the British people were to do the jobs they wanted to do, or were called on to perform, without compulsion. This strategy had already been compromised, but thanks to a manpower survey made available to the War Cabinet in the autumn it was cast aside irrevocably. Britain now needed a massive injection of labour: two million additional men and women by June 1942, in all areas of the armed forces and the war industries.

The War Cabinet argued long and hard about the level of conscription required. Eventually, on 28 November, a comprehensive package of measures was thrashed out. The call-up age for men would be raised from forty-one to fifty, and lowered from nineteen to eighteen and a half. Most strikingly, single women aged between twenty and thirty would be conscripted for non-combatant duties in the armed services, civil defence or industry.

There were dissenters against the plan, for a variety of reasons. A.V. Alexander opposed the principle of compulsion; Archibald Sinclair thought men in the forces would disapprove of women joining them; Beaverbrook felt it was a mistake to recruit so many women into the army when they were desperately needed in the factories. All agreed, however, that one particular proposal should be left on the table: the conscription of married women for the services and civil defence. In the three-day Commons debate on the new National Service Bill, there was surprisingly little opposition. The questions were not about why conscription had to be introduced, but why it had not been introduced earlier.

There was some criticism from the women who spoke in the debate. Mavis Tate, Conservative MP for Frome, objected to talk of absenteeism on the part of women in the factories, complaining it was because of a 'disgraceful' lack of nursery schools and day nurseries, as well as a shortage of transport to and from work. Eleanor Rathbone, Independent for the Combined Universities, felt the twenty-to-thirty age limit was mistaken, as it was 'working on the analogy of men . . . That is the very age when a woman is likely to have a baby in the cradle and a husband in the forces.'

It fell to Bevin to wind up the debate. When the pacifist MP John McGovern mocked one of the other measures introduced, the registering of all sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds for community work, as the 'Churchill Youth Movement', Bevin replied, 'I would rather have a Churchill youth movement than leave the children in slums unattended.'

Pressed, mainly by Labour MPs, to consider nationalisation as a quid pro quo for this extension of compulsion, he responded, 'My entry into this Government and that of everyone else concerned, had as its supreme object the winning of the war . . . it is a cardinal point of policy for the Government as a whole that neither interest, property, persons, nor prejudice will be allowed to stand in the way of our achieving that great objective.'

'The best speech I have heard him make,' was the verdict of Tory MP Sir Cuthbert Headlam. The National Service Bill was passed by 326 votes to 10. Brendan Bracken's MoI had worked hand in hand with Bevin to ensure that the measures – which were presented under the banner 'Maximum National Effort' – had a favourable reception. 'A stirring call to war', wrote the _Daily Mirror._ 'After twenty-seven months we are ready for this great move forward', was the _Yorkshire Post_ 's view. It was a significant moment, but two days later it was eclipsed by an event that was to change entirely the course of the war.

At 7.48 a.m., Hawaiian time, on 7 December 353 Japanese fighter planes and bombers launched a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. Within ninety minutes, eighteen ships – including five battleships – were sunk or run aground, and 188 aircraft were destroyed. In total, 2,403 Americans – sailors, soldiers and civilians – died; 1,178 were wounded.

The following day the United States and Great Britain declared war on Japan. Two days after that, Germany and Italy declared war on America, an act that was swiftly reciprocated. 'Today all of us are in the same boat with you and the people of the Empire and it is a ship which will not and cannot be sunk,' Roosevelt assured Churchill. The Prime Minister told the Commons, 'In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines all over the land and sea.'

Leo Amery was apprehensive. 'The next few months will be very anxious for us . . . the whole world is now practically at war.' But Anthony Eden shared Churchill's optimism. 'I could not conceal my relief . . . before, we had believed in the end but never seen the means. Now both were clear.'

## Chapter Eight

## **'The Ascendancy of Stafford Cripps'**

8 February to 15 June 1942

The magnificent, baroque-style Bristol Hippodrome was packed to overflowing on the afternoon of Sunday, 8 February 1942. Fortunate to have escaped the bombing that had wrecked so much of the south-west port city, the theatre's stalls and boxes hummed with anticipation as over 2,500 men and women, with another 2,000 outside clamouring to get in, greeted the arrival of the latest star turn. The audience sang 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow', Alderman William Hennessy called for three cheers, and the subsequent applause echoed around the ornate building for many minutes.

The tall, slim, bespectacled man who was the focus of their acclaim was not one of the famous actors who regularly graced the theatre, like Noël Coward, Robertson Hare or John Gielgud; nor was he one of the popular entertainers of the time, such as Hughie Green, Jimmy James or the promising young Ernie Wise. He was instead a politician, with no party, no government position, and he had barely been seen on British soil for eighteen long months. And yet Sir Richard Stafford Cripps, MP for Bristol East, was able to stride out on to that 80ft stage and receive the crowd's tumultuous acclaim as if he were an all-conquering hero.

It was easy to see why his constituents – and many beyond the boundaries of Bristol – viewed him in this light. Just two weeks earlier Cripps had returned from the war's fiercest battlefront, Russia, where he had acted as Churchill's ambassador through the most difficult of times. As Britain's fortunes continued to plummet, with Malaya on the verge of being completely overrun by the Japanese, and Benghazi having fallen to Rommel's troops in the latest calamity in the Western Desert, the contrast with the Red Army's recent valiant defence of Moscow could not have been greater.

Many in the country gave Cripps huge credit for his foresight in fighting Russia's corner long before anyone else had been prepared to. Britain's new alliance with the Soviet Union was ascribed by some almost entirely to his efforts. The fact that he had been a 'fellow traveller' before the war, supporting the idea of a broad left-wing front, including the communists, was now quickly forgotten. Even his air of asceticism seemed to symbolise the spirit and self-sacrifice of Soviet resistance.

While Churchill's own popularity remained largely undiminished by the continual setbacks on the military front, there was a feeling abroad that the government, its style and its personalities, needed a shake-up. It was the moment for the quintessential outsider to make his case.

'God Save The King' and 'The Internationale' were sung lustily by the Hippodrome crowd, and then, with the Union flag and the hammer-and-sickle banner as his backdrop, Cripps lobbed some political hand grenades into 10 Downing Street. Since his return to Britain on 23 January, he told his audience, he had noticed a 'lack of urgency' in the country. 'It is almost as if we were spectators rather than participants. I might compare it to the difference between a keen and enthusiastic supporter of a football game and one of the team. We do not seem to realise how total the effort is that is required if we are to win this war, and we have not yet put aside our partial interests in order to concentrate on that total war.'

He thanked Lord Beaverbrook for his support for Russia, and saluted the workers who were making munitions for the Soviet war machine. Hitler's armies could be defeated, perhaps in a year's time, but only 'if we work with a 100 per cent effort, sacrificing our personal interests'.

He then cast an eye to the future, choosing words that were likely to infuriate Churchill. 'Our war aims are negative – to defeat Hitler and destroy the Nazification of Europe. But what are we to put in its place? Are we bent on returning to the old system of organisation which brought us into the last two wars, or are we really determined to build something new and better for the world?'

At 9 p.m. that night Cripps repeated his Bristol speech almost word for word on the BBC's _Postscript_. If anything, his lecture – for that is what it sounded like – was now even harsher. 'Your individual effort is your personal responsibility and you cannot get out of it by criticism of others . . . we are out to win the war and to win it as quickly as may be. In that determination there must be no reservations arising out of personal interests or comforts.'

It was calculated that half the adult population of Britain heard Cripps' radio broadcast, with over 90 per cent of listeners approving of it. His local paper, the _Gloucester Citizen_ , applauded his sentiments: 'Last night he brought home to millions in this country the blunt truth, which for so long politicians have shirked. In praiseworthy contrast to the blah-blahs and mollycoddling of some of our Cabinet ministers, he declared in effect that we were not pulling our weight. And who can deny it?'

Churchill might grumble about Cripps mapping out the future before the present had been secured, but he knew he had to find some way of accommodating this independent-minded politician who had turned up on his doorstep. Cripps was not 'shop-soiled' by participation in a failing government, and he had a moral authority that probably only the Prime Minister otherwise possessed at this moment.

There was some history between the two. During Churchill's time as Minister of Munitions in the First World War, Cripps, a research chemist by training, had expanded output when put in charge of one of the country's biggest munitions factories in 1916, although he stepped down only months later because of ill-health. His father, like Churchill's, had sat in the Cabinet: Charles Cripps (Lord Parmoor) had been Lord President of the Council in Ramsay MacDonald's 1924 and 1929 Labour governments, and when, in 1930, Stafford, aged forty-one, was appointed Solicitor General they had become the first father and son to serve together in government since Joe and Austen Chamberlain in 1903.

Stafford Cripps had been a forceful opponent of appeasement, contributing powerfully to the debate on 8 May 1940 which began the process of toppling Chamberlain. But the reality was, in Eden's vivid phrase, that Churchill and Cripps 'had always been as disparate as a lion and an okapi'. Their lifestyles were poles apart: Churchill, the hearty eater, prolific drinker and cigar smoker, Cripps the vegetarian, teetotaller, and now – after doctor's orders – non-smoker.

Cripps' 'exploratory' mission to the Soviet Union in May 1940 had not been Churchill's idea, but that of foreign secretary Lord Halifax. Cripps and Halifax – despite their obvious political differences – knew each other well through their association with the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches; Halifax was a staunch High Anglican, while Cripps practised a very individual, evangelical form of Christianity. The mission, with Cripps initially a 'hybrid politician-ambassador', had turned into a full-time role that continued throughout 1940 and the whole of 1941. 'A lunatic in a country of lunatics – it would be a pity to move him,' had been Churchill's dismissive response, in December 1940, to a suggestion that Cripps might return to play a part in the coalition government.

Cripps himself, largely denied access to Stalin and his inner circle, his advice often set aside by the War Cabinet, had endured a difficult year and a half and had been desperate to come home. But since December 1941 he had been fortified by a good working relationship with Eden, who gave him a significant part to play in his summit with Stalin in Moscow.

When he arrived back in England in the New Year, Cripps found himself hailed by the public, lauded by the press, and reluctantly wooed by the Prime Minister. The political landscape had changed over the past few months, and he was – at least for the moment – the principal beneficiary of this new environment. To a good number in Westminster Cripps was remote, self-righteous, pompous and even cranky, earning the sobriquet 'Christ and Carrots'. A gag circulating the tearooms mocked his supposed sense of humour: 'Stafford saw a joke last week – by appointment'.

But the public merely observed an austere, principled man with fresh ideas about how to manage the war. Cripps was a clear threat to Churchill, because his proposed changes – especially on the military front – would require the Prime Minister to devolve a fair amount of his power. The whisper in Westminster was that it might soon be the 'Winston and Sir Stafford' show – and that was something Churchill was not prepared to tolerate.

The sense of euphoria that had followed America's entry into the war on 7 December evaporated swiftly as the Allies faced the new enemy's massive, co-ordinated assaults on their possessions right across the Far East. The following day Japanese forces attacked the British colonies of Hong Kong and Malaya, as well as Siam (Thailand), while simultaneously striking against US defences in the Philippines and Guam.

At 10 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 December, the Prime Minister called an emergency meeting of his chiefs of staff in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street to consider the crisis in the Far East, in particular the plight of the two capital ships _Prince of Wales_ and _Repulse_ , on their way to provide protection for Singapore, but without air cover and dangerously exposed to attack from the rampant Japanese planes. Churchill's proposals had been that either 'they should vanish into the ocean waves and exercise a vague menace like rogue elephants', or that they should head south and join what was left of the US fleet. The arguments had raged back and forth until midnight, but nothing was decided and it was agreed to address the problem again the next day.

By then it was too late. As the ships and their escort of three destroyers approached Kuantan on the east coast of Malaya, shortly before midday on 10 December, they were attacked by waves of torpedo bombers from the Japanese Genzan Air Group. At the end of the ninety-minute onslaught, the _Prince of Wales_ and _Repulse_ had both been sunk with the loss of 840 sailors.

Churchill was badly shaken by this setback. He felt a close affinity for the _Prince of Wales_ as the battleship had transported him to Placentia Bay for his historic first meeting with President Roosevelt. He had special affection too for its drowned commander, Admiral Tom 'Thumb' Phillips, whom he had promoted when First Lord. The decision to deploy the two ships without air cover had been taken by the Defence Committee, but driven by Churchill, against Admiralty advice.

The Prime Minister had made the decision some time ago that the 'impregnable fortress' of Singapore – a £60 million naval base protected by 15in guns and 60,000 troops – would have to hold its own; Britain's tanks and fighter planes would be better concentrated on the North African theatre, and on helping the beleaguered Russians. Now, however, the east coast of the Malayan peninsula was exposed and the Japanese could launch their amphibious landings against the Allies' soft underbelly.

Militarily unprepared for the Japanese advance, senior British officials in Singapore also appeared to be in the grip of political paralysis. After his unfortunate spell at the Ministry of Information, Alfred Duff Cooper found his new job as Churchill's Cabinet envoy to the Far East scarcely less taxing. He filed his first full dispatch on 18 December, while the Prime Minister was sailing to America on board the _Duke of York_. It was a typically lucid and colourful report, but highly damning of most of the men entrusted with the safety of the Singaporeans.

Sir Robert Brooke-Popham (commander-in-chief Far East Command) was a 'very much older man than his years warrant and sometimes seems on the verge of nervous collapse'. Sir Shenton Thomas (governor) was 'one of those people who find it quite impossible to adjust their minds to war conditions. He is also the mouthpiece of the last person he speaks to.' Stanley Jones (colonial secretary) was a 'sinister figure . . . universally detested in the Colony, where he is accused of having been defeatist since the beginning of the war.'

Perhaps most worrying was Duff Cooper's portrait of the general officer commanding Malaya, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Percival, a man who had served brilliantly and courageously in the previous war, with the Military Cross and Croix de Guerre to his credit, but who was now apparently struggling to assert his authority. 'A nice, good man who began life as a schoolmaster. I am sometimes tempted to wish he had remained one,' Duff Cooper told Churchill.

In secret session in the Commons the following day, 19 December, MPs were scathing about the lack of preparation that had led to the loss of the two ships and the RAF aerodromes at Kota Bharu and Alor Star in northern Malaya. George Harvie-Watt, Churchill's new parliamentary private secretary and his eyes and ears around Westminster, recorded in his latest report for the Prime Minister that 'both Mr Attlee and A.V. Alexander were batting on sticky wickets and the speeches did not please the House at all'.

Disconcerted as he surely was by these reports, Churchill's chief desire on his latest US trip was to keep Roosevelt to his commitment that the Atlantic and European theatres of war should be the principal focus of the Allies' efforts. Once Germany was defeated, it was anticipated that the collapse of Italy and the defeat of Japan would follow. In this respect, Churchill was successful, despite opposition from elements of Roosevelt's military circle who wanted to concentrate efforts in the Pacific.

On Boxing Day Churchill became the first British Prime Minister to address a joint session of Congress. He read the mood almost perfectly, his peroration bringing the Congressmen to their feet, cheering and waving their papers. But the strain of the war had taken its toll and that night, while attempting to open the window of his bedroom in the White House, he became short of breath and felt a 'dull pain' over his heart that travelled down his left arm.

Churchill's doctor, Sir Charles Wilson (who would be ennobled in March 1943 as Lord Moran), examined him and interpreted his symptoms as those of 'coronary insufficiency' (more commonly angina), although he told his patient only that he had been overdoing things and that his circulation was 'a bit sluggish'. Wilson resolved that no one should know about the attack – not even Churchill's wife Clementine, or the President. 'The textbook treatment for this is at least six weeks in bed. This would mean publishing to the world . . . that the PM was an invalid with a crippled heart and a doubtful future,' Wilson recorded in his diary later. 'The effect . . . could only be disastrous.'

The prime ministerial party returned to England on Saturday, 17 January. Beaverbrook's _Sunday Express_ reported large cheering crowds at Plymouth, where Churchill's entourage landed in a flying-boat from Bermuda. 'CHURCHILL WILL ANSWER CRITICISM OF FAR EAST WAR' was the paper's defiant headline. The next day the _Daily Mirror_ 's political correspondent Bill Greig put it more soberly and realistically: 'Events have brought him back to a reckoning rather than a festival.'

Sir Stafford Cripps had not been the first politician to discern a growing national lethargy in the bleak days of January 1942. Lord Woolton, while noting that freedom from air raids had seen life in England 'almost back to normal', with restaurants and theatres crowded and West End hotels full, worried that nobody seemed to care very much about 'getting the war moving'. 'We hear of labour troubles, strikes, absenteeism in factories engaged on vital war work, because the workers won't continue to work after they have earned up to the wage that will attract income tax. And on the continent people are literally dying in thousands from starvation.'

In Parliament the grumbling continued unabated. Sir Cuthbert Headlam, following a conversation with the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, reflected, 'There is no doubt today a feeling of great unrest in the Party, and in the House generally, against the Government.'

Prime ministers returning home with a foreign policy triumph habitually fail to read the mood back home. Churchill, flushed with success at the Washington conference, initially indicated to Harvie-Watt that he wished to confront his doubters head on. 'He said there would be no Government changes and strongly objected to any criticisms. He said the country and America were behind him'. Egged on by the ever-scheming Beaverbrook, Churchill even flirted with the idea of calling a general election. 'This sounded ridiculous. I didn't see what good it could do,' Harvie-Watt recalled. 'It would finish up as a "coupon election" and would savour too much of the Nazi pre-war elections to the Reichstag.' Almost certainly never a serious proposal, it nonetheless revealed Churchill's unsteady grasp of the political mood.

Aircraft losses were rising, plane production was falling, and the Japanese were closing in on Singapore. So Churchill resorted to the tactic he had employed the previous spring following the fall of Greece and setbacks in the Middle East: he called for a vote of confidence to clear the air. At the end of the three-day debate, from 27 to 29 January, the government had a majority of 464 to 1, but the figures obscured the full story.

Churchill had given ground, indicating to MPs that he would follow the American lead and appoint a new Minister of Production. He had also admitted that 'wrapped up in the bad news will be many tales of blunders and shortcomings, both in foresight and action', although he had insisted that the decision to send the _Prince of Wales_ and _Repulse_ into dangerous waters had been the 'policy of the War Cabinet and the Defence Committee, initiated by the Naval Staff'. Admiral Phillips' decision to press on, without fighter protection, had been 'audacious and daring' and the prize might have been 20,000 of the enemy drowned in the sea. On the central criticism of his military strategy, he had responded that 'to aid Russia, to deliver an offensive in Libya and to accept a consequential state of weakness in the then peaceful theatre of the Far East was sound and will be found to have played a useful part in the general course of the war'.

Some critics had directed their fire at Churchill's advisers and the structure of government. 'It is not that his judgment is bad, but that his information is often bad . . . is the present system of the War Cabinet the right one?' asked Sir Herbert Williams, Conservative MP for Croydon. Sir John Wardlaw-Milne, an old foe and the influential chairman of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, had made his attack more personal. 'I say that any criticism of any member of the Government, as the Government is at present constituted, becomes, unfortunately, a criticism of the Prime Minister. If you live under a dictatorship, that must happen.'

Churchill had hoped to appease his detractors by reshaping his government, but his efforts stalled when Stafford Cripps turned down an invitation to become Minister of Supply. Churchill started to work on Cripps over the course of a convivial weekend at Chequers on 25 and 26 January, but the returning ambassador refused to commit himself to joining the government because the offer lacked a place in the War Cabinet. Cripps realised he would be subordinate to the new Minister of Production, Beaverbrook, a man he could not trust, and who had treated him with disdain the previous autumn in Moscow.

When the minor reshuffle was announced on 4 February, and it became clear that it revolved around Beaverbrook's new role, the response was underwhelming, inside and outside Westminster alike. The _Yorkshire Post_ , rarely critical of the government, drily observed, 'We have passed the time for relying on theatrical efforts and spectacular spurts to whip up production of particular weapons,' while the _Spectator_ opined that, 'For an imaginative man, Mr Churchill shows himself surprisingly unimaginative in the periodical reshufflings of his administration.'

On 15 February, the 'impregnable' fortress of Singapore surrendered. Churchill had given General Wavell in Java the brutal instructions five days before: 'There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs . . . commanders and senior officers should die with their troops.' Right up to the final hours, with Japanese forces on the outskirts of the town, Wavell continued to obey these orders, exhorting his commander on the ground, 'so long as you are in position to inflict losses and damage to the enemy and your troops are physically capable of doing so you must fight on.'

But in this telegram, sent to Percival on 15 February, Wavell had added, 'when you are fully satisfied that this is no longer possible I give you the discretion to cease resistance.' Percival and his officers had received the message while in conference at 9.30 a.m. It was what they needed to seek surrender terms. 'Owing to losses from enemy action, water, petrol, food and ammunition practically finished,' he wrote in a final telegram to Wavell. 'Unable therefore to continue the fight any longer.'

The 85,000 troops taken prisoner – British, Australian, Indian and Malayan – represented the largest surrender in British history. Churchill announced Singapore's fall in a 9 p.m. broadcast on the BBC. While acknowledging a 'heavy and far-reaching military defeat', he sought to accentuate the positive. 'We must remember that we are no longer alone. We are in the midst of a great company. Three-quarters of the human race are now moving with us.'

But many thought it an unpersuasive performance. 'It was a foolish and unpleasant speech . . . the use of words won't win the war, and I'm afraid that the feet of clay are beginning to be discerned,' Lord Woolton reflected. 'Unfortunately he appeals for national unity and not criticism, in a manner which recalls Neville Chamberlain,' wrote Harold Nicolson. 'I do not think his speech will have done good, and I feel deeply depressed and anxious.'

Within the government individual grumbles and more serious discontents began to undermine confidence in Churchill's leadership. Brendan Bracken, the most steadfast of allies, wrote to the Prime Minister requesting to resign from the Ministry of Information 'because he didn't feel he was properly treated'. The atmosphere in Whitehall was thick with gossip and intrigue. Oliver Harvey, Eden's private secretary, wrote that 'Bracken now knows [about the] state of [Churchill's] health and doctor's report, so it will soon be known all over Fleet Street. A.E [Eden] and I both very worried at turn of events . . . A.E feels he [Churchill] is more and more obstinate and at the same time losing grip.' Beaverbrook, writing to Sir Samuel Hoare in Madrid, gave his perspective: 'We are in the midst of a political crisis in Britain. The newspapers made it. But the Prime Minister keeps it alive.'

Woolton, under pressure as the sinking of merchant convoys reached a new height, was in the blackest of moods. 'If I were clear that we had personnel to replace the present Cabinet I would myself resign in order to break the present one,' he confided to his diary. 'There's little talent: the Cabinet was formed solely on political issues and without regard to ability . . . Beaverbrook is always at the Prime Minister's elbow instead of being on his own job, and one wonders how much his judgement affects Winston's.'

Beaverbrook was the problem, not only for Woolton, but also for Bevin and Attlee, who had looked on his appointment as production minister with dismay. Bevin, determined to maintain his control over manpower and labour, set out right from the start to enfeeble Beaverbrook in his new role. By the time Churchill spelled out the details of the post to the House in a White Paper, on 10 February, it was clear who had won most of the arguments. 'Mr Bevin has evidently got himself completely detached. He proudly survives the imperious and impetuous, but possibly powerless, control of Lord Beaverbrook,' wrote the _Daily Mirror._

Churchill's wife was urging him to go further, and wrote to her husband two days later, saying, 'leave Lord B entirely out of your Reconstruction'. She acknowledged he might then work against the government. 'But is not hostility without, better than intrigue and treachery and rattledom within? Exorcise this bottle imp and see if the air is not clearer and purer.'

Despite his deep loyalty to friends, Churchill was wearying of this particular political struggle. He told Beaverbrook on the day he promoted the White Paper, 'I have reached the end of my patience. I have lavished my time and strength during the last week to make arrangements which are satisfactory to you and to the public interest, and to allay the anxieties of the departments with whom you will be brought in contact. I can do no more.'

Beaverbrook's irresistible force had met Bevin's immoveable object. The main changes in the most extensive reshuffle of the government so far, on 19 February, showed the results of Bevin and Attlee's stubborn resistance. Having lasted just two weeks in his new job, Beaverbrook was out of government entirely. The more emollient but very capable Oliver Lyttelton was recalled from Cairo to replace him as Minister of Production, while Attlee was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister and given the post of Dominions secretary. Moreover, Churchill finally bowed to the popular pressure to bring Cripps into the government, giving him a place in the War Cabinet as Leader of the House of Commons (hitherto one of Churchill's own responsibilities) and the nominal title of Lord Privy Seal. Bevin, Eden and Sir John Anderson all stayed in their old positions, but Arthur Greenwood, whose drinking had become an inconquerable problem, left the War Cabinet. There was also an unexpected change at the War Office where Captain David Margesson, one of the old Chamberlainites whom Churchill had tolerated, was replaced by Sir James Grigg, previously the chief civil servant in the same department.

Beaverbrook's exit was explained away partly because he had now been assigned special duties in America, and partly because his health – asthma being a particular problem – had been suffering. But the day after the reshuffle Churchill made it clear to William Crozier of the _Manchester Guardian_ that Beaverbrook's departure was not what he had wanted. 'He could have had any one of three or four offices if he had liked to stop. I didn't want him to go. He was good for me! Any number of times, if things were going badly, he would encourage me, saying, "Look at all the things on your side. Look at what you have accomplished."'

He may have misjudged the Westminster mood, there were grumbles behind his back from colleagues, the state of his health was troubling, and he had to confront continuing military setbacks. But there was no serious threat to Churchill's pre-eminence. However, as _Time_ magazine suggested, 'for the first time millions of Britons began to doubt his abilities', while in the War Cabinet the balance of power had tilted, just slightly, away from him. Markers had been laid for the future, and there were signs it would now no longer be the largely quiescent body it had been since the coalition's inception two years before.

'Hide them in caves and cellars, but not one picture shall leave this island,' Churchill had exhorted Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery, when it was suggested in June 1940 that the nation's masterpieces should be shipped abroad to Canada. The Prime Minister's words were heeded and the artworks were stored safely underground at the disused slate mine of Manod, near Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales. Now, in safer times, they were being brought back home one by one to take their place in the new 'Picture of the Month' display at the gallery.

'Because London's face is scarred and bruised these days we need more than ever to see beautiful things,' sculptor Charles Wheeler told _The Times_. The first work to be shown, from early March, was Titian's _Noli me Tangere_ , a profoundly moving representation of Mary Magdalene reaching out towards the recently resurrected Christ, set against a background of tumbling hills and a rich, melancholy Venetian sunset. One interpretation viewed Christ's self-sacrifice for humanity as a metaphoric depiction of the nation's sacrifices, and of the people's faith in ultimate victory over totalitarianism.

Meanwhile the totalitarian regime currently sweeping all before it in the Pacific had reached Burma. On 7 March, the Japanese took the capital Rangoon. They now had the jewel in the crown of the British Empire – India – in their sights.

The War Cabinet was desperate to secure India's full support in repulsing the advance. Tens of thousands of Indian volunteer servicemen were already fighting alongside British troops in Africa and Asia, but there was concern over the anti-colonial sentiment among the population as a whole; in the event of an invasion, it was not impossible that the Japanese would be welcomed as liberators. Churchill's government would surely have to make significant concessions on the principle of self-government. The Indian case had been strengthened by the Atlantic Charter and its 'right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live', and was also of keen interest to the instinctively anti-colonial Americans.

Relations with India had been poor from the moment war on Germany was declared in September 1939. On that same day the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, without consulting political leaders, had simply declared India a belligerent state alongside its colonial master. In particular this dismayed the pacifist-inclined Congress Party, which withdrew from all the provincial legislatures set up in 1935.

Churchill's jaundiced view of Congress's spiritual leader – he once referred to him as a 'seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir' – had scarcely been improved when Mahatma Gandhi published an open letter to the British people in July 1940, suggesting they lay down their arms to the Germans and Italians. 'Invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but not your souls or your minds.' Nonetheless, Churchill had sanctioned a government White Paper, in August 1940, promising an independent Indian Constituent Assembly with completely indigenous representation and some power to frame the future constitution of the country; safeguards for minorities, especially Muslims, would also be put in place. Since these changes were only to be instituted _after_ the war, however, the proposals had been promptly rejected by all sides.

Eighteen months later it was Attlee, in a paper to the War Cabinet on 2 February, who suggested it was time 'for an act of statesmanship', time for 'some person of high standing' to be sent out with wide powers to negotiate a settlement for India. Surprisingly perhaps, having had his feet under the Cabinet table for just two weeks, the man chosen to make that journey was Cripps. Finding accord in the fractious relationship between Congress and the Muslim League, appeasing the fiercely imperialist Lord Linlithgow, and satisfying the conflicting demands of Churchill, Dominions secretary Attlee and Amery (India secretary) back home would be the trickiest of tasks. Yet Cripps had already built up valuable contacts and a sound understanding of Indian affairs. Crucially, he had established a close personal and political relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru: the leader of Congress had stayed, along with his daughter Indira, at Cripps' country home, Goodfellows, in 1938, and Nehru had been Cripps' host for a good part of a private visit to India in 1939. On that same trip Cripps had also met Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League.

Cynics wondered if Churchill saw the mission as an opportunity to hand a dangerous rival an impossible task. Perhaps more important, though, was that Roosevelt was pressing for progress in the matter, equating India's position with that of his own country between 1783 and 1789, when, post-revolution, the welding of the original thirteen states into a federal union had proven far from easy or harmonious. In a letter to Churchill, on the eve of Cripps' departure, the President wondered if a 'temporary dominion government', covering different castes, occupations, religions and geographies, might be immediately established which could then plan for a longer-term federal future. But he cautioned, 'For the love of Heaven don't bring me into this, though I do want to be of help. It is strictly speaking, none of my business, except insofar as it is a part and parcel of the successful fight you and I are making.'

Cripps' mission lasted less than a month, from 22 March to 10 April, and ended in failure. Working to the brief settled by the War Cabinet, he proposed a post-war Indian Union with full dominion status. Thereafter, India would be free to leave the Commonwealth and pursue complete independence. A constituent assembly would frame a constitution, and any province not willing to join the Union could establish a separate constitution and form a separate Union. But Congress wanted immediate self-government. Gandhi described dominion status after the war as a 'post-dated cheque and drawn on a crashing bank', and his party feared India's disintegration if provinces were allowed to opt out. There was also disagreement about the powers of a future Indian minister of war.

It was thought in some quarters that Cripps had strayed from his instructions and had offered Gandhi and Nehru self-government earlier than the end of hostilities. But few in Whitehall really blamed him for the collapse of the talks. 'The truth is we have wet-nursed India so long in our grandmotherly way that Indians perforce have lost all sense of political realism,' wrote Oliver Harvey.

'We have done our best under the circumstances here,' Cripps wrote to Churchill on 11 April; 'we are not depressed though [we are] sad at the result. Now we must get on with the job of defending India.' The reply was sympathetic: 'You have done everything in human power and your tenacity, perseverance and resourcefulness have proved how great was the British desire to reach a settlement.' Churchill added that 'The effect throughout Britain and in the United States has been wholly beneficial.'

Time would only tell whether Cripps' failure had dented his political progress. For the moment, he was still riding high. In April a Gallup survey asked, 'If anything should happen to Mr Churchill, whom would you like to succeed him as Prime Minister?' It showed Cripps, with 34 per cent, behind only Eden on 37 per cent. The organisation revealed in a separate poll that for the first time since the beginning of the conflict, more people were dissatisfied (50 per cent) than satisfied (38 per cent) with the government's conduct of the war. The 'Picture of the Month' in April was El Greco's _Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple_ ; something similar was needed on the battlefields of North Africa and the Far East.

At 7.22 a.m. on Thursday, 21 May, a high-speed London and North Eastern Railway locomotive, the _Golden Fleece_ , pulled up at the quiet country station of Brookmans Park, just eighteen miles outside London. From the door of the sleeping compartment stepped a stocky man in a smart brown suit with a distinctive black moustache and round spectacles. He wore a frosty smile and looked every inch the suburban bank manager. Accompanying him, umbrella in hand, was a tall, elegant-looking individual, sporting a lighter moustache and slicked-back hair, who would not have been out of place on a Hollywood movie set.

Vyacheslav Molotov, people's commissar for foreign affairs, and Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary, were meeting on this unremarkable branch line in conditions of great secrecy; not a word of the Soviet politician's trip had been made known to the wider world. This 'mystery man thriller', as the _Daily Express_ would later dub it, was partly a product of the natural paranoia of an aide to Stalin, but due also to Molotov's unwillingness to publicise a set of negotiations that might well fail and reflect badly on him.

After extracting a guarantee of confidentiality from a resourceful _Daily Mirror_ photographer who had turned up on a tip-off, Eden led his guest to a waiting car and they drove out of the village, heading for Chequers, where Churchill was waiting to meet them. There the Soviet contingent would remain for the whole of their week in England.

The Wehrmacht advance towards Moscow had been halted for now, but the Soviet counter-offensive at Kharkov was going very badly wrong. From the outset, Molotov pressed strongly his two main demands: for the Allies to open up a 'second front' in Europe, landing sufficient combat troops to draw off forty German divisions from the Soviet front; and for recognition of the Soviet Union's June 1941 borders, which incorporated the Baltic states and east Poland. The talks appeared to stall, but then, on Sunday, 24 May, Stalin unexpectedly sent a telegram instructing Molotov to accept the uncontroversial British draft proposals and not press for the 1941 frontiers. 'I don't know what obliged Stalin so sharply to change his attitude,' reflected Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky. Perhaps the Russian leader had concluded that half a treaty was better than none. With the Germans attacking hard again, adequate supplies of aeroplanes and tanks were more important than hypothetical borders, and discussion of a second front could continue when Molotov went on to Washington for talks with Roosevelt.

Even so, the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance, signed in secrecy on 26 May, locked in – in general terms – a military and political alliance between the USSR and the British Empire for the remainder of the war, and for twenty years thereafter. When Molotov and Eden put pen to paper that day, in the latter's office in Whitehall, they did so before the full glare of the cameras, although the pictures were only to be made public two weeks later once Molotov had returned to London from the US. Churchill was delighted with Eden, congratulating him at War Cabinet for his 'skilful handling of the negotiations', and the following day he thanked Stalin for 'meeting our difficulties in the Treaty as you have done'. But the elephant in the room had not gone away: 'A SECOND FRONT IN 1942', the _Daily Mirror_ proclaimed on 12 June when the embargo was lifted; 'BRITAIN, USA AND RUSSIA AGREE SECOND FRONT THIS YEAR,' read a _Daily Express_ front-page headline _._

This was no newspaper hype. Eden had been forced to read out to the Commons a communiqué Molotov had brought back with him from Washington, stating that 'full understanding was reached between the two parties with regard to the urgent task of creating a second front in Europe in 1942'. Roosevelt had told Molotov that the Allies were already consulting on landing craft, food for troops and other issues. The President had agreed that the date of 1942 be included in the joint statement, so Eden had no alternative but to swallow it. The War Cabinet lacked both the appetite and the means to conduct a cross-Channel operation that year, but – intent both on ensuring Hitler retained his troops in France and on bolstering Russian morale – it acceded to the unattainable pledge nonetheless.

Ministers had already been doing their best to dampen down expectations about the likelihood of a second front before the year was out. Sir Stafford Cripps told his Bristol constituents that the government was 'as keen and anxious for this to materialise as you are'. But he stressed that, first, it had to be organised 'at the proper time and place', and, second, the War Cabinet had to make sure 'not to give the enemy any information about our intention'.

On his return from his failed mission to India Cripps had cut an increasingly forlorn figure. He was largely ignored by Churchill outside War Cabinet meetings, and was frustrated by his minimal influence on day-to-day decision-making. 'Cripps was annoyed about the lack of work involved in his office of lord privy seal and made needless toil out of his leadership of the House of Commons,' Herbert Morrison later reflected.

That 'toil' included having to defend the absent Prime Minister in a stormy two-day debate on the war situation in May. This proved doubly difficult for Cripps as he shared many of the MPs' criticisms – chief of which was that Churchill was struggling to combine the roles of Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, and ought to be replaced in the latter by a new and independent chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

But Cripps, brushing off some heckling about the Prime Minister's absence, stuck loyally to his brief. No 'superman' existed, he said, who could control the military chiefs, Prime Minister and War Cabinet. Rallying to Churchill's side, he added that 'the War Cabinet desires to have the advice of a first-class defence minister, and there is no-one in the country with wider and larger experience of defence problems than the Prime Minister'. He assured the House that 'the Prime Minister as minister of defence submits to the Cabinet just as other ministers do in their sphere of activity'.

But his restlessness drew Cripps into composing another speech about his vision of post-war Britain that undoubtedly irked Churchill. In the BBC Sunday night _Postscript_ slot that had served him so well in the past, he staked out partisan territory. 'There must be, after this war, none of the gross inequalities that there were in the aftermath of the last one, none of that disgraceful contrast of great poverty and great wealth . . . the waste of humanity which our education and social system has permitted in the past will no longer be tolerated.' Harold Nicolson thought that the broadcast was 'uncompromisingly and radically socialist . . . that will much annoy the Conservatives, and [which] was not wholly in keeping with the party truce'.

But such was Cripps' enigmatic nature and quixotic behaviour that others formed a different impression of his mood and views in this period. George Orwell, who with a group of other writers spent a long evening with the Lord Privy Seal – 'about two and a half hours of it, with no drink' – was not convinced, for all his bold rhetoric, that the Labour maverick would stay true to his beliefs. 'I cannot help feeling a strong impression that Cripps has already been got at. Not with money or anything of that kind, of course, nor even by flattery and the sense of power . . . but simply by responsibility, which automatically makes a man timid.'

For the time being, with any second front some way off, and the immediate search for military success on land proving elusive, attention focused more and more on the need for progress in the air. A report by David Bensusan-Butt in August 1941 – commissioned by Professor Lindemann – had first cast great doubt on the efficiency of the RAF's bombing campaign. An examination of 633 photographs in June and July that year showed that only one in four planes got within five miles of their targets in Germany, and over the industrialised Ruhr it was just one in ten.

Nor, in May 1942, despite an improvement in navigation aids, was a report by High Court judge Mr Justice Singleton able to reassure the War Cabinet either that the bombers were destroying targets effectively, or that the morale of the German people was likely to crack. He recorded that 'a very large proportion [of bombs] have fallen on open ground', and did not think that great results could be hoped for within six months from 'air attacks on Germany at the greatest possible strength'.

Nonetheless Bomber Command, now with Sir Arthur Harris as commander-in-chief, stepped up its campaign, launching heavy raids on the north German port of Lübeck in late March, and hitting nearby Rostock a month later. Strategic bombing had given way to area bombardment, threatening the civilian populations of the towns attacked as much as the specific military targets. Goebbels noted in his diary, 'The British are publicising their last raid on Rostock in the grand manner. It has been, it must be admitted, pretty disastrous.'

Then on the night of Saturday, 30 May the first 'thousand bomber raid' took place when the RAF attacked Cologne, dropping 1,455 tons of bombs and losing just forty-one aircraft in the process. When the War Cabinet met on Monday morning to review the success of the operation, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal said simply that 'there was little to add to the statements in the press'. Indeed, he and the Air Minister, Archibald Sinclair, had enjoyed a huge propaganda coup. The newspapers had seized on the 'good' news with enthusiasm. '1,500 PLANES IN BIGGEST RAID YET' was the headline in the _Daily Mirror_. 'THE VENGEANCE BEGINS! ONE BOMBER EVERY SIX SECONDS, 3,000 TONS IN 90 MINUTES', screamed the _Daily Express._

A fortnight later the War Cabinet ruled out a very different sort of bombing raid. In response to the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia – where the Germans had massacred 173 men, and transported women and children to concentration camps, in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia – Churchill suggested wiping out three German villages in revenge. The justification for this drastic action would be announced afterwards.

Ernest Bevin, Anthony Eden and Leo Amery volunteered differing levels of support. '[The] German responds to brute force and nothing else,' said the Minister of Labour. Eden felt 'there might be a deterrent element in this'. Amery inquired, 'Why a village? Why not a quiet residential town?' But everyone else around the table was against the idea. Archibald Sinclair felt it was a 'diversion of effort from military objectives'. Clement Attlee, drily, doubted 'if it is useful to enter into competition in frightfulness with Germans'.

Churchill withdrew the suggestion. 'I submit – unwillingly – to the view of Cabinet against,' he concluded. The meeting then moved on to other points, including a discussion of public morale. The Prime Minister forecast that the 'likely news for the next few months will cure undue optimism' in the country. This War Cabinet meeting had been the gloomiest for many months, with reports of severe losses to Coastal Command as the Battle of the Atlantic continued, and crippling blows to the Malta convoys. Nor were there any developments in the land war to give cause for optimism. 'The news from Africa has become ominous, and it looks like another defeat for us there,' Lord Woolton recorded in his diary that night. Britain was no longer short of allies, but what was desperately needed was a victory – any kind of victory – that would signal the turning of the tide.

## Chapter Nine

## **'Ringing the bells of victory'**

21 June to 1 December 1942

On the afternoon of Sunday, 21 June, four days into another visit to America, Churchill was talking with Roosevelt, General Sir Alan Brooke and General Ismay in the President's study at the White House, when General George C. Marshall walked in with a pink slip of paper and handed it to Roosevelt. The President absorbed it quickly and then, without a word, passed it to Churchill. It read, 'Tobruk has surrendered, with twenty-five thousand men taken prisoners'.

Churchill visibly winced. The news was then confirmed by a second telegram from Admiral Harwood, commander-in-chief of the British naval forces in the Mediterranean. For a few moments no one spoke, then the silence was broken by Roosevelt, who simply asked, 'What can we do to help?'

Churchill's response was instinctive. 'Give us as many Sherman tanks as you can spare, and ship them to the Middle East as quickly as possible.' Although the new battle tank was only just coming into production, and America's own armoured divisions had barely got their hands on it, Roosevelt promised three hundred plus a consignment of one hundred 105mm self-propelled guns.

The Prime Minister then phoned Attlee and asked him to convene a meeting of the War Cabinet that evening – it was Sunday, so not all members were close by – to consider some practical solutions to the crisis. At the 10.30 p.m. gathering in Downing Street, Ernest Bevin led the recriminations. He bemoaned the 'defeatist attitude' of the telegrams received that day from General Claude Auchinleck – Commander-in-Chief Middle East Command – and others, adding that 'we should not tolerate the suggestion that Rommel and his troops were superior to our own'. The time had come, he suggested, to consider changes in the high command. But Oliver Lyttelton, Minister of Production and not long back from his role in the Middle East, rejected Bevin's demand for sackings. 'When General Auchinleck had been urged two months ago to stage an offensive . . . he had constantly affirmed that he was too weak in armour to do so with any prospect of success,' he told his colleagues. 'Recent events might well confirm the correctness of this view.'

By midnight, the War Cabinet had agreed on one immediate measure. One hundred and twenty tanks and twenty-four Hurricane fighters intended for India were now to be diverted to Suez. Together with the Shermans, it was at least a start. The broader issues of military leadership, strategy, and the efficiency of the equipment would have to wait for another day. For now, Rommel's progress had to be halted by whatever means were available.

The New York newspapers scented blood – 'ANGER IN ENGLAND', 'TOBRUK FALL MAY BRING CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT', 'CHURCHILL TO BE CENSURED', were among their headlines – although Eden reassured the Prime Minister that the mood back home suggested nothing of the kind. 'Of course there was much grief. No doubt there would be blame for the government,' he conceded. But much had been happening in London while Churchill was away. Four days later, a motion was put down in the House of Commons by Churchill's old opponent, Sir John Wardlaw-Milne. Reading 'This house, while paying tribute to the heroism and endurance of the Armed Forces of the Crown in circumstances of exceptional difficulty, has no confidence in the central direction of the war,' it was eventually signed by twenty-one other MPs: seven Conservatives, seven from Labour, six Independents and one Liberal.

On the same day the government suffered yet another by-election defeat, its fourth, and heaviest, since March. At Maldon in Essex, the Independent candidate Tom Driberg (gossip columnist 'William Hickey' of the _Daily Express_ ) overturned an 8,000 Conservative majority from 1935 to register his own 6,000 majority over the Coalition candidate, agricultural engineer Reuben Hunt; the turnout of 45 per cent was the highest in the whole of the war.

Driberg was a member of the left-leaning 1941 Committee, a grouping of progressive intellectuals – such as J.B. Priestley, Edward G. Hulton (the owner of _Picture Post_ ), H.G. Wells, Richard Acland, Michael Foot and Julian Huxley – which urged that the government should seek to 'win the peace' as well as the war. They wanted Britain's social system rebuilt, advocating – among other reforms – works councils, public control of the railways, mines and docks, and a national wages policy.

There were persistent rumours around Westminster that Beaverbrook was taking soundings about Churchill's position. 'Undoubtedly the opposition to Winstonian control is gathering force,' wrote Sir Cuthbert Headlam. 'Beaverbrook is said to be behind a lot of this – influencing, so they say, Winston's critics who sit on both sides of the house.' In fact Beaverbrook had approached his bête noire Bevin to canvass his views on the formation of an alternative government, should Churchill be forced out. An angry Bevin had interrupted Beaverbrook before this flight of fancy developed too far, warning him he would go at once to Churchill to tell him about the approach. Whether he carried through with his threat is unclear, but what is known is that on Sunday, 28 June, at a mass meeting in Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall, an impassioned Bevin sought to rally support for the Prime Minister and his government on the eve of the vote of confidence. In an apparent reference to Beaverbrook, he told his audience, 'This wicked, filthy business of trying to break our national unity by playing off Winston Churchill against his colleagues on the part of newspaper millionaires is a most diabolical thing.'

The Prime Minister retained the support of the public – opinion polls (still in their infancy) put his approval rating at just below 80 per cent – but his backing in Westminster remained shallow. Harvie-Watt spelt out the mood of the House to him thus: 'It is being said that every time the Government has asked for anything the demands have been met; the House agreed to the conscription of men and women, high taxation, full supplies of supply and production, and yet the results as proved in Libya have been not only disappointing but disastrous.'

Meanwhile the Tory party was divided over the proposed vote. The 1922 Committee was adamantly opposed to any censure debate, and Wardlaw-Milne himself began to have second thoughts. Realising he had stirred up a crisis, he suggested to government whips that it should be deferred while a major battle – the first El Alamein – was going on. But Attlee, sensing the government would get the approval it needed, ensured it went ahead.

Nevertheless the 'Great Debate' or 'Great Inquest' was a testing moment, and would prove to be a gripping piece of parliamentary theatre, lasting two long days with simultaneous debates in the House of Commons and House of Lords. In the Commons on the first day, Wednesday, 1 July, the benches and galleries were more crowded than on any day since the Norway debate that had brought down Neville Chamberlain. Dozens of MPs stood up to speak, and consequently broke the record for the longest sitting of the war: over fifteen hours, until the House broke up at 2.45 a.m. the following morning.

In the Lords, Beaverbrook startled his fellow peers by admitting that the British Army in the Western Desert had more tanks than the Germans and Italians put together. He also informed them that the coalition had made no provision for the dive-bomber – seen by many as a critical piece of equipment in this theatre of war – when it had taken over in May 1940.

Yet this was Beaverbrook at his most effective and most loyal. He suggested that recent setbacks could be attributed to 'too many committees in Cairo . . . committees are always a cause of delay [cheers and laughter]. And organisation is the enemy of improvisation.' Confronting the criticism that Churchill had taken on too much by combining the roles of Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, he responded, 'If you create a separate Ministry of Defence you will either duplicate the functions of the Prime Minister or you will create a dual Premiership. The first would be useless, and the second would be intolerable and fatal.'

The debate in the Lords was considered and good-humoured. In the Commons, where the votes mattered, there was acute tension, high farce, an ineffective display from the government's lead speaker Oliver Lyttelton, and scintillating contributions from critics as otherwise far apart as Leslie Hore-Belisha and Aneurin Bevan.

Sir John Wardlaw-Milne, opening the case for the prosecution, was a tall, dignified man, who delivered his speech at a measured pace in a gentle west-of-Scotland accent. His detractors considered this former Indian civil servant and financier to be a pompous bore, but on this day he spoke authoritatively and held the House's attention, at least to start with. Claiming his motion had 'one object, and one object only, of assisting us to win the war in the shortest possible time', he went on to present the nub of his argument: that Churchill should give way to a new minister of defence, who would be an independent leader of the armed forces, not beholden to the War Cabinet, and 'strong enough to see that his generals and admirals are allowed to do their work in their own way'.

Then, in an instant, he lost the respect of the House. 'I do not know whether Members have thought of it,' he said, 'but it would be a very desirable move, if His Majesty the King and the Royal Highness would agree, if His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester were to be appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.'

If Wardlaw-Milne had been allowed to finish his sentence with the words 'without, of course, administrative duties', and then gone on to explain that the King's younger brother would be a figurehead only, all might have been well. As it was, the thought of the Duke of Gloucester – an amiable country gentleman type – assuming a position of power caused his fellow MPs to dissolve into gales of laughter.

The seconder of the motion, Sir Roger Keyes, only made matters worse. Whereas Wardlaw-Milne had argued Churchill had too much power and must be stripped of some of it, Keyes' argument was the opposite. He said the problem with the central direction of the war was that the Prime Minister was surrounded by ministers who lacked courage or ability, specifically naming Morrison, Bevin and Alexander. In Keyes' view, Churchill needed to assume _greater_ responsibility.

With the vote's Conservative sponsors confused over strategy, it was left to Aneurin Bevan, the firebrand Labour MP for Ebbw Vale, to make the most coruscating speech. Britain's military setbacks were due to three things, he said: the main strategy of the war was flawed; the wrong weapons had been produced; and those weapons were being commanded by men who had not studied their use. In a memorable phrase, he accused Churchill of winning debate after debate yet losing battle after battle. 'The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.'

