Lord Moran (1882-1977). Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940-65 (1966)
Part Five. A Long Farewell
Chapter thirty-nine. Defacing the Legend
June 6, 1957
...John Reith was there, the old Covenanter decked out in a crimson smoking jacket. He came across to me after dinner and without any preliminaries began:
‘I intensely dislike your man, more than I have ever disliked anyone.’
Moran: ‘You find Winston wanting in consideration?’
Reith: ‘No. You cannot expect consideration from a Prime Minister in war. But Winston prints in his war book innumerable directives and never once lets us see a single answer. Why, he vituperated me for not doing something, though I had been trying to get the Government to do this very thing for months. And even when I wrote to him and explained this, the same directive appeared unaltered in the next edition.’
Reith spoke without anger or vehemence, as if he were puzzled.
Chapter forty. Brendan’s Verdict
March 1, 1958
...After breakfast he got going about Suez.
‘I made a great mistake giving in to them when we left the Canal. I feel responsible. All the Cabinet were for withdrawing. They persuaded me that we must get out of Suez. But if I had been in better health, if I had been stronger, we might have stayed on the Canal and all this would not have happened.’
As I was leaving the room I picked up a Bible. ‘Do you read it?’ I asked him. He did not answer for some time. Then he said: ‘Yes, I read it; but only out of curiosity.’