Lord Moran (1882-1977). Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940-65 (1966)
Part Five. A Long Farewell
Chapter forty-one. The Dying Gladiator
April 13, 1959
When I called at Chartwell on my way to London I found Clemmie in the cottage, which was full of books; she explained that Winston had about ten thousand, and she was trying to reduce them by half.
June 8, 1959
...Yet only on one occasion, as far as I can remember, did he show me his scars. It was in the summer of 1953, after his stroke, when he thought he was dying and his head was confused. Even his speech was difficult to follow; he kept trying to say something and I was able at last to pick up what he wanted to say:
‘I ought not... I must not... be held to account... for all... that has gone wrong.’
He still lives in the war. On Thursday I found him with a glum face, brooding over his bed-rest. I taxed him with giving way to the Churchill melancholia. ‘Why,’ he retorted, ‘do I get stuck down in the past? Why do I keep going over and over those years when I know I cannot change anything? You, Charles, have spent your life puzzling how the mind works. You must know the answer.’ He thinks I know more than I do. Indeed, much that he has told me has been no more than a cry for help. I rack my brains, wondering what I can do. That I am so useless to him torments me.
Augusts, 1959
Dorothy asked the Prime Minister how he had kept his garden so green. Hers was brown and parched. When she wanted to cheer herself up she looked at Norman Brook’s photograph of the water garden taken with the camera Khrushchev gave him.