Winston S. Churchill by Martin Gilbert Volume VIII Never Despair 1945-1965 (1988)

[papalagi]

Part Two: In Opposition 1945-1951
34
‘It is only the truth that wounds’
“How clever the French are to get on without a Government, or Prime Minister, or Parliament. All these follies cancel themselves out. The Civil Servants run the show, and the happy land rejoices in the sunshine and complete contempt of politics.”

...The final volume of the war memoirs was now being completed. Help came from many quarters, including Miss Sturdee who, having accompanied Churchill to Yalta as one of his personal secretaries, now set down her recollections for him, including an occasion at Yalta when Sir Charles Portal ‘happened to remark that there was no lemon-peel for the cocktails at your villa.

The next day a lemon tree, in a large tub and laden with lemons, appeared.’

…

35

Towards the General Election

...Churchill intended to take the train from Annecy to Venice. ‘I told him that as the train did not stop at Annecy we would have to drive to Geneva,’ Miss Portal later recalled. ‘Kindly remember I am Winston Churchill,’ he replied. ‘Tell the station master to stop the train.’ The train was duly stopped.

On Churchill’s journey from Annecy to Venice, French Railways transported fifty-five suitcases and trunks, and sixty-five smaller articles. His rooms at the Excelsior Hotel on the Lido were those used shortly before by a royal honeymoon couple-King Farouk of Egypt and Queen Narriman. But Churchill almost failed to reach the hotel, as his valet, Norman McGowan, later recalled:

Anxious to obtain a glimpse of the city as we approached it, he leaned right out of the train window.

I was standing near him, also eager to see a place which was, of course, unknown to me, when the detective wrenched Mr Churchill backwards by the shoulder.

A split second later a concrete pylon carrying the overhead wires of the electric railway flashed past, only about a foot from the side of the train.

My Guv’nor’s smiling comment was: ‘Anthony Eden nearly got a new job then, didn’t he?’