When Churchill stood up to make his closing statement – watched in the gallery by his wife Clementine and daughters Diana and Mary – he exploited the House's residual loyalty as expertly as ever. First, he dealt with his critics, in particular the 'bitter animosity' of Bevan's 'diatribe'. Next he continued quietly, without emotion, in a half-conversational manner, to respond in detail to the criticisms of equipment failures and oversights. Thereafter, he pointed to the advantages the Allies possessed, even at this dire moment: airpower was developing rapidly; British tanks were bolstering Russia's defensive shield; convoys to the east had grown; India had been reinforced; the US Navy had won victories in the Coral Sea and at Midway Island.

'We have no right to assume that victory is certain,' he concluded. 'It will be certain only if we do not fail in our duty. Sober and constructive criticism, or criticism in Secret Session, has its high virtue; but the duty of the House of Commons is to sustain the Government – or to change the Government. If it cannot change it, it should sustain it.'

His government was sustained, by 475 votes to 25, with 35 abstentions. Churchill left the chamber to a loud ovation, brandishing his V for victory sign. Eden was relieved: 'Winston wound up with one of his most effective speeches, beautifully adjusted to the temper of the House.' Others were not so sure the boil had been lanced: 'the House was quite won over in spite of itself,' noted Lord Woolton. 'Their cheers indicated that they had quite lost sight of the gravity of the position of the country . . .'

The following day Churchill received a first-hand account of the army's difficulties in the Middle East from a young captain based at Britain's headquarters in Cairo. Twenty-three-year-old Julian Amery, son of Leo, had been sent back to London to brief senior War Office officials on the plans being drawn up in the event of Egypt being overrun. Granted this unexpected opportunity to brief the Prime Minister through his father, Amery did not hold back. Painting a picture of poor morale, both at HQ and in the field, he urged the Prime Minister to go out to Egypt and see the situation for himself. 'Your presence among the troops in the battle area would be enough. It would have an electric effect.' Churchill – who never needed a second invitation to head for the scene of the battle – had already been contemplating such a move, and would act on it very shortly.

In a letter to his old friend Samuel Hoare in May 1941, Beaverbrook, observing Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood as they sat alongside Churchill during a parliamentary debate, had described the two Labour men as 'a sparrow and a jackdaw, perched on either side of the glittering bird of paradise'. It was a typically colourful, disparaging description from a man who might himself have been likened to a black crow: cunning, mischievous and destructive. But while the jackdaw – and indeed the crow, albeit only temporarily – had now left the garden, the unobtrusive sparrow had settled down well among the bigger birds.

Attlee's profile with the public was still not high in the summer of 1942. On the newsreels they saw an unassuming man, pipe in hand and flat cap on his head, following in the wake of the flamboyant Prime Minister, while on the BBC his unremarkable voice offered only dry, cautious tones where Churchill served up bold rhetoric. In April, when Eden and Cripps were riding high in the public's estimation as potential replacements for Churchill in the event of his death, only 2 per cent thought the designated Deputy Prime Minister should be the successor. In fact, before setting off for Washington in June, Churchill had written to the King to nominate Eden for the task. 'He is the outstanding candidate in the largest political party in the House of Commons . . . with the resolution, experience and capacity which these grievous times require.'

Attlee was aware of his limitations, in Parliament and on the radio. In August 1941 he had found himself in charge of the War Cabinet for a lengthy period while Churchill was away meeting Roosevelt in Placentia Bay. 'I had to take the place of the PM . . . as the reviewer of the war situation, no easy thing to follow such an artist,' he had written to his brother Tom. 'I eschewed embroidery and stuck to a plain statement. It is no use trying to stretch the bow of Ulysses.' On announcing the Atlantic Charter six days later, he had confessed, 'I felt that I was taking the place of Bruce Belfrage [a BBC news presenter] rather than making any original contribution.'

In the early stages of the war Attlee's strength had been in making the machinery of Whitehall work more efficiently. He had culled the number of ministerial and official committees, and transformed the Lord President's Committee into the governmental hub of the Home Front, in the process taking a lot of weight off the War Cabinet. Eden, for one, had watched his early reticence in the War Cabinet and Defence Committee and wished he would contribute more, as his succinct interventions were always full of sound common sense. But now, with the Prime Minister out of the country increasingly often, Attlee's skill as a committee chairman came to the fore. He had looked on as Churchill became prone to treating the War Cabinet simply as a debating society, testing out new ideas and developing arguments for speeches; when he was in charge, he would make sure it stuck to its core role as an instrument of decision.

The chiefs of staff were especially grateful for the Deputy Prime Minister's brisk methods. General Alan Brooke, often driven to distraction by Churchill's rambling if entertaining discourses, recorded, 'PM now away and meeting run by Attlee very efficiently and quickly.' Others outside the Cabinet Room appreciated his collegiate approach. 'Attlee . . . does what I wish Winston would do, see other Ministers and talk things over with them,' noted Leo Amery.

As the government suffered that summer in the wake of the constant stream of military defeats, so Attlee came under pressure from elements in his own party, disgruntled at what they perceived as his uncritical loyalty to the Tory leadership. Chief among these was Professor Harold Laski, the intellectually brilliant political science lecturer at the London School of Economics, and a key member of Labour's National Executive. In a series of articles in _Reynolds News_ , Laski upbraided the Labour members of the coalition for failing to implement socialist reforms. 'No one . . . can point to any serious effort by Mr Attlee to make the idea of a partnership with the people a conscious part of the Prime Minister's policy,' he wrote.

Inside Westminster, such frustrations were usually voiced by the formidable duo of Aneurin Bevan and Emmanuel 'Manny' Shinwell, the feisty left-wing MP for Seaham, and it was the latter who led the way in an acrimonious debate on 29 July over increases in old-age pensions. The government had proposed an increase of 2s 6d a week, but Attlee and Bevin assured Labour MPs that this was just an interim proposal pending the recommendations of the eagerly awaited Beveridge Report later that year.

This promise of 'jam tomorrow' failed to assuage Shinwell. He indulged in a particularly acrimonious exchange with his old sparring partner Ernest Bevin, suggesting at one point the minister 'would prefer the friendship of members of the Tory party' to himself, before he joined another sixty-two Labour members in voting against the government. This was the largest opposing vote since the coalition had come into being in May 1940. Yet despite such party irritations, and the rise of a potentially dangerous rival, the popular Stafford Cripps, Attlee's calm and self-confidence appeared unperturbed. 'He gives me an impression of greater strength and on-the-spotness,' noted Hugh Dalton after a lunch at the Lansdowne Club.

Attlee had not hitherto ventured far into the field of military strategy, however. As a member of the Defence Committee and the War Cabinet, he had long held nominal responsibility in this area, but he had been largely excluded from the major decisions by Churchill's tight ownership of the military campaign. Moreover, Attlee appreciated and deferred to the Prime Minister's imaginative understanding of the battlefield, even if he and Eden had to dissuade Churchill from some of his wilder schemes. Having never thought Churchill's most ambitious project of all, the Dardanelles campaign in the First World War, the disaster conventional history painted it to be, he had no objection in principle to Churchill's dual role as premier and Minister of Defence in the current struggle. What was wrong now, to Attlee's mind, was not the speed of decision-making but the fact that too many of the decisions taken were based on outdated strategical thinking.

So he put together his thoughts in a wide-ranging four-page paper, which he sent on 6 July initially to Eden, by this time a key ally in the Cabinet. 'I am a good deal disturbed at our failures in the field,' he told the foreign secretary. 'We are still very largely bound by conceptions of fighting before the present war which express themselves in the establishment and equipment we maintain.' Static warfare, with the division (40,000 men) as the 'cumbrous' unit, supported by an 'immense litter of ancillary services', was outdated. Military chiefs were still thinking 'in terms of lines, although linear warfare has been largely stultified by the air and to a lesser degree by the tank'.

Attlee observed the mobility of the Japanese forces – 'highly trained guerrillas' – and noted the success of both the Germans and the Russians in using planes to supply troops and maintain advanced air forces. The Air Ministry, he wrote, still regarded such use of aircraft as 'an illegitimate filching away of resources. Their attitude continues to be dominated by the conception that the war can be won by big bombers.' As for generals, Rommel 'like Cromwell and Marlborough is with the forward troops . . . this is the right place. The general far in the rear is applicable to the days when wars were fought with masses of infantry.'

After receiving Eden's comments, Attlee made revisions and then, on 10 July, sent his paper to the Prime Minister. A considered reply of all the points came back on 29 July, with Churchill conceding the need for a more significant commando force, for a brigade group rather than a division where operations were on a small scale, and for a reduction in the 'excessive standards of transport'. But given the lack of progress on land, he would not be moved from the tactic he currently favoured: 'to withdraw our Bomber force from the cities, factories and seaports of Germany to be a mere handmaid of the Army, bombing airfields and railway junctions behind the hostile front, would be a great relief to the enemy.'

The Attlee–Eden axis on foreign policy and strategy would continue to gain strength. But the Deputy Prime Minister's criticisms about the bombing campaign made no headway in War Cabinet. Indeed, the night before Churchill gave his response to Attlee's memorandum, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, chief of Bomber Command, had broadcast on the BBC, in a forbidding message to the German people, that he intended to 'scourge the Third Reich from end to end . . . We are bombing Germany, city by city in order to make it impossible for you to go on with the war. That is our object. We shall pursue it remorselessly.'

At 1 a.m. on Thursday, 30 July, following a Cabinet dinner with the King at Number 10, Churchill broke the news to his ministers that he intended to visit Cairo to see the problems of the Eighth Army at first hand. At the same time the Foreign Office had received a telegram from the British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, suggesting there would be 'immense advantages' in the Prime Minister visiting the Soviet Union to meet Stalin and discuss the second front.

Churchill jumped at the idea of a double mission, and it was put to the War Cabinet the same day. Remembering the incident in Washington eight months before, however, Eden privately worried about the risks posed to the Prime Minister's health by the journey, and persuaded Churchill to consult his doctor, Sir Charles Wilson, before any final decision was taken. Churchill passed the doctor's test, and a little after midnight, on Sunday, 2 August, he set off from Lyneham airfield in an unheated, four-engined US Liberator bomber named _Commando_. He went with two objectives at the forefront of his mind: in Cairo, to make sweeping changes to the high command; in Moscow, to convince Stalin that Operation _Torch_ , the intended North African landings, would be a more than adequate substitute for a second front on the European mainland.

No member of the War Cabinet accompanied the Prime Minister. Churchill was content to take Sir Alexander Cadogan and General Alan Brooke as his principal advisers, with his old friend South African president Field Marshal Smuts joining them for the Cairo leg. The friendship between Smuts and Churchill had been forged in unlikely circumstances in the Second Boer War, when the former, a key commando leader, interrogated the latter, a captured journalist, and a mutual respect developed. Churchill had little time for the leaders of other Dominion countries, but he greatly admired Smuts and his wise counsel, encouraging his attendance at War Cabinet.

The Prime Minister's delight at escaping the shackles of Whitehall and heading for the thick of the action was self-evident. 'Winston was bubbling with enthusiasm,' observed one of the first men to brief him, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, head of RAF Middle East Command. 'He was like a schoolboy just out of school and off for a really wonderful holiday.'

A few days later, after a full round of conferences and a visit to inspect the Eighth Army at El Alamein, Churchill's mind was made up. General Auchinleck had to go, to be replaced by Lieutenant General William Gott, whose aggressive personality appealed to the Prime Minister, and who came with a recommendation from Eden, the pair having served together in the First World War. Back in London, on Friday, 7 August, Attlee convened the War Cabinet three times, at 9.30 a.m., 5 p.m. and 11.15 p.m. – only in the desperate days of May 1940 had ministers met so often in a twenty-four-hour period. There was unrest in India and the fate of the Atlantic convoys to consider, but Churchill's proposed changes in the military hierarchy in the Middle East were the main focus of their attention.

Around midnight Attlee, Cripps, Eden, Anderson, Lyttelton and Bevin were among those critically examining the plan when an ashen-faced secretary entered and handed a piece of paper to Attlee with the comment, 'I fear this is bad news.' It was a message from Churchill that Gott's plane had been shot down and the general killed. Eden in particular was badly shaken by the loss of his old regimental colleague. 'The war had been going badly for us and it seemed we could never get the right commanders in the right places. Now that we thought all was set fair, this unexpected blow had fallen.'

The Prime Minister's determination to remove Auchinleck was unaltered by the tragedy. The Eighth Army command would instead go to Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, commander of the South-Eastern Army in Britain, who had already been earmarked to take control of British forces in Operation _Torch_. General Sir Harold Alexander, mentioned in dispatches earlier in the year during the desperate retreat in Burma, was to become commander-in-chief Middle East Command. Auchinleck was offered the newly created Persia and Iraq Command but, deeply hurt by his dismissal, refused it and retired to India to lick his wounds.

Montgomery assumed command of the Eighth Army at 2 p.m. on 13 August – an act of 'disobedience', as he took charge two days before he was officially due to do so. Right from the start he sought to instil a new resolve. 'I issued orders that in the event of enemy attack there would be _no_ withdrawal; we would fight on the ground we now held, and if we couldn't stay there alive we would stay there dead,' he recalled. This was music to the ears of Churchill, who by then had reached Moscow – via Teheran – to begin the delicate task of informing Stalin there would be no second front. The Soviet Union was facing a grave crisis, with Hitler's summer offensive in full flow and the German Sixth Army rapidly approaching the outskirts of Stalingrad.

The War Cabinet was apprised daily – sometimes hourly – as to each twist and turn of Churchill's first ever face-to-face meeting with Stalin. The Soviet leader's mood was dark to begin with, after the Prime Minister frankly informed him that the 'great offensive' in Europe could not be launched until 1943. He was only partly assuaged when Churchill pledged to intensify the bombing campaign instead, putting twenty more German cities in the firing line.

Churchill won a more favourable response when he outlined the strategy behind Operation _Torch_ by taking up his pen and drawing a picture of a crocodile – one of his favourite metaphors – on a piece of paper. Once North Africa was in the possession of the Allies, it was 'our intention to attack the soft belly of the crocodile as we attacked its hard snout'; the clear implication being that Sicily and Italy was the belly, while northern France and western Europe remained the snout. Now Stalin's mood changed. 'May God help this enterprise to succeed,' he remarked enthusiastically.

But apparent harmony at the end of that first meeting quickly evaporated, to be replaced by a provocative, accusatory approach from the Russians the following night. Stalin called for 'higher sacrifices' from the western Allies. Operation _Torch_ was all well and good, but it demonstrated that Britain and America thought the Russian front was of 'secondary importance'. On the recent sinking of two-thirds of Convoy PQ 17, which had been bringing vital supplies to the Soviet Union, he bluntly told Churchill, 'This is the first time in history the British Navy has ever turned tail and fled from the battle. You British are afraid of fighting. You should not think the Germans are supermen. You will have to fight sooner or later.'

The Prime Minister kept calm in the face of this provocation. He then launched into an oratorical tour de force lasting five minutes, in which he complained that he had travelled all across Europe to 'meet the hand of comradeship' and that it grieved him to think the Russians did not believe the Allies were doing their utmost for the cause. 'If, by the loss of 150,000 British and American soldiers on the shore of France, real help could be given to Russia and something useful achieved, the Americans and the British would not hesitate to give the order.' Transfixed by Churchill's 'magnificent performance', the interpreters failed to translate it properly. Stalin, however, had no need to grasp the speech fully to appreciate the passion with which it was delivered. 'I do not understand the words,' he said, smiling broadly for the first time that evening, 'but by God I like your spirit.'

Churchill deduced that Stalin, for all his bluster, would accept the postponement of the second front. 'It is my considered opinion that in his heart – so far as he has one – Stalin knows we are right . . . moreover I am certain that his sure-footed and quick military judgement will make him a strong supporter of "Torch".' He was correct. By the time Churchill left on Sunday, 16 August, after two further meetings, he was able to tell the War Cabinet that 'the greatest goodwill prevailed, and for the first time we got on easy and friendly terms'. Stalin had swallowed the bitter pill; now everything turned on the Allies defeating Rommel and launching the _Torch_ invasion as soon as practicable.

Churchill had hinted to Stalin at their first of their meetings in the Kremlin that in the absence of a fully fledged second front, 'something could be done in September . . . on the stretch between Dunkirk and Dieppe.' In fact this attack, Operation _Jubilee_ , took place sooner, on Wednesday, 19 August. The following day its principal author, Acting Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations (the body that oversaw amphibious offensives carried out jointly by army and naval personnel), great-grandson of Queen Victoria and a favourite of Churchill, was invited to Downing Street to give the War Cabinet an account of the operation. Its target had been the French port of Dieppe, and it involved the landing of 5,000 Canadian infantry, 1,000 British commandos and fifty US rangers, supported at sea by the Royal Navy, in the air by seventy-four RAF squadrons – mainly Spitfires – and on land by fifty-eight of the new Churchill tanks.

The Chief of Staffs Committee had approved the plan, when it was Operation _Rutter_ , back in May. Since then, Mountbatten had run the operation – significantly modified in the meantime – with great secrecy; the Prime Minister and a majority of his military chiefs had been aware (to varying degrees) of its progress, but there is no evidence that the ministers around the table that evening – Attlee (in the chair), Cripps, Eden, Anderson and Amery – had been brought into the loop. Even Sir Archibald Sinclair, air minister, who had signed off the RAF squadrons for the mission, was thought to have been briefed only at the last minute. It was a typical example of Churchill's preference for secrecy where unconventional, risky operations were concerned.

Mountbatten presented the ministers with a positive story. He said two-thirds of the 6,000-plus force had been accounted for and returned to Britain. Planning, organisation and co-operation between the services had been excellent; the air support had been 'faultless'. The personnel of one enemy coastal battery had been wiped out, while another was neutralised. All in all, despite very heavy air fighting, the 'lessons learned in this large-scale raid would be invaluable in planning for Operation _Round-Up_ ' – a reference to the major cross-Channel invasion planned for the spring of 1943.

Attlee praised Mountbatten for the planning and execution, which 'reflected the greatest credit on all concerned'. Lord Halifax noted later, 'I don't think it sounds at all bad – one or two things went wrong . . . but the troops [are] in good heart, and the Air Force having had a real good fight at everything the Germans had to put up.'

In fact, the assault was a disaster. Of the Canadian contingent, 3,367 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner; of the British commandos, 247. The Royal Navy lost the destroyer HMS _Berkeley_ and thirty-three landing craft, suffering 550 dead and wounded. The RAF, which flew 2,617 sorties in the largest single-day battle of the war, lost 106 aircraft, over double the number it took from the Luftwaffe. The German army suffered 591 casualties. Perhaps the only accurate part of Mountbatten's presentation was the capture of the Hess coastal battery on 'Orange Beach', six miles west of Dieppe.

Mountbatten nevertheless remained bullish. 'The air support was faultless . . . morale of returning troops reported to be excellent; all I have seen are in great form,' he telegraphed Churchill on the day of his appearance before the War Cabinet. For the moment, Churchill agreed with Mountbatten on the value of the operation. 'My general impression of Jubilee is that the results fully justified the heavy cost,' he telegraphed the War Cabinet on 21 August while still in Cairo. 'The large scale air battle alone justified the raid.'

The British press dutifully painted a glowing picture of the failed attack. 'LORD LOUIS: OUR TANKS PENETRATED THE TOWN', was the front-page headline in the _Daily Express_ two days after the operation, which claimed 273 German planes had been destroyed. A reporter for the German paper _Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ , who was visiting a nearby Luftwaffe airbase, unsurprisingly viewed things in a very different light – but arguably with more accuracy. 'As executed, the venture mocked all rules of military logic and strategy.' And as more information about the raid seeped out, the gloss on the events of 19 August wore off. Four days after _Jubilee_ Hugh Dalton was offered a worrying second opinion when dining with his friend, the military intelligence officer Christopher Mayhew. 'He takes rather a gloomy view of the operation. In the centre, he says, it was just a massacre, and there was a muddle at one of the other landing places . . . our tanks got stuck against a sea wall.' A week on and General Alan Brooke admitted, 'The casualties were undoubtedly far too many – to lose 2,700 men out of 5,000 on such an enterprise is too heavy a cost.'

Later, as he read detailed reports of the day's events, Churchill's satisfaction over Dieppe would diminish too. He even considered constituting a full-scale inquiry. But the raid's failure – or benefit, if viewed from the perspective of tying down the Germans and learning lessons for D-Day – faded from the memory as the more momentous military events of autumn 1942 began to unfold.

On Sunday, 23 August Vasily Grossman, special correspondent for the _Red Star_ newspaper, reached Stalingrad just as General Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army prepared to launch the Germans' major offensive on the city. Months of bombing from the Luftwaffe had already taken its toll. 'Stalingrad is in ashes. It is dead,' Grossman wrote. 'People are in basements. Everything is burned out. The hot walls of the buildings are like the bodies of people who have died in the terrible heat and haven't gone cold yet . . . there are children wandering about, there are many laughing faces. Many people are half insane.'

A week later in the Western Desert, Field Marshal Ernst Rommel prepared to launch his offensive against the Allied Eighth Army at Alam el Halfa, calculating that Montgomery's troops, yet to receive reinforcements or to settle down under their new command, would be at their most vulnerable. The residents of Stalingrad, protected by the depleted Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, would face months of siege and starvation. But by 2 September the Eighth Army, aided by vital Ultra intelligence – which enabled the sinking of German fuel cargoes – and supported superbly by the Desert Air Force, had finally halted Rommel. If not a victory, the British government at last had a successful defence to boast of.

The situation further east remained ominous, however. In August and September the government had to confront Gandhi's 'Quit India' campaign, whose renewed call for immediate independence had sparked rioting across the country. Even with Churchill absent, the War Cabinet – save for some half-hearted opposition from Cripps – was unanimous in adopting a tough line. With Japan still threatening India, it fell to Attlee, Secretary of State for the Dominions, and one of the more liberal-minded ministers in this area, to approve the imprisonment of Gandhi, Nehru and other Congress leaders.

The question of what to do about Gandhi's latest hunger strike did, however, provoke dissent. On 10 August Sir James Grigg, war secretary, led the hardliners: 'I would leave him to die where he is – at Poona, where he is in a palace not a prison.' Others disagreed. 'Whatever the disadvantages of letting him out, his death in detention would be worse,' Lord Halifax averred. Later, the government offered to release Gandhi while he fasted. Gandhi replied that if he were released, he would have no need to fast. In the event, his fast lasted twenty-one days; by the end of the year, 60,000 people had been arrested in the crackdown.

The man who had grappled with the seemingly intractable Indian problem in the spring was now a frustrated and isolated power in the War Cabinet. 'Stafford Cripps' shares have gone down rather with his colleagues,' his friend Violet Bonham Carter had observed in early July. Cripps told aides he had been permitted only one face-to-face meeting with Churchill since his return from India. Slowly but surely he was being frozen out. Worse, his heavy, at times hectoring, tone in the Commons won him scant affection from MPs, one particular incident, on 8 September, underlining his status as an irritant to both his peers and his master.

Churchill's speech on the war that morning had so disarmed his critics that there were few volunteers for the debate that followed. But later Cripps, as Leader of the House, took it on himself to give MPs a sharp dressing down for this pliancy, accusing them of preferring their luncheon to their duty of scrutinising the government. 'This has enraged everybody, and will, I fear, do the House much damage in the country,' noted Harold Nicolson. In War Cabinet the following day Churchill displayed his annoyance.

'Why encourage criticism?' he asked Cripps.

'I didn't. I regretted the lost opportunity [for MPs] to express support,' replied the Leader of the House.

'Silent support is perhaps best. The House of Commons is in a very good mood – better to have left them alone,' retorted the PM.

'The general effect was bad,' came back Cripps.

'I disagree,' replied Churchill.

Two weeks later an unhappy Cripps forced the issue. 'I do not now feel you place reliance on my help,' he wrote to Churchill. 'I feel increasingly out of touch with your mind on a wide range of subjects of which, as Leader of the Commons, I should have an intimate knowledge.' Cripps attached a memorandum containing familiar criticisms of the machinery of Churchill's ministry.

Churchill replied that he was 'surprised and somewhat pained' to receive the letter. 'I thought we were on the most cordial terms when I set out on my journey at the beginning of August. . . I have always found our conversations agreeable and stimulating.'

A solution to Cripps' discontent had to be found. At 11 p.m. on Wednesday, 30 September, he was summoned to Downing Street, where he and Churchill had a 'lively' discussion until 2.30 a.m. Eden was given a first-hand account later that day. 'The first hour W attacked him, so SC says, told him he had raked up criticism from all quarters, that if he went out he would have no future, neither Tories nor Socialists supporting him. SC retorted; then matters were calmer but without agreement.'

Churchill told Eden he was convinced Cripps had devised some 'Machiavellian political plot'. The foreign secretary and Attlee then stepped in to act as peacemakers, urging Cripps not to resign at such a critical moment for the government, with Operation _Torch_ about to be launched. They also floated the idea – without consulting Churchill – of Cripps taking a new job outside the War Cabinet, as Minister of Aircraft Production, a prospect that had evidently excited his interest.

The matter was resolved the next day. Churchill liked the suggestion that Cripps might move to aircraft production, while the unhappy minister acknowledged the need not to rock the boat at a crucial juncture. 'If "Torch" failed, we were all sunk, if it succeeded, he was free to act as he wished. If it were fifty-fifty, we could think again,' had been Eden's advice to his colleague. On 3 October Cripps wrote to the Prime Minister, telling him, 'You have not convinced me that the changes which I have suggested in the central direction of the war are unnecessary.' He was, however, withholding his resignation because of the 'special circumstances to which you and my other colleagues have drawn my attention'.

'If "Torch" fails, then I'm done for and must go and hand over to you,' Churchill confided in Eden. But salvation was not far away. Twelve days after Montgomery launched Operation _Lightfoot_ in Egypt, Rommel's Afrika Korps was routed on the battlefield at El Alamein; Hitler refused his general's request to retreat, but the 'Desert Fox' disobeyed orders and by 8 November had fallen back to the port of Sidi Barrani, close to the Libyan border. On that same day, further west along the African coast, some 63,500 US and 10,000 British troops had made dawn landings at Algiers and Oran in Algeria and Casablanca in Morocco.

At the War Cabinet meeting at 6 p.m. the following day, Churchill's excitement at Montgomery's success and his relief that _Torch_ was finally under way were palpable. As General Alan Brooke reported the capture of 40,000 German prisoners and the destruction or seizure of nine-tenths of the enemy's tanks and three-quarters of their guns, the Prime Minister proclaimed El Alamein to be 'one of the greatest victories ever won by the British Empire in the field'. He proposed that church bells – silenced since 1940 – should ring out in celebration of the first British military success of the war. As for _Torch_ , he was equally upbeat. 'It is the biggest combined effort since the attack on the Low Countries – and the largest amphibian operation ever undertaken . . . I beg my colleagues and the military authorities to look on this as a springboard . . . this is the moment for the offensive.'

In the House of Commons on 11 November, after he had given a dramatic, detailed description of Montgomery's triumph, Churchill informed MPs of the fall of Casablanca, the last of the vital North African ports to be taken by the Allies. He brought news, too, of Hitler's decision to march into Vichy France, 'thus breaking the Armistice which the Vichy Government had kept with such pitiful and perverted fidelity'.

After all the misery of the previous ten months, Churchill was now able to reassert himself, and on 22 November he carried out a Cabinet reshuffle on his own terms. Cripps was sent to the Ministry of Aircraft Production as promised, and Herbert Morrison was promoted to the War Cabinet in his place. Eden succeeded Cripps as Leader of the House, while Lord Cranborne took his role as Lord Privy Seal.

Morrison learned of his promotion in unusual circumstances. Invited to Chequers for the weekend, he was surprised when he sat down for dinner to see a small radio on the table by Churchill's side. 'He switched on the BBC news bulletin and the announcement of Cripps' resignation came through – the first inkling I had of it. There was a twinkle in the Prime Minister's eyes when he switched off the set and without any comment about the Cripps affair, invited me to join the Cabinet.'

Hugh Dalton, certainly no friend of Cripps, thought the departing minister had been 'very skilfully played by the PM . . . Seldom has anyone's political stock, having been so outrageously and unjustifiably overvalued, fallen so fast and so far.' In press coverage on Monday, 23 November, the Labour-supporting _Daily Herald_ asserted that the War Cabinet had been clearly strengthened. But _The Times_ worried that the reconstruction of Britain might be now set back by the 'withdrawal from the War Cabinet of a minister peculiarly identified in the public mind' with the necessary 'freshness' in policy outlook that was now needed.

The sudden optimism inspired by the African victories had set many ministers' thoughts turning towards post-war policy. For some in the War Cabinet, there was apprehension at the impending publication of Sir William Beveridge's long-awaited report _Social Insurance and Allied Services_. Sir William had been reported in the _Daily Telegraph_ on 13 November suggesting that his welfare proposals would take Britain 'half-way to Moscow'. The quote was, in fact, erroneous, but it voiced precisely the fear of many Conservative members of the government.

Brendan Bracken had told colleagues in the War Cabinet meeting of 16 November that Beveridge was 'working up a political campaign'. The author wished to brief lobby correspondents two weeks before publication, and to follow this with a full press briefing on the day. Churchill appeared relatively emollient at first, merely responding, 'It was a pity if such a comprehensive scheme failed to get a fair chance because of the propaganda of its author.' Later in the meeting, though, he emphasised more severely, 'The report is Government property. Beveridge must be told he is not to expound it – threaten him with [parliamentary] privilege.'

Ten days later the battle lines were more sharply drawn. The chancellor, Kingsley Wood, estimated the cost of implementing the Beveridge Report to be as much as £100 million. For Labour, an enthusiastic Attlee suggested, 'US reaction may be good – they may be impressed by our boldness.' Stafford Cripps warned, 'When opinion crystallizes, it would be a pity to let it appear the Government is being dragged reluctantly to support it,' adding, 'Could we not welcome it in principle?' Churchill and Kingsley Wood firmly disagreed with that approach.

The struggle for national survival had been the glue holding the coalition together. Huge differences in political philosophy had been put to one side in the common interest. Now that it seemed the fight might not be lost, the old fissures were opening up again, as thoughts turned to what sort of peace could be constructed from the ruins of war.

## Chapter Ten

## **'Slaying the five giants'**

1 December 1942 to 18 May 1943

Late on the evening of Monday, 30 November 1942, long queues began to form outside the London headquarters of His Majesty's Stationery Office at York House, Holborn. Government publications are rarely bestsellers, and _Social Insurance and Allied Services_ was a particularly unpromising title. The main text was 150,000 words long, and it was followed by pages and pages of appendices containing surveys, statistical tables and various memoranda.

But those who braved that cold winter's night were not doing so out of a desire to immerse themselves in technical details about provisional rates of benefit, compulsory insurance contributions or comprehensive health and rehabilitation services. They had joined the mile-long line because they wanted to buy a vision of the future – of a Britain far removed from the rationed, cramped, controlled country of 1942; of a new order where, in the heroic language of sections of the report, the 'five giants' of Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, Idleness and Want had been slain.

Freedom from want cannot be forced on a democracy or given to a democracy. It must be won by them. Winning it needs courage and faith and a sense of national unity: courage to face facts and difficulties and overcome them; faith in our future and in the ideals of fair play and freedom for which century after century our forefathers were prepared to die; a sense of national unity overriding the interests of any class or section.

The author of those stirring words was sixty-three-year-old Sir William Beveridge, a renowned economist and social reformer all the more respected by the British public because they viewed him as an idealist untainted and unconstrained by party affiliation. With his exuberant white hair, avian profile, rubicund complexion and gently smiling face, Beveridge looked more like an amiable farmer or reassuring family doctor than some wild-eyed revolutionary. Yet his supremely lucid and logical report, written out in neat longhand at the disciplined rate of 1,000 words a day, spelt potential trouble – as well as opportunity – for the coalition government. This was a Magna Carta for the working classes.

From early on in the war, even as all efforts were concentrated on Britain's survival, ideas of what sort of country should emerge in the aftermath of the conflict had flourished in people's minds. 'The European House cannot be put in order unless we put our own house in order first,' wrote _The Times_ in July 1940. 'The new order cannot be based on the preservation of privilege whether the privilege be that of a country, of a class or of an individual.'

The miseries of the 1930s, of unemployment and the hated household means test, had to be left behind. Long waiting lists at hospitals needed to be reduced, and the cursory examinations and hasty diagnoses given by many panel doctors dispensed with. Above all, there was a growing chorus of disapproval over the social welfare system; a seminal report by Seebohm Rowntree, based in York, had found that whereas in 1901 poverty had been principally caused by low earnings, now it was in large part due to unemployment and inadequate provision for childhood and old age.

Back in June 1941, when Arthur Greenwood, Minister without Portfolio, asked Beveridge to chair an obscure interdepartmental inquiry into social insurance, the expectation had been that this would be just another 'patching up' exercise. There were issues of compensation for industrial injury and sickness to consider, as well as the long overdue rationalisation of the chaotic and inconsistent mix of social security that had accumulated over the previous half-century. No less than seven government departments were directly or indirectly concerned with administering cash benefits for different kinds of need.

But beyond that, the inquiry had been an excuse for Ernest Bevin and other ministers, tired of the restless ambition of this undoubtedly brilliant but somewhat vain and overbearing civil servant, to cast Beveridge into a backwater where he would be unable to disturb their work on the war effort. He had not been expected to report back until the return of peacetime.

That plan had now backfired. Beveridge was at first deeply disappointed with his new brief, believing he had been 'kicked upstairs' for the remainder of the war. But with time he came to see how his inquiry could be transformed into a major work of social reconstruction, enabling him to become the pioneering architect of a more enlightened age. He could not, he told ministers as he prepared his report a year later, confine himself to the narrow issue of social insurance. There were three principles without which his plan for social security would not work. All were politically controversial, especially to a Conservative-led government.

First, there had to be a National Health Service, free at the point of use to prevent medical bills causing poverty. Second, there had to be family allowances paid at the same rate in and out of work, because purely means-tested help would leave those with large families better off unemployed. And third, there had to be full employment – or at worst, a jobless rate of no more than 10 per cent – to ensure wages were high enough to pay the contributions needed to fund the scheme.

The mixture of private cover and means-tested dole that had existed before the war would be replaced by a comprehensive scheme of social insurance, administered by a new Ministry of Social Security. All working people would pay a single weekly contribution to the state, and in return flat-rate benefits would be paid out to support the unemployed, the sick, the retired and the widowed.

Yet in some ways this central pillar of Beveridge's report was not as radical as his supporters claimed, or as his critics feared. This was the proposal of a liberal collectivist, not an out-and-out socialist. He did not establish a principle that people were entitled to free allowances simply because they were members of a community. The contributory principle still reigned: people were only entitled to 'what they paid for'. 'The state in organizing security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility,' Beveridge emphasised. 'In establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family.'

It was not the level of benefits per se that attracted such popular support, but the democratic intent behind them. 'All social insurance . . . for all citizens without income limit – from duke to dustman,' proclaimed the _Daily Mirror_ . 'Cradle to grave benefits for all, including free medical, dental, eyesight and hospital treatment.' _The Times_ recorded that an incredible 70,000 copies of Beveridge's report were sold in its first three days (the final tally would be 635,000). Details were broadcast by the BBC from dawn on 1 December in twenty-two languages. Gallup noted that after two weeks, 95 per cent of the population knew about the proposals, and the vast majority supported them. Members of the public questioned for the Ministry of Information's 'Home Intelligence Weekly Report' were insistent that Sir William's core ideas must be acted upon. 'If not, things will be damned unpleasant for whatever government is in power; if it's mucked up, there will be hell to pay.'

Some, of course, had reservations. 'People in all walks of life fear that the high rate of benefits may prove an incentive to laziness and thriftlessness,' the Ministry of Information reported. Oswald Falk, nephew of social reformer Arnold Toynbee and a former colleague of John Maynard Keynes, wrote a hostile letter to _The Times_ on 2 December. 'The Beveridge Report is the road to the moral ruin of the nation . . . it is the way of sleep, not a symptom of the vitality of our civilization, but of its approaching end.' But these were minority views. Even a large number of backbench Tory MPs were won over. After Beveridge delivered a 'concise and brilliant speech' to the 1922 Committee, Harvie-Watt reported to Churchill, 'The younger members are prepared to go a long way with the suggestions contained in the report . . .'

Nevertheless, Beveridge would have to manoeuvre adroitly if he was to persuade the coalition government to implement any part of his scheme. The estimated cost – £700 million by 1945, and up to £850 million twenty years thereafter – was seen as prohibitive by many, especially the Chancellor, Sir Kingsley Wood, whose lot it was to contemplate the colossal scale of Britain's post-war debt. Meanwhile, for some on the right of British politics, the principle of an enlarged social role for the state was simply anathema. What the man who 'fathered' the first scheme of unemployment insurance in Britain would make of it, no one was quite sure.

Beveridge and Churchill had first met at the political salon of Fabian Society founders Sidney and Beatrice Webb at 41 Grosvenor Road, on 11 March 1908. Like Clement Attlee a few years later, Beveridge, a leader writer on the _Morning Post_ , had spent time at the pioneering Toynbee Hall settlement – where university dons and students lived alongside the poor of the East End of London – and was interested in long-term solutions for unemployment; Churchill, about to become President of the Board of Trade, was working to usher in rapid social change as a member of Herbert Asquith's reforming Liberal government.

Their introduction had gone well. They talked about decasualisation and other ways of helping the jobless, and Beveridge was impressed by Churchill's 'brilliance and restlessness'. A few days later Beatrice Webb urged the new minister, 'If you are going to deal with unemployment, you must have the boy Beveridge.' Soon Churchill invited 'the boy' to a departmental seminar on labour exchanges, and not long afterwards he drafted him into the Board of Trade. Working alongside the masterful permanent secretary Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, Beveridge had shaped two groundbreaking pieces of legislation for Churchill: the Labour Exchanges Act (1909), which set up offices to inform employers of available labour and workers of available jobs, and the National Insurance Act (1911), which brought in the first system to protect the British working class against sickness and unemployment, and applied to two and a quarter million employees in heavy industries.

This was the zenith of Churchill's radicalism: a period of mighty legislative accomplishment (although the latter act was actually ushered in by Lloyd George) that also included his 1909 Trade Boards Act, establishing for the first time the concept of a 'minimum wage'. The Beveridge Report could be viewed as a logical extension of those earlier measures, but by the 1940s Churchill's reforming instincts had long since dimmed. Increasingly irritated by those who planned for peace before first winning the war, he now viewed his erstwhile colleague as 'an awful windbag and a dreamer'.

On 15 December Beveridge married Juliet ('Jessie') Mair, mother of four children and widow of David Mair, his first cousin. Churchill did not attend the ceremony, but sent as a wedding present a four-volume edition, in green and gold, of his panegyric on his great ancestor Marlborough, _His Life and Times_. Though it was in fact a well-worn piece of Churchillese, used on numerous occasions when talking or writing about social security, the inscription must have encouraged Beveridge that his ideas might yet get a fair wind: 'May he bring the magic of averages to the rescue of millions'.

On the eve of a trip to Casablanca in January, to plan the next stage of the Allied European strategy with President Roosevelt, the Prime Minister circulated a memorandum to the War Cabinet that sounded a more cautious note. Headlined 'Promises About Post-War Conditions', it attempted to dampen down the euphoria created by the Beveridge Report.

'A dangerous optimism is growing up about the conditions it will be possible to establish here after the war,' the document began. The Prime Minister went on to list all the potential benefits outlined in the Beveridge Report – the abolition of unemployment and low wages, better and prolonged education, great developments in housing and health, the abolition of 'want' – but observed sceptically that all this was to be achieved without raising the cost of living, or reducing the value of sterling. 'It is because I do not wish to deceive the people by false hopes and airy visions of Utopia and Eldorado that I have refrained so far from making promises about the future,' he wrote.

Beveridge wrote to Churchill on 30 January. 'Can you spare me a few minutes of your time at any time in the future? I would like the chance of a word with you about the "magic of averages" in relation to social security.' His entreaty fell on deaf ears.

For Attlee, Morrison and Bevin, who for two and a half years had laboured under a self-denying ordinance in the interest of national unity, it was no doubt galling to see their radical thunder stolen by Beveridge; an arrogant academic – as they perceived him – who was a Liberal to boot. Even so, they remained publicly loyal to the Churchill line of caution over his proposals. For Bevin, at least, this was not purely out of adherence to collective Cabinet responsibility. He had his own issues with the report, regretting that there was no mention of a guaranteed weekly wage, disliking the notion of job training (which sounded to him too reminiscent of the old workhouse test) and believing family allowances would undermine wages. 'Man cannot live by Beveridge alone' would be his watchword. Attlee and Morrison found such self-restraint in discussing and promoting social change more difficult, however, especially with the Labour Party so enthusiastic about the contents of the report. In private, the gloves could come off.

With a date set for a full-scale Commons debate on Beveridge, on Monday, 16 February, Churchill issued another warning note in a second memorandum to his colleagues. Using the same phrase written on Beveridge's wedding present – 'bringing the magic of averages nearer to the rescue of millions' – he acknowledged that the report constituted 'an essential part of any post-war scheme of national betterment'. But he also made it quite clear that a general election was required – 'a House of Commons refreshed by the people' – before any major changes could be implemented.

Attlee fired back immediately, writing that he was 'disturbed' at the claim that it would be 'unconstitutional or at least improper' for the government to legislate for social change. In a rebuke to the Prime Minister for his detachment from Home Front matters, he wrote, 'I doubt whether in your inevitable and proper preoccupation with military problems you are fully cognizant of the extent to which decisions must be taken and implemented in the field of post-war reconstruction before the end of the war.' Refusing to accept that further change would be catastrophic, he warned, 'I am certain that unless the Government is prepared to be as courageous in planning for the peace as it has been in carrying on the war, there is extreme danger of disaster when the war ends.'

On the eve of the Commons debate, the War Cabinet assembled at Downing Street with the Prime Minister's fresh memorandum in front of them, and Attlee was ready to lock horns with him in response. The exchanges were robust.

Sir John Anderson told colleagues his interpretation of Churchill's memorandum was that there would be no reconstruction legislation at all – or reform of the social security system would be given a lower priority than other projects. To this Attlee said bluntly, 'If the PM's line is taken, it will provoke demand for a General Election.' He again disputed the argument that it was not the job of a wartime coalition to introduce social legislation, pointing out, 'In the last war an education bill [The Fisher Act] was passed by an even older Parliament.'

But Churchill asserted, 'Our first promise should be to ensure that the demobilized will get back to their old jobs – ie, under the old regime . . . no promises, no commitments, [yet] every conceivable preparation.'

'Preparations all involve decisions of policy,' retorted Attlee.

'I would agree to legislation by this Parliament to prepare for post-war; but not to legislation taking decisions binding the future,' Churchill went on.

Now Morrison contested him: 'If we accept the view that we can have no enabling legislation dealing with post-war problems – then we shall be in an indefensible position.'

By the end of the meeting Churchill had reluctantly been forced to concede that the government's speaker the next day, Sir John Anderson, should not have his hands tied by a blanket refusal to legislate during the current parliament.

As it turned out, what Anderson said mattered less than the manner in which he said it. He addressed MPs as if in his natural role of civil servant reporting to the government, rather than as a minister engaging a political assembly. His words by themselves suggested real enthusiasm: this 'is indeed a bold and imaginative conception . . . any Minister who . . . could come and accept it in its entirety might justifiably feel both proud and happy . . . I have made it clear that the Government adopts the scheme and principle.' Anderson was in fact committing the government to universal healthcare and an employment policy. But this was an object lesson in how to alienate the House of Commons. Reading entirely from a script, the Lord President was stiff in manner, humourless, pompous in response to interruptions, and gave the impression that the report was a heavy load to bear, not a gift to be welcomed.

The mood of the Labour Party hardened as a result of this inept display. When its administrative committee met that night, a critical amendment was drawn up to challenge the government's motion, demanding 'early implementation' of the Beveridge Report. Attlee and Morrison struggled to defend their position at a fractious party meeting early the following morning. By the time they went on to attend a session of the War Cabinet at Downing Street, at 12.30, all the evidence suggests they were prepared for a fight. It would be one of the more acrimonious meetings of the war.

Around the table were all the members of the War Cabinet: the Prime Minister, Attlee, Eden, Anderson, Bevin, Morrison and Lyttelton – together with Kingsley Wood, Archibald Sinclair, and James Stuart and William Whiteley, the joint Tory and Labour parliamentary secretaries to the Treasury. This would be Churchill's last major engagement for over a week. He was visibly sick. A heavy cold and sore throat had dogged him for several days, and the night before his temperature had risen sharply. His doctor, Sir Charles Wilson, had diagnosed inflammation on the base of a lung, which a specialist would confirm the following day as pneumonia.

The meeting began with Whiteley's assessment of the mood at Westminster and in the country. '[The] general public is expecting more from the Government than has been offered. The temper of the [Labour Party] meeting this morning was very unsatisfactory.' The chancellor then pitched in, outlining how the various government departments would draw up plans for implementing Beveridge's proposals. With those complete, the government would review them, together with other claims on the Treasury's purse, in the light of the prevailing financial situation. 'That is what every Government does before introducing a bill. What's wrong with that?' Kingsley Wood asked.

Then, as Whiteley later put it to colleagues, Attlee 'fought like a tiger'. '[I] didn't come into this Government on the basis only of dealing with the war,' the Deputy Prime Minister asserted. '[I] always understood that we would concern ourselves with preparations for post-war problems. Moreover, the public are very much interested in their post-war conditions.' Most cuttingly, he continued: 'The mandate of this government is not limited to "blood, tears and sweat". This government must either govern or get through a general election a government that will.'

Churchill hit back, saying that any commitments to Beveridge's report would be 'irresponsible' and a 'peril to financial security . . . We must get our soldiers home and into employment.' Attlee retorted, 'The Labour Party are not irresponsible about this.' To which Churchill responded, 'Everyone wants it; but can you pay for it?'

At this point, Herbert Morrison weighed in. 'If we said "no legislation until after the war" the House of Commons wouldn't have it. [This is] a political crisis; [there is a] solid Labour vote in favour of the motion tabled.' He added, 'If this Government leaves its successor with no legislative preparations for the post-war period we shall be treacherous to the country.'

Later Churchill seemed keen to take the heat out of the meeting. 'My plan was to win the war and keep the government united for the purpose of putting through [afterwards] a programme of four or five projects of social importance. However, if an Appointed Day can be left blank, I wouldn't oppose the introduction of a bill. Though I think it would be unwise – occupying much Parliamentary time and provoking much controversy. So long as we reserve the right to decide at the end of the war when to bring it into operation.'

While this uneasy compromise hung in the air, it fell to Herbert Morrison, on day three, to demonstrate that the coalition had been inspired by Beveridge's plan and intended to respond positively to the public mood. In an accomplished, energetic speech, he told MPs that the Beveridge Report should be 'classed as a great state document that will live long in our social and economic history . . . a landmark, not only in Britain but in the world'. But despite this generous praise, there was still the government line to be maintained: 'We cannot give a date when the Bill will be produced. We are not going to do it.'

When the House divided, Labour's amendment expressing dissatisfaction with the government's approach was defeated by 335 votes to 119. But it had been the biggest total of votes yet cast against the coalition; the protests were led by ninety-seven Labour MPs, including former War Cabinet member Arthur Greenwood, who had commissioned Beveridge's report. David Lloyd George, now eighty years old – and, along with Churchill, the 'father' of the welfare state – came up from his country home, Churt, specifically to vote against this 'watering down' of social reform; he marched into the 'No' lobby with his daughter Megan on his arm.

The vote opened up a serious rift between Labour ministers and the party's backbenchers. Jim Griffiths, MP for Llanelli, who had moved the critical amendment, summed up the views of the party's rank and file. 'The Beveridge Plan has become in the minds of the nation both a symbol and a test . . . a symbol of the kind of Britain we are determined to build when the victory is won . . . Frankly, I am terribly disappointed at the fact that the Government has not risen to the opportunity offered to them this week of giving a real message to the people of this country.'

Regardless of Labour's enthusiasm for Beveridge – some of which he shared, quite a lot of which he did not – Ernest Bevin was furious with the party for what he believed was its disloyalty. He viewed Griffiths' amendment as a vote of censure on him and his fellow Labour ministers, toiling away in government under the necessary strictures of collective responsibility. He even briefly threatened to resign from the War Cabinet, but in the end reserved his sanction for his supposed comrades; for the next year he stopped attending party meetings, viewing his place in the government as the representative of the trade unions alone.

Home Intelligence reports suggested that most people now feared Beveridge's proposals had been put on the back burner. In a series of by-elections in February, Conservative candidates fared badly, with the party's vote down on average 8 per cent in four of the six seats contested. While recovering at Chequers from his bout of pneumonia, Churchill thought more and decided to wrest back the initiative. He began to consider making a speech about the Home Front – his first significant foray into this territory since the start of the war – with the possible title 'A Four-Year Plan for England'. He took soundings from a number of ministers, with 'Prof' Lindemann – ennobled in June 1941 as Lord Cherwell – constantly at his side to evaluate the statistical information. Robert Hudson, Minister of Agriculture, was the first to be summoned to Chequers, followed by Rab Butler, President of the Board of Education.

At a specially convened War Cabinet meeting on Friday, 19 March, the discussion was entirely devoted to the Prime Minister's speech, now to come live from Chequers on the BBC on Sunday evening. Attlee, Bevin, Anderson, Lyttelton and Bracken all helped to add finishing touches. The familiar warnings about the need to win the war first remained, with a pledge 'not to make all kinds of promises and tell all kinds of fairy tales' about social reform in the future. But now Churchill said that he was 'very much attracted' to the idea of a four-year plan, once Germany and Italy had been defeated, which would be the 'right length for the period of transition and reconstruction'. There was also, for the first time, an acknowledgement of 'my friend Sir William Beveridge'. He gave an endorsement of his protégé's new system, which 'should have a leading place in our four-year plan'.

Churchill appeared ready to don once more the mantle of Liberal reformer he had cast off several decades earlier. In the speech's most resounding section, after a reprisal of that familiar phrase 'bringing the magic of averages to the rescue of millions', he proclaimed that 'the time is ripe for another great advance . . . you must rank me and my colleagues as strong partisans of national compulsory insurance for all classes, for all purposes, from the cradle to the grave'. Once again, however, came the warning. 'For the present during the war our rule should be no promises but every preparation . . . all our improvements and expansion must be related to a sound and modernized finance.'

Not everyone listening was swayed by the stirring rhetoric. 'It was a foolish broadcast,' recorded Lord Woolton. 'He said nothing specific . . . he has effectually damped down any public effort at planning for the post-war period.' _The Times_ thought very differently. It was a 'proclamation of much vigour and sincerity . . . that may well mark an epoch in the social policy of this country'.

Churchill's intervention had not, however, drawn a line under the matter. Attlee, Morrison and Bevin continued to be frustrated by the lack of legislative initiative, invariably defended by Kingsley Wood and the Prime Minister on the grounds of prudence while uncertainty remained about the post-war financial burdens on the exchequer. In June the three wrote a critical joint memorandum for the War Cabinet entitled 'The Need For Decisions'. They argued that detailed policies should be pursued _now_ to find homes and employment for 'all those who had served the country'.

'We refused to make definite decisions on the Beveridge Report without having considered other demands. The principle of refusing to make piecemeal decisions is sound, but the moral cannot possibly be to make no decisions at all . . . we shall be hopelessly impeded if no decisions have been reached on the use of land, development rights, compensation, water supply, the financing of the building programme, reorganization of transport, heat and power.'

The political momentum was now with the party straining for change. A Gallup poll in June showed a twelve-point Labour lead over the Conservatives on voting intentions at the next general election. At the same time, 76 per cent were satisfied with the government's conduct of the war, and a remarkable 93 per cent approved of the performance of the Prime Minister. Those figures demonstrated Churchill's continuing popular appeal, but they also reflected a series of crucial successes on the battlefield in the first half of 1943; at long last, the public had been given a tantalising glimpse – albeit still far on the horizon – of the end of hostilities.

Of all these victories, the monumental triumph of General Georgy Zhukov's Soviet forces over General Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army at Stalingrad was by far the most significant. This pitiless battle had endured for nearly six months while Hitler pursued the strategic prize of southern Russia and the Caucasian oilfields, as well as the symbolic triumph of crushing the industrial city – a maker of armaments and tractors – that bore the name of the Soviet leader.

Over two million men, 2,300 planes, 24,000 artillery guns and 1,500 tanks had been hurled by the two armies into one of the most brutal battles in history. 'Not a step backwards,' Stalin had ordered, and the final months had seen hand-to-hand combat for the control of individual streets. General Paulus and his staff were captured on Sunday, 31 January; two days later, the remainder of the Sixth Army – 90,000 men – capitulated.

The surrender of German troops at Stalingrad had raised the stakes for Hitler in North Africa. Rommel, after repelling the Allied drive into southern Tunisia at Faid Pass in early February, launched a last, desperate counter-attack at Medenine on 6 March. Montgomery, who had been forewarned by Ultra intercepts, scornfully told Sir Alan Brooke, 'He is trying to attack me in daylight with tanks, followed by lorried infantry . . . I have 400 tanks . . . good infantry . . . and a great weight of artillery. It is an absolute gift, and the man must be mad.'

The Desert Fox, suffering from jaundice and exhaustion, returned to Germany three days later. His efforts to persuade Hitler to abandon North Africa and instead concentrate on reinforcing Italy had failed: the Führer kept on pouring men into the region. But throughout April the better organised American and British forces pushed back the Axis troops – more than half of them Italian – to a small pocket on the northern tip of Tunisia. At the same time, the RAF and American fighters began to break the back of the Luftwaffe, while the Royal Navy strangled the enemy supply line across the Mediterranean, depriving General von Arnim of armour, fuel and food. The end came on 7 May, when tanks of the British 7th Armoured Division rolled into Tunis, while further North American and Free French troops captured the city of Bizerta. Within a week, the German and Italian forces in Tunisia – nearly 250,000 men – had surrendered. Finally thoughts could turn to Operation _Husky_ , the invasion of Sicily, the 'soft belly of the crocodile'.

For millions, however, these checks on the fascists' advance came far too late. By now all the evidence indicated that the Nazis had embarked upon a policy to systematically exterminate Europe's Jews.

William Sampson Cluse was one of the least noticeable MPs in Westminster. The Labour member for South Islington had as colourful a background as anyone in the Commons – orphaned at the age of five, he had taken up part-time work by eleven and been apprenticed to the printing trade at fifteen – but the retired compositor, now sixty-seven years old, made only fleeting contributions to debates, usually restricting himself to questions about the value for money of matters such as cinema ticket prices, the Home Guard's travel expenses, or the productivity of Italian prisoners of war. Cluse was, in the eyes of the _Daily Express_ , 'Strube's Little Man', after the character created by the paper's cartoonist, Sydney Strube. With his umbrella, bow tie and bowler hat, the 'Little Man' was a national symbol of the long-suffering 'man in the street', struggling with everyday grumbles and problems, yet always trying to keep his chin up. But on Thursday, 17 December 1942, the unassuming Cluse was to provoke an extraordinary moment, the like of which Lloyd George later told Anthony Eden he 'could not recall in all my years in Parliament'.

Cluse had listened to speeches by Eden and the Liberal MP Jimmy de Rothschild, and had been profoundly moved by them. First the foreign secretary, in tones of deep solemnity, had read out the text of a declaration by a group of twenty-six 'United Nations' – including the 'Big Four' of the USA, Great Britain, the USSR and China – established at the Washington conference of 1942, citing 'reliable reports' of the barbarous and inhuman treatment of the Jews in occupied Europe, where the able-bodied were being worked to death in labour camps, and the infirm 'left to die of exposure and starvation or deliberately massacred in mass executions'. De Rothschild, the MP for Ely, had applauded Eden's 'eloquent and just denunciation' – his voice quivering with emotion and his eyes filled with tears – before moving on to say that His Majesty's Jewish subjects 'will feel that, but for the grace of God, they themselves might be among the victims . . . they might be in those ghettos, in those concentration camps, in those slaughter houses'.

Five other MPs made brief contributions, and then Cluse stood up. In a calm, measured voice, he said simply, 'Is it possible, in your judgment, Mr Speaker, for Members of the House to rise in their places and stand in silence in support of this protest against disgusting barbarism?'

There was no precedent for such a gesture, but the Speaker, Edward Fitzroy, suggested it could be allowed if it was a spontaneous act by the House as a whole. On his word, over two hundred members rose as one and bowed their heads. 'We stood for a few frozen seconds. It was a fine moment, and my back tingled,' wrote Henry 'Chips' Channon.

Evidence that the Germans were committing widespread atrocities in eastern Europe had been reaching the British government, albeit in piecemeal fashion, since mid-1941, when code breakers at Bletchley Park had intercepted reports from the German _Ordnungspolizei_ (regular uniformed police) documenting large-scale killings of Jews by _Einsatzgruppen_ (SS execution squads) in the newly occupied Soviet territories. Whether prompted by the details contained in those decrypts or by reports from various other sources, Churchill had referred to the growing horror in his broadcast to the world on 24 August, days after he signed the Atlantic Charter with President Roosevelt. Speaking of 'whole districts being exterminated' and 'methodical, merciless butchery', he had concluded that 'We are in the presence of a crime without a name.'

Fragments of information about German atrocities had continued to reach the British government in the closing months of 1941. On 19 November it received a disturbing report from David Kelly, head of the British legation in Switzerland. Relaying news from two valued sources back to the Foreign Office in London, he stated, 'The Pole . . . says that about one and a half million Jews who were living in Eastern [recently Russian] Poland have simply disappeared altogether; nobody knows how or where. The Dutch Minister tells me that fifty per cent of the Dutch Jews sent to camps are now dead.'

The Nazi leadership's intentions had been well enough known, even if never expressed with complete candour. Yet on the day before Kelly filed his report, Alfred Rosenberg, newly appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, had held an off-the-record press conference in Berlin. The East, he said, had been 'called to solve a question that has been put to the peoples of Europe; that is, the Jewish Question. About six million Jews live in the East and this question can only be solved by a biological eradication of the whole of Jewry in Europe.'

Two months later, on 20 January 1942, the Wannsee Conference of senior Nazi officials had met in secret and agreed on the implementation of the 'final solution' to this 'Jewish Question': the industrial slaughter of Jews in German-occupied Europe. The first trainloads of Jews had arrived at the biggest of the death camps, Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, in late March, and the gas chambers there had claimed their first victims six weeks later. Although the detail and scale of the murders at Auschwitz would not be known for another two years, by the spring of 1942 evidence of the killing programme at the specially designated death camps had already started to emerge. One of the more detailed early reports came in May from Leon Feiner, an underground activist for the Polish Jewish socialist party Bund. Feiner described the extent of the murders, town by town and district by district, and he was among the first to report the use of gas – in mobile vans – as one of the Germans' means of killing large numbers of Jewish prisoners.

General Wladyslaw Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile, broadcast the contents of Feiner's report on the BBC on 24 June. The following day the _Daily Telegraph_ carried the story on its principal inside news page, under the bold headline 'GERMANS MURDER 700,000 JEWS IN POLAND,' with an accompanying subtitle 'TRAVELLING GAS CHAMBERS.' Combined with pressure from Jewish groups, the widespread newspaper coverage soon forced the War Cabinet to act. On Thursday, 9 July Brendan Bracken called a press conference at the Ministry of Information, appearing with Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, deputy prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, and two members of the Polish national council.

'I can assure our Polish friends that those responsible will be tried as murderers, which they are, and these gangsters will be punished with the utmost rigidity of the law,' Bracken told reporters. But his comments received very little attention in the next day's press. Instead the main stories concerned a massive tank battle as the Wehrmacht launched a new offensive against the Red Army on the Kharkov front, and a lull in Rommel's quest to push British forces back to the Egyptian border. With Allied forces struggling on all fronts, it appeared that the plight of the Jews in occupied Europe took second place in the minds of both the government and general public.

Prior to Eden's declaration on 17 December, Bracken's statement had been a rare public acknowledgement by the government of its growing knowledge of the mass round-ups and killings – although even on that occasion he had not specifically referred to the Jews. Churchill remarked on the deportation of Jews from Vichy France in his war report on 8 September, calling it the 'most bestial, the most squalid and the most senseless of all their [German] offences'. Then on 7 October the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simon, made a fleeting reference to the 'ferocity . . . with which the aged, the Jews, the women, the children have been treated', when announcing the establishment of a 'United Nations' Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes.

Although news of atrocities committed against the Jews had steadily accumulated from midsummer onwards, the government was initially reluctant to go public with a wholesale condemnation. The memory of the First World War, when propaganda about German atrocities in Belgium had proved entirely false, had not yet faded from the memory. Civil servants in the Foreign Office were particularly sceptical of the reports, and ministers were guided by their advice.

'At first it was very difficult to assess their accuracy – indeed, so horrible were they that it was hard to believe they could be true,' Anthony Eden remarked later. But by the autumn any doubts in the minds of the War Cabinet were being erased. It was one thing, however, to condemn the slaughter of the Jews – even to promise retribution for the perpetrators at a later date – it was quite another to seek to prevent it. Even before Eden's speech, the War Cabinet had been compelled to consider whether anything at all could be done to stop the killings; more realistic, at this stage, would be the granting of refuge to those Jews who might be able to escape the horrors.

Responsibility for the latter lay primarily in the hands of the home secretary, Herbert Morrison. On 28 October he received a major deputation of church leaders – including the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, and Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster – as well as MPs, peers and representatives from the major refugee and relief organisations. They had come to the Home Office specifically to plead the case of 2,000 Jewish children in Vichy France threatened with deportation to Poland, but they had also hoped to gain a more general insight into government policy on refugee immigration.

They left not merely disappointed, but incensed. After listening to an impassioned appeal by Eleanor Rathbone, MP for the Combined English Universities, Morrison reassured her that the government 'did not underestimate the magnitude of the horrors which Vichy were committing or the difficulties of the unfortunate refugees'. But he went on to remind his guests that Britain and the Empire had already made what he regarded as a generous contribution to solving the refugee problem: taking in 50,000 Jews between 1933 and 1939.

He then made his position clear: wartime Britain could offer very little to those seeking sanctuary. She was a small country whose towns and cities had been massively damaged by German bombers. The government had enough problems finding places for the indigenous population to live, with a large influx of American soldiers starting to put an additional strain on what accommodation remained. He also dwelt at some length on a theme he would return to time and time again in the coming months, warning that 'anti-Semitism was just under the pavement and that if we let in large numbers of Jews this would cause an anti-Semitic outburst that we would be incapable of controlling'.

The home secretary had already set out his position to the War Cabinet that autumn: 'There are many foreign persons, both Jews and others, who are anxious to come to this country, and the general policy has been not to admit during war additional refugees to the United Kingdom unless in some quite rare and exceptional cases it can be shown that the admission of the refugee will be directly advantageous to the war effort.' His refusal to budge from the policy might appear uncharitable, but it ought not to be seen specifically as a lack of sympathy for the Jews, or as evidence of anti-Semitism. Morrison's record in this regard suggests otherwise.

In 1935 he had returned from a visit to Palestine convinced by the Zionist cause. In the House of Commons the following year he waxed lyrical about the spirit of the Jewish people, and in particular about the kibbutzim. 'I have seen these Jewish agricultural settlements . . . they are one of the most wonderful demonstrations of the moral capacity of the human race in the whole of the civilized world . . . I have seen these fine young people, coming from various countries where they have been persecuted . . . I have eaten their humble food with them and have witnessed their fine morale.' Three years later, these sentiments led him to oppose a White Paper which contained a limit on Jewish immigration to Palestine of 75,000 over five years, in effect suspending the 1917 Balfour Declaration's commitment to foster an independent Jewish state. 'I ask honourable members to remember the sufferings of these Jewish people all over the world,' he implored. 'I ask them to remember that Palestine, of all places in the world, was certainly the place where they had some right to expect not to suffer or to have restrictions imposed upon them.'

Morrison was also sensitive to the needs of the large Jewish population in his constituency of South Hackney. But memories of how Oswald Mosley, his former colleague in the Labour government of 1929–31, and more recently leader of the British Union of Fascists, had stirred racist tensions in the East End of London remained fresh. Rightly or wrongly, Morrison feared that an influx of Jewish refugees could threaten national cohesion at a time when anti-Semitism still festered just below the surface.

Britain had taken in a sizeable number of Jewish refugees on the eve of war – most notably through the _Kindertransport_ programe, which started in December 1938 and gave homes to nearly 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Then there were outstanding acts from individuals like Nicholas Winton, a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker of German-Jewish origin, who had helped bring out 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia by the start of the war.

Within the government's own ranks there were examples of charity towards refugees. In October 1938 Harold Macmillan had provided homes on his Birch Grove estate for forty Czechs, a number of them Jews, who had fled the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland. In early 1940 Clement Attlee and his wife Violet had invited a twelve-year-old German Jewish boy, Hans-Paul, who had arrived on the _Kindertransport_ , to live with them and their four children at their home in Stanmore, Middlesex. Hans-Paul had stayed with the Attlees for six months until the Blitz, when he had been evacuated to the countryside. But worthy gestures from these and many other British families could only make a tiny dent in the massive overall threat to the Jews.

As the calls for action grew louder following Eden's declaration, it fell to Attlee to shore up the government line in the Commons. On 19 January 1943, he explained that although consultations with other governments on how to tackle the growing refugee problem were under way, the fact remained that 'the only real remedy for the consistent Nazi policy of racial and religious persecution lies in an Allied victory; every resource of all the Allied nations must be bent towards this supreme object'. By this point the War Cabinet had set up a new 'committee on the representation and accommodation of Jewish refugees', and the Political Warfare Executive was seeking to make the slaughter of the Jews the central theme of British propaganda in Europe, but the perception beyond Whitehall remained that of inaction.

Meanwhile the group that had come away so dismayed from that 28 October meeting with Herbert Morrison had formed the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, and was stepping up its lobbying and campaigning. In January 1943 the vice-chairman of the new body, the radical publisher Victor Gollancz, wrote and published a 16,000-word polemical pamphlet which almost rivalled Beveridge in terms of public interest, selling 250,000 copies in three months. Titled _Let My People Go: Some Practical Proposals for Dealing with Hitler's Massacre of the Jews_ , it grabbed the attention right from the start:

Of the six million Jews or so who were living in what is at present Nazi-occupied Europe, a high proportion – say between one and two million – have been deliberately murdered by the Nazis and their satellites . . . all this is part, not of war, but of a quite deliberate policy, openly proclaimed, of exterminating the Jewish population of Europe.

This policy . . . is now reaching its climax. _Unless something effective is done_ , within a very few months these six million Jews will be dead.

Gollancz acknowledged the 'genuineness and warmth' of Eden's statement in the Commons, but argued that the government's 'policy' of vengeance at a later date 'will not save a single Jewish life'. Instead he urged the 'United Nations' to negotiate with Germany to allow the Jews to emigrate. Jews could be exchanged for similar categories of enemy nationals; the 'doors of Palestine must be opened . . . and the policy of treating Jewish refugees to Palestine as illegal immigrants immediately reversed'; temporary camps should be immediately established in North Africa, Cyprus and Kenya; and an approach should be made to the South American states to see how many refugees they might be willing to receive.

The Church also kept up the pressure for a more 'energetic' policy. Archbishop Temple wrote to Churchill, asking him to pronounce publicly on the right of asylum, while the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, spoke angrily and passionately to a public meeting in Leeds, referring to Nazism as the 'Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse'. Elsewhere, more secular luminaries spoke up, including Beveridge, who wrote in the _Observer_ on 7 February that 'the United Nations . . . should ask Germany, in place of exterminating the Jews, to set them free to leave Germany and lands under German control . . . Hitler might think he saw an advantage in throwing a large mass of people upon the resources of the Allies to use their food and transport, instead of sending the inhabitants of the ghettoes to slaughter houses in Poland and Germany.' At the same time, he urged Britain and all other signatories of the United Nations declaration on 17 December to revise their regulations for the entry of refugees – to 'open the door to safety'.

In fact, there were already signs that the government had been persuaded to soften its position. On 3 February, Oliver Stanley had announced plans for Palestine to take 4,500 refugees from Bulgaria and five hundred children from Rumania and Hungary. Richard Law told his counterpart at the US State Department that 'public opinion in Great Britain has been rising to such a degree that the British Government can no longer remain dead to it . . . [there must be] some reply to the persistent demands to know what it is doing to help the Jews'.

At the War Cabinet meeting at Number 10 on Monday, 22 February, Eden was still searching for an acceptable international strategy. 'There has been no progress with the United States, and no immediate chance of direct conversations . . . We here can do so little that it is difficult to take it up internationally unless the US cooperates.' Morrison replied, 'I could take 1,000 or so as part of a United Nations move – but only to bring the others on [board] . . . My feeling is we've done too much already without guarantees that other nations will help.' The home secretary finished with his familiar mantra, warning of the 'danger of anti-Semitic troubles here'.

At the White House in March the likely extermination of around 70,000 Jews in Bulgaria came up during talks between Eden and Roosevelt. On the idea of an offer of evacuation, the foreign secretary urged caution: 'If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany. Hitler might well take us up on any such proposal and there are simply not enough ships and means of transportation in the world to handle them.' But later the same month, the Joint Emergency Committee on European Jewish Affairs and the Committee for a Jewish Army sponsored major demonstrations in New York's Madison Square Garden, which helped to persuade Roosevelt that something more had to be done. A joint conference with the British on the refugee problem was finally arranged in Bermuda for 19 April.

It commenced just hours after the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a desperate bid by that city's surviving Jews to resist their imminent transportation to the Treblinka death camp. The contrast could not have been starker. 'You go to heaven if you want – I'd rather stay here in Bermuda,' wrote Mark Twain in the nineteenth century. To choose this island paradise as the venue for discussing the starving, tortured and murdered victims of Nazism seemed singularly inappropriate, but Bermuda had been selected as much for its isolation as for its climate. It was a place from where the world's press could be kept away and low expectations maintained.

Leading the British delegation was Richard Law, Eden's junior minister, who was instructed not to discuss increasing the numbers of Jewish refugees allowed into Palestine. When the conference wound up after twelve days it was clear very little had been achieved, even though the final report was kept secret until December. All that was left on the table by 30 April were suggestions for helping escaped Jews to leave Spain – the fortunate few who had already saved themselves – and a vague declaration on the post-war repatriation of refugees. While the delegates sat round tables in the cool of the Mid Ocean Club and Manor Hotel, in Warsaw the Nazis were razing buildings and burning the inhabitants alive. On 21 April a secret transmitter in the ghetto flashed a final four-sentence message to the West; it ended with the words 'save us'.

Despite the secrecy, enough news from the conference filtered out to fill Jewish and humanitarian organisations with despair. One of them took out an advertisement in the _New York Times_ under the headline 'TO 5,000,000 JEWS IN THE NAZI DEATH-TRAP BERMUDA WAS A "CRUEL MOCKERY".' On 10 May the War Cabinet discussed Bermuda, and considered tactics for a forthcoming parliamentary debate on refugees planned in the wake of the conference. Eden told his colleagues that agreement had been reached on three main points: neutral countries would take more Jewish refugees, a camp would be set up in North Africa to relieve the pressure on Spain, and the inter-governmental conference on refugees would be revived. The foreign secretary seemed satisfied. '[It was] encouraging that we and the US delegates – which is not easy – got on very well together.'

Morrison – after once more cautioning 'that when you get more than a certain number you begin to generate anti-Semitism' – clearly realised the Home Office could expect a rough ride in the impending debate. What was needed was some manipulation of the speakers. 'Could the Whips get some balanced speeches on the other side – so long as they aren't too extreme? Supporting the middle line?'

The Chief Whip, James Stuart, was able to oblige, and a number of pliant, mainly Conservative, backbenchers lined up to support the government spokesmen, Home Office Minister Osbert Peake and Eden. But they nonetheless took a ferocious battering. Peake unnecessarily infuriated the government's critics by declaring that the 'rate of extermination' was such that 'no measures of rescue or relief, on however large a scale, could be commensurate with the problem'. He also scorned Victor Gollancz's suggestion of a direct offer to the German government, saying, 'There is no indication whatever that any such offer, if made, would meet with anything but a negative response.' ('Make it!' shouted a voice from the opposition benches.)

Eleanor Rathbone countered by telling the House that the 'dreadful' opening speeches of the Bermuda conference had 'breathed the very spirit of defeatism and despair'. She proposed approaching neutral countries like Argentina, and establishing a new Ministry for Refugees, before launching a personal attack on Herbert Morrison. 'Why does he always make us feel in his Parliamentary answers, and even more in our approaches to him privately, as if the whole question of refugees was becoming a bore and an irritation to him and that he was transferring to refugees the dislike which he quite openly feels for ourselves?'

But it was left to Victor Cazalet, Conservative MP for Chippenham, liaison officer between the Polish government-in-exile and the British Cabinet, to produce the most impassioned speech of the day. Although not Jewish himself, Cazalet was of Huguenot descent and a wholehearted advocate of the refugee cause; in particular, he was a vehement champion of a Jewish national home in Palestine. He warned fellow MPs, 'All I can say is that the threat of Goebbels is no idle boast. The Jews are being exterminated today in tens of thousands. The stories of the horrors of the massacres at a camp called Treblinka would put to shame the massacres of Genghis Khan or the suffering of the Albigenses in the past.'

Concluding the debate, Eden attempted to strike a conciliatory note. 'I know some honourable members think that the Government are perhaps insensitive in this matter. I can assure them that we are not . . . I do not know whether ministers can contribute to the problem if they wear their hearts on their sleeves for the jackdaws to peck at, but I believe they will do all that is humanely in their power to help the matter forward, short of any major interference with our war effort.'

_The Times_ , the _Manchester Guardian_ and the _Daily Express_ all covered the debate at some length the next day – but on pages two, three and four, as all the front pages were taken up by Churchill's speech to Congress. None chose to cover the matter as purely – or even mainly – a Jewish tragedy; it was about 'the refugees' – Jews, Poles, Czechs and other races. _The Times_ ' leader writer said the 'painful and heartbreaking fact is that the saving hand cannot reach the majority of the refugees, and it is neither a shelving of responsibility nor a salving of conscience to say that the only certain hope for them is allied victory at the earliest moment'. The _Manchester Guardian_ thought differently: 'We have had 200,000 prisoners suddenly thrown on us in Tunisia and no one talks of there being no ships and food available. But there is no sign that we are bringing that sort of spirit to the question of the refugees.'

That same month, a young SS doctor named Josef Mengele had arrived at Auschwitz and begun to conduct medical experiments on the inmates, injecting them with phenol, petrol, chloroform and air. And on 25 June the newly built gas chamber opened, bringing the daily capacity at the four new crematoria to 4,756 bodies. The mass slaughter would continue, much of it still unknown to the outside world.

## Chapter Eleven

## **'A grand job to be done for the nation'**

19 May to 17 December 1943

On the morning of 19 May 1943 a German submarine from the _Donau 2_ 'wolf pack' attacked a large Allied convoy, SC 130, in the north Atlantic Ocean off Cape Farewell, Greenland. The convoy comprised thirty-eight merchant ships and was bound for Liverpool with a cargo of vital supplies for the war effort – wheat, flour, fuel oil, steel, sugar, ammunition and explosives.

U-954 fired off two torpedoes towards the rear of the convoy, narrowly missing their mark. A few weeks earlier such an attack might have left SC 130 feeling isolated and vulnerable. But now its escort ships, equipped with cutting-edge sonar, radar and high-frequency direction finders – and backed in the sea by aircraft carriers and in the sky by long-range B-24 Liberator bombers – had been quick to turn defence into attack. U-954 was forced on the run for several hours.

When the leading pursuers, the frigates HMS _Jed_ and HMS _Sennen_ , eventually located their quarry, they continuously fired their new 'Hedgehog' mortars into her. These small forward-throwing bombs created a dense explosive field more accurate than the usual depth charges. Some while later a large pool of oil rose to the surface of the water, together with splintered white-painted wood and pieces of blue paper and cloth, evidence that U-954 had been sunk with all hands.

One of the U-boat's crew was its twenty-one-year-old watch officer Lieutenant Peter Donitz, the youngest son of Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, commander-in-chief of the German navy and the man ultimately responsible for the direction and welfare of all his country's submariners. The failure of his son's boat and the rest of the packs that day to make any sort of dent in the Allied convoy – not one ship was lost – persuaded Admiral Donitz that the game was finally up. Five days later, Donitz ordered his submarines to pull out of mid-ocean operations against the convoys and to retreat to waters south-west of the Azores.

Donitz would send the 'wolf packs' back into action in September, better equipped and protected; but they would never pose the same threat again. A crucial moment had passed – far more significant than any individual land battle like El Alamein. No church bells would ring out for this victory, but the British people would not starve, British industry would receive the vital raw materials it needed, and Bomber Command could bank on the fuel to keep up its offensive on Germany. Moreover, Operation _Bolero_ , the build-up of American troops and materiel for the planned cross-Channel invasion, would continue unimpeded.

Nine days later the First Lord of the Admiralty stepped up to the dispatch box in the House of Commons and signalled the War Cabinet's belief that this was the beginning of the end of the Battle of the Atlantic. A.V. Alexander did not couch his statement on the U-boat war in such climactic terms, but the evidence he presented and his barely disguised sense of relief spoke volumes.

May was the best month of 'kills' so far in the war, he told MPs (the actual figure, which he could not publicly disclose, was forty-six), and he attributed the improved situation to the 'growing size of our escort forces – both ships and aircraft – and the growing deadliness of our weapons and devices'. He reported that Allied bombing of the U-boat construction yards in Germany and of their operational bases in the Bay of Biscay was now reaping rewards. He denounced Hitler's propagandists as 'quite wrong' in ascribing the low rate of Allied losses in April to the small number of ships at sea; instead, Alexander insisted, imports of food and munitions in that month had been the highest since the beginning of 1942.

What Alexander could not say was that while better technology, more accurate bombs, continuous long-range air cover, and enhanced convoy escorts had all been vital in turning the tide, intelligence had been perhaps the crucial factor. After ten barren months, a raid on U-559 by the British destroyer HMS _Petard_ in October 1942 had recovered valuable documents, enabling Bletchley Park to break Enigma's latest and more complicated 'Triton' system (dubbed 'Shark' by the British).

This moment of triumph for Alexander and the Admiralty had been a long and difficult time in coming. For months they had been outvoted on one of the central arguments of the war: whether to use bomber aircraft in offensive mode against Germany, or in a defensive role to protect shipping in the Atlantic. It had always been an unequal contest, with Churchill, 'Prof' Lindemann, Sir Archibald Sinclair and Air Chief Marshals Sir Charles Portal and Sir Arthur Harris (commander-in-chief Bomber Command) on one side, and on the other Alexander, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound and Air Chief Marshal Sir Phillip Joubert de la Ferte, commander-in-chief of Coastal Command. Churchill's dictum had always been, 'The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it.' Only after the Casablanca conference, at which the combined chiefs of staff had asserted that 'the defeat of the U-boat must remain a first charge on the resources of the United Nations', had the defence of trade taken priority.

With the war at sea now being demonstrably won, the military focus could shift in earnest to the land, and to Operation _Husky_ , the invasion of Sicily. At dawn on 10 July, some 2,700 ships and landing craft disgorged 180,000 men along with hundreds of vehicles along the 105-mile stretch of coastline between the Gulf of Gela and the Gulf of Noto. In a robust counter-attack, German armoured forces almost drove the Americans back into the sea at Gela. Nevertheless, within forty-eight hours, all the beachheads had been secured. By 17 August enemy resistance in Sicily had been totally crushed; though not before 100,000 German and Italian troops, and a great deal of military equipment, had been successfully transferred to the mainland. The fight up the Italian peninsula would be considerably more difficult.

With supplies of food and raw materials across the Atlantic now uninterrupted, the principal preoccupation on the Home Front became the coal crisis. On 20 July Ernest Bevin had to convince a silent, suspicious gathering of miners in a conference hall in Blackpool that their already beleaguered industry was in need of immediate and drastic change.

Much of the labour minister's speech dealt with the general progress of the war and the reforms planned for social services after the cessation of hostilities. Eventually Bevin turned to the mining industry, and, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief – whether because of the heat of the summer's day, or the anxiety of the moment – sought to explain that every piece of territory the Army took in Italy resulted in fresh calls on the scanty reserves of the coal industry, and that if the continent was invaded successfully, the demand would go up by millions of tons. He drew much laughter when he quipped about the land campaign, 'I cannot mention the other places to which we shall have to go, because the tourist programme is not yet out.'

He then came to the crux of the matter. 'At the end of this coal year there won't be enough men and boys in the industry to carry it on. It is a serious problem. It is the one great difficulty in our war effort. I am up against it . . . I shall have to resort to some desperate remedies during the coming year.' The drastic solution he proposed was to compulsorily recruit between 30,000 and 60,000 youths aged sixteen to eighteen into the mines.

Miners' leaders were stunned by Bevin's proposal; some wondered whether he had Cabinet approval or if he was acting on his own initiative. Ebenezer Edwards, general secretary of the Miners' Federation, felt the plan would fail in its main objective of boosting productivity in the short term. He was against forcing youngsters into the pits unless they were well guarded against accidents and given 'a fair, honest and just deal'. Joe Hall, president of the Yorkshire mineworkers' association, was similarly disparaging: 'My boy did not go down the mines because my experience in the mines tells me conditions have not improved. They are getting worse.'

At the start of the war, coal had been the one raw material which everyone in Britain had assumed would always be abundant. The first inkling that something was amiss came on 28 May 1941 when David Grenfell, secretary of mines and himself a former south Wales pitman, told an astonished House of Commons that the country was facing a severe shortage – just at the time when the power stations, shipyards and steel mills were crying out for more coal. Grenfell revealed to MPs that in the winter just gone he had been 'very worried for weeks' about the coal supply to the population of London: 'I was afraid that we had come to the end, and would find that disaster had overtaken us in this large centre of population here.'

The crisis had begun after the German advances of May and June 1940 closed off important export markets. Nearly a hundred pits shut overnight and 34,000 miners were made idle, mainly in south Wales and the north-east. In order to find them work, Bevin was persuaded in the autumn of 1940 – contrary to Grenfell's advice – to allow men to leave the pits, either to join the forces or to seek alternative employment in the growing munitions and construction factories. Most, if not all, of the coal shortage of 1943 could be traced back to this particular decision. In the year to April 1941 the work force had dropped from 764,000 to 690,000. Bevin had tried all manner of means to halt the exodus, including, in spring 1941, using the Essential Work Order, under which – in return for a guaranteed week and an extra shilling per shift – miners had been prevented from leaving the industry and their employers from dismissing them.

In June 1941 Bevin broadcast an appeal for 50,000 ex-miners to return to the pits. He couched his plea in strong language: 'This Government has played straight with the miners and the mining industry, and the nation is entitled to a square deal from you in return. If any man stays away from his job other than for genuine and unavoidable cause, he is acting criminally against his fellow men, the nation and the forces. He is helping Hitler, and we cannot allow it to continue.'

Despite this stern exhortation only a trickle returned, yet still the government refused to recall miners, even temporarily, from the services. To many in the major mining areas this appeared short-sighted: 'Those responsible for the direction of our war effort must ask themselves continually whether a proportion of the millions of men now being trained in the use of arms would not be better employed in making arms for their comrades,' the _Yorkshire Post_ argued on 24 June.

Then in July 1941 Bevin ordered the registration of all men with mining experience (since 1935) who had taken up other employment. This added 30,000 more to the workforce, but by April 1942, when Sir John Anderson, Lord President of the Council, submitted a paper on coal production to the War Cabinet, the labour force was still fifteen thousand short of the figure needed to raise the weekly production of coal to 4.35 million tons for the coming year.

A Cabinet committee, once more chaired by Anderson, was then set up to consider the essential question of how to increase coal output. What emerged eventually from its deliberations, in June 1942, was a White Paper proposing a number of changes to the management of the pits that it was hoped would spur greater production. Most significant was the institution of a new system of 'dual control': the government would exercise a greater say through powerful regional controllers, while the colliery owners were still responsible for the finances of the mines.

At work at the same time as Anderson's committee had been the Board of Investigation into Wages and Machinery of the Coalmining Industry, which had taken just two weeks to bring forward its proposals: a flat-rate increase in pay of 2s 6d a shift; an output bonus; and a national minimum wage of 83s a week for underground workers and 78s for those above ground. The board was chaired by Lord Wilfred Greene, Master of the Rolls, but its report's principal architect was a bright, twenty-six-year-old statistician, J.H. (Harold) Wilson, who had previously worked with Beveridge but was now a temporary civil servant in the mines department. His recommendations were adopted immediately and in full.

The final administrative change in the government's attempt to revive the industry had come on 12 June with the creation of a new Ministry of Fuel, Light and Power, under the control of Gwilym Lloyd George. But the Greene/Wilson plan produced the more immediate results. At a stroke it raised the miners from fifty-fourth to twenty-third in the league table of industrial earners, and thus did more than anything else to stem the increasing number of strikes in the coalfields. With Bevin's ongoing efforts to transfer men back to the pits, it also helped to raise the labour force to 711,000 by the end of 1942.

Unfortunately, the revival was short-lived. Plans to concentrate manpower in the most productive mines and seams largely failed; men were reluctant to move even relatively short distances from their villages to work in different pits. And absenteeism among miners was rife, due to a combination of factors, including pay differentials, continuing resentment of the mine owners, and a general weariness at the increasing demands placed upon them after four years of war.

In the folklore of the British working class, the miners had always commanded a special place. For writers like George Orwell, the powerful imagery of their dark, hot underground existence was irresistible. Modern civilisation had been founded on coal and the miner was 'a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported . . . all of us _really_ owe the comparative decency of our lives to the poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel'. But for the Minister of Labour, struggling to deal with the miners' increasing propensity to strike, there was precious little romance.

In January 1942 Bevin decided to prosecute over a thousand pitmen at Betteshanger Colliery in Kent under Order 1305 (which banned strikes and lockouts in wartime) after they had struck for nineteen days over the level of allowances for working difficult seams. Three local union officials were jailed and the rest of the workforce hit with fines of £1 or £3, most of which were never paid. Now, in the late summer and early autumn of 1943, further trouble was brewing in the coalfields of Scotland, Wales and the Midlands.

In the biggest industrial action in the coalfields, 15,000 miners in Nottinghamshire stopped work after an eighteen-year-old surface worker, Sidney Page, was jailed for refusing to work underground. At the Penrhiwceiber colliery, Mountain Ash, in Glamorgan, 4,600 men walked out after the alleged non-payment of the minimum wage to three miners.

But it was not just the pits – strike action dogged all quarters of industry in August and September. Liverpool dockers walked out after refusing to work overtime, Clydeside shipwrights struck over wages, and electricians and engineers from the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness were also in dispute over a long-deferred pay increase. Bevin, the self-styled representative of the trade unions, spoke darkly of 'anti-war people' in the labour movement 'kicking over the traces in wartime, when people are fighting for their lives'.

Workers' strikes were almost always over the bread and butter issues of pay and conditions – but the elephant in the room in the coal industry was nationalisation. Miners' leaders expected Labour ministers to deliver it sooner rather than later, and the radical feeling stirred by Beveridge encouraged them to revive their interest.

At the War Cabinet meeting on 8 October, the new minister Gwilym Lloyd George pinned his colours firmly to the mast of nationalisation. His memorandum stated that 'dual control' between the government and colliery owners had not improved the efficiency of the nation's mines. 'I am convinced that more coal can be got with the present manpower, provided that the limitations of the present organization and in the practical use of my powers are removed.' But the issue was too politically explosive, and the assembled ministers swiftly sidestepped it. Indeed, if nationalisation was ever considered a viable solution to the crisis, it was killed stone dead five days later when the Prime Minister rounded off a special two-day debate on mining in the Commons.

'The principle that we work on is "Everything for the war, whether controversial or not, and nothing controversial that is not bona fide needed for the war",' Churchill declared. 'It would raise a lot of argument, [a] lot of difference of opinion, and it would be a tremendous business to nationalize the coal mines . . .'

In the same debate Gwilym Lloyd George admitted that a change of policy was now urgently needed: 'It is clear that voluntary recruitment will not of itself produce the numbers required, and it will now be necessary to call up men for the coalmines in the same way as they are called up for the Armed Forces.'

Conscription to the pits had finally, inevitably, come to pass. But before it was enforced, Bevin made a final plea, this time specifically to the nation's schoolboys. In a radio broadcast to schools on 12 November he urged sixth-formers to volunteer for the mines. 'There's a grand job to be done for the nation . . . none of you would funk a fight with the enemy, and I do not believe it will be said of any of you boys that you failed to respond to the call for coal upon which victory so much depends.'

'We were deeply impressed by Bevin's earnest, if unpolished manner, but none of us responded,' recalled Norman Longmate, then aged seventeen and a pupil at Christ's Hospital, an independent boarding school in West Sussex. And it appears the appeal met with a similarly unenthusiastic response in other schools. Bevin had, however, finished with pleading. Compulsion was the only course left to him, and he would shortly impose one of the more remarkable recruiting schemes in British labour history.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, had died suddenly, aged sixty-two, in the early hours of Tuesday, 21 September.

His fatal heart attack had denied him the opportunity to introduce the most innovative and important proposal drawn up during his time at the Treasury. Later that day, he had been due to tell MPs about his new PAYE (Pay As You Earn) scheme, a compulsory deduction of income tax from current pay packets – rather than retrospectively – that would cover all the nation's employees and guarantee more money for the exchequer. It would prove to be his enduring legacy.

The bespectacled Wood had been short – just five feet tall – plump, cherubic and curly-haired, with a thin, high speaking voice. His appearance, together with a certain geniality and conviviality, had inevitably resulted in him being described as 'Pickwickian'. But despite his high position in the government, he had made little impact on the public, and his sudden death barely made it to the front pages of most newspapers, which were more concerned with Churchill's war update in the Commons, the sacking of Naples and the Red Army's successful summer offensive.

Wood had built a reputation in Whitehall in the 1930s as a highly capable administrator, reviving the Post Office and expanding the telephone service, as well as introducing an effective slum clearance programme when Minister of Health and Housing. While at the Air Ministry, from 1938 to 1940, he had also launched the valuable Empire Training Scheme, although dispute remained over whether he had satisfactorily quickened the pace of aircraft production in time for war.

In peacetime the Treasury would have been the dominant department in Whitehall. But since the onset of hostilities the influence of the chancellor had been diminished. Even in economic policy Wood had been far from supreme, as this was now co-ordinated by the Lord President's Committee, currently chaired by Sir John Anderson. And though Wood had become a member of the War Cabinet in October 1940, he had been removed from it in February 1942.

Yet within the more limited confines of his role, Wood's impact had been impressive. Not only had he kept the economy stable, he had successfully generated the finance needed for the war effort, aided by an outstanding group of advisers including John Maynard Keynes and Lord Catto, a future governor of the Bank of England. He had also been Churchill's ideological bedfellow in the Cabinet, and an important barometer of feeling within the Conservative Party.

Now that 'Little Joe' – as Bracken and Beaverbrook had condescendingly called him – was gone, a limited but important reshuffle was necessary. Some, like Leo Amery, wondered whether 'the Labour wing of the coalition may possibly wish to press their claims to the vacancy'; one or two newspapers tipped Herbert Morrison for the post. But in the end, Churchill went for the logical, safe option of Sir John Anderson, with Attlee replacing him as Lord President, Lord Cranborne assuming Attlee's role as Dominions secretary, and Richard Law, Britain's representative at the Bermuda conference, receiving a promotion to minister of state at the Foreign Office.

The controversial appointment was not the new chancellor, but the return of Lord Beaverbrook, back in the Cabinet – although not the War Cabinet – in the free role of Lord Privy Seal. Churchill had been petitioning him to rejoin the government for many months, but Beaverbrook had repeatedly turned the Prime Minister down: he was determined to preserve his independence and continue pressing for an immediate second front.

Three days after Wood's death, the Beaver had been preparing to table a hostile motion on this very subject in the House of Lords; his fear was that preparations for the cross-Channel invasion had stalled during Churchill's recent meeting with Roosevelt in Quebec. Upon receiving word of his old friend's move, the Prime Minister summoned him to Downing Street the evening before the debate. Beaverbrook, having received a clear assurance that the operation would go ahead the following spring, agreed to withdraw the motion. Churchill then persuaded him, finally, to rejoin the government; as ever he valued his companionship, as well as his intuitive advice.

The Prime Minister was just beginning to plan for a big summit meeting towards the end of the year at which he, Roosevelt and Stalin would co-ordinate military strategy against Germany and Japan, and start to make decisions about the post-war order in Europe. But the Labour ministers in the coalition were determined to drag his focus back to Britain's future, and the task of realising the spirit – and some of the letter – of the Beveridge Report. One piece of draft legislation was already making particularly good progress through the Cabinet committees: an Education Bill, designed by Rab Butler with the aid of his energetic and highly capable junior Labour minister James Chuter Ede, a former school teacher.

Forty-year-old Richard Austen Butler (known to all as 'Rab') had travelled a long distance since May 1940. Then, as Halifax's under-secretary at the Foreign Office and closely associated with Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, he was viewed with suspicion by Churchill's supporters. But Churchill himself had come to recognise the young minister's administrative and political flair, while Butler's disdain of the man he had called the 'greatest adventurer' turned to admiration on viewing his direction of the war. On appointing him President of the Board of Education in July 1941, Churchill told Butler, 'I think you can leave your mark there.'

Butler's visit to Chequers in March had paved the way for the Education Bill, and Churchill had included some lyrical passages on schooling in his 'Four-Year Plan' speech a week later, asserting, 'I hope our education will become broader and more liberal.' Butler and Chuter Ede's draft bill would certainly achieve that: it advocated free secondary education for all, raising the school leaving age to fifteen, the creation of three different types of secondary school, and bringing church schools into the national sector. Its promise was greater social mobility, and although Churchill grumbled that the measures were 'leftish', he also viewed them as a great success.

Attlee, Bevin and Morrison wholeheartedly backed Butler's bill. Bevin had been especially engaged, offering suggestions on further education to Chuter Ede, and proving a powerful supporter of the bill in Cabinet. But the lack of progress in the contentious areas of health, social insurance and planning was threatening to destabilise the coalition.

On the evening of 14 October, Attlee arrived at the War Cabinet ready for battle. His resolute approach, aided by Bevin and Morrison, led to a 'frightful row, and loud explosions from the prime minister'. Churchill would say later he had been 'jostled and beaten up by the deputy prime minister'. On the table was the critical document submitted by the three Labour ministers back in June, 'The Need for Decisions', together with a response from the late chancellor, and a further riposte from the Labour trio. At stake was the whole Home Front strategy.

Attlee, first to speak, reiterated his concern that 'the formulation of policy could not await the end of war; if decisions had not been taken and preparatory action put in hand, the end of the war would find us unprepared'. Morrison backed him up, saying that 'much of the preparatory work was now reaching a point at which decisions by the War Cabinet were required . . . in the international field, we had already made a start in the discussion of post-war economic policy. Could we not make similar progress on domestic issues?'

Churchill took what he thought was a humorous swipe at the title of the paper. '"Need for Decisions"! Was it [the Cabinet] not always taking decisions? A decision had been taken to have [a] Second Front.' In the words of Rab Butler, he then proceeded to test out the Labour ministers 'to see if they were likely to break away'. 'There were obvious objections to formulating post-war policies, and still more to giving effect to them in legislation, if there were no assurance of the continued co-operation of the Labour ministers after the war,' Churchill said. The 'grimmest climax' of the conflict was approaching, he warned, and he 'found the greatest difficulty in giving that close attention . . . to the great social changes which were involved in the discussion of post-war policy.'

Bevin then weighed in, suggesting there was room for compromise. For example, he was prepared to reach agreement on questions about agriculture –'although not fully in accord with his view' – provided a proper plan was agreed for basic services like coal, electricity and the water supply, which 'ought to be brought under some form of national control'. The Education Bill was proof, he said, that it was not impossible to make policy on thorny issues.

The central argument shuttled back and forth, Attlee and Morrison pressing the case for action and Churchill responding, with his natural allies, Beaverbrook and Cherwell, largely silent. Sir John Anderson said progress had been made on the Beveridge Report and that he hoped shortly to be in a position to report further. At that point, Churchill cut off Anderson, who looked set to embark on a long speech, saying he had to dine with the King.

On 21 October, the same group reassembled, this time joined by Sir Archibald Sinclair and Hugh Dalton. Churchill submitted a memorandum to the meeting, and it showed that the 'going over' he had received the previous week had forced a rethink. He was now prepared to concede that 'any decisions which are needed for the supreme objects of FOOD and EMPLOYMENT in the years immediately after the war must be taken now, whether they involve legislation and whether they are controversial or not'. The coalition should begin work on schemes for the 'transition' period, which he proposed to define as either two years from the defeat of Germany or four years from 1 January 1944, whichever ended sooner.

The night before, the King had come to dinner at the Annexe, with Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, Anderson and others in attendance. Fuelled by a rehoboam of champagne, the talk had flowed well, alternating 'between light badinage and intense seriousness'. It had almost certainly helped settle the mood for the following day. Indeed, with Churchill's concessions already in place, the War Cabinet of 21 October was as harmonious as its predecessor had been fractious. Labour ministers were startled, yet heartened, by Churchill's about-turn. 'Very great credit is due to Attlee and, in a lesser degree, to Morrison for having brought about this remarkable change in the PM's attitude,' wrote Dalton. The Prime Minister even warmed to the idea of post-war planning at the meeting, laying out in 'dramatic detail' the idea of a great, thousand-page tome on the project – _The Book of the Transition_ – and mooting a week of debates in the Commons, during which each minister would expound his own departmental plan.

Churchill's apparent determination to shape the Home Front agenda remained in evidence a week later when he invited Lord Woolton to lunch at Downing Street. Following the two War Cabinet meetings, he had taken the decision to appoint a Minister of Reconstruction, together with a new Cabinet committee on the same subject; he offered his successful Minister of Food the job.

'He seemed to be surprised – and a little grumpy – that I didn't just jump at his offer,' Woolton recorded. 'He asked me if I had any ideas as to how it would work out under a new ministry; quite obviously he has not.' The Food Minister went away to ponder the offer. His wife Maud left him in no doubt about what she thought of the role: 'all the experience you have had in life has been just a preparation for this, hasn't it, so why should you hesitate?' Meanwhile Churchill's pursuit of his other option – inevitably, Beaverbrook – was brought to an abrupt end by Attlee. The Deputy Prime Minister told Dalton that he and Churchill had had 'quite a row, as we usually do, but that the result was that Beaverbrook is not to have anything to do with post-war'. A few days later, Woolton finally agreed to take on the position.

The newspaper reaction on 12 November left him in no doubt about the enormity of his task. 'WOOLTON TO PLAN NEW BRITAIN' was the _Daily Mirror_ 's front-page headline. He was 'the man on whose decisions the future of the country will depend . . . and because of the sweeping nature of his powers he will rank second only to the Prime Minister'.

'People are expecting the new heaven and the new earth . . . it terrifies me to know that I'm to be the provider of it,' Woolton wrote in his diary that night. Elsewhere, Bevin was concerned that the new minister would usurp some of his powers, and demanded – and received – reassurance from Churchill that this was not the case. But Woolton's fellow welfare worker from before the First World War, Clement Attlee, was satisfied. Woolton had a good grasp of social needs and a sense of social purpose; this vital job was in the hands of someone the Deputy Prime Minister could trust.

Churchill was in buoyant mood as the third plenary session of the Teheran conference ended on the evening of 30 November. After three amicable and fruitful days with Stalin and Roosevelt, he had successfully concluded negotiations on the grand strategy for the next six months of the war. They had addressed speeding up the Allied advance to Rome, the possible wooing of Turkey, and better support for Yugoslavia, but all of these were as nothing compared to the main agreement that _Overlord_ , the American and British cross-Channel invasion of Europe via northern France, would be launched in May, with a 'supporting operation' against the south of the country.

At the same time as Allied troops came ashore, the Red Army would launch a large-scale offensive to prevent any movement of German forces from the east. And in the meantime – at the Russian leader's initiative – it was agreed that the military chiefs of all three powers should collaborate on joint cover and misdirection schemes: dummy tanks, planes and airfields, and radio deception. 'Truth deserved a bodyguard of lies,' Churchill commented, quoting a phrase of Stalin's – a Russian proverb – back at him.

It was an evening to celebrate, not least because it was the Prime Minister's sixty-ninth birthday. But Churchill's buoyant mood evaporated only minutes later, when, back in his bedroom, he picked up a telegram from Clement Attlee. 'Read that,' he ordered Lord Moran, his doctor. 'The Government may go out over Mosley. Bevin is kicking.'

Attlee's telegram was a report of a dangerous rift in the War Cabinet, with the barely disguised animosity between Bevin and Morrison now well and truly on the surface. The home secretary's deeply controversial decision, announced to the War Cabinet two weeks earlier, to release the British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley from Holloway prison on medical grounds, had provoked a storm of political and public protest. Mosley and his wife Diana had been interred in May 1940 under Defence Regulation 18b, which allowed the home secretary to detain anyone he believed to be 'of hostile origin or associations' and committing acts 'prejudicial to the public safety'. A campaign for the couple's freedom by a host of their aristocratic friends, led by Mosley's former mistress Lady Alexandra 'Baba' Metcalfe, who had sent a series of pleading letters to Churchill, had finally borne fruit when a conference of doctors had agreed that Mosley's phlebitis was worsening, and that there was a risk of serious complications, even danger to his life. 'The quandary was whether to free this leading Fascist, a sympathiser with Hitler and Mussolini, or whether to risk having a British citizen die in prison without trial,' Morrison reflected later. 'Apart from such a blot on history going back to Magna Carta, martyrdom is a very profound source of strength.'

After winning the War Cabinet's approval, on 17 November, for Mosley's release – and that of Lady Diana, on 'humanitarian grounds' – Morrison had sent a telegram to Churchill, then en route to Malta aboard the battleship HMS _Renown_. 'I highly approve your action,' came back the reply. But there had been one, serious opponent of the move: Bevin had asked for his dissent to be placed on record, saying Mosley's release 'would weaken morale and would have an unfortunate effect on negotiations and discussions in the industrial field'. Indeed, his union, the Transport and General Workers, would be at the forefront of the opposition to Morrison in the coming days.

Now, on the eve of a major parliamentary debate on the decision, it seemed Bevin was prepared to take the matter further and imperil the coalition itself. Attlee's telegram reported that the labour minister had been 'strongly critical of Morrison's action [during that day's War Cabinet meeting] and said that if there was a division he would be unable to vote with the Government and might have to resign'.

Churchill made little effort to disguise his irritation. 'We have had a grand day here, and relations between Britain, the United States and Europe have never been so cordial,' he replied. 'All war plans are agreed and concerted. Judge our astonishment to receive your telegram.' Attlee's worrying communiqué was swiftly followed by a short telegram from Lord Cherwell. 'You will have heard from Attlee about trouble in cabinet,' he wrote. 'A personal wire from you to Bevin before the division tomorrow would be helpful.'

There was still much to be done during the final days in Teheran, with tricky issues such as Poland's frontiers, Stalin's demands for compensation from Finland, and the fate of a conquered Germany yet to be resolved. Two telegrams Churchill proposed to send to Bevin and Attlee betrayed his mounting fury at the domestic distraction thrust upon him. For Bevin he drafted the most intemperate note: 'You are the last man whom I thought would stab me in the back like this at a time when I am absent from public duty. Be assured I shall fight this matter in the House and the country with all the life and strength I possess. It is impossible for me to break up this conference in the next two critical days. You have been my loyal colleague in the sternest times, but if you bring about a series of events which lead the Labour Party to leave the Cabinet I shall still do my best to continue the war effort, and though it will be grief to me on personal grounds to part from you, my duty is plain.'

To Attlee, he was scarcely less immoderate. 'If the Labour ministers choose to leave the Government on what I can only regard as a frivolous pretext of this kind and I am entrusted by the King with the duty of carrying on the war, I shall certainly not flinch from it. I am sure that the moral sense of the British nation and their respect for humanity and fair play, even to the most unpopular figures, will vindicate itself with every step in this controversy.'

In the event, Churchill thought better of sending either telegram. Instead, in the privacy of his rooms at the legation in Teheran, he vented his frustrations upon, among others, Lord Moran. 'I said he could not govern England without Labour. It would impair unity and interfere with production. At this he shouted he could get on quite well without them. He would not get rid of them, but they could go if they wanted.'

Back in London, Brendan Bracken was given the vital task of pacifying Bevin. Bracken composed a skilful letter – a mix of flattery, exhortation and not a little blackmail – in which he told Bevin that Churchill looked upon him as the 'embodiment of loyalty and good sense. In the darkest days of the war you have always been a rock of strength to him.' But, he warned, 'If you were to publicly dissociate yourself from your colleagues in the Cabinet and fulfil your intention to resign from the Government you would add a great deal to Churchill's burdens, and the Government in the midst of some of the worst problems of the war and of reconstruction would be most seriously weakened.'

Finally, there was a salutary word on the possible consequences of his resignation. 'Most of his colleagues share the public's view that Churchill is a man of limitless physical strength and that he can cast aside the many worries which are his daily lot. I, who am more in touch with him than most persons, wish I could share this optimistic view. The facts are otherwise. He needs all the encouragement which he can get from his colleagues, and the more worries there can be kept away from him the better for his health.'

Bracken's letter did the trick. Bevin visited him in the morning and was persuaded not to move against the government. John Martin, Churchill's principal private secretary, acknowledged that Bracken had done 'most valiant work'. At the end of a gruelling all-day Commons debate, an amendment from the Labour MP Reverend George Woods (Finsbury), stating that Mosley's release would 'retard the war effort and lead to misunderstanding at home and abroad', was defeated by 327 votes to 62. Fifty-one Labour MPs voted for the amendment, a major blow to Morrison, but Bevin was not one of them. The coalition had survived.

Morrison and Churchill, despite the latter's negotiations in Cairo and Teheran, had kept in touch daily throughout the crisis, the home secretary drawing strength from the Prime Minister's unequivocal backing and shrewd advice. One curious suggestion the home secretary put to the Prime Minister did not, however, meet with his approval. 'If U.J ["Uncle Joe", i.e. Stalin] could be persuaded to say, for publication directly or indirectly, that while he does not profess to be an authority on British psychology, he is mystified by all the fuss about this unimportant individual under house arrest, and that he thought we were fighting the real big Fascists, it would be most valuable. I should be grateful if you would see what you can do with him. It would blow the agitation clean out of the water.' Churchill's reply was understandably dismissive: 'I am sure we shall not need to go to Stalin for help in defending the principles of British liberty and humanity.'

Lord Beaverbrook had, as ever, acted as Churchill's eyes and ears on the affair. He now worried that the major fallout from Mosley's release would escalate the simmering feud between the two Labour ministers. 'Everything should be done to hold the domestic situation in check until you return because the quarrel between Bevin and Morrison is continuing on other issues and sometimes appears to be serious. Certainly it is irreconcilable by anyone but yourself.'

The story told was that during a conversation between Labour MPs someone had remarked that Morrison was his own worst enemy, to which Bevin was purported to have snarled, 'Not while I'm alive, he ain't!' This may have been apocryphal, but it was essentially true. In formal situations the two men observed basic courtesies, addressing each other in committee as 'Ernest' and 'Herbert', but in War Cabinet Bevin would on occasion mutter and grumble audibly at Morrison's contributions, while in the bars and tea rooms of Westminster he would tell close colleagues 'to watch 'Erbert – and if you find the little bugger getting up to any of his tricks you tell me'.

They were like two medieval barons closely guarding their fiefdoms: Bevin the trade unions, and Morrison the London Labour Party. The feud stretched back to the late 1920s when Morrison, then Minister of Transport under Ramsay MacDonald, had introduced the London Passenger Transport Bill, reorganising the city's buses, underground system and trams and bringing them under central control. For Morrison, the board running the capital's transport had to be independent and impartial, made up of executives with proven experience in 'industry, commerce or finance, or in the conduct of public affairs'. By contrast, Bevin believed in direct worker representation, and had called for a minimum number of trade unionists on the new London Transport Board.

A direct appeal to MacDonald had won Bevin some minor concessions, but it was Morrison's principle that had prevailed. In the process, the dispute had revealed the essential and enduring political difference between the two: Bevin was principally concerned for the status and welfare of the working class – 'his' people – while Morrison, the party creature, eschewed sectional interests and strove to build middle-class support for Labour wherever he could.

Political enmities are often more about character than ideology, however, and the rancour between the two was profoundly personal. Bevin was an intuitive, emotional man and would not be shaken from his prejudices once they were formed. He thought Morrison untrustworthy, 'a slick wire-puller', a political conjurer. For his part, Morrison had come to regard Bevin as a jealous bully, given to sarcasm and sneering, and always ready to use his trade union muscle to thwart his rival's ambitions.

Since joining Churchill's war ministry, they had by and large sublimated their loathing in the national interest. Skilfully managed by Attlee, they had joined forces to harry Churchill over the pace of reform. But the Mosley affair had revived all the old tensions. 'I went to the meeting of the civil defence committee with Willink . . . on the way he commented on Morrison's sullen behaviour,' Chuter Ede recorded in late December. 'I said I thought he suspected Bevin of engineering the trade union attack on him over the Mosley release.' Attlee would have more conciliatory work to do in the coming weeks.

The day after the vote on Mosley's release, Bevin – having exhausted all other methods – announced his conscription scheme for the coalfields. He told the Commons a nationwide ballot would be held of all men under the age of twenty-five, with the aim of recruiting 30,000 by 30 April 1944. Other than those who were medically unfit, the only exemptions would be for submarine mechanics, those with flying duties in the RAF or Fleet Air Arm, and a shortlist of 'highly skilled occupations'.

His cantankerous mood was hardly improved when he was questioned by MPs about why there was to be no debate on such a major decision. 'Have we not reached a most intolerable position in which ministers act in this way without consulting the House even when it is sitting? The House has become a Reichstag,' baited Aneurin Bevan. The labour minister testily told his questioners that it was his right, under the powers granted to his office, to enforce the move without further deliberation.

Twelve days later, on the morning of 14 December, twenty-two-year-old clerical assistant Betty Eileen Nunn was working, as normal, in her second-floor office in Montagu House, the Ministry of Labour's imposing headquarters on Whitehall. An Ealing grammar school girl, who had finished second in her class in the national civil service examination in 1938, Betty was one of the secretaries who served Sir Godfrey Ince, Bevin's trusted director of manpower. Like most of the junior employees in Montagu House she had great affection for her minister, referring to him as 'Uncle Ernie'. 'How are you today, my dear?' was his customary greeting if he met her in the lift, and he would usually spend a moment or two in pleasant chat.

Today Betty's work was interrupted by her supervisor, who asked if she would go down to Bevin's office on the floor below. When she entered the room, she was surprised to see a large gathering of men, which included three ministers – Bevin himself, Gwilym Lloyd George and Rab Butler – together with some senior civil servants and a few members of the press. A black homburg hat had been placed on the desk in front of her. Rab Butler gestured to her and said, 'All we want you to do, my dear, is to put in your hand and pick out a number.' Betty dipped her hand in among ten pieces of paper and drew out the number 9. Then Bevin told her to repeat the task, and this time she drew the number 0.

All young men whose National Service Registration Certificate numbers ended in those two numerals were now to become miners. This transparent, impartial method of selection would be repeated every month in Bevin's office until 23 April 1945. Only infrequently were two numbers drawn, but on this first occasion it was vital to conscript as many men as possible. The initial cohort would be sent to eleven special training centres, ready to start work in the collieries by the middle of February.

On page three of the next day's _Daily Mirror_ , the paper's cartoonist 'Zec' drew Bevin as a shop assistant, tape measure around his neck, helping a young girl try on a hat in front of a mirror. Lying on the table in front of them was an apparently discarded black homburg hat with the words 'privilege and wire pulling' inscribed inside the brim. But on the girl's dress was written the word 'justice', and the label on the hat she was wearing read 'Miner's Ballot A La Bevin'. The caption to the cartoon read, 'This cap fits!' A ministry spokesman was quoted afterwards as saying that the identity of the staff member who had drawn the numbers would be kept secret 'lest she should be molested by mothers of boys who were sent to the coalmines'.

Not only was the ballot a necessary mobilisation of manpower, it became a form of social experiment. 'It doesn't seem a bad scheme – but I confess I still have my doubts about the "high and mighties" ever reaching the pit,' commented Jim Hammond, Lancashire miners' leader. 'I feel many of them will find ways of slipping through.' But the sons of lawyers, headmasters and stockbrokers would now have to take their place alongside those of engineers, gardeners and dustmen.

When Bevin eventually granted MPs a short debate about the policy on 17 December, it was greeted with near unanimous enthusiasm – as much for the social cohesion it appeared to offer as for the increased coal output it would reap. Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Lancaster, Conservative MP for Fylde and a coal industry director, enthused, 'The young miner can learn a river of life which at present flows past his narrow mountain valleys, and maybe in the learning of it he will find some of his prejudices being swept away.'

Alexander 'Sanny' Sloan, Labour MP for South Ayrshire, a miner at the age of twelve who had lost an eye in a pit accident, was equally stirred by Bevin's scheme. 'These youths may be missionaries. When they have come into mining and seen what it is like they will be able, like the Queen of Sheba, to say "The half has not been told me; the half of the misery has never yet received the light of day."'

As for the architect himself, he concluded the debate that afternoon in more prosaic style. 'We devised this scheme of selecting these lads because we thought it fair . . . I think it is coming, after all, at an opportune moment when a changed mental outlook and a change in our conception of national life is on the way.'

## Chapter Twelve

## **'Should we tell the Russians?'**

18 December 1943 to 2 June 1944

On the same day Ernest Bevin was supervising the coal ballot in his office in Whitehall, Winston Churchill dictated a telegram for the War Cabinet. In it he detailed his recommendations for the British contribution to the Allied military command structure for Operation _Overlord_ and the Mediterranean. Air Marshal Arthur Tedder was to be General Eisenhower's deputy for the cross-Channel invasion, Harold Alexander or Bernard Montgomery should command the expeditionary army, and General Henry 'Jumbo' Maitland Wilson was the Prime Minister's choice to replace Eisenhower as supreme commander in the Mediterranean.

'I very much regret', the telegram concluded, 'that on account of my illness and fever – which continue – I have not been able to visit the Italian front. I still hope to do so after I have recovered.' There would be no such visit to the front; Churchill very nearly did not recover at all.

Following the summit in Teheran, and subsequent talks with Roosevelt in Cairo, Churchill had insisted on visiting Eisenhower at his villa, The White House, near Tunis. But on arrival he had been so weak he had immediately taken to bed, and in the morning he had been diagnosed with pneumonia – his second serious bout of the year. Even as he dictated that message, his temperature was still rising and the infection was spreading in his left lung. A few hours later his doctor, Lord Moran, was forced to administer digitalis for an irregular heartbeat. 'As I sat by his bedside listening to his quick breathing, I knew that we were at last right up against things.'

'Lord Moran tells me he thought the PM was going to die last night,' Harold Macmillan recorded the next day. 'He thinks him a little better as regards the pneumonia, but is worried about his heart.' On 16 December the fever began to ease and there were signs that Churchill's lungs were clearing, although his temperature was still 101°F (38.3°C). This was the fifth day of the illness, and although the War Cabinet had been kept updated – 'some of them have been getting agitated, they seem to be in a complete dither,' observed Moran – the Prime Minister's condition had yet to be revealed to the British public.

Clementine, accompanied by Jock Colville, flew out from RAF Lyneham to be at Churchill's bedside. Around midday on 16 December Attlee stood up in the Commons to deliver the news. 'The Prime Minister has been in bed for some days with a cold. A patch of pneumonia has now developed in the left lung. The general condition is as satisfactory as can be expected.' There was a gasp of concern, followed soon afterwards by loud cheers from MPs as Attlee added, 'I am sure it will be the desire of all of us that we should send our best wishes for a complete and speedy recovery.'

As the bulletins became steadily more upbeat over the following days any speculation about Churchill's fitness for office died away, at least in public. 'The circumstances certainly do not suggest any special arrangements will be necessary in connexion with the work of the war cabinet,' suggested _The Times_. However, Cecil King of the _Daily Mirror_ was more ready to contemplate the worst, voicing a common line of thought in and around Westminster: 'In the event of Churchill's death, the only possible successor, in my opinion, would be Eden, though the Tories are trying to build up Anderson!'

On Christmas Day in Carthage, a recuperating Churchill hosted a conference of the five commanders-in-chief – Eisenhower, Maitland Wilson, Tedder, Alexander and Admiral Sir John Cunningham – to thrash out the strategy for _Overlord._ Then in the New Year he journeyed to one of his favourite retreats, the Villa Taylor at Marrakech, to continue his convalescence. Here he took time to consider the stalled campaign in Italy and the plans for Operation _Shingle_ , the impending Allied assault on Anzio, south of Rome, whose object was to force the withdrawal of the German armies from the Gustav Line at Cassino, thus opening up the way to the capital.

On the Eastern Front, meanwhile, the momentum was now undeniably with the Red Army. 'THE GREAT RETREAT TURNS INTO ROUT' was the _Daily Express_ 's description of the latest events in Ukraine, where General Nikolai Vatutin's offensive had apparently destroyed eight Panzer and fourteen infantry divisions, totalling some 250,000 men.

At the final War Cabinet of 1943, the assembled ministers took particular satisfaction from the latest evidence of the upturn in fortunes in the Arctic campaign. Details were given of the sinking on Boxing Day of the _Scharnhorst_ , the German battleship that had sailed with such impunity down the English Channel in February 1942. This war had now lasted fifty-two months – exactly as long as the last one. Everywhere Hitler's army, navy and air force appeared to be either holding on or in retreat, but the biggest military challenge was yet to come.

Evidence that the second front was imminent was not hard to find, despite the censors attempting to block any informed speculation in the national newspapers. The island was crammed with foreign soldiers – mainly American and Canadian – and industry was totally geared to the war effort, with factories churning out landing craft and amphibious tanks. Builders and civil engineers, especially in and around the south coast, were particularly involved in projects for the big push; indeed, most people had a story about someone they knew who was engaged in 'secret' war work.

'I am sick of this war. Sick of everything. Sick of the waiting and the sound of bombers, of my work and my clothes and the general dullness of my complicated existence.' The weariness and frustration of Maggie Joy Blunt, a thirty-four-year-old architectural writer living alone with her cats in a cottage near Slough, mirrored the feelings of many Britons in the early months of 1944. But coupled with the general mood of lassitude and restless expectation, there was also anxiety after the return of a forgotten menace.

When Maggie Blunt spoke of the 'sound of bombers', she was referring to the renewed Luftwaffe night bombing campaign, 'The Little Blitz', which had started on 21 January and would go on until 19 April. Hitler, provoked by the RAF's saturation bombing of Berlin and other major German cities, had sent his planes back to take their revenge on London and other selected targets, including Bristol and Hull. The attacks never reached the scale of those in 1940–1, with just thirteen concerted raids spread out over the three months. But Operation _Steinbock_ nonetheless sent Londoners scurrying for cover in their mothballed Anderson and Morrison shelters, and at the height of the bombing 50,000 packed into the capital's public refuges.

However, the lessons of the Blitz had been learned. This time the Heinkels, Dorniers and Junkers were up against improved anti-aircraft batteries, while the impressive de Havilland Mosquito night fighters patrolled the skies. The Luftwaffe lost 329 planes before Göring decided to preserve what was left of his bomber strength for the expected cross-Channel invasion by the Allies. Even so, by that point the raids had claimed the lives of 1,500 people – mainly Londoners – with nearly 3,000 seriously injured.

With its military campaigns stalled, or as yet unready to launch, the government was anxious to maintain morale on the Home Front. Concrete plans for reconstruction would help, and as the 'The Man Who Will Remake Britain' Lord Woolton was expected to swiftly bring forward substantial proposals on, among other matters, housing, employment and a national health service. In each case, he would be judged by the inevitable yardstick of Beveridge's detailed social insurance scheme. But first Woolton faced the problem of reconciling the differing ambitions and politics of his new reconstruction committee. It appeared to be carefully balanced: on the Labour side were Attlee, Bevin, Morrison and William Jowitt (Paymaster General), while the Conservative representatives were Butler, Lyttelton, Dominions secretary Cranborne and Henry Crookshank (Postmaster General). The Chancellor, Sir John Anderson – nominally a National Independent MP, but clearly wedded to the values and principles of the right – also took his place.

Hitherto the coalition had, by and large, suppressed its rawer political instincts in the interests of national unity. Now, with the economic future of the country to be shaped, clear party differences would surely emerge. In practice, urged on by personal political preference, pressure from their party and the clamour from the public for change, the four Labour members would prove to be the more proactive and influential.

Woolton, who had been free of party-political pressure at the Ministry of Food, now 'met the full force of the divergence' in the coalition, 'both of policy and of personalities'. 'It was a very good training ground for a sixty-year-old novice to party warfare,' he recalled. As it was, his main source of trouble came not from inside the committee, but from predictable foes outside it. Beaverbrook and Bracken regarded Woolton's project as 'socialist', a threat to the independence of doctors, managers and industrialists, and would attempt to use their influence with the Prime Minister to confound it.

Woolton's reconstruction committee now began to produce a 'White Paper chase' of suggested reform. First off the conveyor belt was a paper on health, in February, that took as its basic principle Beveridge's vision of a fully comprehensive, universal healthcare system, free at the point of delivery and available for every citizen in the land. It also introduced the concept of salaried doctors working in health centres, governed – along with public and voluntary hospitals – by new regional government authorities. What the paper did not propose, however, was a statist model. Its 'starting point' was that it was possible to 'combine public responsibility and a full service with the essential elements of personal and professional freedom for the patient and the doctor'. The latter would be allowed to continue as an independent contractor or private practitioner, and the independent, charitable 'voluntary' hospitals could carry on 'without loss of identity or autonomy', albeit encouraged to co-operate with public hospitals in their area.

It was a clear compromise, but one with which both sides of the committee appeared able to live. Attlee was concerned that state-employed doctors would favour their private patients, while Bevin would have liked greater emphasis on the development of health centres. Woolton, on the other hand, wanted to preserve the 'voluntary spirit', leaving hospitals 'as free as possible to manage their own affairs in their own ways' while accepting guidance from the new local authorities.

Woolton presented the document at a War Cabinet meeting on the evening of 9 February. He was at pains to emphasise that the scheme did not involve the abolition of private medical practice, but he did concede that any plans to establish a comprehensive service would inevitably be seen to threaten it, and he warned of strong opposition from the doctors' union. Churchill appeared content enough, although he stressed that ministers should not present the proposals as the government's final view; constructive criticism was to be welcomed. The War Cabinet also agreed to remove a reference in the introduction acknowledging Sir William Beveridge's influence on the document: this ungenerous omission was all part of an effort to emphasise the government's initiative and downplay the reformer's guiding influence.

Beaverbrook and Bracken, on this occasion, listened largely in silence. But after the meeting in the Cabinet Room was over, they stayed behind to persuade Churchill of what they considered to be the folly of Woolton's plans, in particular the attack on the 'independence' of the family doctor. As was so often the case, their arguments prevailed and Churchill was persuaded to reconvene the War Cabinet a week later to re-examine the proposals. At the same time, the Prime Minister asked Eden to confer with the Tory members of the reconstruction committee and gather details on any concerns they had. Woolton, alarmed to learn of this instruction, wrote to warn the foreign secretary, 'If the Conservatives turn down the compromise at which we have so laboriously arrived on this issue, there is little hope of getting the Socialists to arrive at a compromise on the other issues with which the committee is faced, and on which they have been publicly expressing their conviction for many years.'

At the reconstituted War Cabinet on 15 February, Bracken launched a fierce attack on both the principles and the specifics of the proposals. He feared not just the end of private practice, but the demise of voluntary hospitals, which for so long had taken the lead in teaching and research. He foresaw, too, that the new scheme would interfere with the right of doctors to set up in practice as consultants.

In the end Woolton rode the storm, and the decision taken a week earlier was reaffirmed. But Bracken and Beaverbrook's crude interference had stirred up resentment within the coalition. Lord Cherwell told Jock Colville there was 'much annoyance in Government circles because Brendan and Lord B attempt, by using their influence with the PM, to sabotage measures . . . about which they are hopelessly ignorant but which have been worked out by experts, with great pains and hard work, over a long period'.

In a two-day Commons debate on the White Paper in March, Henry Willink, health minister, and Florence Horsbrugh, his junior, had to continually reassure MPs – especially those who were doctors – that private practice was safe in their hands. In the face of a great many interruptions, Horsbrugh unflappably talked MPs through the details, assuaging their fears about doctors' independence and the future of voluntary hospitals. She finished with a flourish. 'I hope [future generations] will look back to the year 1944 when . . . at a time of increase of suffering, of wounds and maiming and crippling, we in this House launched a scheme to allay suffering, to get people made well, and in the middle of destruction, to do something constructive for the people of this country.'

One of the House's other thirteen women MPs was to make a significant intervention in a different area of reconstruction – albeit not to the government's benefit. Thelma Cazalet Kerr – Conservative member for Islington East, sister of Tory MP Victor Cazalet, and a one-time junior minister at the Board of Education – had never allowed her party loyalties to supersede a commitment to what would nowadays be termed 'feminist' politics. She had recently campaigned to press Anthony Eden to admit women to the diplomatic service, but now her principles were to stall the one piece of reforming legislation that had been progressing towards the statute book: Rab Butler's Education Bill.

Cazalet had already tried and failed (by thirty-five votes) to persuade the government to set a date for raising the school leaving age to sixteen. Now she put down an amendment that would give equal pay to women teachers. To Butler's immense annoyance, and Churchill's fury, it passed by 117 to 116; the first time in the war the coalition had been defeated in either the Commons or the Lords.

Although not the foremost advocate of women's rights, Churchill maintained he bore no ingrained hostility to the idea of equal pay. 'The amendment advocates a perfectly good principle which is not suitable for insertion in this clause. It is quite easy to have a perfectly good thing in the wrong place . . . [it] is like potato in a gooseberry pie,' he grumbled to Butler. What incensed him, as the country approached its most formidable test of the war, was what he perceived as a lack of unity in the body politic and the signal that gave to the enemy. Once apprised of the result he immediately summoned the War Cabinet to the Annexe for an emergency session at 10 p.m. the same evening. There he persuaded his ministers – with no dissenters – to reverse the vote by using the sledgehammer tactic of making it an issue of confidence.

It was a ploy that worked, even cowing the architect of the government's misfortune. In the subsequent debate on 30 March, Thelma Cazalet Kerr resignedly told the House: 'In this great democracy of ours, convention, for once, seems to have overruled commonsense. I believe in the clause as it stands, but I shall vote against it, to show my measureless confidence in the Prime Minister now, in view of the stupendous days that lie ahead.'

The government won their confidence motion by a resounding 425 votes to 23. For Rab Butler, the government's heavy-handed action 'paid a handsome dividend'. From then on, no MP was willing to press an amendment to his bill – at least, one that was unacceptable to the government – if there was any chance of it being carried. The bill progressed smoothly through the Lords that summer and became law in August. Churchill sent a congratulatory telegram to Butler, saying he had 'won a lasting place in the history of British education'.

One of the three 'assumptions' underpinning Beveridge's social insurance scheme was full employment, so early in 1944 Lord Woolton's reconstruction committee had started to turn its attention to jobs. The resulting White Paper was presented to the War Cabinet on 19 May. Churchill had not read the report, but had received a long brief from Cherwell, who had described it as a 'very bold and ably conceived plan worthy of full support'. Even so, before he committed himself the Prime Minister wanted to hear the views of Beaverbrook. 'A magnificent scheme, a first-class scheme,' was the Beaver's surprising reply. Bracken was enthused too: 'it is a document of great significance', he wrote in a memorandum that recommended maximum publicity for the plans.

So this White Paper was given a fair wind. And when it emerged few could deny that it was a landmark document: the government had finally cast aside the view that employment could not be expanded through state action. Indeed, the first words averred that 'the Government accepts as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war'. This was taken by many as official acceptance of the doctrines of John Maynard Keynes; certainly some sections of the paper pointed towards greater government management of the economy, including a more active fiscal policy, with public works schemes and the deliberate running of deficits in times of depression. 'The Government are prepared to accept in future the responsibility for taking action at the earliest possible stage to arrest a threatened slump. This involves a new approach and a new responsibility for the State,' chapter four stated.

But this was only half the picture. The paper was a careful mix of the macro-economic thinking of the Keynesians in the Cabinet Office's Economic Section, and the orthodox micro-economic strategy of the Treasury. The first three chapters reflected the views of the latter, stressing the need to revive international trade, the importance of increased industrial efficiency and labour mobility, and the dangers of inflation.

Attlee's foreword made the compromise explicit: 'In the post-war period, the country will inevitably depend upon a mixed economy, neither wholly subject to state regulation nor wholly ruled by private enterprise; and the extent to which either one of these principles gains or loses ground will depend on the will of the post-war electorate expressed at the polls.' This position irritated many Labour backbenchers, who believed quite simply that unemployment was synonymous with capitalism. 'Shallow, empty-headed and superficial, bearing all the stigmata of its coalition origin,' was Aneurin Bevan's contemptuous verdict.

Keynes himself was underwhelmed by the White Paper. 'My own feeling is that the first sentence is more valuable than the whole of the rest,' he told fellow Cambridge economist Austin Robinson. But on the whole Woolton's proposals received a glowing response. 'GOVT PLANS JOBS FOR ALL AFTER WAR – WILL CONTROL AND AID SWITCH TO FULL PEACE PRODUCTION,' proclaimed the _Daily Mirror_. 'Irrespective of the precise nature of its contents,' wrote the _Economist_ , 'this first formal resolution of democracy to shoulder anew responsibility on behalf of its members deserves a round of applause.'

At the press conference for the paper on 26 May Woolton and Bevin stood side by side, and the latter was unreserved in his enthusiasm. He reminded journalists of the Bank Act of 1844, which had set in stone a free trade system that dictated 'whenever the exchanges went wrong, you rectified them by restricting credit and producing unemployment'. Now, he said, 'instead of human beings having to fit into the international exchange system, the international exchange system must be fitted to human requirements . . . this plan leaves the 19th century behind'.

The success of the White Paper came as some relief to the Minister for Labour, who had played no small part in its development. The pit crisis still showed no signs of abating, and the first four months of 1944 had seen a wave of strikes in the coalfields, which a minimum wage award of £5 a week for underground men and £4 10s for surface workers had done little to alleviate. In March a total of 15,000 men had gone on strike in the Scottish pits, 100,000 in south Wales and 120,000 in Yorkshire. The conscription scheme for the mines was also causing trouble. There was a national strike of shipyard apprentices against their inclusion in the ballot for 'Bevin Boys', including 6,000 on Tyneside and 5,000 on Clydeside.

Then a number of court cases involving conscripts who had refused to take their places in the mines began to attract publicity (there would be 147 such refusals in 1944). One such concerned eighteen-year-old Arthur Jenner, of Bethnal Green, London, who declined to go down a Northumberland colliery. Jenner, who had joined the Home Guard at sixteen and since manned AA guns, told Old Street magistrates' court he was keen to join the forces and had been passed A1 for the army and A1 for the navy. The sympathetic presiding magistrate Mr Rowland Thomas, in adjourning the case, told him, 'It's not a matter for me, but when you have a public-spirited fellow who has been proving himself to be highly useful it does seem a thousand pities.' Bevin was indignant when told of the affair. He rebuked Thomas, although not by name, in the Commons a few days later. 'It is the duty of magistrates to enforce the law, and it is no part of their function to use the courts for expressing their personal views on the policy of that law.'

Regarding the wider problem, Bevin now decided the industrial strife had gone on too long. On 4 April, at a luncheon at the Dorchester Hotel given by the Civil Engineering Construction Conciliation Board, he launched a startling attack on the Yorkshire miners, and anyone else prepared to withdraw their labour at this time. 'What has happened this week in Yorkshire is worse than if Hitler had bombed Sheffield and cut our communications. It is the most tragic thing that in Britain you can do more harm by thoughtless action and lack of discipline than your enemy can do to you.' But a week later Bevin had negotiated a successful conclusion to the Yorkshire miners' strike, and a few days after that he achieved a national agreement on wages and conditions with the workers' leaders and the pit owners. However, he still wanted stronger powers to stamp out illegal industrial action, so on 17 April he added a new section, 1AA, to the Defence of the Realm Regulations. It was aimed at anyone inciting strikes or lockouts in an essential service, the penalty for which would be a maximum of five years' penal servitude, a fine of £500, or both, if necessary.

So soon after the vote of confidence, this seemed – and not just to the left-wing press – to be another example of an authoritarian-minded government, lashing out at straw men. On the Education Bill, rebellious MPs had been in the firing line; with 1AA, supposed bands of Trotskyist agitators were the threat. Labour MPs attacked Bevin for the 'unconstitutional' way he had imposed the new regulation, without first consulting Parliament, and argued that the miners had come out on strike because of the incompetence of his ministry, not because of any carefully orchestrated conspiracy.

But Bevin had some valuable allies that day. James ('Jimmy') Glanville, the recently elected MP for Consett, had come straight to the Commons from the pit where he had worked for forty years. Glanville reproached Aneurin Bevan for 'magnifying in high falutin' language' the implications of the new regulation, saying they existed solely in his imagination. 'This is a wartime measure and it finishes at the end of hostilities. If it is necessary that this House should collect the boys and conscript them to go and risk their lives, it is necessary to exercise severe control over the disrupters, who are preventing the workers carrying on necessary jobs.' Grateful for the backing, Bevin told MPs he hoped the new powers would never have to be used – and so it would eventually prove: there would never be a single prosecution under 1AA.

The hostile motion was defeated by 314 votes to 23, albeit just 56 out of 165 Labour MPs voted with the government (the rest either abstained or were absent). It was a political embarrassment, but memories would soon fade, as worries over industrial strife took a back seat to the war's defining military campaign, Operation _Overlord._ In the meantime, however, a yet longer-incubating matter was to occupy the minds of certain Cabinet members.

Sir John Anderson was a man ripe for caricature. For one thing, there was his face – long, forbidding, lugubrious and increasingly jowly – that seemed uncannily to have taken on the appearance of a bloodhound (a representative of which breed he would later acquire). With his customary dress of wing collar, black coat, striped trousers, immaculately folded cravat and gold watch chain, and a manner formal to the point of pomposity, he might have been mistaken for a stern butler, or perhaps an efficient undertaker. Indeed, two of the whispered sobriquets attached to him in Whitehall were 'Pompous John' and 'God's Butler'. A third, 'Jehovah', was a favourite with the War Cabinet. At one Cabinet committee meeting, as Anderson prepared to open proceedings, Clement Attlee announced in a deadpan voice, 'Well, we are all Jehovah's witnesses now!'

His portentous approach served him ill in the House of Commons. 'Is it in order for the home secretary to treat this as if we were the natives of Bengal?' an exasperated Dr Edith Summerskill had complained to the chamber in October 1939 after receiving an especially unsatisfactory answer. But whatever the demeanour Anderson presented in public – in private, colleagues attested to a more human figure, with a pawky sense of humour – no one disputed his long and considerable contribution to the British state. As secretary to the Ministry of Shipping during the previous war, he had countered the U-boat menace. As joint under-secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1921, he had helped draft the treaty establishing an Irish Free State. In 1926, while at the Home Office, his meticulous preparation had enabled Winston Churchill to break the general strike. Then from 1931 to 1935 he had governed the largest Indian province, Bengal, where he had won admiration from opponents in the Congress Party for continuing to move freely among the population despite two assassination attempts.

If Anderson lacked the presentational skills of a career politician – he was a relative novice, having only been elected MP for the Scottish Universities in 1938 – his administrative genius was undisputed. 'Anderson is the most learned of men. We can catch him out on nothing. No wonder he is a tower of strength to Winston, he settles all the quarrels in the Cabinet and knows everything,' Victor Cazalet noted in February 1942. Two years on Anderson's importance to Churchill had only grown. He was a 'friendly power of equal status rather than a satellite', was how Norman Brook, formerly his principal private secretary, would later describe Anderson's relationship with the Prime Minister by the spring of 1944.

Having shed responsibility for important economic committees to Attlee and Woolton upon becoming chancellor in July 1943, Anderson was still left – along with a brief for manpower – with two vital roles in Churchill's ministry. He was, of course, the steward of the nation's finances, but he had another, highly secretive brief, known only to the Prime Minister and a handful of colleagues. It was the latter that preoccupied him in the spring of 1944 – just as much, if not more, than his first, uncontroversial budget, introduced on 25 April.

Two days after his major financial statement – and for the second time in just over a month – Anderson had written to the Prime Minister to try and convince him that Britain's secret atom bomb project, codenamed 'Tube Alloys', should be opened up to a far wider circle of government ministers. Moreover, the Chancellor believed there should now be serious discussion about whether Britain and America might, in the interests of world security, disclose the project to the Soviet Union.

Churchill and Anderson had worked closely together on the bomb project since the late summer of 1941. The Prime Minister, whose engagement with science, though amateur, was always well-informed and imaginative, had been prescient in his analysis of the huge impact nuclear energy was likely to have on the world. In an article for the _Strand_ magazine, in December 1931, entitled 'Fifty Years Hence', he had written – almost certainly influenced by Professor Lindemann:

If the hydrogen atoms in a pound of water could be prevailed upon to combine together and form helium, it would suffice to drive a 1,000-horsepower engine for a whole year. If the electrons – those tiny planets of the atomic systems – were induced to combine with the nuclei in the hydrogen, the horsepower liberated would be one hundred and twenty times greater still . . . What is lacking is the match to set the bonfire alight, or it may be the detonator to cause the dynamite to explode. The scientists are looking for this.

But for his pursuit of a career in the civil service, Anderson might have been one of those exploring scientists. A brilliant student at Edinburgh University, he had graduated with first class honours in mathematics and natural philosophy, including distinctions in physics and chemistry. Seemingly set for a career in scientific research, he had headed for the University of Leipzig, then renowned for its contributions to physics and physical chemistry. There he had chosen to study uranium, although his researches had been devoted to the chemical rather than the radioactive properties of the element. Upon his return to Edinburgh, he had written a thesis on the subject considered remarkable for its clarity and insight.

So in July 1941, after the government's Scientific Advisory Committee had produced the MAUD (Military Application of Uranium Detonation) report, with its startling suggestion that it should be possible to make an effective atomic bomb, possibly within two years, Anderson had been the obvious candidate to assume political control of this potentially potent weapon.

Anderson himself – despite the celebrated memorandum from German émigré scientists Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch that had made the first coherent, theoretical case for a 'super bomb', in the spring of 1940 – had been sceptical that the release of atomic energy in any useful form could be achieved soon. But he was won over by the 'sensational' prospects envisaged by the MAUD report, and lobbied strenuously to be included in any project. On the urging of the Prof, Churchill duly appointed him.

Despite his perceptive 1931 essay, Churchill had been less enthusiastic about the findings of the MAUD committee. 'Although personally I am quite content with the existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement,' had been his initial, muted response to Lindemann's early recommendations. Nevertheless, he sought out the view of the chiefs of staff, and when this was received, on 2 September, it was 'strongly in favour of . . . development being pressed forward in this country with the highest priority'. Although the chiefs had added that they would rather speak than write to the Prime Minister about the substance of the project, about which 'the less put on paper . . . the better'.

This strategy suited a Prime Minister who naturally inclined to the clandestine. Churchill possessed an almost boyish enthusiasm for secret information, and had been one of the earliest champions of code and cipher breaking. He relished the daily diet of raw intelligence he received from the Enigma decrypts at Bletchley Park. But at the same time he worried about the number of government officials who had access to sensitive information.

The same anxiety applied to the atom bomb project. Churchill was determined to confine the secret to as narrow a circle as possible, to the extent that he chose not to inform the War Cabinet – neither Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, Lyttelton, Cripps, Woolton, Kingsley Wood nor Greenwood were ever in the loop. Nor, it would appear, was the subject shared with the usually well-briefed Lord Beaverbrook.

The members of the government and its friends associated with the project never numbered more than a dozen. Anderson and Lindemann were the key players, while the others – with varying degrees of knowledge – were Lord Hankey (the arch-mandarin with fingers in many scientific and technical pies), Lord Halifax, Anthony Eden, the Minister of Aircraft Production John Moore-Brabazon (briefly, when the MAUD scientists had been attached to his department), Colonel John Llewellin (as the Ministry of Supply's representative in Washington), Sir Ronald Campbell (veteran British embassy diplomat in Washington), Malcolm MacDonald (former Minister of Health, now the UK high commissioner to Ottawa), and Field Marshal Jan Smuts. Sir John Dill, who had been briefed right at the start, continued his involvement when he took up the post of chief of the British Staff Mission in the American capital; but the chiefs of staff in London, despite that initial briefing in the summer of 1941, were largely left out of the picture.

In autumn 1941, Anderson established an oversight committee of ministers and scientists, deliberately and misleadingly named the Tube Alloys Consultative Council. The Lord President (as he was then) and Wallace Akers, ICI's research director in charge of the working scientists on the council's technical committee, settled on the name 'Tube Alloys' because the phrase had the 'specious air of probability about it', and would encourage the uninitiated to believe the project was something to do with aeroplane radiators, or tanks.

To begin with, Anderson and Lindemann had resolved to make Tube Alloys an independent British venture, although they were content to share the contents of MAUD with the Americans. In any case, by the autumn of 1941 nearly all the major theoretical and practical advances had been made in Britain: the Americans, still non-combatants, had yet to display any great urgency in their fragmented and ill-directed nuclear weapons research.

Many of Britain's best scientists had been drawn into other critical war work, including the development of radar, but the presence of a number of well-qualified refugees from Germany and occupied Europe had filled the gaps. The universities of Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, and King's College and Imperial College in London, had all contributed to the research effort, with the large experimental group led by Franz Simon at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford (working on a process known as gaseous diffusion) and the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (on plutonium) having played especially crucial parts. Meanwhile, ICI and Metropolitan Vickers had embarked on preliminary industrial work, and a new factory had been established in Widnes, Lancashire, for producing pure uranium.

MAUD had impressed the Americans, and in particular the President. In October 1941 Roosevelt sent a message to Churchill, saying, 'We should soon correspond or converse concerning the subject which is under discussion by your MAUD committee . . . in order that any extended efforts may be coordinated or even jointly conducted.' His overture was ignored for almost two months, by which stage Pearl Harbor had brought America into the war and the US was fast developing its own bomb project. By the summer of 1942 Anderson realised that, despite all the intellectual talent at work in Britain, the task of building a bomb in a war-torn, still potentially vulnerable country was beyond Tube Alloys. 'It has now become clear that the production plant will have to be on such a huge scale that its erection in this country will be out of the question in the war,' he wrote to the Prime Minister on 30 July. 'The Americans have been applying themselves with enthusiasm and a lavish expenditure which we cannot rival.'

His recommendation that British design work and personnel should be moved to the United States, as part of a 'combined Anglo-American effort', had been accepted by Churchill. But over the course of the next year it proved ever more difficult to maintain an equal partnership; the US 'Manhattan Project', at Los Alamos in the New Mexican desert, had become the focus of activity, and to Anderson and Cherwell's frustration they were sidelined by politicians and scientists in Washington in an atmosphere of developing mistrust. They also faced a formidable obstacle in the project's fiercely protective senior military chief, General Leslie R. Groves. By the end of 1942 British influence on the bomb project had dwindled alarmingly.

In the early months of 1943 Churchill enlisted Harry Hopkins in an effort to break the impasse, and by the summer Roosevelt had instructed his scientific adviser Dr Vannevar Bush 'to renew a full exchange of information with the British government'. This new co-operation had led to the Quebec Agreement, signed by Churchill and Roosevelt in August, which finally formalised the Anglo-American partnership 'to bring the Tube Alloys project to fruition'. The two leaders had resolved 'never to use this agency against each other', 'not [to] use it against third parties without each other's consent', and that neither would 'communicate any information to third parties except by mutual consent'. All well and good, although they had also agreed, in the less-observed and lengthier fourth clause, that 'any post-war advantages of an industrial or commercial character shall be dealt with . . . on terms specified by the President of the United States to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The Prime Minister expressly disclaims any interest in these industrial and commercial aspects beyond what may be considered by the United States to be fair and just and in harmony with the economic welfare of the world.' Back in London, Reginald Victor Jones, Churchill's brilliant thirty-one-year-old scientific military adviser, had concluded that herein 'we had signed away our birthright in the post-war development of nuclear energy'. But for the Prime Minister, the immediate aim of cementing the alliance between Britain and America had obscured longer-term concerns; besides, by this stage his bargaining power was on the wane.

It had been the arrival in Britain in October 1943 of perhaps the greatest nuclear physicist of the day, Professor Niels Bohr, that began to change Anderson's thinking about the bomb. Bohr, his wife and four sons and his brother had been spirited by Allied intelligence out of Copenhagen, away from the clutches of the Gestapo, and taken by boat across the Sound to Sweden. When news of his escape reached London, Cherwell sent the Danish scientist a telegram inviting him to Britain. He arrived in Scotland on 6 October in a de Havilland Mosquito, having passed out during the journey from oxygen starvation.

Thereafter, at Anderson's behest, Bohr and his son Aage, who had arrived a week after his father, joined the British Tube Alloys team at Los Alamos under the codenames 'Nicholas Baker' and 'James Baker'. Bohr was stunned by the size and ambition of the Manhattan Project, realising that the theoretical work he, as much as anyone, had laboured over had now been transformed into a potentially devastating reality. As much a philosopher as he was a scientist, he began to contemplate how the existence of such an extraordinary weapon might affect the future.

Upon Bohr's return to London, he and Anderson talked at length about their hopes and fears for the new atomic age. Bohr, the romantic idealist, had come to believe the need to prevent a nuclear war could galvanise the nations of the post-war world to overcome their differences and work together. Anderson, the pragmatic civil servant cum politician, found himself warming to the Dane's vision. In the short term, Bohr argued, the Soviets should be told the West was working on an atomic bomb; they probably knew anyway, but even if not, the longer it was hidden from them the more they would feel threatened when the secret was finally revealed. So, Anderson, now a convert, set about trying to persuade Churchill of the need to lift the blanket of secrecy over Tube Alloys.

On 21 March 1944 the Chancellor wrote a long memorandum, stating that given the vast military implications, 'it no longer seemed right' to confine knowledge to a very narrow circle. He recommended that he and Lord Cherwell should now brief all members of the War Cabinet, the three 'service' ministers (war secretary Sir James Grigg, air secretary Sir Archibald Sinclair, and First Lord A.V. Alexander), together with the chiefs of staff. He even suggested Sir Stafford Cripps (aircraft production) and Andrew Rae Duncan (supply), who 'already have some vague knowledge of the matter', should be added to the list.

He also ventured his thoughts on the shape of things to come, outlining two scenarios: 'either there will be a particularly vicious form of armaments race, in which at best the United States, or the United States and the United Kingdom working as a team, will for a time enjoy a precarious and uneasy advantage', or 'a form of international control . . . will ensure that sub-atomic energy is used for the common benefit of mankind, and is not irresponsibly employed as a weapon of military or economic warfare'. For his part, Anderson was now firmly wedded to the latter. If the Americans could be persuaded, he suggested, 'there is much to be said for communicating to the Russians in the near future . . . and for inviting them to collaborate with us'.

Churchill's notes on the memo said everything about his reaction. He ringed the words 'full', 'collaborate' and 'Chiefs of Staff' (adding 'already know'), before writing simply at the end, 'I do not agree'. But Anderson persevered. On 27 April, he tried again, this time linking his remarks to a War Cabinet paper, from minister of state Richard Law, on a future international organisation designed to safeguard the stability of the post-war order. 'I cannot help feeling that the plans for world security which do not take into account Tube Alloys must be quite unreal,' the Chancellor wrote. 'When the work on Tube Alloys comes to fruition – as we now know it will be a comparatively short time – the future of the world will in fact depend on whether it is used for the benefit or destruction of mankind.' This time Anderson pressed Churchill to seize the initiative on greater transparency by sending Roosevelt a telegram to 'break the ice'. The President, he suggested, was hemmed in by his military chiefs who 'almost certainly want to keep Tube Alloys for the exclusive use of the US army'.

Once again Churchill was dismissive. 'I do not think any such telegram is necessary; nor do I wish to widen the circle who are informed,' was his curt reply.

Now somewhat desperate, Anderson and others, including Sir Henry Dale, Field Marshal Smuts and R.V. Jones, lobbied Cherwell to persuade the Prime Minister to speak with Bohr. Churchill, although engrossed with last-minute planning for _Overlord_ , agreed to a meeting in Downing Street on Tuesday, 16 May. At five o'clock that afternoon R.V. Jones was returning to his office at SIS headquarters, at 54 Broadway, when he spotted the scientist approaching him. 'He seemed to be in a daze, and he walked right past me. Fearing that something was wrong I went back and stopped him, to ask how he got on,' Jones recalled. 'All he could say was, "It was terrible! He scolded us like two schoolboys!"'

The encounter had been an unmitigated disaster. Instead of being invited to speak, Bohr had been made to wait while Churchill turned on Cherwell, angrily defending himself to his scientific adviser over criticism of the Quebec agreement. That done, the Prime Minister turned to Bohr, who, now quite intimidated by his host, struggled to articulate his views on post-war nuclear proliferation, despite having prepared his statement in advance. Nor had his uncertain English and low, whispering voice done him any favours. An exasperated Churchill responded that the atomic bomb was simply a bigger one that 'made no difference to the principles of war', and had asserted that there were no problems that could not be 'amicably settled between myself and my friend President Roosevelt'.

Before departing, the disconsolate Bohr asked Churchill if he could spell out his views more clearly in a letter. 'It will be an honour for me to receive a letter from you,' the Prime Minister had replied, 'but not about politics.'

Perhaps Churchill's tetchy mood should not be judged too harshly. Weighing difficult choices about a still hypothetical nuclear future was one thing, but first there was a war to win, and its outcome would depend heavily on the success, in just a few weeks' time, of the largest seaborne invasion ever attempted.

On 19 May came news of the fall of Monte Cassino, after a gruelling 123-day siege: the road to Rome had finally been opened up. A relieved General Alan Brooke was hopeful Germany's forces would now be tied down in Italy, and Hitler's attention kept from the Channel. Six days later he was on the south coast, inspecting equipment for the artificial 'Mulberry' harbours that would be crucial to the impending landings in Normandy.

By the end of the month, a swathe of southern England fifteen miles wide resembled a huge military camp, the once picturesque fields, woods and lanes now populated by tens of thousands of Allied soldiers. Quiet country railway stations on the way to the ports of Southampton, Portsmouth and Newhaven had been transformed into mighty hubs of activity, with fourteen miles of sidings capable of holding 2,500 wagons packed with troops and supplies. Micheldever, in Hampshire, had become a vast freight yard known as the 'Woolworth Depot' because – like the eponymous high-street store – it supplied military planners with virtually everything they needed, from odd-sized nuts and bolts to entire trainloads of bombs.

All along the Southern Railway line stations resounded with thrumming and clanking as war machines were assembled, a cacophony accompanied by the banter – albeit more subdued as the hour approached – of American and British soldiers preparing their kit for battle. But on the afternoon of Friday, 2 June, Droxford, a little station on the Meon Valley branch line, twenty miles south of Micheldever, was curiously free from the bustle and clamour of the rest of the county. Indeed, it was all but deserted, except for the goods yard in Siding No. 1, south of the station near the Cutts Arch Bridge, where two saloon carriages stood in splendid isolation. Emanating from within were noises more suggestive of a Whitehall office – the clacking of typewriter keys, the continual ringing of a telephone, the barking of commands to secretaries. Later there would be the surprising sound of a man splashing in a bathtub. Droxford was located just a couple of miles from the headquarters of the Allied military commanders at nearby Southwick House, and Churchill, joined by Ernest Bevin, Field Marshal Smuts and General Ismay, had taken up residence here in order to be at heart of the action in the build-up to D-Day.

Such was the level of secrecy that the local Home Guard had not been informed of their arrival. This almost had fateful consequences when, at 1.55 a.m. the following morning, a quartermaster sergeant on guard duty at the bridge marched towards the station gates, accompanied by two privates. A Canadian major inside the compound approached and on the simultaneous cry of 'Halt! Who goes there?' both men drew their pistols. Fortunately the major broke the uneasy silence to question the Home Guard about their business. They took him to see their colonel – a very deaf, eighty-year-old old army veteran – and amicable assurances were eventually given all round.

After lunch Churchill, Smuts and Bevin departed for Southampton, where they watched the men of the 50th Durham Regiment embark onto their landing craft. Bevin found the moment deeply affecting. One of the soldiers, who happened to be a member of his union, recognised him and called out, 'You'll look after the missus and kids, won't you, Ernie?' As the labour minister walked back to the car his eyes filled with tears.

## Chapter Thirteen

## **'Buzz bombs and flying gas mains'**

6 June to 10 December 1944

It was almost exactly four years since the evacuation of Dunkirk. For the last three of those years, the pressure on Churchill, his War Cabinet and his chiefs of staff to start a second front had been unrelenting. Finally the moment had arrived when the Allies calculated their resources were so strong, and Hitler's sufficiently weakened, that the armada could set sail across the Channel with a confident prospect of victory.

Operation _Fortitude_ – the principal Allied deception plan – had been so successful that if there were any German units on extra alert along the Atlantic Wall on the morning of Tuesday, 6 June, they were in the Pas de Calais region, or Norway. In any case, the poor weather of recent days had eased the Germans' fears of an imminent attack. The Seventh Army, in charge of the defence of Normandy, had ordered all its senior commanders a hundred miles north to Rennes, in Brittany, for a map exercise, while Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander-in-chief of German forces in France, was back home in Herrlingen, celebrating his wife's birthday.

So the 24,000 Allied soldiers who were dropped on French soil shortly after midnight had the vital element of surprise on their side. Behind them, a huge fleet of 7,000 ships, supported by 11,500 aircraft, negotiated the sea passage without serious interference, and the 156,000-strong force it disgorged went on to capture the Normandy beaches more easily than expected. The exception was the six-mile stretch of coast east of the Vire Estuary, codenamed 'Omaha'. Here the Germans, entrenched in heavily fortified cliff-top positions, put up prolonged resistance, continually raking the US forces in their landing craft with machine gun fire. After six hours of heavy bombardment and little progress, Lieutenant General Omar Bradley considered withdrawing the US V Corps, but by nightfall, and at the cost of over 3,500 casualties, the Americans had managed to establish a tiny, precarious bridgehead.

At 6.15 p.m. on D-Day Churchill walked into the House of Commons chamber to give MPs a brief update on the invasion's progress. The operation, he told them, was 'proceeding in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. Many dangers and difficulties which at this time last night appeared extremely formidable are behind us . . .'

While the landings had gone as smoothly as hoped, the War Cabinet had been embroiled in a stormy debate over the future administration of a liberated France. It pitted the Prime Minister against the now established axis of Eden and Attlee, and at the centre of the dispute was the haughty, indomitable figure of General Charles de Gaulle.

Churchill's relationship with the Free French leader had waxed and waned since the days of mutual admiration in June 1940, when these two intensely patriotic men had jointly embraced the Monnet– Salter plan for an 'indissoluble union' of their two nations. After four years of personal and policy differences, the Prime Minister now viewed de Gaulle with a deep suspicion that sometimes bordered on loathing. This had been fuelled by Roosevelt, who had always mistrusted de Gaulle, believing him to be only a minor figure in the resistance. But Eden and Attlee, despite the Frenchman's perpetual awkwardness, recognised his strength of character and the esteem in which he was held in occupied France. Moreover, they had identified the French Committee of National Liberation (FCNL), chaired by de Gaulle, as the real voice of the resistance and the basis for a French future government.

In May 1943, during a trip to Washington, Churchill had written in an intemperate cable to the War Cabinet, 'I ask my colleagues to consider urgently whether we should not now eliminate De Gaulle as a political force . . . He hates England and has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him everywhere.' The Prime Minister also forwarded a personal memo from Roosevelt which described the French leader as having a 'messianic complex' with 'dictatorial tendencies', acidly suggesting, 'Perhaps you would like to make him governor of Madagascar?' But Attlee fought off the idea. His sober reply asserted that the 'removal of De Gaulle would probably have a disastrous reaction on the whole resistance movement. The resisters would consider that the Anglo-Saxons had betrayed their leader and a further swing towards Russia would be inevitable.' After detailing the adverse consequences – diplomatic and military – that would follow from breaking off relations with the FCNL, Attlee concluded, 'We are sorry not to be more hopeful, but we are convinced that the Americans are wrong in this and advocate a line . . . with possible evil consequences to Anglo-American relations.' Churchill had been forced, grudgingly, to bow to the War Cabinet's will.

A year on, with the invasion of Normandy about to begin, Attlee and Eden resolved to press de Gaulle's case once more. They were not helped, however, by a strained meeting between Churchill and the French leader in the Prime Minister's temporary headquarters at Doxford station on Sunday, 4 June. De Gaulle had been invited to the railway carriage to be briefed by the Prime Minister about D-Day, but arrived frustrated by the Allies' lack of communication with him, and seething with resentment at their reluctance to endorse his future leadership of a civil administration. Churchill, who had greeted him on the station tracks with arms outstretched, was offended by de Gaulle's sullen attitude and apparent ingratitude. Towards the end of a tense luncheon meeting the Prime Minister told him angrily, 'get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea that we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.'

Two days later the French leader further provoked Churchill's ire by refusing to broadcast a message to his compatriots under the terms dictated to him by the Americans. The script he had been presented with offered no recognition of his provisional government, merely saying that 'effective civil administration of France must be provided by Frenchmen'. It also instructed the French people, in the early stages of invasion, to obey the orders of the Allied command. De Gaulle feared – not without some justification – that Roosevelt intended to set up a semi-military administration until he could gauge the will of the country. As a result, the French leader forbade his liaison officers to accompany the invading forces, and he angrily opposed a plan to issue Anglo-American military currency in France – _les faux billets_ (sham money), he had called it.

A week earlier, on 31 May, Attlee had written to Eden to assure him of his determination to battle Churchill and Roosevelt over the issue. 'I do not think that the President has any real understanding of the French temperament . . . nor do I think that his attitude is dictated by a zeal for democracy . . . we are the only people in this set-up who can speak as Europeans concerned with the future of Europe.' Grateful for Attlee's support, the foreign secretary chose D-Day to tackle the Prime Minister. Taking his cue from a recent telegram in which Roosevelt had insisted 'I am absolutely unwilling to police France,' he told Churchill, 'If the President renounces the paternity of France, he must allow the British to do the schooling in their own way. The present position is unfair to H.M. Government and dangerous to Anglo-American relations.' Eden and Attlee were backed by Bevin, who wrote to Churchill to explain the fear of his trade union friends in the FCNL that 'France may go completely Communist' and that unless the Free French were given the opportunity to form a government, the whole French labour movement might be driven into Stalin's hands. Whatever the flaws in de Gaulle's character, Bevin counselled, they should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the FCNL was the best option for France's future.

Late on D-Day, realising he had been backed into a corner, Churchill exploded with rage. 'I was accused of trying to break up the Government, of stirring up the press on this issue. He said that nothing would induce him to give way, that De Gaulle must go,' recorded Eden. 'He said I had no right to "bully" him at this time like this . . . FDR and he would fight the world.'

Helped by the steady progress of the troops in Normandy over the course of the next week, slowly but surely the temperature in Downing Street began to fall. At War Cabinet on 7 June, Eden managed to win agreement that everything should be done to 'encourage the authority and prestige of the FCNL as a whole, rather than De Gaulle's personal position'; although, as a concession to the defeated Prime Minister, the Cabinet also agreed that Churchill should advise the King not to meet de Gaulle until the discussions over currency notes and other matters had been satisfactorily resolved. Six days later, on the eve of the Free French leader's first visit to his liberated homeland, Eden hosted a dinner party for him; it was attended by five of the Cabinet, including Attlee and Duff Cooper (by this time Churchill's liaison minister with the Free French). During the meal, a letter was delivered from the Prime Minister, still irritated by de Gaulle's refusal to allow his liaison officers to go to France in the absence of agreement over the future civil government. 'There is still time to cancel his visit,' wrote Churchill. 'There is no harm, from our point of view, to the President's taking the lead.'

But Eden, and Attlee, stood firm, and de Gaulle made his trip the next day. In newly liberated Bayeux he was greeted spontaneously and enthusiastically by cheering crowds. British newspapers carried proof of the warmth of his reception on their front pages the next day, and the clear success of the French leader's visit would help to mellow Churchill over the coming weeks.

By now even Roosevelt could see the writing on the wall. In July he would invite de Gaulle to Washington, treating him with the deference and hospitality normally offered to a fully fledged head of state, and granting him three tête-à-tête conversations. Yet even then the old enmities were slow to fade; it would not be until 23 October that Churchill and Roosevelt finally recognised the FCNL's reincarnation, the Provisional Government of the French Republic – with de Gaulle as its leader – as the legitimate government of France.

At first, Hitler was unperturbed by the Allied invasion. In his increasingly deluded state of mind, he remained confident the Wehrmacht was strong enough to repel the Allied armies. In any case, he was fortified by the knowledge that plans were in motion to finally put paid to the obdurate British opposition. The Führer Order of 16 May had outlined the use of new long-range weapons against England. 'The bombardment . . . will begin in the middle of June,' it had stated. '[It] will open like a thunderclap at night.' Reviving the miseries of the Blitz once again, _Vergeltungswaffe_ (reprisal weapon) _1_ , the pilotless plane or 'flying bomb', was about to hit London.

British intelligence had received the first, tentative reports that the Germans were developing a long-range missile programme as far back as the autumn of 1942. Only when they listened in on a conversation between two high-ranking German prisoners of war, on 27 March 1943, had they been finally convinced of the threat, however. One of those officers, General Wilhelm von Thoma, a member of Rommel's staff captured in North Africa four months earlier, had expressed surprise that London was not already in ruins from a German rocket attack; he had also spoken about a special site near Kummersdorf, in Brandenburg, Germany, where the weapons were being tested.

On the recommendation of the chiefs of staff, Churchill appointed his thirty-five-year-old son-in-law Duncan Sandys, then joint parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Supply, to investigate whether the increasing intelligence on secret weapons was reliable, and what counter-measures should be employed. Sandys was no scientist, but his military career seemed to qualify him for the task; he had seen action in the disastrous Norwegian campaign, he was a qualified pilot, and he had commanded an experimental anti-aircraft rocket battery at Aberporth in north Wales.

Sandys' biggest obstacle in Whitehall would be Lord Cherwell, piqued that this young upstart had reduced his own influence on such a vital scientific matter. In the Prof's circle of friends, what 'they' were doing with 'their' rockets did not refer to the Germans, but to Sandys and his colleagues. In fact, Cherwell had been sceptical the enemy was even pursuing a long-range rocket programme. 'I have the impression that the technical difficulties would be extreme, and I should be rather surprised if the Germans had solved them,' he told Churchill just two days after Sandys' appointment.

He had continued to hold to this position for many months, despite a convincing mass of photographic and other intelligence to the contrary. At a Defence Committee meeting on 29 June, at which his protégé R.V. Jones dramatically produced pictures of white-painted, rocket-like objects at a place called Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea, the Prof dismissed them as a great hoax, suggesting they were wooden dummies deliberately painted to show up on Allied photographs. Nearly everyone else present thought differently, however, and as a result 596 RAF bombers were sent to attack Peenemünde on the night of 17–18 August 1943. The results of the operation were mixed at best. The death toll included 730 prisoners and foreign workers, but not all the facilities were destroyed, and most of the key scientists survived. The project, it emerged later, had been delayed by just two months.

By the autumn of 1943 the focus of attention had shifted to a second type of missile, the 'pilotless plane', after Operation _Crossbow_ (the codename given to the campaign against the long-range weapons programme) had begun to identify a large number of 'ski sites' – the sloping ranges needed to launch the missile – on the French coast. Once again Cherwell was dismissive: although he accepted the evidence of the threat, he advised Churchill that its scale would be 'comparatively insignificant', as the explosives carried by these weapons could weigh no more than half a ton. Herbert Morrison viewed the matter with less equanimity. In a paper prepared for the 16 November meeting of the War Cabinet, he demanded the retention of 2,700 Metropolitan Police officers and 3,500 civil defence workers, shortly due to be released from their duties, to counter the 'unprecedented strain which heavy and sustained rocket bombardment' would place on London. He also began to plot the opening of the new deep shelters he had commissioned at the time of the Blitz, and laid plans for rest centres near London to accommodate half a million refugees.

During the early months of 1944 the RAF and US Army Air Force carried out a series of successful bombing raids against the ski slopes and the pilotless plane's suspected production sites. But in mid-April Operation _Crossbow_ reported that a significant number had been repaired, and that the accuracy of the weapon – which had suffered faults in the early months of the year – had been improved. On 17 April, Churchill told the War Cabinet that more effort needed to be concentrated on _Crossbow_ targets, and a few days later General Eisenhower ordered US Army chief of staff General Carl Spaatz to give those attacks absolute priority 'for the time being' over all other operations.

Despite this, almost exactly a week after D-Day, the first flying bombs landed in England. In the early hours of Tuesday, 13 June one fell harmlessly in a field bordering the A2 Rochester to Dartford road in Kent, a second fell at Mizbrook's Farm near Cuckfield in Sussex, while a third crashed into a strawberry field at Crouch near Sevenoaks, Kent. Finally, at 4.30 a.m., a pilotless plane reached the real target, London, detonating on a railway bridge in Bow. Six people were killed, while twenty-eight were injured and two hundred rendered homeless.

But in Whitehall the mood was initially calm. At the chiefs of staff meeting that morning Lindemann and Sandys were in rare agreement that the defence of London should not interfere with the battle in France. And at the War Cabinet meeting at 6.30 p.m., Herbert Morrison was relieved – given previous dire predictions of ten-ton rockets – that the damage had not been worse. He reported that the weapon's effect was no greater than a parachute mine and rather less than an up-to-date 2,000lb bomb. Nonetheless, he urged that as many planes as possible should be diverted from the battlefront in Normandy to attack the ski slopes and the factories that supplied them. The War Cabinet also accepted Morrison's recommendation that the press should give out no information until the exact severity of the new menace was known.

The jet-propelled 'flying bomb' (this was Morrison's phrase) was 25ft long with a wingspan of 16ft, and weighed two tons. It travelled at up to 400 miles per hour, and was preset to a maximum range of 150 miles. The first clue it was on its way was a distant hum, growing to a distinctive tearing, rasping, chugging noise, which stopped abruptly as the engine cut out, leaving an eerie, terrifying silence of ten to fifteen seconds before it crashed to the ground, detonating the 2,000lb of high explosive in its nose. Weary, stoical Londoners found other names for the weapon: 'buzz bomb', 'doodlebug', 'zoombie' or 'robot'.

When the ban on reporting the flying bomb was lifted on 16 June, the home secretary tried publicly to shrug off the attacks. 'Dr Goebbels has painted a lurid and over-dramatised picture,' he told MPs. 'The morale of the British takes a lot of upsetting.' But some thought he had misread the mood. A few days later the _Daily Express_ would capture the tension in the capital with a famous cartoon, by Giles, depicting Londoners listening with giant ears and captioned, 'It's ridiculous to say these new flying bombs have affected people in any way!'

By the end of the month, with 1,900 killed and 5,500 seriously wounded, Morrison's calm was being sorely tested. On the evening of 27 June, in the recently reopened underground Cabinet War Room, the home secretary's real anxieties were laid bare. During one of his visits to the scene of an explosion, he had been stung by 'jeering references to the impotence of the greatest military alliance in history'; he also expressed concern about the morale of the troops in France while their families were being indiscriminately bombed back home. Morrison demanded the RAF and USAF use 'maximum action' to stop the flying bombs.

Sitting across the table, General Alan Brooke was unimpressed. From his vantage point, the only priority was the battle for France, where the British were now engaged in Operation _Epsom_ to capture the strategic town of Caen. '[It was] a pathetic wail from Herbert Morrison who appears to be a real white-livered specimen. He was in a flat spin . . . in fact he did not mind if we lost the war much, provided we stopped the flying bombs!' But by 3 July Churchill was in complete agreement with his home secretary, and even Brooke was acknowledging that 'the threat is assuming dimensions which will require more drastic action'. The War Cabinet, again convening underground, heard that while many Londoners had headed for the shelters, others had fled the capital in their thousands. By the end of a meeting that lasted three and three-quarter hours – one of the longest of the war so far – a comprehensive set of emergency measures had been drawn up. Civil Defence and building workers would be drafted in from outside the city to aid the victims and clear the damage; the maximum possible number of casualties should be moved to hospitals outside the capital; the evacuation of 'priority classes' would continue apace; and the homeless should be allowed to take up accommodation recently freed up by the departed US forces.

In late July, with the swarms of flying bombs still terrorising London, _Crossbow_ intelligence brought news of a second, even more deadly German weapon – a missile ten to fifteen tons in weight and 46ft high. Over the next month a new Rocket Consequences Committee worked side by side with the existing Civil Defence Committee to prepare Britain for the arrival of this 'super rocket', now named the V-2. In War Cabinet earlier that month, the Prime Minister had picked up an earlier suggestion made by Morrison of using gas as a weapon of retaliation, although the idea was soon discarded. In the corridors of MI5, however, a retort far more drastic than gas was being contemplated. On 25 August, Guy Liddell, Director of Counter-Espionage, noted in his diary, 'I saw "C" [head of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Stewart Menzies] about the uranium bomb and put to him the suggestion that it should be used as a threat of retaliation to the Germans if they use V2. "C" said he could see no reason to think V2 was imminent, although it was possible to think it might start in the near future. He felt however that there was nothing to be lost and he would put the suggestion to the PM who might take it up on his visit to President Roosevelt, which is to take place early next month. On the other hand, he might decide to act more quickly.'

As it was, there was no need for Churchill to consider a move of such magnitude. Slowly but surely the tension in Whitehall eased as Britain's defences – much stronger than in 1940–1 – got to grips with the flying bomb, while Allied attacks slowed its production in France. Anti-aircraft guns were sited all along the coast, to tackle the V-1s long before they reached London, and two thousand barrage balloons were tethered on the southern outskirts of the capital to impede their final approach. But most importantly, the RAF's fighters were intercepting the missiles in significant numbers. Hawker Tempests, Spitfires, Mosquitos and Britain's first jet fighter, the 400mph Gloster Meteor, helped bring down 3,957 of the 7,488 flying bombs that crossed the Channel over the summer months.

By 4 September the situation had eased to such an extent that Morrison advised that the evacuation of London could be halted, and the movement of patients to hospitals outside the city should cease. On the afternoon of 7 September, at the Ministry of Information's headquarters in Malet Street, Brendan Bracken and Duncan Sandys hosted the largest press conference yet held in the war. Here Sandys, armed with the news that the recent seizure of Brussels and Antwerp had included the nearby V-1 launch sites, gave the assembled journalists an unusually detailed resume of the struggle against the flying bomb. Although he was careful to say he could give no categorical assurance that the attacks had ceased, in a dramatic flourish he told reporters, 'Except, possibly, for a few parting shots, what has come to be known as the Battle of London is over.'

Bracken telegrammed Churchill, by then aboard the _Queen Mary_ en route for a conference with Roosevelt in Quebec, showering praise on the Prime Minister's son-in-law. 'His account of how the Government handled the flying bomb menace was beyond praise . . . at the end he was cheered by the Press, and as you know the Press are a hard-boiled lot.'

At the height of the Battle of London, in early July, Anthony Eden's attention had been drawn back to the plight of the Jews in the Nazis' concentration camps. On Tuesday, 4 July the Foreign Office received the first comprehensive account of the full horror of the operations at the biggest of these complexes, Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland.

The information came from two Slovakian Jews, nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and twenty-six-year-old Alfréd Wetzler, who had staged a remarkable breakout three months earlier, having hidden in a woodpile for three days. Without documents, compass, map or weapons they made their way southwards, carefully avoiding German 'settler' villages in Poland, before crossing the border into Slovakia and finding safe refuge. There they composed a forty-page report, giving a detailed description of everything they had witnessed at Auschwitz since their incarceration in June 1942, including the geography and management of the camps, how the thousands of prisoners lived, and how they were dying in the gas chambers. Eventually this report had been smuggled into Switzerland, and as a result of coverage in that country's press details had begun to appear in newspapers and radio broadcasts in Britain and America, first on the BBC on 15 June, and then in the _New York Times_ on 20 June.

Now Eden was being pressed by representatives from the Jewish Agency on whether His Majesty's government would do anything to help stop the continuing slaughter. The focus at this moment was on the fate of Hungarian Jews, whose transportation to the death camp, which had started on 15 May, was continuing at the rate of 12,000 a day. The day after he received Vrba and Wétzler's report on Auschwitz, Eden faced questions in the House of Commons from Labour's Sidney Silverman about the killing of the Hungarian Jews. Could he confirm that 400,000 had been deported, with 100,000 already murdered? And were there 'any steps the United Nations could take to prevent . . . the total annihilation of European Jewry by Hitlerite Germany'? Without citing figures, Eden said there were strong indications from various sources of 'barbarous deportations and that in the course of them many persons have been killed'. On what to do, he offered the standard answer of the British and American governments at the time: 'the principal hope of terminating this tragic state of affairs must remain the speedy victory of the Allied nations'. But after a meeting with Jewish Agency representatives Dr Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Shertok the next day, the foreign secretary was ready to consider another option. Weizmann and Shertok had devoted the early part of the meeting to exploring whether it was still worth pursuing the Gestapo's extraordinary offer – first made in April, in a meeting between Adolf Eichmann and Joel Brand, a leading Hungarian Zionist – of 'goods for blood': the release of one million Jews in eastern Europe, in exchange for ten thousand lorries, two million bars of soap, eight hundred tons of coffee, two hundred tons of cocoa and eight hundred tons of tea.

Eden and the rest of the War Cabinet had considered this 'offer' back on 1 June and had turned it down flat, seeing it as a stunt aimed at embarrassing the Allied governments. Yet at the Foreign Office that day, Shertok suggested the 'matter was still alive, and that the Germans seemed prepared to strike a bargain'. Eden cautioned him against 'anything that looked like negotiating with the enemy'; it was 'too dangerous'. He was more interested in the pair's fifth and final proposal, 'that the railway line leading from Budapest to Birkenau, and the death-camps at Birkenau and other places, should be bombed'. Eden said he had already raised with Sir Archibald Sinclair the possibility of raiding the camps, and that he would now put to the air minister the additional suggestion of targeting the railway lines.

Churchill concurred with his foreign secretary about the Gestapo offer, stating bluntly, 'On no account have the slightest negotiations, direct or indirect, with the Huns.' He also supported the idea of bombing, although he rejected Eden's suggestion of wider consultation: 'Is there any reason to raise these matters at the Cabinet? You and I are in entire agreement. Get anything out of the air force you can, and invoke me if necessary.' So, on 7 July, Eden wrote to Sinclair: 'Could you let me know how the Air Ministry view the feasibility of these proposals? I very much hope it will be possible to do something. I have the authority of the Prime Minister to say that he agrees.'

Sinclair's reply, eight days later, was discouraging. On attacking the railways he wrote, 'It is out of our power. It is only by an enormous concentration of bomber forces that we have been able to interrupt communications in Normandy; the distance of Silesia from our bases entirely rules out our doing anything of the kind.' As for the gas chambers, his response was equally unhelpful: 'Bombing the plant is out of the bounds of possibility for Bomber Command, because the distance is too great to be carried out at night. It might be carried out by the Americans by daylight, but it would be a costly and hazardous operation.' Sinclair's one positive remark was a suggestion that weapons could be dropped into the camp, in the hope that some of the victims might fight their way out; this had been done in a prison camp in France, and 150 men condemned to death had managed to escape. Although he admitted that at Auschwitz 'the chances of escape would be very small indeed'.

The air minister promised to consult the Americans about the plan, but Eden was unimpressed. 'He wasn't asked his opinion on this; he was asked to act,' he scribbled next to Sinclair's doubts about whether the victims would be helped. And his general comments were no less scathing: 'A characteristically unhelpful letter. [The] department will have to consider what is to be done about this. I think that we should pass the buck to this ardent Zionist in due course i.e. tell Weizmann that we have approached Sir A. Sinclair and suggest he may like to see him.' The air minister did consult with the Americans, but his representations fell on stony ground.

For the next six weeks the matter was passed back and forth between the Foreign Office and the Air Ministry. The end of the deportations of Hungary's Jews by the country's leader Miklós Horthy on 7 July – though evidence of it did not filter to the West until some days later – halted much of the impetus behind the campaign to bomb Auschwitz, but as Isaac Linton of the Jewish Agency pointed out, in a letter to the Foreign Office on 16 August, 'The reasons which were advanced for the bombing of the death camps are still valid. There are still many Jews in the hands of the Germans who can be sent to those camps to their doom . . . [the] destruction [of the camps] would make it difficult for them to construct new camps, and this might be the means of saving Jewish lives.'

Despite the explicit backing of Churchill and Eden, a combination of bureaucratic infighting and inertia kept the plan bogged down. At one point the Air Ministry urgently requested the clearest and most up-to-date photographs of the camps and installations in the Birkenau area; they were not readily forthcoming. By August and September, Churchill was abroad for much of the time, first with General Alexander's troops in Italy and then in America for discussions with Roosevelt about the Pacific theatre and plans for the post-war order. At home, Eden had to chair the War Cabinet for two of those weeks, as well as cope with Stalin's refusal to aid the Polish resistance in its efforts to drive the Germans out of Warsaw. Meanwhile, the Allies had long since moved from their Normandy fastness: Paris had been set free on 25 August, and in Operation _Dragoon_ , the American-led invasion of the south of France, Toulon and Marseilles had been liberated by 28 August. Many were predicting the war would be over by Christmas; once again, the overriding imperative was to hasten Germany's defeat.

Thus, on 1 September, it fell to Eden's junior minister, Richard Law, to tell the Jewish Agency that 'in view of the very great technical difficulties involved' the government had decided it had 'no option but to refrain from pursuing the proposal in present circumstances'. Twelve days later American bombers, flying from Italian bases, attacked and slightly damaged the I.G. Farben synthetic oil plant at Monowitz, just five miles away from the still active gas chambers. Jews would continue to be killed at Auschwitz until the autumn.

'The armies of the United Nations are advancing on all fronts,' declared a buoyant Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, on Friday, 8 September – and the news from the battlefront certainly bore him out. With the liberation of Belgium in full swing, the push to the Dutch border was now on. General Dempsey's Second British Army, having swept through Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent in previous days, was fast approaching the Albert Canal. Meanwhile, the Americans, established on five solid bridgeheads across the River Meuse, were poised to take Liège. The Canadians, having overcome the Germans at Ypres and Passchendaele, were ready to recapture Ostend. And elsewhere, Allied troops were on the outskirts of Boulogne, the Red Army was advancing to the east Prussian border, and Bulgaria had deserted Hitler to join the Allies.

At home, blackout restrictions in homes had been scaled down to 'dim-out', with thinner curtains permitted, and street lighting was to be improved. The War Cabinet had also suspended recruitment to the Home Guard, while the last 'evacuation special' had run on 7 September, taking 600 mothers and children from Liverpool Street Station to Norfolk. Much of the newspaper coverage focused on the victory over the V-1. On the same day that Maitland Wilson hailed the Allies' onward march overseas, the front page of the _Daily Worker_ proudly proclaimed, 'The triumph of British arms, ingenuity and steadfastness over the flying bomb makes an epic worthy to rank with the greatest feats of our nation in this war.' Just twenty-four hours later, however, all that euphoria was wiped away in an instant. At 6.34 p.m., Sandys was startled to hear a resounding thunderclap while working in his office at Shell Mex House on the Embankment. Sensing immediately that this might be the feared V-2, he rang the Home Security War Room to discover where the bomb had landed; he then called for a car to take him to the scene. R.V. Jones, in his office in Broadway, had no doubts about the cause of the noise. Turning to his assistant, he exclaimed, 'That's the first one!' The distinctive double bang they had heard was that of the supersonic rocket breaking the sound barrier and then exploding on impact.

Herbert Morrison and Ellen Wilkinson, hurrying from the Home Office, were the first ministers to reach the site of the explosion, in Chiswick, west London. In Staveley Road they found six houses destroyed and a crater 30ft deep and 8ft wide. Three people had died in the blast and seventeen others were seriously hurt, including one who died later from his injuries. Morrison's response was to impose an immediate news blackout on the rocket attacks (a second one a few seconds later, twenty miles away in Epping, had merely damaged some wooden huts).

Admiral George Thomson, the avuncular and well-liked chief censor, attended the emergency War Cabinet chaired by Attlee – Churchill was absent in Quebec – at midday on Saturday. Morrison, Bevin, Sandys, Woolton and Cripps joined them, as did the 'second eleven' of the chiefs of staff (most of their seniors were out in Canada with the Prime Minister). The rockets had come from Holland, somewhere near one of the major towns yet to be liberated by the Allies, they were told. Morrison persuaded his colleagues the news blackout should continue for at least forty-eight hours until it became clear whether this was just a one-off attack or the start of another concerted campaign similar to the flying bombs. By 18 September twenty-five rockets had reached England, fifteen of them hitting London and causing fifty-six deaths. Then came a lull of over a week as an audacious military adventure – one that would not only have halted the flow of V-2s towards London, but almost certainly hastened the end of the war – took its course in the Netherlands.

Operation _Market Garden_ , the brainchild of Field Marshal Montgomery, was a two-pronged attack: _Market_ , the codename for the airborne element, in which over 30,000 British and American paratroopers were dropped behind German lines to seize eight major road bridges over the River Rhine; and _Garden_ , the later land link-up of General Horrocks' British armoured XXX Corps, arriving from the Belgian-Dutch border to cross those bridges. If Monty's gambit had been successful, the Allies would have outflanked the fixed German fortifications of the Siegfried Line and established a bridgehead across the Rhine, enabling them to press on towards the enemy's industrial heartland in the Ruhr Valley. In the event, the airdrop achieved complete surprise, only to meet unexpectedly strong resistance. The Allies were forced to retreat, having suffered 17,000 casualties. The failure of Operation _Market Garden_ meant the Germans still occupied most of Holland and could continue to bombard both Antwerp – the major port on which the Allies depended – and Britain itself. On 25 September the V-2 campaign resumed.

In War Cabinet, there was much agonising over whether the public should now be told about the attacks. Morrison pushed for a statement in Parliament, but Cripps countered that while the Germans said nothing it would be unwise for the government to acknowledge the destruction and death and give Goebbels his satisfaction. On Monday, 9 October Brendan Bracken informed the War Cabinet that although the chiefs of staff had approached their counterparts in America to restrain publicity, the _New York Times_ ' respected military editor Hanson Baldwin had published an article giving details on the rocket attacks. A week later, the Minister of Information came out strongly in favour of disclosure, arguing the government was wrong to use its powers of censorship except where security was at stake.

Baldwin's report was not picked up by the British press, however, so Bracken continued to be overruled by the likes of Cripps and, more reluctantly, Morrison. As the V-2 attacks increased in early October, some Londoners came to believe – and the idea was not discouraged by Whitehall – that the mystery reverberations they were hearing, and the fresh damage appearing on their streets, were the result of faulty gas mains. But this cover story could only last so long. After a few weeks, there was talk of 'ghost bombs', while the in-joke was that these were 'flying gas mains'.

In the end it was not the growing disbelief of the capital's population that forced the government's hand, but the surprisingly belated announcement of the V-2 attacks by Goebbels' propaganda machine. On 6 November Berlin Radio stated – quite accurately, for once – that the 'British Government had concealed from its people' the existence of this long-range weapon. Three days later, many of the British newspapers reported the broadcast on their front pages: 'NAZIS GO ALL OUT ON "V2 TERROR IN LONDON" STORIES' ( _Daily Mirror_ ), 'LONDON UNDER FIRE, SAYS NAZIS' ( _Daily Worker_ ) and 'V-2 HAS SMASHED EUSTON STATION' ( _Daily Express_ ).

Finally, on 10 November, Churchill went to the House of Commons to outline to MPs – and the country – the nature of the new threat. After informing the House that the enemy had been deploying the weapon for the past few weeks (actually it had been in use for two months), he sought to calm any fears. 'There is no need to exaggerate the danger. The scale and effects of the attack have not hitherto been significant.' The following day the press, which had willingly stayed silent on the new rocket, had no regrets. 'There were excellent reasons for withholding all information while the enemy himself was so uncertain of the effect of his contrivance,' declared _The Times_.

By 20 November over two hundred V-2s had reached England, with ninety-six hitting London; 456 people had been killed – the number of deaths per incident was double that of the V-1. Five days later, a rocket hit a packed Woolworth's store in Deptford, killing 160. Yet this would prove to be the high-water mark of the offensive. In December, its intensity would diminish as the German high command concentrated on blitzing Antwerp, and over the coming months air strikes on the launch sites and the Allied advance in western Europe would render the threat far less potent.

A curious by-product of the silent V-2 was a contrary nostalgia for the noisier, slow-moving V-1. 'If I'm going to be killed, I would like to have the excitement of knowing it's going to happen,' one London woman commented sardonically. But the V-2, as George Orwell noted, successfully left its mark on a population looking forlornly for an end to terror after five years of war. 'What depresses me about these things is the way they set people off talking about the next war. Every time one goes off I hear references to "next time", and the reflection: "I suppose they'll be able to shoot them across the Atlantic by that time".'

Between August and October 1944, Churchill was abroad for seven out of thirteen weeks. A pattern had developed in which the Prime Minister concentrated almost wholly on military strategy, while Attlee presided over the Home Front and oversaw policy on post-war reconstruction.

For much of this period, despite the geographical distance between them, Churchill and the War Cabinet worked in close harmony. The likes of Eden, Anderson and Cherwell would often be at his side during foreign trips, and the normal process of consultative Cabinet government continued: the Prime Minister received approval – and took on board advice – from colleagues back in London before making vital military, political and diplomatic decisions. But Churchill's impulsive predilection for settling crucial issues one-to-one with Roosevelt or Stalin, without War Cabinet endorsement, still ruled him on occasion.

At the conference in Quebec on 15 September (codenamed 'Octagon'), Churchill and Roosevelt signed up to a startling plan, concocted by US Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, to dismantle the Ruhr and Saar, the industrial heartland of Germany, once the war was won so that the country's future leaders would never have the opportunity to rearm. Although Morgenthau's staff pointed out to him that fifteen million people would be put out of work, he had remained unmoved: 'Just strip it . . . I don't care what happens to the population . . . I would take every mine, every mill and factory, and wreck it.' All of which was music to the ears of Cherwell, who bore an almost unnatural loathing for the country of his birth; the Prof eagerly urged Churchill to put his name to an extraordinary paper that looked forward 'to converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character'. Eden, by contrast, was appalled by Morgenthau's plan and, in the knowledge it was coming, had taken the trouble, on 11 September, to forewarn the War Cabinet, asking Sir John Anderson to prepare a paper opposing the idea on economic grounds – although the moral argument against turning Germany into an almost medieval state was as much a factor. 'It was as if one were to take the Black Country and turn it into Devonshire.'

But when the foreign secretary joined the conference in Quebec, he was horrified to discover the agreement had already been signed. Such was his dismay, he openly criticised the plan in front of the delegations – incensing Churchill – and brought forward the paper Anderson had prepared, together with another from his own officials in the Foreign Office. 'If Germany were unable to manufacture she would be unable to pay for imports. World trade would suffer and our exports along with it,' Eden recorded. Fortunately, the foreign secretary had by this point won the support of his American counterpart, Cordell Hull, and the 'pastoralisation' plan was quietly dropped. Coming so soon after the V-1 and V-2 attacks, the incident was further evidence of the Prof's dubious judgement, and of the increasing determination of the foreign secretary – and the rest of the War Cabinet – to curb his long-standing influence over the Prime Minister.

Three days later, while closeted with Roosevelt at the President's Hyde Park home, following the conclusion of 'Octagon', Churchill bypassed his government on another major policy decision. This being the matter of the atomic bomb, however, most of the War Cabinet would learn nothing of it. And here, at least, Cherwell's was a moderating voice, as both he and Anderson still hoped Roosevelt would provide a counterbalance to Churchill's personal dislike of Niels Bohr and his reluctance to embrace the Danish physicist's idea of sharing nuclear technology with Russia. Yet the President now performed a volte-face. It is unclear whether this was due to Churchill's influence, a worry he would be painted as 'soft' during the forthcoming presidential election if he shared America's secret with an ally distrusted by most of his countrymen, or sheer frustration at Stalin's intransigence over Warsaw. Whatever the reasons, the President now disowned Bohr and his vision of nuclear co-operation.

The two leaders instead signed an aide-memoire which bluntly stated, 'The suggestion that the world should be informed regarding tube alloys, with an international agreement regarding its control and use, is not accepted. The matter should continue to be regarded as of the utmost secrecy.' The paper also noted that when the bomb was finally available 'it might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese'. Churchill's distrust of Bohr was evident in the final paragraph, where the two leaders agreed that 'enquiries should be made regarding the activities of Professor Bohr and steps taken to ensure that he is responsible for no leakage of information, particularly to the Russians'.

An even greater cause of anxiety for Churchill's ministers than his unblinking affection for Roosevelt were his sometimes testy meetings with 'Uncle Joe' in the Kremlin. These exchanges could be sharp, the humour raw and sometimes crude, and the confidences shared often alarmingly frank. So it was late on the evening of 9 October, the first day of the 'Tolstoy' conference between Britain and the Soviet Union, when Stalin and Churchill sat down to talk, attended only by their interpreters, and the conversation moved to south-eastern Europe and the 'spheres of influence' the two leaders wished to establish there.

The Prime Minister told Stalin he had a 'naughty document here with some ideas of certain people in London' and proceeded to lay a half sheet of paper on the table which divided the region in percentage splits between the USSR and Great Britain. Russia would control 90 per cent of Rumania, the others 10 per cent; 90 per cent of Greece would be allocated to Great Britain (in accord with the US), 10 per cent to Russia; Yugoslavia and Hungary would be divided equally between Great Britain and Russia, with 50 per cent each; and Great Britain would take 25 per cent of Bulgaria, the remaining 75 per cent going to Russia. In response, Stalin took a large blue pencil and ticked the paper before passing it back to Churchill. The Prime Minister reflected for a moment, then said, 'Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper.' Stalin replied, 'No, you keep it.'

It was left to Eden to follow up this unorthodox diplomacy the following day when Stalin's foreign minister Molotov took up the percentages and proceeded to haggle over them, initially insisting on increasing Soviet influence in Yugoslavia and Hungary from 50 to 75 per cent. Eden responded with counter-proposals, before eventually calling off the whole discussion, saying he had no interest in being tied down to figures. Three days later Churchill, perhaps recognising the folly of his off-the-cuff initiative, drafted a letter to Stalin in which he admitted the percentages could never form the basis of any public agreement between the Allies, and indeed 'would be considered crude, and even callous if they were exposed to the scrutiny of the Foreign Office and diplomats all over the world'. Yet even now he suggested 'they might, however, be a good guide for the conduct of our affairs'.

When Averell Harriman, Roosevelt's special envoy to Russia, was shown this letter he warned Churchill candidly that the President and Cordell Hull would wash their hands of it. Poland, in particular, was too serious a problem to be dealt with in such summary fashion. So the message was never sent. Then, a few hours later, the Prime Minister deemed it politic to send by telegram to the War Cabinet an explanation of his 'naughty document'. He told Attlee and his colleagues that 'the system of percentage . . . is not intended to be more than a guide . . . nor does it attempt to set up a rigid system of spheres of interest.'

Regardless, Churchill's manoeuvring had been not only premature, but probably also futile. The hard decisions about eastern Europe would be taken at the Yalta conference in January, and even then the unspoken reality, as Stalin tightened his stranglehold on much of the Balkans, was that possession would prove to be nine-tenths of the law.

Churchill had been greatly distracted by the military campaigns in Europe throughout much of 1944, and had left his Cabinet wide scope on the Home Front. But by the autumn of that year, with the moves towards social reform back home gathering pace, he and Lord Woolton became concerned that the shape of post-war Britain was being too significantly moulded by the powerful Labour triumvirate of Attlee, Bevin and Morrison. As Woolton told Rab Butler, the 'Reconstruction Committee should see to it that the Conservative element pulled its weight rather more than it had done'. And when Attlee requested that Labour's Lord Listowel be allowed to attend meetings, Churchill drafted a reply (which he never sent) declaring his reluctance to appoint the peer because 'a solid mass of four [William Jowitt, the new Minister of National Insurance, was the fourth] Socialist politicians . . . all working together, very much dominates this committee'.

Nonetheless, Woolton and his colleagues had been collaborating to great effect, as shown by the near universal public acclaim for the White Paper on social insurance published on 25 September. This was not altogether surprising given it had stayed faithful to the spirit of Beveridge's plan, embodying almost all of its proposals and even paying a belated tribute to the Liberal reformer's 'comprehensive and imaginative report'. Britain now had a government blueprint for a scheme of social insurance in which the whole working population would participate, paying in flat-rate contributions in return for the entitlement to claim flat-rate benefits. Only in three areas did the White Paper diverge from Beveridge. The idea of an unlimited duration of unemployment benefit was rejected in favour of a thirty-week cut-off; for some this evoked the memory of the dreaded means test. Second, the amount of benefit paid, at 24s a week for a single person, was not a subsistence rate; it was designed to act as an incentive for claimants to seek work. And finally, Beveridge's plans for industrial retraining for the unemployed and working-class life assurance were deemed too costly and quietly shelved.

Once again, the paper represented a compromise between Labour and Conservative instincts. But despite the inevitable cheese-paring, the government's Home Intelligence reports recorded widespread approval from the public. The mere establishment of a Ministry of National Insurance appeared to instil confidence that 'the Government means business'. Concern remained about the possible encouragement of thriftlessness: some resented providing incomes for the 'work-shy'; others worried the scheme would be difficult to finance in a crippled post-war world economic environment. But the overall message from the people was, 'If we can pay for the war, we can pay for the peace.'

The other piece of work to come out of the Reconstruction Committee that autumn proved far more contentious – indeed, at one moment it looked as if it might bring down the coalition. After the destruction wrought on the nation's towns and cities in 1940–1, it was clear that in peacetime town and country planning would be needed on a scale hitherto unknown. Politicians of the left, previously uninterested in a subject thought either dull or arcane, now seized on it as another potential tool for social engineering; moreover, in the area of land reform, there was an opportunity for radical redistribution of wealth.

Sir John Reith, in charge of works and planning from 1940 to 1942, had been the first of Churchill's ministers to tackle the country's physical reconstruction. The 'building arbitrator of Britain' (to quote Beaverbrook) had encouraged local government officials from Coventry and Plymouth to 'think big' when imagining the future of their blitzed cities and not to worry about the limitations imposed by the existing pattern of land ownership or planning laws. Reith had also set up the Uthwatt Committee to look at the issues of 'compensation and betterment', and by April 1941 this had returned with some findings anathema to many Conservatives – namely that a central planning authority should be established (with a national plan), and that planning should be viewed not simply as an issue of land use but as a means of 'control of economic development through taxation and regulation'.

Reith's 'socialistic' ideas had begun to concern the property-owning members of the Tory party, and his dismissal from office in February 1942 had been as much to do with his views on national planning as with his boorish and inflexible relations with his colleagues. Now the subject was back on the agenda, however: the Town and Country Planning Bill was designed to enable local authorities to compulsorily acquire bomb-damaged areas for redevelopment on payment of compensation to their owners. But for many Conservatives, who had watched the build-up of radical proposals in health, employment and social insurance with mounting alarm, this was a bill too far. Lord Selborne, Minister of Economic Welfare, claimed it cut 'fundamentally at the rights of property and disregards equity between the State and the individual'.

Much time was spent wrangling over the compensation clauses of the bill; on 2 October the War Cabinet discussed the subject for nearly three hours. 'It revealed . . . the profound cleavage between the two wings of the coalition,' recorded Leo Amery. 'Winston handled the debate with considerable skill and impartiality, but the nearer we get to reconstruction the more difficult it will be to keep the team together.' On 10 October Labour's chief whip William Whiteley disclosed to education minister James Chuter Ede that Tory backbenchers had been to see Churchill and 'threatened trouble'. A fortnight later, the prospect of mass backbench revolt was still on the cards, with Beaverbrook gossiping to Hugh Dalton that 'Anderson had made a complete mess of' explaining the government's latest compensation plans at the 1922 Committee.

Eventually William 'Shakes' Morrison, the minister in charge, quelled much of the rebellion with a substantial concession, fixing compensation at levels that reflected the increase in land prices since 1939. When the final vote was taken, only fifty-six Tory backbenchers went into the opposition lobby, and, on 17 November, the bill followed the Education Act onto the statute book. But along the way it had widened the fault lines in the coalition, and there was little prospect of them now narrowing. Having strained its co-operation to the limit in hours of fierce argument over the various White Papers, the government was fast running out of compromises. Legislation had formally prolonged the life of the parliament until November 1945, but the odds were shortening on the war being over in six months, and normal political hostilities were breaking out again.

## Chapter Fourteen

## **'A light shining on every helmet'**

13 December 1944 to 28 May 1945

By December 1944, the Allies were bogged down on the Western Front. All six of their armies had launched a general offensive in mid-November, but although the French 1st and US 7th Army had reached the River Rhine in Alsace, there was precious little progress elsewhere. On 11 December, Ernest Bevin told the War Cabinet that in trade union circles, the impression was 'that the position was slipping and was not being properly gripped'. He himself worried that 'a continuance of the present position might have serious effects on the coalition government'. Yet there were more immediate problems for Churchill and his ministers that day. They had been plunged into a serious political and military crisis over Greece, which was threatening to undermine the whole of the war effort.

After the last German troops had fled the Greek mainland two months earlier, the War Cabinet had authorised a force of 5,000 paratroopers, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Richard Scobie, to help keep the peace while a new representative, democratic government was established. At first a population starved and brutalised for four years by its German oppressors greeted Scobie's men rapturously as liberators. But by the beginning of December, the mood had changed.

The powerful left-wing alliance EAM (National Liberation Front), the main resistance movement during the occupation, contained a significant communist element and had walked away from a carefully constructed coalition government led by Georgios Papandreou, the social democratic leader who headed the Greek government-in-exile. Negotiations over the disarming of the various rebel groups – of which EAM's military wing, ELAS, was by far the most powerful – had broken down. With the political vacuum yet to be filled, Athens had become a dangerous city thronging with thousands of well-armed ELAS guerrillas, spurred on by leaders who were determined to exploit their strength and block any attempt by the provisional government to return to the old days of monarchical rule.

The crisis erupted on Sunday, 3 December, when Greek gendarmes fired on an EAM-inspired demonstration of over 100,000 in Constitution Square in the centre of Athens, killing twenty-eight – some of them children – and injuring 148. For _The Times_ ' correspondent, this was when 'the seeds of civil war were well and truly sown'. Although no British soldier had played any part in the shooting, the newspaper reported that armoured cars had been present beforehand, and had been reinforced later by tanks and patrols of the Parachute Regiment. Since then the population had turned on General Scobie and his men, accusing them of association with this 'Fascist action' and of interfering in Greek internal affairs.

When Stalin and Churchill 'carved up' Europe during their late-night meeting at the Kremlin, in October, the former had conceded that Greece was to be in Britain's 'sphere of influence'. So far there was no reason to doubt his word, no hint of interference from Moscow, but Churchill feared that if he failed to act quickly a communist-led EAM could drag the country into the ambit of the Soviet Union. Greece was Britain's major strategic lifeline to the oilfields of the Middle East and to India; the Prime Minister was prepared to countenance the toughest action to restore order.

Having received reports of growing violence in the streets and the seizure by ELAS of many police stations in Athens, Churchill, entirely on his own initiative, issued unambiguous orders to Scobie: 'Do not hesitate to fire at any armed male in Athens who assails the British authority or Greek authority . . . act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.' Thus a full-blown armed confrontation began. On 7 December, the British public woke up to bewildering newspaper headlines: 'RAF STRAFE GREEK PARADE' on the front page of the _Daily Mirror_ , 'SPITFIRES BLITZ ATHENS TROOPS' in the _Daily Express._ Many had been unable to understand why Britain was interfering so forcefully in the affairs of a liberated country; why were British troops firing on allies when there was a war still to be won against Germany? To all intents and purposes, the action looked like support for a right-wing government against a popular uprising.

In America, the new secretary of state Edward Stettinius Jr was provoked to issue a rebuke. Ostensibly criticising Britain's attempt to stop Count Sforza, deemed untrustworthy by Churchill, becoming foreign minister of Italy – 'We expect the Italians to work out their problems of government along democratic lines without influence from outside' – his comments were widely interpreted as a display of the administration's anger at events in Greece. Members of Congress had begun to ask why Lend-Lease supplies should be used to kill Greeks who had resisted fascism.

The disquiet was such that the government was unable to resist a full-scale Commons debate on the matter. Held on 8 December, it was a rollicking, partisan affair, with no quarter asked or given by Churchill or his critics. Seymour Cocks, the Labour MP who introduced the censure motion, likened the deaths in Constitution Square to the killing of peaceful protestors during the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1815, and wondered if Churchill was claiming the right to appoint the leaders of allied states just 'as Hitler appoints gauleiters in the different countries that come under his sway'. But the Prime Minister appeared unabashed. 'Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun . . . when countries are liberated it does not follow that those who have received our weapons should use them in order to engross themselves by violence and bloodshed all those powers and traditions and continuity which many countries have slowly developed.'

In the end the motion was defeated, by 279 to 30, but only twenty-three Labour MPs supported the government; the rest abstained. Worse, the Prime Minister's plan to re-establish Greece's traditions by restoring to the throne King George II – a monarch widely disliked in his own country for his blessing of the pre-war neo-fascist Metaxas regime – was winning few supporters among his ministers. Most were becoming exasperated by Churchill's predictable and interminable expositions at War Cabinet meetings, and his inability – or reluctance – to persuade the Greek king to step aside and allow a regent, Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens, to take over as an interim leader.

By Wednesday, 13 December, disaster beckoned. In Greece, General Scobie's men were trapped in a small pocket in the centre of Athens, hard pressed to protect British embassy staff and keep ELAS at bay; while in Britain, the government's actions were attracting fierce opposition from the left. Churchill had urged his colleagues to 'put our case to the world', and the first to answer the call was Ernest Bevin. The Minister of Labour decided to face the government's critics head-on at the Labour conference, where the party's fury over what it considered the acquiescence of its leaders in an 'imperialist' venture was boiling over.

When Bevin lumbered onto the platform in Central Hall, Westminster, on the morning of 13 December, cheers were still resounding for John Benstead, general secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, who had just declared that nothing could be more repugnant to British workers than the 'utilization of our splendid British boys to shoot down the Greek guerrillas'. Undaunted, the labour minister waited for the applause to die down, and then made a passionate and unequivocal defence of the War Cabinet's decision to intervene in Greece.

First, he gave the delegates a stiff lesson in the responsibilities of government. 'If we win the next election you will find that you cannot govern this world by hard emotionalism. It will call for hard thinking and great decisions, tremendous willpower will have to be applied, and the Labour movement will have to learn to ride the storms of life as these great issues arise from time to time.'

Banging the table in front of him, he proclaimed, 'I say boldly that I will hide behind no one. I am a party to all the decisions taken. I cannot say that any one of them was wrong. This step taken in Greece is not the decision of Winston Churchill. It is the decision of the Cabinet.'

Bevin's strong medicine worked. Supported by the block vote of his Transport and General Workers' Union, a resolution uncritical of the government duly passed by 2,455,000 votes to 137,000. Friend and foe alike hailed Bevin's speech as a turning point in the struggle for hearts and minds over the Greek question. Churchill was delighted. 'Ernest Bevin's speech to the Labour Conference won universal acclaim,' he pointed out to Roosevelt.

On 14 December, the British 4th Infantry Division arrived in Greece from Italy – to be followed later by the 46th Division – and over the course of the next few days the military situation was partially stabilised. Finding a political solution proved more difficult, however. In London Churchill and Eden spent fruitless hours talking to the obdurate King George II, who remained unwilling even to countenance the idea of a regent, or indeed any other settlement that did not involve his immediate restoration. And Churchill appeared similarly stubborn. At War Cabinet, two days later, frustrations boiled over when the Prime Minister once again refused to accept Archbishop Damaskinos as a suitable candidate for regent, protesting, 'I won't install a dictator – a dictator of the left.' An exasperated Attlee responded, 'We often heard you say that, but you haven't produced a scintilla of evidence to support your thesis.'

Churchill and Eden now decided to forgo their Christmas holiday and fly to the Greek capital in an effort to find a way through the impasse. It was a mission fraught with danger: EAM only abandoned a plan to blow up the British military headquarters at the Hotel Grande Bretagne when they learned, just hours before his arrival, that the Prime Minister would be in the building.

The negotiations themselves – held on Boxing Day in a sparse room at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – took place in an atmosphere of intense theatricality, with tanks on guard outside and Spitfires and Beaufighters patrolling ceaselessly overhead. 'When we entered the room all was in murky shadow except for a long table down the middle,' Eden recorded. 'There a few hurricane lamps broke the darkness and played upon the glittering epaulets of the chief of the Soviet Mission . . .'

When the three EAM/ELAS representatives arrived, dressed in khaki battledress, they were forced to hand in their weapons outside the door. Churchill then assured them, 'We want nothing from Greece, not an inch of her territory. We must, of course, ask acceptance of General Scobie's terms. But we hope this conference may restore Greece to her place among the Allies.' The leader of the trio, Dimitrios Partsalidis, the general secretary of EAM, replied smoothly and courteously, thanking the 'Prime Minister of our great ally, England', and assuring him that the clashes between the two sets of troops 'will not shake the traditional relations of the Greek people with the British people'. Churchill then passed down both sides of the long table, shaking hands with all members of the Greek government, before finishing with the EAM/ELAS group, 'whose bows could not have been lower, handshakes warmer nor protestations more friendly had they been ambassadors of a party under the deepest obligation to Great Britain'. He and Eden and the other foreign representatives then left the room to allow the warring Greek parties to get down to business.

The intervention broke the deadlock. Archbishop Damaskinos, whose humour and quiet determination at a meeting prior to the talks had eventually melted Churchill's hostility, reported the next day that there had been unanimous agreement to establish a regency. Back in London, with the help of a persuasive letter from Roosevelt, Churchill and Eden also prised a declaration of consent from a reluctant George II, albeit only after keeping him locked away with them at the Downing Street Annexe until 4 a.m. on 30 December. 'W was very firm and steady,' Eden recalled.

On 5 January EAM/ELAS was forced to flee Athens under pressure from the British forces; six days later it signed a ceasefire. The following month the Treaty of Varkiza was drawn up, instituting a definitive political settlement to the fifty-day armed resistance. A plebiscite on the country's governmental system was promised, to be held within twelve months and followed by free parliamentary elections. When Churchill and Eden returned to Athens two days later, on 14 February, to put their stamp of approval on the agreement, an enthusiastic crowd of 40,000 cheered them as they were driven through the city in an open-topped car. Churchill had achieved his objectives. The communist threat of EAM/ELAS had been defeated, and Britain's vital 'sphere of influence' in the Balkans had been preserved. But it had been a close-run thing, and another cause of division within the coalition.

In Italy, the transfer of those British divisions to Greece had further depleted the Allied ground forces – already reduced since D-Day – and their American commander, General Mark Clark, had been forced to consolidate and wait for better weather before attempting the push north, through the country's treacherous mountainous regions, towards the German 'Gothic Line'. At the same time, a far more serious setback had come in a surprise German counter-offensive in the Ardennes region of Belgium, France and Luxembourg, where on 16 December twenty-eight divisions punched a big hole through the Allied front, splitting the American and British armies in two. Ultimately, the Wehrmacht advance had foundered on a lack of supplies and strong resistance from General George S. Patton's Third Army, and by 3 January Patton and Field Marshal Montgomery – by then in temporary command of the American First and Ninth Armies in the north of the 'Battle of the Bulge' – had begun to push the Germans back; but it had been a costly campaign, with American casualties eventually numbering 100,000.

Back in Britain, the early weeks of 1945 had seen tensions continue to rise within the government. One of the major factors was the hold Beaverbrook and Bracken continued to exert over Churchill. Attlee, for one, had finally lost patience; on 19 January, he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister setting out a devastating critique of his handling of the Cabinet and his favouritism towards his two 'cronies'. The Deputy Prime Minister's frustration had soared following a series of War Cabinet meetings badly managed by an occasionally ill, often tired and invariably distracted Churchill. On 2 January, for instance, ministers spent a good part of what Brooke called a 'ghastly' three-hour Cabinet listening to the Prime Minister fulminate against the BBC and Reuters over their news coverage of the Greek crisis, before he finally turned to Attlee's paper on a V-2 warning system for London Underground stations. A week later Leo Amery noted that items regarding Italian claims against Germany and constitutional policy in Malaya had taken an hour and a quarter to discuss when 'they need not have taken five minutes . . . Winston had not looked at the papers and had no idea what they were about, but talked away at large and would not hear when things were explained to him.'

In his letter Attlee confronted Churchill over this time wasting. Busy ministers, he wrote, spent much time preparing succinct memoranda for their colleagues to read for War Cabinet meetings. 'What happens then? Frequently a long delay before they can be considered. When they do come before the Cabinet it is very exceptional for you to have read them. More and more often you have not read even the note prepared for your guidance. Often half an hour and more is wasted in explaining what could have been grasped by two or three minutes reading of the document.'

Yet 'worse than this', Attlee moved on to explain, was the destructive influence of Beaverbrook and Bracken. 'Conclusions agreed upon by a committee on which have sat five or six members of the Cabinet and other experienced ministers are then submitted with great deference to the Lord Privy Seal [Beaverbrook] and the Minister of Information [Bracken], two ministers without cabinet responsibility, neither of whom has given any serious attention to the subject. When they state their views it is obvious that they know nothing about it . . . Time and again important matters are delayed or passed in accordance with the decision of the Lord Privy Seal.' This was, Attlee suggested, 'a serious constitutional issue'. He concluded, 'I do not think you can complain of any lack of loyalty on my part, but I think that your cabinet colleagues have the right to ask that in matters to which you cannot give your personal attention you should put confidence in them.'

Churchill was stunned by the letter; his anger at it was nothing short of apoplectic. After phoning Beaverbrook to share his fury, he began drafting a derisive reply. But upon consulting the members of his inner circle, he was surprised to discover the Deputy Prime Minister had their support. Jock Colville recorded, 'Greatly as I love and admire the PM, I am afraid there is much in what Attlee says, and I rather admire his courage in saying it.' Bracken himself told Churchill, 'Attlee's quite right,' while Clementine, always honest with her husband, replied, 'I admire Mr Attlee for having the courage to say what everyone is thinking.' Most surprising of all was Beaverbrook's acknowledgement that it was a 'very good letter'. After this, Churchill put aside his withering response and instead sent a short, courteous reply:

My Dear Lord President,

I have to thank you for your Private and Personal letter of January 19. You may be sure I shall always endeavour to profit by your counsels.

Yours sincerely,
Winston Churchill

Yet the following day's War Cabinet, on Monday, 22 January, provided little evidence that the leopard had changed its spots. Brooke wrote, 'At 5.30 War Cabinet, drawn out by the usual endless statements by Winston. My God! How I loathe these Cabinet meetings. The waste of time is appalling.' Nor was there any sign of contrition from either Beaverbrook or Bracken, despite their acceptance of the force of Attlee's argument. Two days later they sent a joint, mocking letter to Churchill about the Labour leader – who had also been complaining about non-attendance at the Lord President's Committee – in which they quoted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ :

Our attention has been called to the lament of Mr Attlee in his paper L.P. (45) 17 that ministers do not attend his committee. We now offer to fill two of the vacant places. We are moved to this offer by the sad plight of the Lord President.

'Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on the wide wide sea',

Yours ever,
B.
B.B.

P.S Our offer depends of course on the approval of the Lord President.

Meanwhile, Lord Woolton's Reconstruction Committee had virtually run its course. The King's Speech at the end of 1944 had promised only two new items of policy: one was Bevin's inspiration, establishing wages councils to set minimum pay levels and encourage collective bargaining, while the other was Hugh Dalton's Distribution of Industry Bill, which would give the government greater powers to locate new manufacturing in areas of heavy industry blighted during the depression.

But Parliament's principal legislative preoccupation in early 1945 was the Family Allowances Bill. This was an outcome of the Social Insurance White Paper and took up a key principle of Beveridge's plan, which had proposed an allowance of 8s a week for all children after the firstborn, graduating with age. In the end the Cabinet had decided on a lower sum of 5s a week – intended to supplement a family's income, rather than provide for the needs of the child in full – but even this represented a milestone in the history of social reform, as well as a personal triumph for the backbench MP Eleanor Rathbone, who had been campaigning for the measure for twenty years. Before it reached the statute book, however, the government faced another Commons rebellion, as Rathbone mounted a final battle to have the payment made to the mother, rather than the father.

On 6 March, just two days before the bill's second reading, Eden, as Leader of the House, and Sir William Jowitt, national insurance minister, met a group of MPs including Rathbone, Beveridge (now elected as a Liberal) and Labour's Edith Summerskill to hear the rebels' case. By now 180 MPs from all parties had signed a motion in favour of the mother being the recipient, and Rathbone's delegation suggested to Eden that the matter should be left to a free vote. At War Cabinet a little later that afternoon – still being held underground, as the sporadic V-2 attacks continued – there was an hour-long discussion on the subject. Morrison made it clear he favoured the mother. 'She controls the household budget . . . and it is in accord with modern ideas,' he said. Churchill responded, 'Wages will be paid to the mother next! But this is not a matter for Government to force.'

Eventually they agreed to allow a free vote, and the debate on 8 March revealed almost unanimous support for Rathbone's cause. Although some MPs were reluctant to back the move under the banner of 'women's rights', most agreed with the Conservative Lady Astor's observation that 'When family allowances were first mooted people on this side of the house said it would break up the home, and the Labour Party and the trade unions would not have them at all. We have come a great way since then, and all because of one revolutionary woman.'

The Family Allowances Act would be the last major reform to emerge from Churchill's war ministry. The other White Papers were now bogged down by party disputes and resistance from vested interests. The White Paper on health, for example, had run into the brick wall of the leaders of the British Medical Association, who continued to resist the proposal that GPs should become salaried state employees. And Herbert Morrison's attempt to push for nationalisation of the electricity industry was stymied by the Tory members of the Reconstruction Committee.

Without a common legislative project, the coalition began to succumb to old-fashioned partisanship. And of the many individual Labour–Tory alliances that had made it so effective in earlier times, the first to collapse was the Churchill/Bevin axis. The trigger was the Prime Minister's refusal to consider changes to the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act of 1927, drawn up after the general strike of 1926 by Stanley Baldwin's government – when Churchill had been chancellor – and which had declared any sympathetic ('secondary') strike action illegal, had outlawed mass picketing, and had forced trade union members to make a positive decision to pay a political levy to a political party ('contracting-in' rather than 'contracting-out').

Over the previous four years the act had been the target of repeated lobbying by Walter Citrine, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress. Bevin meanwhile, who had long regarded it as 'petty vindictiveness inspired by class and party spite', saw its repeal as the minimum reward for the hard work done by trade unionists in factories up and down the country to supply the war effort. Yet on 9 March, knowing the Conservative Party would reject the change, Churchill wrote to the TUC council to say any amendment was out of the question prior to a general election.

This alone was enough to provoke Bevin's ire, but worse was to follow six days later, in Churchill's speech to the Conservative Party conference. Standing on the same stage in Central Hall, Westminster, where the labour minister had so loyally rallied to his side four months earlier, the Prime Minister warned, 'Our Socialist friends have officially committed themselves, much to the disgust of some of their leaders, to a programme for nationalizing all means of production, distribution and exchange . . . these sweeping proposals . . . imply not only the destruction of the life of the whole of our existing system of society and life and labour, but the creation and enforcement of another system or systems borrowed from foreign lands and alien minds.'

Churchill then turned to wartime controls, which covered not only rationing and prices but also wages and production and had already been a target of Beaverbrook's _Daily Express_ for many weeks. 'Control for control's sake is senseless. Controls under the pretext of war or its aftermath which are, in fact designed to favour the accomplishment of totalitarian systems however innocently designed or whatever guise they take . . . are a fraud which should be mercilessly exposed to the British public. At the head of our mainmast we fly the flag of free enterprise.'

As Minister of Labour and National Service, charged with directing Britain's workforce and industries to sustain the war effort, Bevin had implemented many of those 'controls'; the link with totalitarianism infuriated him. 'He's all right as a national leader, but when he turns into the leader of the Tory Party you can't trust him an inch,' Bevin complained to Dalton. He retaliated in a series of cutting speeches in the north of England on the weekend of 7 and 8 April. In Leeds he reminded his audience that the Tory Party 'which had a majority for nearly 20 years . . . completely failed to prepare for defence or adequately to warn the country where it was heading. It ran a foreign policy which nearly brought us and the whole of civilisation to the dust.' And on the specific question of controls, he said the Conservatives were creating a bogey. 'Come out into the open. Is it your intention to take off the control of food and let prices rise? Do you mean you are going to take off the price control of clothing, furniture and other things?' If that was the case, Bevin claimed, the resulting inflation would cut the value of the public's savings in half. In Blaydon-on-Tyne in Durham, on the Sunday, he went so far as to invent his own totalitarian threat. Hitler had received his money and power from big business, Bevin claimed; now 'big business here might join up with the big business of the Nazis', leaving Labour as the sole force to fight oppression.

This provided the pretext for Brendan Bracken to enter the fray. 'I can hardly avoid saying something about his blitz on the Conservative Party,' he told Holborn Tories on Monday, 9 April. 'Britain will never accept the sort of totalitarian state desired by the Socialists . . . as a nation of enterprises our future is boundless. As a nation of form fillers and restrictionists we have the bleakest of futures.'

Not only had the government's unanimity broken down, its splits were now being paraded openly. Yet the Prime Minister appeared outwardly relaxed about this newfound spirit of disunity. The day after Bracken's broadside against Bevin, during questions in the House about the future of the Ministry of Information, Labour's Manny Shinwell suggested mischievously that following such a partisan speech the former's salary should now be borne by Tory Central Office. At which Churchill shot the arch riposte, 'The minister of information was speaking in his capacity as a member of His Majesty's Government – in which, at present, great freedom appears to be allowed . . .' provoking laughter in the chamber.

The gloves were off, and the press now hummed with talk of an immediate break-up of the coalition and an early general election. 'Just a Big Happy Family' was the caption to a Low cartoon in the _Evening Standard_ on 12 April. In it, Bevin and Bracken, their arms in slings, glared at each other across the Cabinet table; the gnome-like Beaverbrook peered up from under the table next to Bracken, holding a book entitled 'Unarmed Combat'; and Churchill, presiding with cigar in mouth, told his ministers, 'Remember gentlemen, no questions asked about our private lives outside . . .but all is peace and loyalty within.' It was a far cry from 'All Behind You, Winston'.

The 'Big Three' conference at Yalta, in February, had seen the post-war territorial settlement dictated by the brute fact of the Soviet Union's overwhelming military presence in eastern Europe. Of all the concessions to Stalin, perhaps the most ignominious was that Poland's new frontier to the east would follow the Curzon Line – a return, effectively, to the carve-up of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. By way of compensation the Poles had received a 'substantial accession of territory' from Germany in the north and west, but within weeks it had become clear that their future would be bleaker even than this.

On 6 March Eden reported to the War Cabinet that Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, leader of the Polish government-in-exile, looked certain to be excluded from a new provisional administration at the behest of Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister. Meanwhile the Foreign Office had received disturbing reports of mass arrests of intellectuals in the Cracow area, the transportation of thousands to labour camps at Voroshilovgrad, and the detention of 6,000 former Home Army resistance officers in a camp near Lublin run by Russian officials.

Churchill and Eden, unwilling to concede they had been betrayed by Stalin at Yalta, wondered whether there might be another explanation. Churchill even speculated to the War Cabinet, 'The change of atmosphere since Yalta suggests that Stalin is not in supreme control.' But his overriding reaction was gloom: 'What alternative [is there] – unless you are prepared to fight against Russia . . . Russia is fastening [her] own types of government in all other countries, including now Vienna, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia.' Writing in his diary on 23 March, Eden conceded, 'Altogether our foreign policy seems a sad wreck and we may have to cast about fresh.'

Five days later the War Cabinet debated a pledge made by Churchill in the Commons, on 27 February, that citizenship of the Empire should be offered to those Polish troops who had fought 'so valiantly' under British command in France and Italy, but who had no desire to return to a homeland increasingly under Soviet diktat. Herbert Morrison expressed doubts about the commitment: 'Many of those who have passed through the army are pretty poor people . . . many also are Fascists. Lots of other foreigners want to stay here – many have "fought" in Pioneer units to escape internment. They will press for what you give to the Poles.' The home secretary returned to an argument with which his colleagues were all too familiar. 'Any large increase in the foreign population increases the risk of disorder – anti-Semitism is just below the surface.'

Churchill's response was brusque. 'I'm concerned only with Poles – and Poles who have really fought. We have a sacred duty to them. They are not without their troubles, and they have been led on by pledges and promises of ours.' He was backed by Sir Archibald Sinclair, who reminded his colleagues of the 'indispensable reinforcement' provided by Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain. 'They had a very good reputation in Scotland, in spite of being Roman Catholics . . . the claims of the Teutonic Jews are not to be compared with them.'

The pledge would be honoured, but it was at best a gesture, and a small one at that. Five and a half years before, Germany's invasion of Poland had been the act that had finally stirred Britain from her slumber. Now the same people were falling under the yoke of a new dictatorship, but this time the oppressor was Britain's ally. So long as the war against Germany was yet to be won, the plight of the Poles would have to be overlooked.

The previous month, on Friday, 16 February, the strategy behind the RAF's bombing campaign in Germany had, quite by accident, finally spilled out into the open. In a briefing at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) in Paris, Air Commodore Colin Grierson had taken questions from reporters about the recent raids on Dresden, during which huge numbers were killed (estimates of 70–100,000 were being made, although the death toll would later be calculated at around 30,000) after hundreds of tons of incendiary bombs unleashed a firestorm on the city.

When asked whether the main aim of attacking Dresden had been to cause confusion among fleeing refugees, or to hit trucks carrying military supplies to the Russian front, Grierson replied that the primary objective was to prevent the Germans transporting military equipment to the battlefront, but added, in a later aside, that the raid had helped destroy 'what is left of German morale'. In his report on the press conference, Associated Press correspondent Howard Cowan then wrote, 'Allied air bosses have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of the great German population centres as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler's doom.' The following day newspapers all over America ran the startling headline 'TERROR BOMBING GETS ALLIED APPROVAL AS STEP TO SPEED VICTORY'.

In London, Cecil King, executive editor of the _Daily Mirror_ , was appalled by the report. 'This is entirely horrifying. Not only does it make nonsense of all our protestations about our war aims and about our bombing policy; it gives official proof for everything that Goebbels ever said on the subject. It is wicked as well as being typically un-British.' Nonetheless, although the censor Admiral Thomson had approved Cowan's story, King and others in Fleet Street successfully lobbied for its suppression.

It was not until Tuesday, 6 March, when Richard Stokes, one of a lonely trio of parliamentary campaigners against the bombing campaign (the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, and Stokes' fellow Labour MP Arthur Salter were the others), stood up in the Commons chamber to reveal the Associated Press report, that MPs and the public learned of the policy for the first time. Stokes chose as the occasion for his intervention the annual Air Estimates debate, in which Sir Archibald Sinclair had earlier praised the work of Bomber Command. 'Allied air bombing is on such a colossal scale that Dr Goebbels has had to admit "it can now hardly be borne",' the air minister told MPs. In response Stokes, after reading out the banned AP story, asked, 'Is terror bombing – perhaps the minister will answer me – now part of our policy? And why is it that the British people are the only people who may not know what is done in their name?'

'I leave out the moral issue,' he said resignedly. 'I have given up in despair trying to persuade people on that issue. On the strategic issue, what are you going to find with all the cities blasted to blazes and diseases rampant? May you not well find that you will simply be overtaken by your own weapons, and that the disease, filth and poverty, which will arise, will be almost impossible either to arrest or to overcome . . .'

Of course the 'news' in the AP dispatch was over three years old. The RAF's switch from 'precision' targeting to 'area' bombing had followed the publication of the Butt Report in September 1941, which revealed that only one in three aircraft had got within five miles of its target. A directive to Bomber Command on 15 February 1942 stated that in the campaign to strike at the industrial heartlands of the Ruhr and Rhineland, 'the primary object of your operations should now be focussed on the morale of the enemy civil population and, in particular, that of industrial workers'. The only time in the subsequent three years when the War Cabinet had seriously dissented from the strategy had occurred during the build-up to D-Day, when Eisenhower insisted on blitzing multiple French communication and industrial centres at the cost of thousands of civilian lives. And even then Britain's objections – led by Churchill – had been swiftly overruled.

If Sir Archibald Sinclair, in charge of the political direction of policy, had any moral qualms about the bombing of population centres, he kept them well hidden. In May 1942 Geoffrey Shakespeare, National Liberal MP and a former junior minister for Dominion Affairs, wrote to the air minister in support of the campaign: 'I am all for the bombing of working class areas in German cities. I am Cromwellian – I believe in "slaying in the name of the Lord" because I do not believe you will ever bring home to the civil population of Germany the horrors of war until they have tasted it in this way.' Sinclair replied that he was 'delighted to find that you and I are in complete agreement about . . . bombing policy generally'.

There is, however, evidence that Churchill harboured some doubts about the campaign. On the night of 27 June 1943, just days after the RAF had dropped 15,000 tons of bombs in twenty nights as part of the 'Battle of the Ruhr', Australian Richard Casey, the War Cabinet's minister resident in the Middle East, was among those with the Prime Minister at Chequers when he was shown a graphic film of the bombings. 'WSC suddenly sat bolt upright and said to me "Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?" . . . I said we hadn't started it, and that it was them or us.'

The same scruples may have inspired an extraordinary memorandum Churchill drafted to the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, and his colleagues on the Chiefs of Staff Committee, on 28 March 1945. 'It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed,' the Prime Minister wrote. 'Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land . . . The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.'

What prompted this volte-face is unclear. But a volte-face it certainly was, for it had been a curt instruction from Churchill, back on 26 January, that set in train the bombing of Dresden. Having asked Sinclair, the night before, what plans he had for 'basting the Germans in their retreat from Breslau' – a remark that revealed his eagerness to curry favour with Stalin ahead of the forthcoming Yalta conference – the Prime Minister had urged his air minister to consider whether 'Berlin, and no doubt other large cities in East Germany, should not now be considered especially attractive targets'. After a conversation with Sinclair the following day, the air chiefs immediately set about planning strikes on Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig.

In fact, by the time Churchill drafted his later memorandum, the area bombing campaign was already in its final throes; there were few strategic targets left to strike. What had changed, perhaps, was that news of the scale of the carnage at Dresden was now reaching the West, and the authorities were being furnished with disturbing reconnaissance photographs of the devastated city. Or maybe Churchill had succumbed to one of his periodic bouts of introspection, prompted by the realisation that the military campaign was finally, irrevocably, winding down. 'AT LAST – COLLAPSE,' was the headline in Beaverbrook's _Daily Express_ on the day the Prime Minister wrote to the air chiefs. It was now apparent that all organised resistance along the 700-mile Western Front had ceased; all that remained was for the Allied forces to capture the ruins of Berlin and link up with the Soviets.

Whatever the reason, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal would have no truck with Churchill's self-critical minute. Four days later the Prime Minister was persuaded to withdraw it, and substitute it with something altogether milder for the record. In the new version, there was no mention of Dresden, no reference to 'increasing terror', and no hint of a 'serious query' against the bombing strategy. With the punch taken out, the opening merely stated, 'It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so-called "area bombing" of German cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests.'

The strategic air offensive formally ended on Monday, 16 April. From then on, Portal directed, the RAF's remaining tasks would be to give 'direct support to the land battle and . . . continue their offensive against the sea power of the enemy which they have already done so much to destroy.'

On the afternoon of Thursday, 12 April, while sitting for a portrait at his favourite retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt collapsed and died of a cerebral haemorrhage. The sixty-three-year-old had appeared tired and sick at Yalta two months earlier, but his death nonetheless came as a shock in Downing Street. The following morning Churchill told the War Cabinet he felt 'profound sorrow and a deep sense of personal loss'; he initially planned to attend the funeral, but later asked Eden to go in his place.

Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, a farmer's boy and former county judge from Independence, Missouri, was little known on the international stage, and there was concern about how this modest, unassuming sixty-one-year-old would engineer an end to the Pacific war and manage the tricky transition to peace in Europe alongside the wily Stalin. 'I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me,' an apprehensive new president told reporters soon after taking the oath of office.

The day before Truman was sworn in, the US Third Army's 80th Infantry Division reached the gates of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in Weimar, Germany, and thus became the first Allied soldiers to confront evidence of the singularly depraved nature of Hitler's regime. Buchenwald had been in operation for seven years, during which around 240,000 prisoners had been incarcerated there – many Jews, but also Poles, Slavs, the mentally and physically disabled, Roma, homosexuals, and various religious and political prisoners. Large numbers had been worked to death in local arms factories. Many had died after being experimented upon. Others had been arbitrarily murdered, taken into the woods nearby and shot or hung from trees.

On 18 April General Eisenhower met Churchill in London, and persuaded him to quickly dispatch parliamentarians and journalists to the camps, before they were cleaned up and it was 'too late to see the full horrors'. Three days later a British delegation of ten MPs and two peers arrived at Buchenwald to view the piles of dead bodies and talk to the remaining, starved inmates. The sole woman in the party was Mavis Tate, Conservative MP for Frome, a striking, unconventional advocate of women's rights. She had been asked to record her impressions of Buchenwald for a British Pathé News film. Thousands in cinemas up and down Britain would later hear her voice, poised but seemingly on the edge of anger, deliver a narrative about the camp over images more awful than anything they had seen in all the previous five years of war.

'Some people believe that the reports of what happened there are exaggerated,' she began. 'No words could exaggerate. We saw – and we know.' Then, to pictures of scores of naked and half-naked corpses piled up on top of each other next to a giant woodpile, she told the audience, 'Much as they shock you, do believe me when I tell you that the reality was indescribably worse than these pictures. You can't photograph suffering – only its results. In pictures you have no smell of disease or death. You see just a fragment of the full pattern of horror.' Tate returned from Buchenwald convinced that the restoration of democratic government would not, by itself, be sufficient to solve the German problem. 'There is indubitably a deep streak of evil and sadism in the German race, such as one ought not to expect to find in a people who for generations have paid lip service to Western culture and civilisation.'

In War Cabinet in April there had been fierce debate about what punishments the Nazi hierarchy should suffer for having ordered this slaughter. The Americans wanted some kind of quasi-judicial process; they suggested that 'arch criminals' like Hitler, Göring and Goebbels should first be served with a 'document of arraignment', alleging they were responsible for a plan to establish Nazi domination over the world, before being brought before an inter-Allied tribunal. Stafford Cripps, the lawyer, disliked the idea: 'It mixes political and judicial decisions with disadvantage to both. It will give him [Hitler] the chance to harangue . . . it would be better to make a political decision in favour of punishing them by forced labour.' Morrison and Churchill saw no point in a trial of any kind. 'All major allies are committed to the execution of Hitler,' said the home secretary. 'This mock trial is objectionable . . . better to declare that we shall put them to death.' Field Marshal Smuts, however, advised against summary executions, saying it would 'set a dangerous precedent'.

Then, on the night of 1 May, came the news, via Hamburg radio, that Hitler was dead, having 'fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting with his last breath against Bolshevism'. Churchill, who had been discussing future election strategy over dinner with Beaverbrook, Minister of Production Oliver Lyttelton and the Tory chief whip James Stuart, remarked, 'Well, I must say I think he was perfectly right to die like that.' A sceptical Beaverbrook retorted that he 'obviously did not', a judgement borne out some days later, when it was revealed that the Führer and his mistress Eva Braun had committed suicide in his bunker. Elsewhere, Alan Brooke 'remained completely unmoved . . . I think I have become so war weary with the continual strain of war that my brain is numbed, and incapable of feeling intensely.'

The War Cabinet's earlier preference for summary execution now gave way to America and Russia's insistence that the major war criminals should face full state trials. But two days after the announcement of Hitler's death, Churchill still wondered whether they should 'negotiate with Himmler, and bump him off later'. 'Quite entitled to do so,' agreed Morrison. The horrific scenes from Buchenwald were fresh in ministers' minds, and when the war secretary Sir James Grigg suggested the atrocities there and at the other concentration camps – all of which were under Himmler's command – did not qualify as 'war crimes', the Prime Minister responded sharply: 'Don't quibble; he could be summarily shot, in respect of some of those in the camp.'

The war was now hurtling towards its conclusion. On 2 May the Red Army completed the capture of Berlin, and in Italy nearly a million German soldiers laid down their arms. The following day the British 7th Armoured Division entered Hamburg, the last remaining defence for the Germans in the north. Meanwhile, as Japan's defences crumbled in Burma, Major General Henry Chambers' Indian 26th Division marched into Rangoon. Then, at 6.30 p.m. on 4 May, in a carpeted tent on a wind- and rain-swept Timeloberg Hill at Wendisch Evern, in Lower Saxony, Field Marshal Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of German forces in north-west Germany, Holland and Denmark. Soon afterwards Churchill summoned his chiefs of staff to the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, where, with tears in his eyes, he thanked them for everything they had done over the last five years, before shaking them each by the hand.

It would be another three days before General Alfred Jodl arrived, at 2.40 a.m., at General Dwight Eisenhower's temporary headquarters in a small schoolhouse in Rheims, France, to sign the final unconditional surrender. Churchill was informed at 7 a.m., and then spent a frustrating day on the telephone in tortuous negotiations with President Truman and Stalin – in particular, about how to synchronise the announcement that the war was over. Meanwhile word about the German surrender had got out, and crowds began to gather outside Buckingham Palace, shouting 'We want the King.' In response, despite the absence of any official confirmation that hostilities had ceased, the Home Office issued a circular instructing the nation on how they could celebrate: 'Bonfires will be allowed, but the government trusts that only material with no salvage value will be used.' Bell ringers were put on alert for a nationwide celebratory peal.

At War Cabinet that evening, Churchill recounted his discussions with an obdurate Stalin – whom he remained unwilling to upset, even at this late stage – and told his colleagues that the victory and end of the war would be formally announced at 3 p.m. the next day. But given the outpouring of joy, all present agreed that it was impossible not to say something before then. The Ministry of Information therefore put out a short statement a little while later, saying simply: 'In accordance with arrangements between the three great powers, tomorrow, Tuesday, will be treated as Victory in Europe Day and will be regarded as a holiday.'

Perhaps appropriately, there was no meeting of the War Cabinet on the morning of VE Day. As the lunchtime speaker at a wallpaper industry exhibition at the Suffolk Street Galleries, Ernest Bevin was in reflective mood. After admiring the exhibits, he told fellow diners he had no doubt that the harmony of colour on the walls contributed to happier minds and happier homes. He 'looked forward to the time when the housewife would display her new wallpaper to her friends as she now expectantly displayed her new jumper'. After lunch, Bevin, like his fellow ministers, made his way to the Houses of Parliament to await the arrival of the Prime Minister, who was due to speak following his victory broadcast from the Cabinet Room in Downing Street at 3 p.m.

In the Lords, at 3.15, it fell to Lord Woolton to read out Churchill's statement. This disclosed that hostilities would officially end at one minute after midnight, but that in the interests of saving lives the ceasefire had been sounded along all fronts the previous day. In the Commons, as the clock ticked by with no sign of the Prime Minister, it was left to Sir John Anderson, acting Leader of the House in Eden's absence, to fill in. The Chancellor, hardly a natural extemporiser, attempted to spin out a series of good-humoured answers to spurious questions, prompted on occasions by Morrison and A.V. Alexander who sat alongside him. In danger of drying up, he had just responded to a further supplementary question with a terse 'No, Sir, I do not know,' when Churchill finally walked into the chamber at 3.23 p.m.

The MPs rose as one to greet him, waving their order papers, their cheers combining with those from the side galleries and Strangers' Gallery to produce a truly thunderous welcome. The Prime Minister then read his broadcast statement once more, before giving 'hearty thanks to men of all parties . . . for the way in which the liveliness of parliamentary institutions had been maintained under the fire of the enemy'. Once he had sat down, in lines of three, peers and MPs left the chamber and then walked slowly through an avenue of onlookers across the road to St Margaret's Church for a service of remembrance.

Afterwards Churchill and his War Cabinet – minus Attlee and Eden, who were in America – went to Buckingham Palace for tea with the King and Queen, accompanied by Sir Archibald Sinclair, the chiefs of staff and Sir Edward Bridges, the Cabinet secretary. Later, they returned to Whitehall, where a vast crowd had massed, filling the road from the end of Downing Street to Parliament Square. Here Churchill and his colleagues took to the balcony of the Ministry of Health, which had been brightly decked out with Union flags. The Prime Minister was flanked on his right by Oliver Lyttelton, smiling urbanely, and on his left by Ernest Bevin. The other three architects of victory on the Home Front, Anderson, Woolton and Morrison, made up the rest of the group.

'God bless you all,' Churchill told the crowds through the loud and sustained cheering, his voice carried resonantly by the surrounding loudspeakers. 'This is your victory! In our long history, we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.' He asked Bevin to come forward to share the applause, but the Labour man declined, saying, 'No, Winston, this is your day.' The Minister for Labour beat time as the crowd sang 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow', and led them in giving three cheers for the Prime Minister, to which they responded loudly and fervently.

The celebrations would continue all through the night and well into the following morning. Thereafter, some of the men on that balcony would return their attention to the task of saving the coalition – or, for others, hastening its collapse.

It had long been agreed that once the war was over, normal party politics would resume as soon as practicable. The coalition members had been drawn from a Parliament that was now ten years old, and Churchill had told MPs, 'I cannot think of anything more odious than for a Prime Minister . . . to try to grapple with the perplexing and tremendous problems of war and peace, and of the transition from war to peace, without being refreshed by contact with the people.' So an election would take place at the end of hostilities – but which hostilities? When he moved to extend Parliament by a further year back in October 1944, Churchill had anticipated – correctly as it turned out – that the German war would end 'in March, April or May' of 1945, but he had foreseen that the Japanese could go on fighting for another eighteen months, into the middle of 1946. So he had made it quite clear that 'we must look to the termination of the war against Nazism as a pointer which will fix the date of the General Election'.

Now he had changed his mind. With relations between the western Allies and the Soviet Union ever more strained, he was reluctant to disband a team that had weathered so many storms together. Moreover, he had no great relish for a return to partisan politics: he was happy as a national leader.

Attlee, Bevin and Dalton agreed with Churchill on postponing the election until the defeat of Japan, accepting the need to present a united front on international affairs. But neither the Prime Minister nor his Labour colleagues had a free hand: there were other forces at play. On the Conservative side, Beaverbrook and Bracken were furiously lobbying Churchill to exploit his popularity and go for a June election; Eden, too, was keen for a quick ballot. Whereas for Labour, Herbert Morrison, who was increasingly setting the pace on policy, had set about rallying support for an October election, thus allowing time for the majority of servicemen to return home and vote, and for an up-to-date, accurate electoral register to be compiled.

Others were in less haste. Rab Butler wanted the coalition to continue, 'preferably until the social reforms upon which we were in general agreement had been passed; this seemed best in the national interest'. From a purely party perspective, he recognised that the Tory machine was in a 'parlous' state, hit much harder than Labour by the absence of its agents and organisers on war service.

'The coalition is getting more and more threadbare,' observed _The Economist_ , reflecting on recent failures to agree legislation on social insurance, land values and coal. The reality was that the War Cabinet was now so divided over domestic policy, and the pressures from MPs and the rank and file of both major parties for a parting of the ways so strong, that a general election looked likely sooner rather than later. October seemed a long way away.

When Churchill and Attlee first sat down to seriously discuss the disbandment of the coalition in early April, prior to the Labour leader's departure for America with Eden on the 17th, the Prime Minister had assured his deputy that there was no question of breaking up the government or of dissolving Parliament in his absence. But a few days later the electioneering had started in earnest, and Labour – in particular Morrison – had been quickest out of the blocks. On 21 April the home secretary (who was also his party's campaign manager) launched what was to all intents and purposes Labour's election manifesto, _Let Us Face the Future_. An unabashed 'instalment of socialism', it set out a massive programme of public ownership – of the fuel and power industries, iron and steel, inland transport, and also the Bank of England. And in addition to a commitment to implement Butler's Education Act, it planned to raise the school leaving age to sixteen as soon as possible.

The Tories had responded in a series of weekend speeches. Party chairman Ralph Assheton told an audience in Newcastle upon Tyne that only a system of free enterprise could ensure full employment. In an early display of the uninhibited scaremongering that lay ahead, he predicted that Labour's nationalisation plans would not only fail but would also 'create such fear in all other industries that there would be a general paralysis of trade . . . We have been fighting totalitarianism in Germany, and do not wish to adopt as our creed German-made doctrines of Karl Marx.' Morrison had countered with a major speech in Bristol on 29 April in which he argued that central banking policy should be in the hands of the state so as to ensure full employment and avoid inflation. Thereafter political hostilities had been largely suspended again; first while Sir John Anderson presented an uncontroversial budget – although he promised tax cuts by the end of the financial year – and then by the general rejoicing over the end of the war in Europe.

Meanwhile, Eden and Attlee had been in San Francisco, negotiating for Britain at a momentous gathering of fifty countries to discuss the creation of the United Nations. The British delegation also included Ellen Wilkinson and Florence Horsbrugh, both now Privy Councillors. Wilkinson's stock – she was due to chair the Labour Party conference at the end of May – was particularly high. An _Observer_ profile confidently stated, 'Nobody with any knowledge of politics would lay any money against her becoming the second woman cabinet minister in our history . . . and an extremely efficient one she will make.'

On 11 May Churchill met with Bevin and Morrison and warned them that although he personally wished to postpone the general election until after the defeat of Japan, he was coming under pressure from his own party to go to the polls in June. The Labour pair had earlier consulted the party's National Executive Committee, and gave the Prime Minister its view that the national interest would be best served by an election in October. They also shared their personal positions, however, Morrison making it clear that he was keen for an immediate election, Bevin admitting he still saw the value in preserving the coalition until the war in the Pacific was over.

Five days later Attlee returned from America. Just hours after stepping off his plane, he headed for Downing Street and a late-night meeting with Churchill. During an amicable discussion that lasted into the early hours, they had a meeting of minds. Attlee too wished to prolong the government until after Japan's defeat, but both men now recognised that neither of them was in tune with the majority feeling in their respective parties, so Churchill set about drafting a compromise letter that might just bridge the gap. Attlee would then present it to his colleagues at the Labour conference in Blackpool.

But when the first draft arrived, Ernest Bevin realised it would have little chance of winning acceptance. At his insistence, a new sentence was inserted that gave a pledge that the coalition would continue to press on with social reform. 'In the meanwhile', it read, 'we would together do our utmost to implement the proposals for social security and full employment contained in the White Papers which we have laid before Parliament.' In the document the Prime Minister had included the rather odd idea that another extension of the parliament – and thus the coalition – might be put to the people, via a referendum.

Labour's National Executive Committee assembled in Blackpool's Town Hall after tea on Sunday, 20 May to consider Churchill's offer. Attlee remained detached, coolly presenting both sides of the argument, while Bevin and Hugh Dalton did their best to advocate an extension of the coalition. But Morrison's powerful advocacy for a return to party independence in October received the backing of, among others, Ellen Wilkinson, Aneurin Bevan, Harold Laski and Emmanuel Shinwell. Just three members of the committee wanted to prolong the government until the absolute end. Churchill's gambit had failed.

This meeting had been the mirror image of one held almost exactly five years previously. Then, Labour's National Executive Committee, sitting in a basement conference room at a seaside hotel, had taken a decision that consigned Chamberlain's Conservative-led national government to history. Now, although the world and the country had changed irrevocably, here was the same body, with the majority of the same members, back in a seaside hotel, passing a very similar vote to deal a fatal blow to Churchill's administration.

When the conference delegates supported the NEC decision the following morning – just two out of 1,100 voted for Churchill's proposals – Attlee sat down in the Clifton Hotel to write a letter he surely knew would bring his five-year partnership with the Prime Minister to a sudden end. This was no private letter of regret that all the work they had done together was over, however; it was a blunt, detailed, public rebuttal of Churchill's offer that reflected the will of his party. It included strong criticism of the idea of a referendum. 'I could not consent to the introduction into our national life of a device so alien to all our traditions . . . which has only too often been the instrument of Nazidom and Fascism. Hitler's practices in the field of referenda and plebiscites can hardly have endeared these expedients to the British heart.' There was also an accusation that Churchill's rejection of an autumn election had been made purely on 'considerations of political expediency'. 'It appears to me', Attlee wrote, 'that you are departing from the position of a national leader by yielding to the pressure of the Conservative Party, which is anxious to exploit your great services to the nation in its own interest.' And there was a final barb: 'I would earnestly ask you to reconsider your decision to hold an election in circumstances which are bound to cause bitter resentment among the men of the fighting services.'

It was Whit Monday, and Churchill was dining at Chequers, with a party that included his son Randolph and Harold Macmillan. From his hotel room in Blackpool, Attlee telephoned the Prime Minister to read the letter to him, leaving Churchill surprised and disappointed that the Labour leader had failed to carry his party with him. 'Winston was hurt at the unnecessarily waspish and even offensive tone of Attlee's reply,' recorded Macmillan. The die was cast.

Churchill drafted a reply to Attlee the following day. At Beaverbrook's insistence, he omitted a warm tribute to the Labour leader and his colleagues for their war work. Indeed, he composed a riposte as harsh as the rejection he had received. 'I regret the aspersions with which you have darkened this correspondence,' he wrote. 'It is odd that you should accompany so many unjust allegations with an earnest request that we should go on bickering together until the autumn. Such a process would not be a decent way of carrying on a British government.' His anger was echoed by supportive growl from the Beaverbrook press. 'Who brands the greatest Englishman of his time as a rogue and a scoundrel?' asked the editorial in the _Daily Express_ on Wednesday, 23 May.

At noon that day the Prime Minister went to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the King, to tender his resignation. At 4 p.m. he returned, to be formally asked to form a new, caretaker administration. Parliament would be dissolved on 15 June, the election would take place on 5 July, and the result would be declared on 26 July after all the ballot papers from servicemen abroad had been gathered in.

Churchill had led his 'Great Coalition' for a total of five years and thirteen days. When the leader writers penned their obituary notices in Thursday's papers, there was near universal acclaim. 'This has been a great administration,' said _The Times_. 'Its members have worked together in harmonious cooperation and mutual loyalty to a degree never surpassed, and seldom approached, in the history of the many coalition governments that have held office in England.' The _Yorkshire Post_ was equally, if not more, effusive in its praise. 'No-one can question the brilliant success of this Government of all the talents . . . its close comradeship and steady teamwork will be cited by future historians as an inspiring example of what a free people can accomplish in defence of their common life and liberties.'

At the Labour Party conference the same day, delegates stood and cheered wildly as Ellen Wilkinson passed a resolution expressing the party's heartfelt gratitude to, and admiration of, 'all British forces, men and women, who are serving the nation on and over the seas, in India, and at home'. It also pledged the party to 'render to the Services every support in the war against Japan'. There was then a moment of silence in memory of those who had never come back.

Monday, 28 May had been a grey, cheerless day in London, and at 4.30 p.m., as the members of the disbanded coalition made their way to 10 Downing Street for a final farewell, the rain started to fall.

Most of the retiring ministers were chauffeured up to the familiar black door in their big, polished, official cars, with the word 'Priority' emblazoned in red lettering on the front windows. The exceptions were Herbert Morrison and Ellen Wilkinson, who bounded jauntily along the street in a small, private vehicle, and then walked in together, the home secretary smiling jovially at the gathering of photographers.

Inside, with painters and decorators at work, there was a feel of renewal, and as the guests entered the Cabinet Room, they were greeted by the cheerful sight of four magnificent clusters of double peonies spaced across the wide oval table, which was otherwise laden with cups of tea and a buffet. Winston Churchill was 'At Home', hosting a party to thank his colleagues for their unstinting efforts in the fight for their country's survival.

Nearly all of Labour's former ministers had joined him – Bevin, Attlee, Morrison, Dalton, Jowitt – and a fair smattering of Tories and Liberals, too. Lord Beaverbrook and Brendan Bracken were, however, conspicuous by their absence. Sadly, the renewal of political hostilities and the strident tone of the parties' rhetoric in recent days meant the atmosphere was more strained than it might have been. 'Clem Attlee adopted a very correct and chilly attitude. He did not allow his humour off the chain,' observed Oliver Lyttelton. 'Ernie Bevin looked shaken and anxious, Morrison expectant.'

Once tea had been served, Churchill moved to the head of the table, first assuring his guests that although this was a tea and not a cocktail party – 'nothing so flippant' – other drinks that 'were capable of local adjustment' would be made available. Then, visibly moved, with tears starting to stream down his cheeks – as they so often did on such occasions – he began to pay his tributes.

He warmly thanked his Labour and Liberal colleagues for the last five years, asserting that they had been 'surely been the most glorious in our history'. If the Cabinet had not stood together as a united band of friends, Britain 'might have been wiped out'. Posterity would hail their achievements, and a 'light would shine on every helmet' of each man and woman in the room. If another mortal danger threatened, he knew the response would be exactly the same, because that was the mettle and character of this country's leaders.

For his former deputy he had a special promise. In the coming weeks, when he negotiated with Stalin and Truman, he wanted his 'good friend, Clem Attlee' by his side. 'How can you speak for your country when an election is pending? I shall say, the alternative prime minister is with me. We are agreed. On these issues whoever is returned at the election will be supported by the other.'

Attlee and Archibald Sinclair gave brief replies, the former saying simply that 'we had given a practical example of democracy at work', and everyone had 'subordinated their own policies to the necessities of the state'. Then the outgoing Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, called for a group photograph and everyone walked out into the garden of Number 10. With no sign of a break in the rain, the Prime Minister joked, 'We'd better finish this as my political opponents will say this is a conspiracy on my part to give them all rheumatism.' Thereafter the party gradually dispersed. Conservative ministers returned to their Whitehall offices to get to grips with their new briefs; their Labour colleagues, once again in their all too familiar role of opposition, could resume the drafting of election speeches.

'Salute the Great Coalition 1940–45' was the motto Churchill had inscribed on the medal he gave to every member of his war ministry. Britain had turned to coalition governments before, but never one so broadly based, never one that had lasted so long, never one that had worked in such harmony, and never one that affected the lives of its citizens so greatly. In her hour of need, this 'Ministry of All the Talents' had served Britain well.

## **POSTSCRIPT**

Churchill began the 1945 general election campaign in seemingly relaxed vein. On the weekend before his farewell party for the 'Great Coalition', he had embarked on a tour of his new constituency of Woodford, Essex, in an open-topped car, accompanied by his wife Clementine. At one stage he had called in at a children's tea party, where he had donned a paper hat and kissed several of the toddlers for the benefit of the accompanying press pack. Later he had dealt firmly with a group of hecklers who had shouted, 'What about the food shortage?' by retorting, 'I have not come here to promise you beer and skittles.'

The lobby correspondents of left-wing newspapers had quickly dubbed his temporary, two-month administration 'the caretaker government', but he had turned that ridicule to his advantage. 'They call us the "caretakers",' he told a crowd outside the working men's club in Woodford High Road, addressing them from his car in the persistent drizzle. 'We endorse the title because it means that we shall take every good care of everything that affects the welfare of Britain and of all classes in Britain.' This good-humoured, consensual approach had been well received. But ten days later, on Monday, 4 June, Churchill made an abrupt and damaging misstep.

In his first election broadcast on the BBC, live from his study at Chequers, he claimed that 'socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism' and portrayed the state as a malign individual, a dictator, 'the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, the arch-caucus boss'. This by itself might have been forgiven as no more than characteristically robust campaigning, but one particularly intemperate passage was to ensure the speech's notoriety. 'No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of _Gestapo_ , no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.'

Churchill was far from alone in hurling insults inspired by the vanquished Nazi regime. Bevin's speech in Leeds in April had suggested British big business might ally with 'Nazi big business', while Attlee had linked the Prime Minister's idea of a referendum on prolonging the life of the parliament to Hitler's 'practices' in the field of plebiscites. But the use of 'Gestapo', in the context of this already lurid broadcast, gave the Labour leadership potent ammunition, and they used it cannily: not to criticise Churchill himself – still the acclaimed war leader – but to suggest he had been unduly influenced by those familiar, malign influences behind the throne.

Bevin was the first to attack. 'It was Churchill at Beaverbrook's worst,' he told the Press Association that night. For Morrison, 'This broadcast will, I fear, go down in history as Churchill's Crazy Broadcast . . . the best excuse I can find is that Mr Bracken, and not the prime minister, must have written it.' In fact Beaverbrook and Bracken were blameless: neither had contributed to the speech. But it was Attlee who was most withering. 'I realised at once what was his object,' he explained in his own BBC address the following evening. 'He wanted the electors to understand how great was the difference between Winston Churchill, the great leader in war of a united nation, and Mr. Churchill, the party leader of the Conservatives. He feared lest those who had accepted his leadership in war might be tempted out of gratitude to follow him further. I thank him for having disillusioned them so thoroughly. The voice we heard last night was that of Mr. Churchill, but the mind was that of Lord Beaverbrook.'

To his Conservative Cabinet colleagues, Churchill's speech was an evident disaster. 'A fantastical onslaught on Socialism which, while cheering a good many of our supporters, will put off a lot of those who might otherwise have voted on the main international issue,' reflected Leo Amery. Anyhow, its authorship was not the central issue. What bewildered the public was the unreal ring to Churchill's words. For five long years they had been assured that all these socialists had worked in great harmony with the Prime Minister in the national interest; now they were expected to believe they were malevolent outsiders, plotting to bring about a totalitarian state.

In the end, the 'Gestapo' speech was merely a symptom of the Conservatives' malaise, rather than a material cause of their defeat. During wartime, 'fair shares for all' and a genuine equality of sacrifice had been the overriding mood; the country had been 'socialised', to use Churchill's phrase, and had not objected. Thus the election on 5 July proved to be a stunning triumph for Labour, the scale of which surprised even the most optimistic of the party's leaders. The electoral system amplified a popular vote of 48.8 per cent into a tally of 393 House of Commons seats. Although the Conservatives captured ten million votes (compared to Labour's twelve million), they could only muster 213. The resulting rout saw Leo Amery, Brendan Bracken, Sir James Grigg, Harold Macmillan, Richard Law, Ernest Brown, Florence Horsbrugh and Duncan Sandys, the Prime Minister's son-in-law, all defeated. And to compound Churchill's misery, his son Randolph failed to win either of the two seats available in Preston.

It was an equally disastrous election for Sir Archibald Sinclair's Liberal Party, which had hoped to profit from the presence and influence of their recently elected MP, Sir William Beveridge. The great reformer's vision undoubtedly played a major part in the outcome of the election, but his was not the party to benefit; the Liberals won a paltry twelve seats. Beveridge himself was defeated in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Sinclair came a shocking third in Caithness and Sutherland, and Violet Bonham Carter also placed last, in Wells.

'Seldom has an electorate gone to the polls with more deliberate purpose. Seldom has an electorate been more clearly aware of what it was voting against and what it was voting for – against the past, and for the future,' was the view of the American magazine _Time_. The Tories were held responsible for Munich and appeasement, for the sharp class divisions that were now only just beginning to erode, and for the harsh economic policies of the 1930s. Moreover, the party's lacklustre election manifesto had been seen to fall short in addressing the people's needs and aspirations for the post-war period.

Labour had offered a far more coherent and ambitious prospectus, but before the new government could embark upon it, Attlee and Bevin (now foreign secretary) had to replace Churchill and Eden at Potsdam for the final Big Three conference of the war. There, with Truman and Stalin, they concluded negotiations on a final agreement on the governance of occupied Germany, with zones for Britain, America, the Soviet Union and France, and an Allied Control Council to co-ordinate overall administration. Less trumpeted, however, was the final abandonment of Poland. In recognising the Soviet puppet government, rather than the London-based Polish government-in-exile, Britain and America implicitly conceded de facto Russian occupation of central and eastern Europe.

There was also the Potsdam Declaration, signed by America, Britain and China, demanding the unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces – the refusal of which would necessitate Japan's 'prompt and utter destruction'. Without explicitly referring to the atom bomb, Truman casually mentioned to Stalin that America now possessed a 'new weapon of unusual destructive force'; the Soviet dictator merely replied that 'he hoped we would make good use of it against Japan'. His apparent indifference reflected the fact that his spies had already provided him with details of the recent successful test explosion in the New Mexico desert.

When the first atomic bomb landed on Hiroshima on 6 August – the immediate blast and resulting firestorm killing close to 80,000 – the enormity of the event took some hours to absorb. 'It has been interesting to watch the growing understanding of Londoners of what the atomic bomb means,' wrote the Foreign Office diplomat Pierson Dixon, who had been by Bevin's side at Potsdam, 'The prepared announcements on Monday were received with polite interest. It was evidently thought that this was merely an expanded high explosive. [But] the Japanese reports of the destruction of Hiroshima have swept England in a wave of horror.'

Those events at last brought the work of Sir John Anderson and Tube Alloys (although it was not referred to by name) to public attention. Attlee left Churchill to issue a long, detailed and characteristically colourful account of the Anglo-American bomb project, while Anderson himself gave a rare interview to the _Evening Standard_. 'It is the biggest thing ever to be developed,' he told the newspaper. 'It might be a valuable treasure awaiting full development in the interests of mankind. On the other hand it might be the release of a maniacal bomb of death and destruction. God grant this may not be so.'

Anderson remained Attlee's chief adviser on nuclear policy for another year. The new Prime Minister showed no more enthusiasm than his predecessor for airing the subject in Cabinet, preferring to confine discussion to a small, secret sub-committee. Ernest Bevin, worried at Soviet belligerence and concerned about Britain's loss of prestige in the world, drove forward the argument for a homegrown atomic bomb: 'we've got to have this thing over here whatever it costs . . . we've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it'. Thus, on 8 January 1947, a Cabinet committee led by Attlee and Bevin would eventually commit Britain to becoming a nuclear power.

The Japanese surrender left the United States free to re-evaluate major areas of her foreign policy. One of these was the Lend-Lease agreement, which was terminated with brutal haste on 21 August, partly due to a suspicion (which proved accurate) that if left in place it would be used to fund Labour's 'socialist' industrial and welfare reforms. John Maynard Keynes, now advising the new Labour government, spoke of the severing of this lifeline as a 'financial Dunkirk'. Unless new American financial aid was forthcoming, he warned the Cabinet, 'a greater degree of austerity would be necessary than we have experienced at any time during the war'.

Disaster was averted in December, however, when Keynes negotiated a $3.75 billion loan and secured a final $650 million of Lend-Lease assistance. In return Britain had to commit to the establishment of an international free trade organisation, pledge not to discriminate against US imports, and accept that there could be no devaluation of sterling without the approval of the new American-dominated International Monetary Fund. Britain agreed to pay off the 1945 loan in fifty annual instalments, starting in 1950. It would take until 29 December 2006 – when a final payment of $84 million was made – for another Labour government, under Tony Blair, to fully settle that debt.

In the debate on the King's Speech on 29 November 1944, at the zenith of coalition co-operation on social reform, Churchill had cast his mind forward to the aftermath of the coming election. 'There is one thing that is quite certain,' he told MPs, 'all the leading men in both the principal parties – and in the Liberal Party as well – are pledged and committed to this great mass of social legislation, and I cannot conceive that whatever may be the complexion of the new House, they will personally fail to make good their promises and commitments to the people.'

So it fell to Attlee, Morrison, Bevin, Bevan, Cripps and others to build on the work of Lord Woolton's Reconstruction Committee. As it was, their 'New Jerusalem' would come to eclipse it. The 1945 Parliament produced an astonishing 347 acts. Beveridge's report was finally cast in stone, with the National Insurance and National Assistance Acts, and another of his three prerequisites for effective social insurance, a National Health Service, was inaugurated in 1948. The new government also raised the school leaving age to fifteen, and implemented much of Rab Butler's Education Act, introducing free secondary education for all.

Where Attlee and his ministers clearly struck out on their own was with the nationalisation of key areas of British industry, including the coal mines, the railways, gas and electricity, together with the Bank of England. Externally, Labour also pursued a path a Churchill administration would surely not have followed, by granting independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma, and pulling out of the latter. Attlee's government also helped to set up an important new security pact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

There had, of course, been pockets of resistance to the collectivist ethos of the war years – in constituency Conservative associations, employers' organisations, insurance companies and the upper echelons of the British Medical Association. Moreover, political thinkers on the right had been energised by the publication of Friedrich von Hayek's _The Road to Serfdom_ (1944), which had challenged the emerging orthodoxy by putting notions of economic liberalism and individual freedom to the fore, warning that the socialist welfare state contained within it the seeds of totalitarianism. But despite Churchill's 'Gestapo' speech, it was clear that a new political consensus had grown out of the deliberations of Lord Woolton's committee.

Indeed, at the reforming height of its work, in the autumn of 1944, Ellen Wilkinson had even wondered whether the left's thunder had been stolen. 'What were we going to fight about?' she had asked an NEC meeting. 'Certain legislation had been placed on the statute book by the coalition government, for which the Labour ministers and the Labour Party were entitled to a large measure of credit. There was other important legislation, such as Full Employment, Social Security, Health Service etc which it was hoped would become law before the Government broke up. What, therefore, would remain to be incorporated in our programme specifically for the General Election?'

Since the publication of the Beveridge Report both main parties had embraced the idea of full employment, a welfare state, a mixed economy and the involvement of 'both sides of industry' in political and economic decision-making. The Tories would not have carried out Labour's programme of state ownership but neither would they seek immediately to reverse it. Although Rab Butler's 1947 'Industrial Charter' talked of rolling back some of the frontiers of the state, it also put forward the notion of a 'Workers' Charter'. And by 1954 _The Economist_ had coined the term 'Butskellism' to express the notion that there was precious little to distinguish between the two parties on economic policy (Butler became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Churchill's second administration, 1951–5, and Hugh Gaitskell was his Labour shadow). Only in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came to power, fired by Hayek's ideas, had the wartime consensus between Beveridge and Woolton finally run its course.

That it lasted so long was, in part, due to the domination of British politics by the personnel of the 'Great Coalition' during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Churchill's first administration spawned five prime ministers: after Attlee (1945–51), he himself returned to Downing Street in 1951–5, followed by Eden (1955–7), Macmillan (1957–63), and finally – from the wartime civil service – the young economist and statistician who had helped alleviate Bevin's problems with the miners, J.H. (Harold) Wilson (1964–70 and 1974–6). Lord Woolton, who finally joined the Conservative Party after the election defeat of 1945, went on to become a successful party chairman, using all the communication skills he had employed so adroitly at the Ministry of Food; he later served in the Cabinet again, for four years from 1951 to 1955. And Anderson too was offered a place in Churchill's 1951 government, as some kind of 'overlord' to the main economic ministries, but he resisted; although he did accept a place in the House of Lords as Viscount Waverley when his university seat in the Commons was abolished.

The only two women to have served in the coalition both achieved Cabinet rank, and in the same post, as education secretary. Neither realised her true potential. Ellen Wilkinson's tenure lasted just eighteen months, cut tragically short by her death in February 1947. Florence Horsburgh had to wait until September 1953 before Churchill finally gave her a seat at the top table, but with the government's spending priorities on housing, not education, she had a troublesome time.

Whenever leading politicians die of a non-infective condition, it is almost taken for granted that their untimely deaths have been brought about by the strains of their 'unnatural lives'. Churchill's wartime ministers, many working up to sixteen hours a day for five years, with the nation's very existence at stake for the first of those, inevitably suffered more than most. If Anthony Eden had been a more forceful presence during the 1945 general election campaign, rather than convalescing after a duodenal ulcer, the mistakes of the 'Gestapo' speech, and much else, might have been avoided. In 1953, he would suffer a botched operation to remove gallstones, and his premiership was continually dogged by ill health, necessitating three major operations.

During the war Wilkinson suffered crippling bouts of bronchial asthma, accelerated by nervous tension. She was on a cocktail of drugs and an overdose of one of them – barbiturates – contributed to her death from 'heart failure as a result of emphysema, acute bronchitis and bronchial pneumonia'. She was just fifty-five. Ernest Bevin did not die in office, like Wilkinson, but just a month after Attlee had persuaded him to step down as foreign secretary, in March 1951, because of heart problems. In some ways it was a miracle he lived until seventy – he smoked, ate and drank to excess, and his doctor once quipped that the only sound organs in his body were his feet.

Sir Stafford Cripps, by contrast, appeared to lead a puritanically healthy lifestyle, built around his vegetarianism. Yet he had long suffered from colitis, brought on by stress, and during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Attlee he would be forced into frequent absences. After leaving office in October 1950, he was eventually diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. He died in 1952, aged sixty-two.

Perhaps the saddest casualty of all was Sir Archibald Sinclair, who was ennobled as Lord Thurso in 1952. Diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure at the start of the war, he had survived it on a strict fat-free diet. But he suffered two serious strokes, in 1952 and 1959, the latter leaving him in a coma for six months. Thereafter he was permanently bed-bound until his death in 1970. His old adversary Beaverbrook proved again his capacity for private generosity and thoughtfulness when, on Sinclair's seventy-second birthday, he wrote to Lady Thurso, 'My Dear Marigold. This is a message to Archie which I ask you to read to him. He did so much over five years and worried so greatly on account of the boys who lost their lives that it is no wonder that he is now a war casualty.'

Churchill, whose extraordinary working regime and fondness for rich living might have been expected to take their toll far sooner, outlasted the majority of his colleagues. Two years after his return to Downing Street in 1951, aged seventy-seven, he suffered a life-threatening stroke that was carefully kept secret by his inner circle in alliance with the major newspaper proprietors. Even so, he soldiered on as Prime Minister for two more years. His death at the age of ninety, on 24 January 1965, prompted national mourning the like of which had never previously been seen for a prime minister.

Looking back over his time in the War Cabinet, Anthony Eden could recall 'sharp debate' and 'occasional outbursts of anger or indignation'. But his abiding memory was one of 'no continuing tension or intrigue, on the contrary respect, friendship and even affection among those who bore the chief burden. I doubt if it would have been tolerable otherwise.' Sir Archibald Sinclair wrote to Churchill on 24 May 1945, 'We have done something together in the past five years . . . For my part, I can imagine no greater honour than to have served in your war administration, which now passes not ingloriously into history.'

History must surely credit that administration not only for winning the war, but also with beginning the vital work of framing the future political and social structure of Britain.

## **REFERENCES**

AB – Maud Committee (atom bomb project)

CAB 65 – Cabinet minutes

CAB 66 – Cabinet memoranda

CAB 120/127 – Tube Alloys (atom bomb) papers

CAB 195 – Cabinet transcripts

CO – Cabinet Office

FO – Foreign Office

FRUS – Foreign Relations of the United States

HO – Home Office

INF – Ministry of Information

IWM – Imperial War Museum

NA – National Archives

PREM – Prime Minister's Office

WO – War Office

**Prologue**

p5 He seemed tired – Channon, _Diaries_ p244

p5 We had an – _Hansard_ , 7 May 1940

p6 The minister of – ibid.

p6 You have sat – ibid.

p6 This was – ibid., 8 May 1940

p7 Jackals – Reith, _Diaries_ p7

p7 It was a – Williams, _Politics Grave and Gay_ p112

p8 I thought – Dalton, _Memoirs,_ pp306–7

p8 I believe – _The Times_ , 9 May 1940

p8 The PM – Halifax, _Diaries_ p114

p8 Winston, with suitable – ibid. p115

p9 bit evasive – ibid. p116

p9 Mr Prime Minister – Williams, _A Prime Minister Remembers_ p33

p10 although not at – NA CAB 65/7

p10 I propose to – US Ambassador J. Kennedy to State Dept, Tel No 1158

p10 It was the – Channon, _Diaries_ p249

p10 Recent events – _Hull Daily Mail_ , 10 May 1940

p11 Neville is inclined – Templewood papers XII

p11 It's as hard – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p9

p11 Not at all – quoted in Prior, _When Britain Saved the West_ p43

p11 The Labour Party – Dalton, _Memoirs_ p310

p11 it would look – Dalton, _Memoirs_ p311

p12 indignant – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p97

p12 Personally, I think – ibid.

p12 calm and charming – Channon, _Diaries_ p249

p12 little effects – ibid. p240

p14 the strongest – Dalton, _Memoirs_ p312

p15 It helped some – ibid. p311

p15 The National Executive – NEC minutes, 10 May 1940

p15 If you don't – Dalton, _Memoirs_ p311

p16 He [Hitler] – _The Times_ , 11 May 1940

p17 The good clean – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p14

p17 What a moment – Bonham Carter, _Champion Redoubtable_ p212

**1 A Ministry of all the Talents**

p18 Is there a – _Hansard_ , 21 May 1936

p18 When Winston – quoted in Gilbert, _Prophet of Truth_ p741

p19 I am interested – Gilbert, _The Challenge of War_ p31

p20 He has been – Beaverbrook to J.L. Garvin, Beaverbrook papers BBK/C/140, Jan 1932

p21 the strategic – Attlee, _As It Happened_ p41

p22 Sir, we have – quoted in Hore, _Nelson's Band of Brothers_ p153

p23 I was very – Williams, _A Prime Minister Remembers_ p35

p23 was absolutely – ibid. p35

p24 It is probably – Churchill, _Their Finest Hour_ p8

p24 too old – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p12

p24 too slow – ibid.

p24 pleasant talk – Churchill, _The Gathering Storm_ p256

p25 You helped to – Williams, _A Prime Minister Remembers_ p36

p25 You have sprung – ibid. p36

p25 a glorified – ibid, p34

p26 this is a – Hunter, _Winston and Archie_ p223

p26 it didn't sound – Dalton, _Memoirs_ p311

p27 He looked ill – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p98

p28 He said, I – _Manchester Guardian_ , 23 May 1944

p28 Nevertheless, he – ibid.

p28 How filthy this – Reith, _Diaries_ p251

p29 little patience with – _Daily Mirror_ , 13 May 1940

p32 My dear Malcolm – MacDonald, _Titans & Others_ p94

p32 I want you – ibid.

p32 Did he also – ibid.

p32 Let him who – Giuseppe Guerzoni, _Garibaldi_ , Barbèra Firenze 1882, p245

p32 on account of – _Hansard_ , 13 May 1940

p33 Our leader, the – ibid.

p33 You may be – Gilbert, _Finest Hour_ p331

p34 monstrous and imbecile – James, _Churchill, Complete Speeches_ p1028, 4 May 1908

p34 Our whole nation – _Dundee Courier_ , 7 June 1915

p34 It is not – Evans, _Bevin_ , p102, speech in Swansea, Apr 1929

p34 It is imperative – Churchill papers 20/11/59–60

p36 the battle that – NA CAB 65/13, 13 May 1940

p37 Do Greenwood, Attlee – Cadogan, _Diaries_ p283

p37 there is no – Halifax, _Diaries_ p123

p37 Attlee, Greenwood – Ironside, _Diary_ p306

p38 [Bracken] sat up – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p85, 13 May 1940

p38 Humble Suggestions – Churchill papers 20/11

p42 From Lord Lloyd – Macmillan, _Blast of War_ p78

**2 'No longer two nations but one'**

p44 This red line – Horne, _To Lose A Battle_ p372

p44 I expected the – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p103

p44 impossible and – NA CAB 65/13, 18 May 1940

p45 After this – _Daily Express_ , 20 May 1940

p45 The Minister of – _Hansard_ , 22 May 1940

p45 Horny-handed – _Time_ , 3 June 1940

p46 came near to – _The Times_ , 23 May 1940

p46 British strategy – NA CAB 66/7, 25 May 1940

p47 We had to – NA CAB 65/13, 9 a.m. 26 May 1940

p47 doubted whether – NA CAB 65/13, 2 p.m. 26 May 1940

p47 Herr Hitler – ibid.

p48 Being in a – NA CAB 65/13, 4.30 p.m. 27 May 1940

p48 the suggested – ibid.

p48 If it got – ibid.

p48 increasingly opposed – ibid.

p48 I thought Winston – Halifax, _Diaries_ p142

p48 I can't work – Cadogan, _Diaries_ p291

p48 Nonsense – ibid.

p48 full of apologies – Halifax, _Diaries_ p142

p49 stunned, bewildered – Addison and Crang, _Listening to Britain_ p45

p49 public confidence – NA CAB 65/7, 11.30 a.m. 28 May 1940

p49 extremely grave – _Hansard_ , 28 May 1940

p49 The sky out – MacDonald, _Titans & Others_ p96

p50 it might be – NA CAB 65/13, 4 p.m. 28 May 1940

p50 did not feel – ibid.

p50 nothing in his – ibid.

p50 the chances of – ibid.

p50 magnificent performance – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p26

p51 We shall go – ibid. p28

p51 We had a – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p619

p52 the most unforgettable – MacDonald, _Titans & Others_ p98

p52 the only man – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p26

p52 Yes, that was – ibid.

p52 dramatic, unreal, insincere – Reith, _Diaries_ p255

p52 in reaching – NA CAB 65/13, 7 p.m. 28 May 1940

p52 evidently reinforced – Spears, _Assignment to Catastrophe_ p251

p53 I had perhaps – IWM H.S.L. Dundas interview, Cat 10159

p53 You couldn't – IWM Ron Tomlinson interview, Cat 9728

p54 We shall fight – Butler, _Art of the_ _Possible_ pp85–6

p54 our thankfulness – _Hansard_ , 4 June 1940

p55 Tours airfield – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p145

p55 Whether or not – Spears, _Assignment to Catastrophe_ p519

p55 else he could – ibid. p520

p56 I replied that – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p81

p56 dramatic gesture – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p622

p57 too gloomy – NA CAB 65/13, 15 June 1940

p57 I thought it – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p624

p57 It is an – de Gaulle, _Memoirs_ Vol. 1 p243

p58 The two Governments – NA CAB 65/7 Annex 1, 16 June 1940

p58 warm support – NA CAB 65/7, 3 p.m. 16 June

p59 with an air – Churchill, _Their Finest Hour_ p184

p59 Does he agree – Spears, _Assignment to Catastrophe_ p589

p59 He was transfigured – ibid.

p59 Who knows – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p187

p60 Some were astonished – Spears, _Assignment to Catastrophe_ p595

p61 The ships might – NA CAB 65/13, 22 June 1940

p61 We could not – NA CAB 65/7, 22 June 1940

p62 the first shot – Smith, _England's Last War Against France_ p74

p63 I leave the – _Hansard_ , 4 July 1940

p63 This is heartbreaking – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p216

p63 It will wake – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p630

**3 The Beaverbrook Effect**

p65 rammed into – quoted in Bungay, _The Most Dangerous Enemy_ p150

p66 Very few – Holland, _The Battle of Britain_ p545

p67 the complete – King, _With Malice Toward None_ p49

p67 They delighted – Bonham Carter, _Churchill As I Knew Him_ p444

p68 He [Churchill] is – Churchill Archives, Thurso papers

p70 dislocating the pattern – Low, _Autobiography_ p174

p71 I asked him – Crozier, _Off The Record_ p172

p72 Archie was – Balfour, _Wings Over Westminster_ p121

p72 Grenville lived – Taylor, _Beaverbrook_ p242

p72 diverting comedy – Menzies, _Dark and Hurrying Days_ , 7 Mar 1941

p73 It was the – Churchill Archives, Boyle papers 1E

p74 What have you – Boyle, _Poor Dear Brendan_ p256

p75 Lord Beaverbrook has – Hunter, _Winston and Archie_ p226

p75 I would like – Beaverbrook papers, BKK C/311, 4 Jan 1940

p75 By all means – ibid., 7 Jan 1940

p75 the Air Ministry – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p193, 18 June 1940

p76 Churchill treated – IWM, Ronald Melville interview, Cat 13078

p76 Churchill had – Morrison _, Autobiography_ p214

p76 the abuse – Brabazon, _The Brabazon Story_ p206

p76 [H]e receives – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p102, 15 Nov 1940

p76 Archie Sinclair – Halifax, _Diaries_ p121

p76 Max makes – Chamberlain, _Diary Letters_ p540

p77 There is one – Hunter, _Winston and Archie_ p277

p77 I am definitely – Churchill papers 20/13

p77 Better a – quoted in Len Deighton, _Fighter_ p164

p77 I earnestly trust – Hunter, _Winston and Archie_ p255

p77 I am not – Taylor, _Beaverbrook_ p443

p77 I require you – ibid.

p78 I am distressed – Beaverbrook papers BBK/D/5, 4 Sep 1940

p79 I heard the – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p261

p79 W[inston] is convinced – ibid.

p80 You lay in – Cowles, _Looking For Trouble_ p404

p81 consumed with – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p263

p81 I felt sick – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p181

p82 The Lord President – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p263

p82 Don't speak – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p182

p82 Like the Mississippi – _Hansard_ , 20 Aug 1940

p82 power . . . dogged fighting – ibid.

p83 The House would – ibid.

p83 As far as – IWM, Ronald Melville interview, Cat 13078

p84 The Air Ministry – NA CAB 66/11, 20 Aug 1940

p84 Max . . . always – Halifax, _Diaries_ p250

p84 There have been – NA CAB 66/11 'RAF Training', 20 Aug 1940

p84 We must take – NA CAB 65/14, 30 Aug 1940

p84 Our reserves – ibid.

p85 We had no – ibid.

p85 Archie came back – IWM, Ronald Melville interview, Cat 13078

p86 Everyone getting – Koa Wing, _Our Longest Days_ p44

p86 The Berliners – Shirer, _Berlin Diary_ , 26 Aug 1940

p87 First of all – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p105

**4 'A troglodyte existence'**

p88 Derrick Clewley – author interview, 10 July 2014

p91 crowds of – Maisky, _Memoirs_ p108

p92 Good old Winnie – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p185

p94 Apart from – _Hansard_ , 21 Dec 1938

p94 'YOU HAVE RECEIVED' – _Daily Worker_ , 22 Apr 1939

p95 This proposal – Wallace, _Diary_ p95 There was – _Daily Telegraph_ ,13 Sep 2009

p96 showing reluctance – NA CAB 65/9, 13 Sep 1940

p96 Even though victory – North, _The Many Not The Few_ p217

p97 This day our – Taylor, _Beaverbrook_ p448

p97 Hitler will invade – Lee, _Journal_ p60

p98 I went to – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p139

p98 If it's good – www.communist-party.org.uk

p99 episodes of this – NA CAB 65/9, 16 Sep 1940

p100 Is that the – Bennett, _John Anderson_ p253

p100 cartoon – _Daily Worker_ , 21 Sep 1940

p100 dusty, dirty – NA HO 205/40, 26 Sep 1940

p101 we must take – ibid.

p101 You will not – _Sunday Graphic_ , 20 Oct 1940

p102 not attain – Self, _Neville Chamberlain_ p443

p102 unshaken nerve – Churchill papers 2/393

p104 anything like – BBC broadcast, 3 Nov 1940

p105 promised his – _Daily Worker_ , 4 Nov 1940

p105 I do so like – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p128

p105 After I had – _Tribune_ , 28 May 1940

p106 woman triumphs – _Daily Express_ , 4 Nov 1936

p106 impressive mixture –Horsbrugh papers HSBR 2/11

p106 This has been – _Daily Express_ , 11 Oct 1940

p107 No distasteful – ibid.

p108 There seems – Wallace, _Diary_ , 11 Oct 1940

p108 undefended state – NA PREM 3/108, 7 Nov 1940

p109 I was horrified – Wheeler-Bennett, _King George VI_ p478

p109 local people – NA CAB 65/10, 18 Nov 1940

p110 mothering the city – _Daily Mirror_ , 18 Nov 1940

p110 one of the – Horsbrugh papers HSBR 2/11

p112 That's the one – Baker papers LDBA 1/63, Churchill Archives

p112 the worst of – _Evening News_ (London), 17 Dec 1940

**5 'A New Magna Carta'**

p113 The crazy villain – NA PREM 3/496/1, Jan 1941

p113 The PM promised – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p408, 25 Jan 1941

p114 the invasion – NA WO 193/141, 31 Oct 1940

p114 I always disliked – Meacham, _Franklin and Winston_ p5

p114 ruthless war – _Evening Standard_ , 10 Dec 1937

p115 Passionately though – Roosevelt, 'Fireside Chat', 3 Sep 1939

p115 How glad – Meacham, _Franklin and Winston_ p45

p115 I trust you – Churchill papers 20/14

p116 A step of – NA PREM 3/468, 17 May 1940

p117 I cannot – NA PREM 3/462/2/3

p117 We are already – NA CAB 66/10, 18 July 1940

p118 All this is – _Bases for Destroyers_ , J. Balfour papers, NA FO 800/433

p118 Only a war – quoted in Costello, _Ten Days That Saved The West_ p381

p118 Those bloody – _Bases for Destroyers_ , J. Balfour papers, NA FO 800/433

p119 an openly – quoted in Kershaw, _Fateful Choices_ p219

p119 fully aware of – NA CAB 65/14, 22 Aug 1940

p119 we ought to – ibid.

p120 American sympathy – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 14 Oct 1940

p120 We are deeply – Beaverbrook papers, BBK D/45, 15 Dec 1940

p120 Well, boys – Bennett, _King George VI_ p521

p121 I do not – NA FO 371/24249

p121 Germany does not – _The Times_ , 31 Jan 1935

p122 He was not – Lee, _Journal_ p174

p122 useless to help – NA CAB 65/10, 2 Dec 1940

p123 The moment – Churchill papers 23/4

p123 I'm terribly sorry – quoted in Cull, _Selling War_ p123

p124 it is a blow – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p130

p124 instinctive sense – _Hansard_ , 17 Dec 1940

p124 another victim – Halifax, _Diaries_ p361

p124 I had at – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p371, 13 Dec 1940

p124 knowledge of munitions – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p367, 12 Dec 1940

p125 It is an – Halifax, _Diaries_ p367

p125 I got the – Lee, _Journal_ p225

p125 The US would – Halifax, _Diaries_ p369 20 Dec 1940

p125 an opportunity – ibid. p371

p125 We still hold – _New Republic_ , 30 Dec 1940

p125 I have worked – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p130, 22 Dec 1940

p126 get rid of – FDR Library website (text of 'firehose' press conference)

p126 We must be – Roosevelt, 'Fireside Chat', 29 Dec 1940

p127 I am much – NA PREM 4/17/1, 89–91

p127 We are deeply – NA PREM 4/17/1, 77–8

p128 It was raining – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p185

p129 a man of – John Buchan, quoted in Stevenson, _A Man Called Intrepid_ p140

p129 Never have – _Hansard_ , 11 July 1940

p130 It is an – Halifax, _Diaries_ p389, 3 Feb 1941

p131 try to get – Sherwood, _White House Papers_ p237

p131 His sonorous – Chandos, _Memoirs_ pp165–6

p131 Well, Prime Minister – ibid., p165

p131 had made him – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ , 12 Jan 1941

p132 The people here – Sherwood, _White House Papers_ p244

p132 The most important – ibid., p257

p132 we should – NA CAB 65/17, 20 Feb 1941

p133 A financial problem – Halifax, _Diaries_ p402

p133 stripping us – quoted in Steil, _The Battle of Bretton Woods_ p110

p134 The Government – _Hansard_ , 12 Mar 1941

p134 Many thousands – NA FO 371/26169

p135 turned over – Library of Congress Archives, Roosevelt, 4 Nov 1939

p135 I have always – NA FO 371/26169

p135 would give – ibid.

p135 it ought not – ibid.

p136 I prefer this – ibid.

**6 'Uncle Fred's Recipe for Survival'**

p138 [I thought] it – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 18 Mar 1941

p138 It was clear – Woolton, _Memoirs_ p176

p139 Is it worse – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 12 July 1940

p139 My mail – ibid., 13 July 1940

p139 Almost all – Churchill papers 20/2

p139 I always felt – Woolton, _Memoirs_ p184

p140 Lunched with Woolton – Reith, _Diaries_ , 30 July 1940

p140 one of the – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 25 Oct 1940

p140 Churchill is not – ibid., 7 Nov 1940

p140 The Prime Minister – ibid., 28 Nov 1940

p140 saw a new – ibid., 24 Dec 1940

p141 receptive and helpful – ibid.

p141 tinge of jealousy – see Boothby, _Recollections of a Rebel_ p64

p142 woman of some – Woolton, _Memoirs_ p1

p142 Few things affected – ibid. p2

p143 very dangerous house – ibid. p30

p143 I am a – ibid.

p143 Here was an – ibid.

p144 high-powered rocket – ibid. p132

p145 It was the most – ibid. p259

p145 I made it – ibid. p171

p145 Seldom have I – _Life_ , 7 Feb 1944

p146 Lord Woolton was – Boothby, _Recollections of a Rebel_ p165

p146 A man of – Chandos, _Memoirs_ p300

p146 I made the – Woolton, _Memoirs_ p188

p147 That short morning – ibid. p189

p147 I always kept – ibid. p251

p148 The only way – ibid. p248

p151 Distressing! – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p426

p152 Arrivals Much – NA CAB 66/14, 29 Jan 1941

p152 the average round – ibid.

p153 The fire will – Crozier, _Off The Record_ p211

p153 to enable us – Churchill papers 23/9

p154 Every effort – ibid. 20/49

p154 perhaps too – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p163

p154 The issue was – Brabazon, _The Brabazon Story_ p206

p154 had not a – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p443

p154 He at once – Roskill, _Hankey Man of Secrets_ p501

p155 He burst out – ibid.

p155 The Prime Minister – _Hansard_ , 7 May 1941

p155 It was not – ibid.

p155 Never have I – Channon, _Diaries_ p303

p155 Winston . . . made – Headlam, _Parliament and Politics_ p251

p155 He went to – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p456

p156 At last he – Eden, _The Parliament Book_ p12

p156 Something bad – Mortimer, _The Longest Night_ Ch 16

p157 Satrap of the – Chandos, _Memoirs_ p223

p158 bold and bloody – Crozier, _Off The Record_ p218, 21 May 1941

p158 I do not know – Taylor, _Beaverbrook_ p471

p158 Truth to tell – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 5 June 1941

p158 as it does – Churchill papers 20/24

p158 is going to – Orwell, _Diary_ , 20 Mar 1941

p160 Hearty congratulations – quoted in Williams, _Battle of the Atlantic_ p140

p160 To celebrate – Woolton, _Memoirs_ p229

p160 flagrantly violated – _Ottawa Citizen_ , 21 June 1941

p160 There wasn't much – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 13 June 1941

p161 Cricket gives me – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 21 June 1941

**7 'Riding the dung cart'**

p162 The Prime Minister's – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p270

p162 We savoured – ibid.

p162 from every source – NA PREM 3/230/1

p163 Winant . . . suspects – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p481, 22 June 1941

p163 I was happy – Foot, _Debts of Honour_ p99

p164 Russia will assuredly – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p480

p164 I see Russian – _Yorkshire Post_ , 23 June 1941

p165 It seems grand – Koa Wing, _Our Longest Days_ p90

p165 cleverest speeches – ibid.

p165 After hearing – Maisky, _Memoirs_ p159

p165 We are next – _Daily Express_ , 23 June 1941

p165 politically Russia – NA CAB 65/22, 23 June 1941

p165 should continue – NA CAB 65/18, 23 June 1941

p166 poor, overlain – _Daily Express_ , 14 July 1941

p166 one of the – _Daily Mirror_ , 14 July 1941

p168 His best yet – Addison and Crang, _Listening to Britain_ p50

p169 had instituted – _Daily Herald_ , 26 July 1940

p169 You are bloody – _Daily Mirror_ , 19 July 1940

p170 This is spreading – NA INF 1/251, undated

p170 passed into – _Hansard_ , 23 July 1940

p170 A monster had – Duff Cooper, _Old Men Forget_ p285

p170 the enemy within – Reith, _Diaries_ p270, 6 Nov 1940

p170 they ought to – ibid.

p171 tell them exactly – _Daily Mirror_ , 27 Jan 1941

p171 I am very – Churchill papers 20/36

p171 I feel that – Nicolson to Monckton, NA INF 1/912, 13 May 1941

p172 In future – NA CAB 66/17, 21 June 1941

p172 The cabinet has – ibid., 24 June 1941

p172 The publication – ibid., 26 June 1941

p172 The Ministry of – ibid., 28 June 1941

p173 I have come – BBC broadcast, 15 July 1941

p173 He was a – Williams, _Nothing So Strange_ p165

p174 Here is a – Kennedy, _The Business of War_ p80

p174 They quarrelled – Boyle, _Poor Dear Brendan_ p250

p174 He had the – Selborne papers, Bodleian Library, 23 July 1941

p174 I hope that – _Hansard_ , 28 July 1939

p175 I am a – _Daily Mirror_ , 24 July 1941

p175 drill sergeant – Lord Birkenhead, quoted in Lysaght, _Brendan Bracken_ p218

p175 he seems to – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p183, 29 July 1941

p176 The result was – Tree, _When The Moon Was High_ p173

p176 I should be – NA INF 1/869, 17 May 1940

p176 in wartime – _Hansard_ , 23 Oct 1941

p177 What is the – _Hansard_ , 11 Sep 1940

p178 There must be – NA CAB 66/23, 10 Apr 1942

p178 You know perfectly – NA INF 1/859, 2 June 1942

p179 Make sure you – Churchill papers 20/36

p179 Beaverbrook has – Sherwood, _Roosevelt and Hopkins_ p391

p180 both racketeers – Liddell Hart papers, King's College, LH/11/1942/14

p180 We had got – Sherwood, _Roosevelt and Hopkins_ p388

p180 Stalin must be – BBC, 9 p.m. 29 Oct 1941

p181 Bevin was the – Macmillan, _Blast of War_ p128

p181 Bevin said the – Reith, _Diaries_ p270, 14 Nov 1940

p182 What a wonderful – IWM, Trevor Evans interview, Cat 2764

p182 very _unsafe_ – Leasor, _War at The Top_ p110

p182 Lord Beaverbrook – quoted in Taylor, _Beaverbrook_ p499

p182 I would serve – Beaverbrook papers, BBK/C/85-87

p183 I do not – Churchill papers 20/12

p183 I have done – Beaverbrook papers, BBK/C/85-87

p183 Dear Ernie – ibid. BBK/C/38

p183 Dear Max – ibid.

p184 sorry that I – ibid.

p185 working on the – _Hansard_ , 2 Dec 1941

p185 I would rather – ibid., 4 Dec 1941

p185 The best speech – Headlam, _Parliament and Politics_ p282, 4 Dec 1941

p185 A stirring call – _Daily Mirror,_ 3 Dec 1941

p185 After twenty-seven – _Yorkshire Post_ , 3 Dec 1941

p186 Today all of – Churchill papers 20/46, 8 Dec 1941

p186 In the past – _Hansard_ , 8 Dec 1941

p186 The next few – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p753, 7 Dec 1941

p186 I could not – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p286

**8 'The Ascendancy of Stafford Cripps'**

p188 It is almost – _Western Daily Press_ , 9 Feb 1942

p189 Your individual effort – _Daily Mirror_ , 9 Feb 1942

p189 Last night he – _Gloucester Citizen_ , 9 Feb 1942

p190 had always been – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p539

p190 A lunatic – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1939–41_ p368, 12 Dec 1940

p191 Stafford saw – Thomson, _Vote of Censure_ p79

p191 they should vanish – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p242

p192 very much older – NA CO 967/77, 18 Dec 1941

p193 both Mr Attlee – Harvie-Watt, _Most of My Life_ p69

p194 coronary insufficiency – Moran, _Churchill At War_ p18

p194 Events have – _Daily Mirror_ , 18 Dec 1941

p194 We hear of – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 11 Jan 1942

p194 There is no – Headlam, _Diary_ p289, 22 Jan 1942

p195 He said there – Harvie-Watt, _Most of My Life_ p73

p195 wrapped up – _Hansard_ , 29 Jan 1942

p195 It is not – _Hansard_ , 27 Jan 1942

p196 I say that – ibid.

p196 We have passed – _Yorkshire Post_ , 5 Feb 1942

p196 For an imaginative – _Spectator_ , 5 Feb 1942

p196 There must – Churchill Papers 20/70

p196 so long as – ibid.

p197 Owing to losses – ibid. 20/73

p197 heavy and – BBC Written Archives Centre, 15 Feb 1942

p197 It was a – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 15 Feb 1942

p197 Unfortunately he – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p211

p197 because he didn't – Harvie-Watt, _Most of My Life_ p78

p197 Bracken now knows – Harvey, _War Diaries_ p94, 12 Feb 1942

p198 We are in – Templewood papers, Feb 1942

p198 If I were – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 13 Feb 1942

p198 Mr Bevin has – _Daily Mirror_ , 11 Feb 1942

p198 leave Lord B – Baroness Spencer-Churchill papers, 12 Feb 1942

p198 I have reached – Churchill, _The Hinge of Fate_ p67

p199 He could have – Crozier, _Off the Record_ p298, 20 Feb 1942

p199 for the first – _Time_ , 23 Feb 1942

p200 Hide them – National Gallery Archives, Kenneth Clark letters

p200 Because London's face – _The Times_ , 3 Jan 1942

p201 seditious Middle Temple – Gilbert, _Prophet of Truth_ p390

p201 Invite Herr Hitler – _Harijan_ , 6 Jul 1942

p201 for an act – NA CAB 66/21, 2 Feb 1942

p202 temporary dominion – FRUS p615, 10 Mar 1942

p202 post-dated cheque – Taylor, _English History 1914–45_ , p545

p203 The truth is – Harvey, _War Diaries_ p116

p203 We have done – Churchill Papers 20/73

p204 mystery man – _Daily Express_ , 12 June 1942

p204 I don't know – Maisky, _Memoirs_ p267

p205 skilful handling – NA CAB 65/30, 26 May 1942

p205 full understanding – _Hansard_ , 11 June 1942

p205 as keen and – _Western Daily Press_ , 22 June 1942

p205 Cripps was annoyed – Morrison, _Autobiography_ , p215

p206 the War Cabinet – _Hansard_ , 20 May 1942

p206 There must be – _Daily Express_ , 4 May 1942

p206 uncompromisingly – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p225, 3 May 1942

p206 I cannot help – Orwell, _Diary_ , 7 June 1942

p207 a very large – NA PREM 3/11/4, 20 May 1942

p207 The British are – Goebbels, _Diaries_ p186, 26 Apr 1942

p207 there was little – NA CAB 65/26, 1 June 1942

p208 [The] German responds – ibid.

p208 likely news for – ibid.

p208 The news from – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 15 June 1942

**9 'Ringing the bells of victory'**

p209 Tobruk has – Churchill, _The Hinge of Fate_ p343

p209 What can we – Ismay, _Memoirs_ p255

p210 defeatist attitude – NA CAB 65/30, 21 June 1942

p210 When General – ibid.

p210 Of course there – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p332

p211 Undoubtedly the – Headlam, _Diary_ p321, 23 June 1942

p211 This wicked – _Yorkshire Post_ , 29 June 1942

p212 It is being – Harvie-Watt papers, 25 June 1942

p212 too many committees – _Hansard_ , 1 July 1942

p213 one object – ibid.

p214 The country is – ibid.

p214 bitter animosity – ibid., 2 July 1942

p215 Winston wound up – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p332

p215 the House was – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 2 July 1942

p215 Your presence – Amery, _Approach March_ pp308–9

p215 a sparrow and – Beaverbrook papers BBK/C/307-308

p216 He is the – Churchill, _The Hinge of Fate_ p337

p216 I had to – Attlee Collection, Bodleian Library, 9 Aug 1942

p217 PM now away – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p211, 15 Dec 1941

p217 Attlee . . . does – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p828, 17 Aug 1942

p217 No one – quoted in Crowcroft, _Attlee's War_ p137

p217 would prefer – _Hansard_ , 28 July 1942

p217 He gives me – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p477, 19 Aug 1942

p218 I am a good – quoted in Harris, _Attlee_ pp585–8

p219 to withdraw our – Churchill Papers 20/67

p219 scourge the Third – _Daily Mirror_ , 29 July 1942

p219 immense advantages – NA PREM 3/76A/1, 29 July 1942

p220 Winston was – Tedder, _With Prejudice_ p320

p221 I fear – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p339

p221 I issued orders – Montgomery, _Memoirs_ p100

p222 our intention – NA CAB 127/23, 12 Aug 1942

p222 This is the – NA PREM 3/76A/9, 13 Aug 1942

p222 meet the hand – ibid.

p223 I do not – quoted in Sherwood, _Roosevelt and Hopkins_ p620

p223 It is my – NA PREM 3/76A/9, 14 Aug 1942

p223 the greatest – ibid., 16 Aug 1942

p223 something could be – NA CAB 127/23, 12 Aug 1942

p224 lessons learned – NA CAB 65/31, 6 p.m. 20 Aug 1942

p224 reflected the – ibid.

p224 I don't think – Halifax, _Diaries_ p677

p224 The air support – NA CAB 65/31, 20 Aug 1942

p225 My general – Churchill Papers 20/87

p225 As executed – quoted in North, _Inappropriate Conduct_

p225 He takes a – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p478

p225 The casualties – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p317

p225 Stalingrad is in – Grossman, _A Writer At War_ p125

p226 I would leave – NA CAB 195/1, 10 Aug 1942

p227 Stafford Cripps' shares – _Champion Redoubtable_ p241

p227 This has enraged – Nicolson, _Diaries_ p241

p227 Why encourage – NA CAB 195/1, 9 Sep 1942

p227 I do not – NA CAB 127/85

p227 surprised and – Churchill Papers 20/54

p228 The first hour – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p342

p228 If 'Torch' failed – ibid. p343

p228 You have not – Churchill Papers 20/56

p228 If 'Torch' fails – Harvey, _War Diaries_ p165

p229 one of the – NA CAB 65/30, 9 Nov 1942

p229 It is the – ibid.

p229 thus breaking – _Hansard_ , 11 Nov 1942

p229 He switched – Morrison, _Autobiography_ p216

p230 very skilfully – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p522

p230 withdrawal from – _The Times_ , 23 Nov 1942

p230 working up – NA CAB 195/1, 16 Nov 1942

p230 It was a – ibid.

p230 US reaction – NA CAB 195/1, 18 Nov 1942

p230 When opinion – ibid.

**10 'Slaying the five giants'**

p232 Freedom from want – _Social Insurance and Allied Services_ , HMSO 1942, p461

p233 The European House – _The Times_ , 1 July 1940

p234 kicked upstairs – Harris, _William Beveridge_ p376

p235 The state in – _Social Insurance and Allied Services_ , pp6–7

p235 All social insurance – _Daily Mirror_ , 2 Dec 1942

p235 If not – NA PREM 3/168/7B, 8–15 Dec 1942

p235 People in – ibid.

p236 The younger – Harvie-Watt papers, 3 Dec 1942

p236 brilliance and – quoted in Harris, _William Beveridge_ p139

p236 If you are – ibid.

p237 an awful windbag – Harvie-Watt, _Most of My Life_ p117

p237 May he bring – ibid. p127

p237 A dangerous – NA CAB 65/33, 12 Jan 1943

p238 Can you spare – NA PREM 4/89/2, 30 Jan 1943

p238 Man cannot live – _Daily Mirror_ , 16 Feb 1943

p238 bringing the magic – NA CAB 66/34, 15 Feb 1943

p239 I doubt whether – Attlee papers 2/2, undated

p239 If the PM's line – NA CAB 195/2, 15 Feb 1943

p239 Our first promise – ibid.

p240 If we accept – ibid.

p240 is indeed a – _Hansard_ , 16 Feb 1943

p241 [The] general – NA CAB 195/2, 17 Feb 1943

p241 fought like a – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p554

p241 [I] didn't come – NA CAB 195/2, 17 Feb 1943

p241 peril to financial – ibid.

p241 If we said – ibid.

p242 My plan was – ibid.

p242 classed as a – ibid., 18 Feb 1943

p242 The Beveridge Plan – _Hansard_ , 18 Feb 1943

p243 not to make – _The Times_ , 22 Mar 1943

p244 bringing the magic – ibid.

p244 It was a – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 21 Mar 1943

p244 proclamation of – _The Times_ , 22 Mar 1943

p244 We refused to – NA CAB 66/38, 26 June 1943

p245 Not a step – Stalin's Order No. 227, 28 July 1942

p246 He is trying – quoted in Karsten Friedrich, _The Cruel Slaughter_ p171

p247 could not recall – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p358

p247 reliable reports – _Hansard_ , 17 Dec 1942

p247 eloquent and just – ibid.

p247 Is it possible – ibid.

p247 We stood for – Channon, _Diaries_ p347

p248 whole districts being – Churchill papers 9/152

p248 The Pole – NA FO 371/26515, 19 Nov 1941

p248 called to solve – Berenbaum, _The Holocaust in History_ p42

p249 I can assure – _The Times_ , 10 July 1942

p250 most bestial – _Hansard_ , 8 Sep 1942

p250 ferocity . . . with – ibid., 7 Oct 1942

p250 At first it – introduction to ITV's _The World At War_ , 'Genocide', 1973

p251 did not underestimate – Lambeth Palace Library, Temple papers 54/135

p251 There are many – NA CAB 66/29, 23 Sep 1942

p252 I have seen – _Hansard_ , 19 June 1936

p252 I ask honourable – ibid., 23 May 1939

p253 the only real – ibid., 19 Jan 1943

p253 Of the six – Gollancz, _Let My People Go_ p1, emphasis original

p254 Fourth Horseman – _Yorkshire Post_ , 15 Mar 1943

p255 public opinion – quoted in Wasserstein, _Britain and the Jews_ p187

p255 There has been – NA CAB 195/2, 22 Feb 1943

p255 If we do – FRUS, 27 Mar 1943

p256 To 5,000,000 – _New York Times_ , 4 May 1943

p256 [It was] encouraging – NA CAB 195/2, 10 May 1943

p256 that when you – ibid.

p257 rate of extermination – _Hansard_ , 19 May 1943

p257 breathed the very – ibid.

p257 All I can – ibid.

p258 I know some – ibid.

p258 painful and – _The Times_ , 20 May 1943

p258 We have had – _Manchester Guardian_ , 20 May 1943

**11 'A grand job to be done for the nation'**

p260 growing size – _Hansard_ , 3 June 1943

p261 The Navy – NA CAB 66/11, 3 Sep 1940

p261 the defeat of – quoted in Terraine, _The Right of the Line_ p441

p262 I cannot mention – _Daily Express_ , 21 July 1943

p263 a fair, honest – ibid.

p263 My boy did – ibid.

p263 I was afraid – _Hansard_ 28 May 1941

p263 This Government – _Daily Express_ , 24 June 1941

p265 a sort of – Orwell, _Road to Wigan Pier_ p18

p266 anti-war people – _Birmingham Daily Post_ , 2 Oct 1943

p266 I am convinced – NA CAB 66/41, 7 Oct 1943

p267 The principle – _Hansard_ , 13 Oct 1943

p267 It is clear – ibid.

p267 There's a grand – _Gloucestershire Echo_ , 12 Nov 1943

p267 We were deeply – Longmate, _How We Lived Then_ p202

p269 the Labour wing – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p942, 21 Sep 1943

p270 I think you – Howard, _Rab_ p109

p270 I hope our – _The Times_ , 22 Mar 1943

p270 frightful row – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p657, 21 Oct 1943

p271 the formulation – NA CAB 65/40, 14 Oct 1943

p271 'Need for Decisions' – ibid.

p271 to see if – Chuter Ede, _Labour and the Wartime Coalition_ p147

p271 There were obvious – NA CAB 65/40, 14 Oct 1943

p271 although not fully – ibid.

p272 any decisions – NA CAB 66/42, 19 Oct 1943

p272 between light – Lascelles, _King's Counsellor_ p172

p272 Very great – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p655

p273 He seemed to – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 1 Nov 1943

p273 all the experience – ibid.

p273 quite a row – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ , 3 Nov 1943

p273 People are – Woolton, _Diaries_ , 12 Nov 1943

p274 Truth deserved – Gilbert, _Road to Victory_ p586

p274 Read that – Moran, _Churchill At War_ p175

p275 The quandary – Donoughue and Jones, _Herbert Morrison_ p222

p275 I highly approve – NA PREM 4/39/5

p275 would weaken – NA CAB 65/40, 17 Nov 1943

p275 strongly critical – NA PREM 4/39/5

p275 We have had – ibid.

p275 You will have – ibid.

p276 You are the – ibid.

p276 If the Labour – ibid.

p276 I said he – Moran, _Churchill at War_ p176

p276 embodiment of – NA PREM 4/39/5

p277 most valiant – ibid.

p277 retard the war – _Hansard_ , 1 Dec 1943

p277 If U.J – NA PREM 4/39/5

p277 I am sure – ibid.

p278 Everything should – NA PREM 4/39/5

p278 industry, commerce – London Passenger Transport Act 1933

p279 I went to – Chuter Ede, _Labour and the Wartime Coalition_ p160, 31 Dec 1943

p279 Have we not – _Hansard_ , 2 Dec 1943

p280 Uncle Ernie – information from Liz Todd

p280 All we want – ibid.

p281 This cap fits! – _Daily Mirror_ , 15 Dec 1943

p281 lest she should – Evans, _Bevin_ p197

p281 It doesn't seem – _Daily Worker_ , 4 Dec 1943

p281 The young miner – _Hansard_ , 17 Dec 1943

p281 These youths – ibid.

p281 We devised this – ibid.

**12 'Should we tell the Russians?'**

p282 I very much – NA CAB 65/40, 14 Dec 1943

p283 As I sat – Moran, _Churchill At War_ p185

p283 Lord Moran – Macmillan, _War Diaries_ p327

p283 some of them – Moran, _Churchill At War_ p186

p283 The Prime Minister – _Hansard_ , 16 Dec 1943

p283 The circumstances – _The Times_ , 19 Dec 1943

p283 In the event – Cecil King, _With Malice Toward None_ p237

p284 the great retreat – _Daily Express_ , 31 Dec 1943

p284 I am sick – Koa Wing, _Our Longest Days_ p198

p286 met the full – Woolton, _Memoirs_ p298

p287 If the Conservatives – Woolton papers, 10 Feb 1944

p288 much annoyance – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1941–55_ p97, 5 Mar 1944

p288 I hope – _Hansard_ , 17 Mar 1944

p289 The amendment – Chuter Ede, _Labour and the Wartime Coalition_ p179

p289 In this great – _Hansard_ , 30 Mar 1944

p289 paid a handsome – Butler, _Art of the Possible_ p122

p290 won a lasting – ibid.

p290 very bold – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p747

p290 A magnificent – ibid.

p290 it is a document – NA CAB 66/50, 16 May 1944

p290 the Government – NA CAB 65/42

p291 In the post-war – ibid.

p291 Shallow, empty-headed – Foot, _Aneurin Bevan_ p413

p291 My own feeling – Moggridge, _Keynes_ p709

p291 Govt plans – _Daily Mirror_ , 27 May 1944

p291 Irrespective of – quoted in _Social Security Bulletin_ p22, Sep 1944

p291 whenever the – _Yorkshire Post_ , 27 May 1944

p292 It's not a matter – _Dundee Evening Telegraph_ , 18 May 1944

p292 It is the – _Hansard_ , 25 May 1944

p292 What has – _Daily Express_ , 5 Apr 1944

p293 magnifying in – _Hansard_ , 28 Apr 1944

p294 Well, we are – _Onward_ magazine, Apr 1954

p294 Is it in order – _Hansard_ , 31 Oct 1939

p295 Anderson is the – James, _Victor Cazalet_ p273

p295 friendly power – Sir John Anderson papers

p296 super bomb – NA AB 1/210, Mar 1940

p297 Although personally – quoted in Gowing, _Britain and Atomic Energy_ p106

p297 strongly in – NA HO 205/240, 2 Sep 1940

p298 specious air – Gowing, _Britain and Atomic Energy_ p109

p299 We should soon – NA CAB 127/201

p299 It has now – NA HO 205/240

p299 to renew a – Hewlett and Anderson, _The New World 1939–46_ p274

p299 to bring the – NA CAB 127/201

p300 we had signed – Jones, _Most Secret War_ p474

p301 it no longer – NA PREM 3/139/2

p302 I cannot help – ibid.

p302 I do not think – ibid.

p302 He seemed to – Jones, _Most Secret War_ p477

p302 made no difference – ibid.

p303 It will be – quoted in Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ p530

p304 Halt! Who goes – _Heritage Railway_ no. 201, Apr–May 2015

p304 You'll look after – Bullock, _Life and Times of Ernest Bevin_ p318

**13 'Buzz bombs and flying gas mains'**

p306 proceeding in a – _Hansard_ , 6 June 1944

p307 I ask my – quoted in the _Guardian_ , 5 Jan 2000

p307 messianic complex – ibid.

p307 removal of – NA CAB 65/42

p307 get this – Lacouture, _De Gaulle_ p521

p308 effective civil – _Sarasota Herald-Tribune_ , 6 June 1944

p308 I do not think – NA FO 954/9, 31 May 1944

p308 I am absolutely – ibid., 6 June 1944

p308 If the President – ibid.

p308 France may go – ibid.

p309 I was accused – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p455

p309 encourage the – NA CAB 65/42, 7 June 1944

p309 There is still – NA FO 954/9, 13 June 1944

p310 The bombardment – Trevor-Roper, _Hitler's War Directives_ p239

p311 I have the – Lindemann papers G410/1

p311 comparatively insignificant – ibid. G420/23

p312 unprecedented strain – NA CAB 66/58, 16 Nov 1943

p313 Dr Goebbels – _Hansard_ , 23 June 1944

p313 It's ridiculous – _Daily Express_ , 1 July 1944

p313 jeering references – NA CAB 66/51, 27 June 1944

p313 [It was] a pathetic – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p563

p314 the threat is – ibid. p565

p314 I saw 'C' – Liddell, _Diaries_ p223

p315 Except, possibly – _Daily Mirror_ , 8 Sep 1944

p315 His account – NA PREM 3/111A, 7 Sep 1944

p316 any steps – _Hansard_ , 5 July 1944

p317 matter was still – quoted in Gilbert, _Auschwitz_ pp268–9

p317 that the railway – ibid.

p317 On no account – NA PREM 4/51/10, 7 July 1944

p317 Could you let – NA FO 371/42809/142, 7 July 1944

p317 It is out – ibid., 15 July 1944

p318 He wasn't – ibid., 16 July 1944

p318 The reasons – NA FO 371/42814, 16 Aug 1944

p319 in view of – quoted in Wasserstein, _Britain and the Jews_ p317

p319 The armies – _Daily Express_ , 8 Sep 1944

p320 That's the first – Jones, _Most Secret War_ p459

p322 There is no – _Hansard_ , 10 Nov 1944

p323 There were – _The Times_ , 11 Nov 1944

p323 If I'm going – private information

p323 What depresses me – _Tribune_ , 1 Dec 1944

p324 Just strip it – Blum, _Morgenthau Diaries_ p327

p324 to converting Germany – ibid. pp371–2

p324 It was as – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p476

p325 The suggestion – NA CAB 127/201

p326 naughty document – NA CAB 120/158

p326 Might it not – Churchill, _Triumph and Tragedy_ p198

p326 would be considered – ibid. pp201–5

p327 the system of – Gilbert, _Road to Victory_ p1004

p327 Reconstruction Committee – Butler papers G16, 8 Sep 1944

p327 a solid mass – NA PREM 4/88/1, 20 Nov 1944

p328 the Government – NA INF 1/292, Oct 1944

p329 building arbitrator – Reith, _Diaries_ p267, 6 Oct 1940

p329 fundamentally – quoted in Jefferys, _The Churchill Coalition_ p178

p329 It revealed – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p1016

p330 threatened trouble – Chuter Ede, _Labour and the Wartime Coalition_ p191

p330 Anderson had – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p797, 23 Oct 1944

**14 'A light shining on every helmet'**

p331 that the position – NA CAB 65/48, 11 Dec 1944

p332 the seeds of – _The Times_ , 4 Dec 1944

p333 Do not hesitate – Churchill papers 20/176, 5 Dec 1944

p333 We expect the – FRUS Vol 3 p1162, 5 Dec 1944

p333 as Hitler – _Hansard_ , 8 Dec 1944

p333 Democracy is no – ibid.

p334 put our case – NA CAB 65/48, 13 Dec 1944

p334 utilization of – _Daily Express_ , 13 Dec 1944

p334 If we win – ibid.

p335 Ernest Bevin's – NA FO 954/11, 14 Dec 1944

p335 I won't install – Cadogan, _Diaries_ p689, 21 Dec 1944

p335 We often heard – ibid.

p336 When we entered – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p501

p336 We want – Moran, _Churchill at War_ p258

p336 Prime Minister – Greek NLF 'White Book', <http://www.redstarpublishers.org>

p336 whose bows – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1941–55_ p181

p336 W was very – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p502

p338 ghastly – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p641

p338 they need not – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p1023

p338 What happens – Attlee papers Atle 2/2

p339 Greatly as I – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1941–55_ p192, 20 Jan 1945

p339 Attlee's quite right – ibid.

p339 I admire Mr – quoted in Wrigley, _Winston Churchill_ p34

p339 very good – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1941–55_ p193, 21 Jan 1945

p339 My Dear – Gilbert, _Road to Victory_ p1156

p339 At 5.30 – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p648

p340 Our attention – Taylor, _Beaverbrook_ p558

p341 She controls – NA CAB 195/3, 6 Mar 1945

p341 When family – _Hansard_ , 8 Mar 1945

p342 petty vindictiveness – Bullock, _Life and Times of Ernest Bevin_ p378

p342 Our Socialist – _Daily Express_ , 16 Mar 1945

p343 He's all right – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p852, 19 Apr 1945

p343 which had – _Yorkshire Post_ , 9 Apr 1945

p343 big business – ibid.

p343 I can hardly – _Daily Express_ , 10 Apr 1945

p344 The minister of – _Hansard_ , 10 Apr 1945

p345 The change of – NA CAB 195/3, 10 Mar 1945

p345 Altogether our – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p525

p345 Many of those – NA CAB 195/3, 28 Mar 1945

p345 I'm concerned – ibid.

p345 indispensable reinforcement – ibid.

p346 Allied air – Associated Press, 18 Feb 1945

p346 This is entirely – King, _With Malice Toward None_ p290

p347 Allied air bombing – _Hansard_ , 6 Mar 1945

p347 Is terror bombing – ibid.

p347 the primary – Webster and Frankland, _Strategic Air Offensive_ p323

p348 I am all – De Groot, _Sinclair_ p190

p348 delighted to find – ibid.

p348 WSC suddenly – Gilbert, _Road To Victory_ p437

p348 It seems to – Webster and Frankland, _Strategic Air Offensive_ p112

p349 basting the – Air Historical Branch file, Freeman minute, 26 Jan 1945

p349 It seems to – Webster and Frankland, _Strategic Air Offensive_ p112

p350 direct support – Portal to Harris, Air Historical Branch file, 16 Apr 1945

p350 profound sorrow – NA CAB 65/50, 13 Apr 1945

p350 I felt like – Truman Library website, 'Senate to the White House'

p351 too late to see – NA PREM 4/100/11, 19 Apr 1945

p351 Some people – British Pathé News, May 1945

p351 There is – _The Spectator_ , 3 May 1945

p351 document of – NA CAB 66/64, 9 Apr 1945

p351 It mixes – NA CAB 195/3, 12 Apr 1945

p352 All major – ibid.

p352 fallen at his – _Daily Express_ 2 May 1945

p352 Well, I must – Colville, _Fringes of Power 1941–55_ p242

p352 remained completely – Alanbrooke, _War Diaries_ p686

p352 negotiate with – NA CAB 195/3, 3 May 1945

p352 Don't quibble – ibid.

p354 looked forward – _Yorkshire Post_ , 9 May 1945

p354 No, Sir – Wheeler-Bennett, _John Anderson_ p314

p354 hearty thanks – _Hansard_ , 8 May 1945

p355 This is your – _Yorkshire Post_ , 9 May 1945

p355 I cannot think – _Hansard_ , 31 Oct 1944

p356 we must look – ibid.

p356 preferably until – Butler, _Art of the Possible_ p126

p356 The coalition – _The Economist_ , 24 Mar 1945

p357 instalment of – _Daily Mirror_ , 21 Apr 1945

p357 create such fear – _Daily Express_ , 23 Apr 1945

p358 Nobody with – _Observer_ , 20 May 1945

p358 In the meanwhile – Harris, _Attlee_ p250

p359 I could not – Williams, _A Prime Minister Remembers_ p64

p360 Winston was – Macmillan, _War Diaries_ p762

p360 I regret the – _Daily Express_ , 23 May 1945

p361 This has been – _The Times_ , 24 May 1945

p361 No-one can – _Yorkshire Post_ , 24 May 1945

p361 all British – ibid., 25 May 1945

p362 Clem Attlee – Chandos, _Memoirs_ p323

p362 nothing so – Chuter Ede, _Labour and the Wartime Coalition_ p221

p362 were capable of – ibid.

p362 surely been – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p865

p362 How can you – Chuter Ede, _Labour and the Wartime Coalition_ p221

p362 we had given – ibid.

p363 We'd better – Dalton, _Second World War Diary_ p865

**Postscript**

p364 What about the – _Adelaide Advertiser_ , 28 May 1945

p364 They call us – ibid.

p365 socialism is – _Daily Express_ , 5 June 1945

p365 It was – _Evening Standard_ , 5 June 1945

p365 This broadcast – _Daily Herald_ , 5 June 1945

p365 I realised – _Daily Mirror_ , 6 June 1945

p366 A fantastical – Amery, _Empire at Bay_ p1046, 4 June 1945

p367 Seldom has an – _Time_ , 6 Aug 1945

p367 new weapon – Harry S. Truman, _Years of Decisions_ p242

p368 It has been – Dixon, _Double Diploma_ p178

p368 It is the biggest – _Evening Standard_ , 7 Aug 1945

p368 we've got to – quoted in Hennessy, _Cabinets and the Bomb_ p48

p369 financial Dunkirk – NA CAB 128-1, 23 Aug 1945

p369 There is one – _Hansard_ , 29 Nov 1944

p370 What were – quoted in Addison, _Road to 1945_ p284

p372 heart failure – _Lancashire Evening Post_ , 28 Feb 1947

p373 My Dear – Beaverbrook papers BBK/C/ 311

p373 sharp debate – Eden, _The Reckoning_ p552

p373 We have done – Hunter, _Winston and Archie_ p419

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## **INDEX**

1941 Committee ref1

Acland, Richard ref1

Adamson, Janet ref1

Afrika Korps ref1, ref2

Air Ministry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

air raid shelters ref1, ref2, ref3

Anderson shelters ref1, ref2

deep shelters ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

health and sanitation ref1, ref2

London Underground ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Morrison shelters ref1

aircraft production ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Akers, Wallace ref1

Alexander, A.V. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15

Alexander, General Sir Harold ref1, ref2, ref3

Amery, Julian ref1

Amery, Leo ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17

Anderson, Sir John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32

anti-Semitism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

appeasement ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

artworks, wartime storage of ref1

Asquith, Herbert Henry ref1, ref2, ref3

Assheton, Ralph ref1

Astor, Lady ref1

Atlantic Charter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

atom bomb project ref1, ref2, ref3

Attlee, Clement ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41, ref42, ref43, ref44, ref45, ref46, ref47, ref48, ref49, ref50, ref51, ref52, ref53, ref54, ref55, ref56, ref57, ref58, ref59

appointed to coalition government ref1

background and early life ref1

Deputy Prime Minister ref1

and post-war reconstruction ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

Auchinleck, General Claude ref1, ref2, ref3

Auschwitz-Birkenau ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Baker, John Fleetwood ref1

Baker-Cresswell, Capt Joseph ref1

Baldwin, Hanson ref1

Baldwin, Stanley ref1, ref2

Balfour, Harold ref1, ref2

Barnett, Charlie ref1

Battle of the Atlantic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Battle of Britain ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Battle of the Bulge ref1

Battle of Cable Street ref1

Battle of France ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Battle of the Ruhr ref1

Battle of Tyneside ref1

BBC ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

European Service ref1, ref2

Beaumont-Nesbitt, Major-General Frederick ref1

Beaverbrook, Lord ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38

background ref1

feud with Bevin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

feud with Sinclair ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

friendship with Churchill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Lord Privy Seal ref1

management style ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Minister of Aircraft Production ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Ministry of Supply ref1, ref2

and post-war reconstruction ref1, ref2, ref3

Belgium, invasion of ref1, ref2, ref3

Bell, George ref1

Benstead, John ref1

Bensusan-Butt, David ref1

Berkeley, Captain ref1

Berlin, air attacks on ref1, ref2

Bermuda conference ref1

Bevan, Aneurin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Beveridge, Sir William ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

Beveridge Report ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

'Bevin Boys' ref1

Bevin, Ernest ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40

and the coal crisis ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

feud with Beaverbrook ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

feud with Morrison ref1

joins coalition government ref1, ref2

Minister of Labour ref1

and post-war reconstruction ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Bird, Cyril ref1

Bletchley Park ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Blitz ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

'Little Blitz' ref1

_see also_ air raid shelters

Bock, General Fedor von ref1

Bohr, Niels ref1, ref2, ref3

bombing campaigns

area bombardment ref1, ref2, ref3

Blitz ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

first attack on English mainland ref1

moral justification and military rationale ref1, ref2, ref3

'thousand bomber raids' ref1

Bondfield, Margaret ref1

Bonham Carter, Violet ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Boothby, Robert ref1

Bracken, Brendan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22

Bradley, Lt General Omar ref1

Brand, Joel ref1

Brand, Robert ref1

Bridges, Sir Edward ref1, ref2

British Expeditionary Force ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

British Purchasing Commission ref1

British Restaurants ref1

Brook, Norman ref1

Brooke, General Sir Alan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12

Brooke-Popham, Sir Robert ref1

Brown, Ernest ref1, ref2

Buchan, John ref1

Buchenwald ref1, ref2

Buckingham Palace, bombing of ref1

Burke, Edmund ref1

Bush, Dr Vannevar ref1

Butler, Nevile ref1

Butler, Rab ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12

Butskellism ref1

Cabinet War Rooms ref1, ref2, ref3

Cadogan, Sir Alexander ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Caldecote, Viscount ref1, ref2

Calder, Ritchie ref1

Campbell, Sir Ronald ref1

Campbell-Bannerman, Henry ref1

Casablanca conference ref1

Casey, Richard ref1

Catto, Lord ref1

Cazalet, Victor ref1, ref2

Century Group ref1

Chamberlain, Austen ref1

Chamberlain, Joseph ref1

Chamberlain, Neville ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25

illness and death ref1, ref2

member of coalition government ref1

resignation as Prime Minister ref1

Channon, Henry 'Chips' ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Chautemps, Camille ref1

Cherwell, Lord (earlier, Sir Frederick Lindemann) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22

Chief of Staffs Committee ref1

Churchill, Clementine ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Churchill, Randolph ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Churchill, Winston

appointed Prime Minister ref1, ref2

and the atom bomb project ref1, ref2

belligerent attitude towards the media ref1, ref2

black moods ref1

critic of socialism ref1, ref2, ref3

criticisms of war management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Dardanelles campaign ref1, ref2, ref3

death of ref1

early reforming instincts ref1, ref2

forms coalition government ref1, ref2, ref3

health problems ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

historic enmity towards the Air Ministry ref1

'judgement', distrust of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

leader of the Conservative Party ref1

loses the General Election ref1

Minister of Defence ref1, ref2

noblesse oblige ideal ref1

opposes appeasement ref1, ref2, ref3

opposes a negotiated peace ref1, ref2

parliamentary career ref1, ref2

parliamentary speeches ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

political vision ref1

on post-war planning ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

radio broadcasts ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Chuter Ede, James ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Ciano, Galeazzo ref1

Cicero ref1

Citrine, Walter ref1

civilian morale ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

German ref1, ref2

Clark, Kenneth ref1

Clark, General Mark ref1

Clark Kerr, Sir Archibald ref1

Clewley, Derrick ref1

Cluse, William Sampson ref1

coal ballot ref1, ref2

coal crisis ref1, ref2, ref3

coalition government

coalition-building ref1, ref2, ref3

disbandment ref1, ref2

diversity ref1, ref2

_see also_ War Cabinet

Cocks, Seymour ref1

code-breaking ref1, ref2, ref3

Colville, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

Combined Intelligence Committee ref1

Compton, Denis ref1

Compton, E.G. ref1

Connor, William ('Cassandra') ref1, ref2, ref3

conscription ref1

convoys, attacks on ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Cooke, Alistair ref1

Coventry, bombing of ref1

Cowan, Howard ref1

Cowles, Virginia ref1

Cranborne, Lord ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Cripps, Charles (Lord Parmoor) ref1

Cripps, Sir Stafford ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16

Cromwell, Oliver ref1

Crookshank, Henry ref1

Crozier, William ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Cunningham, Admiral Sir John ref1

Cunningham, Flt Lt John ref1

Curzon Line ref1

D-Day ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Dale, Sir Henry ref1, ref2

Dalton, Hugh ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17

Damaskinos, Archbishop ref1, ref2, ref3

Darlan, Admiral François ref1

De la Bère, Rupert ref1

de Rothschild, Jimmy ref1

Dempsey, General ref1

Destroyer-Bases Deal ref1, ref2

Dieppe Raid _see_ Operation _Jubilee_

Dill, General Sir John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Disraeli, Benjamin ref1, ref2

Dixon, Pierson ref1

Donitz, Grand Admiral Karl ref1

Dowding, ACM Sir Hugh ref1, ref2

Dresden raid ref1, ref2, ref3

Driberg, Tom ref1

Driver, Betty ref1

Drummond, Jack ref1

Dudley, Lord ref1

Duff Cooper, Alfred ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12

Duncan, Sir Andrew Rae ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Dundas, Hugh Spencer ref1

Dunkirk evacuation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Eden, Anthony ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41, ref42, ref43, ref44, ref45, ref46, ref47, ref48, ref49, ref50, ref51, ref52, ref53, ref54, ref55, ref56, ref57, ref58, ref59, ref60, ref61, ref62

Eden, Guy ref1

Education Bill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Edwards, Ebenezer ref1

Eichmann, Adolf ref1

Eighth Army ref1, ref2, ref3

Eisenhower, General Dwight ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

El Alamein ref1, ref2

Emergency Powers (Defence) Bill ref1

Empire Training Scheme ref1, ref2

Enigma decrypts ref1, ref2

Erzberger, Matthias ref1

evacuation ref1, ref2, ref3

Evans, Trevor ref1

Fabian Society ref1, ref2

Falk, Oswald ref1

fall of France ref1

family allowances ref1, ref2, ref3

Far East ref1, ref2, ref3

Feiner, Leon ref1

firewatchers ref1

First World War ref1, ref2

Dardanelles campaign ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Fitzroy, Edward ref1

Foch, Marshal Ferdinand ref1

food rationing ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

food supplies ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

_see also_ Ministry of Food

Foot, Michael ref1, ref2

Franco-British Union proposal ref1, ref2

Free French ref1

Freeman, Sir Wilfrid ref1

French, Sir Henry ref1

French Committee of National Liberation (FCNL) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

French fleet, 'neutralisation' of ref1, ref2

Frisch, Otto ref1

full employment ref1, ref2, ref3

Gaitskell, Hugh ref1

Gandhi, Mahatma ref1, ref2, ref3

Garbett, Cyril, Archbishop of York ref1

Garibaldi, Giuseppe ref1

Gaulle, Charles de ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

General Election (1945) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

general strike (1926) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Gensoul, Admiral Marcel-Bruno ref1

George II of Greece ref1, ref2, ref3

George VI ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

George, Walter F. ref1

Glanville, James ref1

Gloucester, Duke of ref1

Godfrey, Admiral René-Emile ref1

Goebbels, Joseph ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

gold reserves ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Gollancz, Victor ref1, ref2

Göring, Hermann ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Gort, General Lord ref1

Gott, Lt General William ref1, ref2

Gould, Barbara Ayrton ref1

'Great Debate' ref1

Greek crisis ref1, ref2

Greene, Lord Wilfred ref1

Greenwood, Arthur ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17

Greig, Bill ref1

Grenfell, David ref1, ref2

Grenville, Lord ref1

Grierson, Air Commodore Colin ref1

Griffiths, Jim ref1

Grigg, Sir Edward ref1

Grigg, Sir James ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Grossman, Vasily ref1

Groves, General Leslie R. ref1

Haldane, J.B.S. ref1, ref2, ref3

Halifax, Lord ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27

Hall, George ref1

Hall, Joe ref1

Hammond, Jim ref1

Hankey, Lord ref1, ref2, ref3

Hardie, Keir ref1, ref2

Harriman, Averell ref1, ref2, ref3

Harris, AM Sir Arthur ref1, ref2, ref3

Harvey, Oliver ref1, ref2

Harvie-Watt, George ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Harwood, Admiral ref1

Hawker Hurricane ref1, ref2, ref3

Hayek, Friedrich von ref1

Headlam, Sir Cuthbert ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Hennessy, Patrick ref1, ref2

Herbert, A.P. ref1

Hess, Rudolf ref1, ref2

Heydrich, Reinhard ref1

Higgs, FO Peter Kingsland ref1, ref2

Himmler, Heinrich ref1

Hinkley, Robert ref1

Hinsley, Cardinal Arthur ref1

Hiroshima ref1

Hitler, Adolf ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12

Hoare, Sir Samuel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Holland, Cedric ref1

Holocaust ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Hopkins, Harry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Horder, Lord ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Hore-Belisha, Leslie ref1, ref2, ref3

Horsbrugh, Florence ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Horthy, Miklós ref1

Howard, Peter ref1

Hudson, Robert ref1, ref2

Hull, Cordell ref1, ref2, ref3

Hulton, Edward G. ref1

Hutton, Len ref1

Huxley, Julian ref1

Ince, Sir Godfrey ref1

India ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

industrial unrest ref1, ref2

International Monetary Fund ref1

internment ref1

invasion abandoned ref1

scenario planning ref1

threat of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Irish Free State ref1

Ironside, General Sir Edmund ref1, ref2, ref3

Ismay, General Hastings ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Jacob, Lt-Col Ian ref1

Jarrow March ref1

Jenner, Arthur ref1

Jewish Agency ref1, ref2

Jinnah, Muhammad Ali ref1

Jodl, General Alfred ref1

Jones, R.V. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Jones, Stanley ref1

Jones, Thomas ref1

Joubert de la Ferte, ACM Sir Phillip ref1

Jowitt, Sir William ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Karsh, Yousuf ref1

Keitel, General Wilhelm ref1

Kelly, David ref1

Kennedy, General Sir John ref1

Kennedy, Joseph ref1

Kerr, Thelma Cazalet ref1

Keyes, Sir Roger ref1

Keynes, John Maynard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

_Kindertransport_ ref1, ref2

King, Cecil ref1, ref2

Kirkpatrick, Ivone ref1

_The Kitchen Front_ (BBC) ref1

Kutuzov, FM ref1

Labour Party National Executive Committee ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Lancaster, Lt-Colonel Claude ref1

Lansbury, George ref1, ref2

Laski, Harold ref1, ref2

Latry, François ref1, ref2

Law, Andrew Bonar ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Law, Richard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

League of Nations ref1, ref2

Leathers, Lord ref1

Lebrun, Albert ref1

Lee, General Raymond E. ref1, ref2, ref3

Lee-Smith, Hastings ref1

Lend-Lease ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Lewis, Edgar ref1

Liddell, Guy ref1

Lidice massacres, Czechoslovakia ref1

Lindemann, Sir Frederick _see_ Cherwell, Lord

Linlithgow, Lord ref1

Linton, Isaac ref1

Listowel, Lord ref1

Llewellin, Colonel John Jestyn ref1, ref2

Llewellyn Smith, Sir Hubert ref1

Lloyd, Lord George ref1, ref2

Lloyd George, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11

Lloyd George, Gwilym ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Lloyd George, Megan ref1, ref2

Local Defence Volunteers (Home Guard) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Lord President's Committee ref1

Lothian, Marquess of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Low, David ref1, ref2, ref3

Luxembourg ref1, ref2

Lyttleton, Oliver ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10

MacDonald, Malcolm ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

MacDonald, Ramsay ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

McGovern, John ref1

Macmillan, Harold ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

Macmillan, Lord ref1

Maginot Line ref1

Magna Carta ref1

Maisky, Ivan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Maitland Wilson, General Henry ref1, ref2, ref3

Manhattan Project ref1, ref2

manpower shortages ref1

Marchant, Hilde ref1

Margesson, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Marshall, General George C. ref1

Marshall, Howard ref1, ref2

Masterman, Charles ref1

MAUD committee ref1, ref2, ref3

Mayhew, Christopher ref1

means test ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Melville, Sir Ronald ref1, ref2, ref3

Mengele, Josef ref1

Menzies, Sir Robert ref1

Menzies, Sir Stewart ref1

Middle East ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw ref1, ref2

Milch, FM Erhard ref1

Ministry of Aircraft Production ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Ministry of Food ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Ministry of Information ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

'silent column' campaign ref1

Ministry of Supply ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Molotov, Vyacheslav ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Monnet, Jean ref1

Monte Cassino ref1

Montgomery, Field Marshal Bernard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Moore-Brabazon, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Morgenthau, Henry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Morrison, Herbert ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38

background and political career ref1

feud with Bevin ref1

Home Secretary ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Minister of Home Security ref1

Minister of Supply ref1, ref2, ref3

and post-war reconstruction ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

and refugee immigration ref1, ref2, ref3

Morrison, William ref1, ref2, ref3

Morton, Sir Desmond ref1

Mosley, Sir Oswald ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Mountbatten, Lord Louis ref1

Mulberry harbours ref1

Munich agreement ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Munro, Patrick ref1

Murrow, Ed ref1

Mussolini, Benito ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

National Fire Service ref1

National Food Campaign ref1

national government (1931) ref1, ref2

National Health Service ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

national lethargy, growing ref1

National Service Bill ref1

National Wholemeal Loaf ref1

nationalisation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) ref1

Nehru, Jawaharlal ref1, ref2

Newall, ACM Sir Cyril ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Nicholl, Captain Angus ref1

Nicholson, Brigadier Claude ref1

Nicolson, Harold ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Niven, David ref1

North Africa ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11

Norway campaign ref1, ref2

Nunn, Betty ref1

nutritional science ref1

Olga, Princess ref1

Operation _Adlerangriff_ (Eagle Attack) ref1

Operation _Aerial_ ref1

Operation _Bolero_ ref1

Operation _Catapult_ ref1

Operation _Claymore_ ref1

Operation _Cromwell_ ref1

Operation _Crossbow_ ref1, ref2, ref3

Operation _Cycle_ ref1, ref2

Operation _Dragoon_ ref1

Operation _Epsom_ ref1

Operation _Fall Gelb_ ref1, ref2

Operation _Fall Rot_ ref1

Operation _Fortitude_ ref1

Operation _Husky_ ref1, ref2

Operation _Jubilee_ ref1

Operation _Lightfoot_ ref1

Operation _Market Garden_ ref1

Operation _Mondscheinsonate_ (Moonlight Sonata) ref1

Operation _Overlord_ ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Operation _Primrose_ ref1

Operation _Round-Up_ ref1

Operation _Sealion_ ref1, ref2, ref3

Operation _Shingle_ ref1

Operation _Steinbock_ ref1

Operation _Torch_ ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Operation _Typhoon_ ref1

Operation _Victor_ ref1

Orwell, George ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

'Paddock' (government reserve meeting place) ref1

Palace of Westminster, bombing of ref1

Papandreou, Georgios ref1

Park, AVM Keith ref1

Partsalidis, Dimitrios ref1

pastoralisation plan ref1

Patten, Marguerite ref1

Patton, General George S. ref1

Paulus, General Friedrich ref1, ref2

PAYE scheme ref1

Peacock, Sir Edward ref1

Peake, Osbert ref1

Pearl Harbor ref1, ref2

Peenemünde ref1

Peierls, Rudolf ref1 'People's War' ref2

Percival, Lt-General Sir Arthur ref1, ref2

Pétain, Marshal Philippe ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Pethwick-Lawrence, Frederick ref1

Phillips, Sir Frederick ref1, ref2

Phillips, Admiral Tom ref1, ref2

pilot training ref1

Pioneer Corps ref1

Piratin, Phil ref1

Poland

German invasion of ref1, ref2

Soviet occupation ref1

Political Warfare Executive ref1

Portal, ACM Sir Charles ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Portal, Lord Wyndham ref1

post-war reconstruction ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

_see also_ Beveridge Report

Potsdam Declaration ref1

Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Prien, Günther ref1

Priestley, J.B. ref1, ref2

_Prince of Wales_ , sinking of ref1, ref2

propaganda ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

white and black ops ref1

_see also_ Ministry of Information

psychological warfare ref1

Purvis, Arthur ref1, ref2

Quebec Agreement ref1, ref2

Quit India campaign ref1

radar ref1, ref2

Radcliffe, Cyril ref1

Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich ref1

Ramsbotham, Herwald ref1

Rathbone, Eleanor ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Rawnsley, Jimmy ref1

Reading, Lady ref1

Reconstruction Committee ref1, ref2, ref3

refugee immigration ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Reith, Sir John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11

_Repulse_ , sinking of ref1, ref2

Reynaud, Paul ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Robinson, Austin ref1

Rommel, General Erwin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

Roosevelt, Franklin ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32

and the atom bomb project ref1, ref2, ref3

death of ref1

meetings with Churchill ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Roosevelt, Theodore ref1

Rosenberg, Alfred ref1

Rowlands, Sir Archibald ref1

Rowntree, Seebohm ref1

Rowse, A.L. ref1

Royal Marine ref1

Rundstedt, FM Gerd von ref1

Salter, Arthur ref1, ref2

Sandys, Duncan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Saul, AVM Richard ref1

_Scharnhorst_ , sinking of the ref1

Scobie, Lt General ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Selborne, Lord ref1, ref2

Sforza, Count ref1

Shakespeare, Geoffrey ref1, ref2

Shertok, Moshe ref1

Shinwell, Emmanuel 'Manny' ref1, ref2, ref3

shipping losses ref1, ref2, ref3

Shirer, William L. ref1

Sicily ref1

Sikorski, General Waladyslaw ref1

Silverman, Sidney ref1

Simon, Franz ref1

Simon, Sir John ref1

Simon, Lord ref1

Sinclair, Sir Archibald ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36

Air Ministry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

background ref1

feud with Beaverbrook ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

friendship with Churchill ref1, ref2, ref3

joins coalition government ref1

Singapore ref1, ref2, ref3

Sloan, Alexander ref1

Smith, F.E. ref1

Smuts, Field Marshal Jan ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

social insurance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

social legislation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

socialism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

Somerville, Admiral Sir James ref1

Sorge, Richard ref1

Southby, Sir Archibald ref1

Soviet Union

Anglo-Soviet relationship ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance ref1

counter-offensive ref1, ref2, ref3

German invasion of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Spanish Civil War ref1

Spears, General Sir Edward ref1, ref2

Spens, Patrick ref1

spies and collaborators ref1, ref2

Spitfire ref1

Stalin, Joseph ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19

Churchill's meetings with ref1, ref2

Stalingrad, siege of ref1, ref2

Stanley, Oliver ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Statistical Branch ref1, ref2, ref3

Stettinius, Edward ref1

Stokes, Richard ref1

strike action ref1, ref2, ref3

Strube, Sydney ref1

Stuart, James ref1, ref2

Sudetenland, annexation of ref1, ref2

Summerskill, Dr Edith ref1, ref2

Supreme War Council ref1, ref2

surrender of Germany ref1

Tate, Mavis ref1, ref2

technocrats ref1

Tedder, AVM Sir Arthur ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Teheran conference ref1, ref2, ref3

Temple, William, Archbishop of Canterbury ref1, ref2

Thoma, General Wilhelm von ref1

Thomas, Sir Shenton ref1

Thomson, Admiral George ref1, ref2

Tobruk ref1, ref2

Tomlinson, Ron ref1

town and country planning ref1

Toynbee, Arnold ref1

Toynbee Hall ref1, ref2

Trades Union Congress ref1

Tree, Ronald ref1, ref2

Trinder, Tommy ref1

Truman, Harry ref1, ref2, ref3

Tube Alloys project _see_ atom bomb project

U-boat warfare ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

Ultra intelligence ref1, ref2

unemployment benefit ref1

United Nations ref1, ref2

USA

aid ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

Anglo-American relations ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

British First World War indebtedness ref1, ref2

Destroyer-Bases Deal ref1, ref2

enters the war ref1

isolationists ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

Lend-Lease ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

Manhattan Project ref1

Neutrality Act ref1, ref2

New Deal ref1, ref2, ref3

Uthwatt Committee ref1

V-1 flying bomb ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

V-2 rocket ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Vatutin, General Nikolai ref1

VE Day ref1

Vichy France ref1

'voluntaryism' ref1

wages councils ref1

Wallace, Captain Euan ref1, ref2, ref3

Walpole, Sir Robert ref1

Wannsee Conference ref1

War Cabinet meetings ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31

members ref1, ref2

reshuffles ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Wardlaw-Milne, Sir John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Warsaw ghetto uprising ref1, ref2

Wartime Social Survey ref1

Washbrook, Cyril ref1

Waters, Elsie and Doris ref1

Waugh, Evelyn ref1

Wavell, General Archibald ref1, ref2

Webb, Maurice ref1

Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ref1, ref2

Weeks, Sir Ronald ref1

Weizman, Dr Chaim ref1

Wells, H.G. ref1

Westbrook, Trevor ref1

Westwood, Joseph ref1

Weygand, General ref1

Weygand Line ref1

Wheeler, Charles ref1

Whitehead, Thomas ref1, ref2

Whiteley, William ref1, ref2, ref3

Wilkinson, Ellen ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13

Williams, Francis ref1, ref2

Williams, Sir Herbert ref1, ref2

Willink, Henry ref1

Wilson, Sir Charles (later, Lord Moran) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Wilson, Harold ref1, ref2

Wilson, Horace ref1

Wilson, Woodrow ref1

Winant, John ref1, ref2

Winton, Nicholas ref1

Wodehouse, P.G. ref1

women

conscription ref1

in politics ref1

women's rights ref1

Women's Voluntary Service ref1, ref2

Womersley, Sir Walter ref1

Wood, Sir Kingsley ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14

Woods, Reverend George ref1

Woolton, Lord ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17

Minister of Food ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

Minister of Reconstruction ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

Woolton Pie ref1

Yalta conference ref1, ref2, ref3

Zhukov, General Georgy ref1

The Cabinet in the garden of 10 Downing Street on 24 October 1941, together with military chiefs and other officials.

_Front Row (from left):_ Ernest Bevin, Lord Beaverbrook, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, Sir John Anderson, Arthur Greenwood and Sir Kingsley Wood.

[_Back Row (from left):_ Sir Edward Bridges (secretary to the War Cabinet), Sir Charles Portal (Chief of Air Staff), Sir Archibald Sinclair, Sir Dudley Pound (Admiral of the Fleet), A.V. Alexander, Lord Cranborne, Herbert Morrison, Lord Moyne, David Margesson, Brendan Bracken, General Sir John Dill (Chief of the Imperial General Staff), General Sir Hastings Ismay (Military Secretary) and Sir Alexander Cadogan (Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs).
© AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-1)

[Churchill's long and varied political life made him uniquely qualified to lead a wartime coalition. His air of defiance and optimism rallied the nation in a way no other could.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-2)

The famous Low cartoon in the _Evening Standard_ on 14 May 1940, portraying national unity in the war effort. Striding out with Churchill are his Labour colleagues Attlee, Bevin and Morrison. Close behind (from left) are Chamberlain, Greenwood, Halifax, Sinclair, Duff-Cooper, Alexander and little Leo Amery.
© DAVID LOW, EVENING STANDARD, 14 MAY 1940, THE BRITISH CARTOON ARCHIVE, UNIVERSITY OF KENT, www.cartoons.ac.uk

[Churchill visits a bomb-damaged home at the height of the Blitz in late 1940. He could provide stirring words on these occasions, but was also easily moved to tears by what he witnessed.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-4)

[Sir Archibald Sinclair, Liberal leader and Secretary of State for Air. He had fierce tussles in cabinet with Lord Beaverbrook during the Battle of Britain.
© PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-5)

[The irrepressible and unconventional Brendan Bracken, Churchill's close confidant and a successful Minister of Information.
© MARIE HANSEN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-6)

[Lord Beaverbrook was at the forefront of propaganda to mobilise the Home Front in the dark days of 1940. This was one of hundreds of posters produced by the Ministry of Information.
© THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES/SSPL/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-7)

[Churchill leaves Downing Street with Sir John Anderson after a War Cabinet meeting in May 1940. Anderson was an indispensable figure: towards the end of the war Churchill advised the King that if he and Eden were killed, Anderson (then Chancellor) should become Prime Minister.
© FOX PHOTOS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-8)

[The redoubtable Ernest Bevin at his office in the Ministry of Labour. Emergency legislation gave him absolute control over the working lives of every Briton.
© HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-9)

[Lord Halifax, then Foreign Secretary, and Anthony Eden, War Secretary, leave Downing Street after a tumultuous War Cabinet meeting on 28 May 1940. Halifax had just presented the case for suing for peace with Germany.
© FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-10)

[Herbert Morrison, master of the photo opportunity and the pithy phrase, ferrying a sack of coal outside the Ministry of Supply headquarters in July 1940.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-11)

[The only two women in Churchill's war ministry. Florence Horsbrugh (seated) and Ellen Wilkinson confer in April 1945 during the conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations.
© AUTHOR'S COLLECTION](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-12)

[Sir Stafford Cripps. In early 1942 he was the most popular politician (bar Churchill) in the country, and even briefly viewed as his possible successor.
© THOMAS D. MCAVOY/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-13)

Lord Woolton, Minister of Food (1940-43) and then Minister of Reconstruction (1943-45). 'Uncle Fred', here taking charge of a soup kitchen during the Blitz, was one of Churchill's best-recognised and most admired ministers.

[As the war developed, Clement Attlee and Anthony Eden formed a powerful axis in the area of foreign affairs - where they saw it as their task to resist some of Churchill's wilder impulses.
© DAVID E. SCHERMAN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-15)

[A preoccupied Lord Beaverbrook prepares to address a conference on the conscription of labour in January 1941: his great rival, Ernest Bevin, in more jocular mood, stands behind him. Other Government ministers present are Oliver Lyttelton (left) and Sir Andrew Duncan, with Bevin's junior minister Ralph Assheton alongside him.
© KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-16)

[Consulting amicably enough early in 1945, but Bevin and Morrison nursed a deep-seated mutual dislike. However, their personal differences did not prevent them joining forces to harry Churchill over reconstruction.
© IAN SMITH/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-17)

[A night off at the Opera House on 1 May 1945 for four of Britain's delegation to the United Nations meeting in San Francisco – Clement Attlee, George Tomlinson (junior minister in Labour department), Ellen Wilkinson and Florence Horsbrugh.
© PETER STACKPOLE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-18)

[Clement Attlee takes tea with his constituents in Limehouse. He grew in stature as the war progressed, valued especially for his efficient committee work and expert chairing of War Cabinets when Churchill was absent.
© POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES](frontmatter02.xhtml#image-19)

David Low's cartoon in the _Evening Standard_ on 12 April 1945 captured the open conflicts that had started to beset the coalition. Bevin and Bracken are pictured, arms in slings after their public (verbal) jousting, while a gnomic Beaverbrook hides under the table.
© DAVID LOW, EVENING STANDARD, 12 APRIL 1945, THE BRITISH CARTOON ARCHIVE, UNIVERSITY OF KENT, WWW.CARTOONS.AC.UK

Victory at last. The War Cabinet takes the applause on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall on the afternoon of 8 May 1945. From the left, Oliver Lyttelton, Ernest Bevin, Churchill, Sir John Anderson, Lord Woolton and Herbert Morrison. © CENTRAL PRESS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

First published in Great Britain in 2016
by Aurum Press Ltd, 74–77 White Lion Street, London N1 9PF
www.aurumpress.co.uk

Copyright © Roger Hermiston 2016

Roger Hermiston has asserted his moral right to be identified as the Author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN 978 1 78131 331 2
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