Clementine Churchill (1885-1977) is best known as Winston Churchill’s wife. But as Sonia Purnell’s deeply researched and readable biography demonstrates, she was much more than that. Clemmie—she allowed only Winston to call her Clemmie—was both a supportive and loving wife, yet developed sufficient independence to live outside the shadow of perhaps the greatest man of the 20th century.
The title of the British edition of this book—First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill—best captures its theme: For the first time in British history, the wife of a prime minister could reasonably be called a “First Lady.” Here in America we have had our Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roose-velt, and the two-for-the-price-of-one administration of the Clintons. But while British history is replete with stories of women who served prime ministers in a variety of ways, before Clementine Churchill and since, none rose to the rank of First Lady.
Born, like her husband, into an aristocratic family with little money, the daughter of Lady Blanche Hozier—who had numerous love affairs, more even than Churchill’s mother—was unsure just who her father was. Her childhood was rackety, money was scarce, and her position in society unsettled. She supplemented her meager allowance by giving French lessons. Little wonder that, as a young girl, she lacked self-confidence despite a rigorous education from French and German governesses (likely funded by one or another of her mother’s serial lovers) and winning several academic prizes at a local grammar school.
She was quite beautiful and much admired. At a dinner party in March 1908, for which she had to sew her own dress, she caught the eye of another unrich member of the upper classes, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. According to other diners, he was immediately smitten. They were married six months later and, as Winston Churchill said, “lived happily ever after.”
At that time, Churchill was a member of Parliament and president of the Board of Trade in H.H. Asquith’s government. The new Mrs. Churchill immediately found herself in the thick of London political life. Their politics differed: Clementine Churchill was a Liberal, understanding from an early age the plight of the underdog, able to sympathize with those in need. Her husband, born in Blenheim Palace, did not come by his sympathies for the less well off quite as naturally or as early in life.
From the early days of their marriage, Churchill kept his wife fully informed of all aspects of his life, “sending her detailed bulletins on his political strategies,” a habit he continued after he became prime minister in 1940. Even the most secret military information, including the ULTRA decrypts of German coded messages, were shared by her husband, who trusted her completely. She had access to Churchill’s famous map room, denied to many: “Winston briefed her so thoroughly on naval operations that she was better informed than most cabinet ministers.”
So how did Clementine Churchill manage to earn the title Purnell uses? She chose to make Winston’s life as smooth as possible, ensuring his meals were prepared the way he liked them, organizing the lunches and dinner parties he prized, visiting battleships and bomb sites with him, and keeping in contact with political allies when he was in the trenches during World War I and, in World War II, away at the White House in Washington. She became an expert at soothing hurt feelings.
At the same time, as she was tending to his needs, she began to step out on her own. During the 1914-18 war she spearheaded a campaign to recruit housewives to make emergency gas masks for soldiers at the front. She opened, staffed, and ran nine canteens to feed some 500 munitions workers at each manufacturing location.
Acquiring new positions of authority added to her self-confidence, from which flowed greater independence from her formidable spouse. She argued forcibly with her husband for votes for women and in the canteens introduced a rule that allowed female workers access to smoking areas previously reserved for their male colleagues. Seeing female munitions workers protecting their hair inside turbans, she took to wearing a turban in public—a shrewd way of identifying herself with them and creating a bond with ordinary British women.
In 1918, her war work was recognized by King George V, who made her a commander of the Order of the British Empire. This, combined with her increased experience, enabled her to fashion a more independent life, traveling abroad on her own for pleas-ure, skiing, swimming, and playing competitive tennis. She had no compunction about besting Field Marshal Montgomery in fiercely fought croquet matches.
She began to add her own list of requirements to those of her finicky husband, insisting that her pillowcases be changed after an afternoon nap, fresh flowers be placed in every room, and a thousand tulip bulbs be planted every year at their country home, Chartwell. Her goal was casual perfection. To arrange her flowers, she would “Grab them by the neck and just drop them in the vase.” Small things, but important assertions of self in a life lived with a man who required that everything be just as he wished and who worked at a frantic, chaotic pace that placed great demands on her, and not only during the war years.
Indeed, during the 1939-45 war, Clementine acted in her husband’s place as member of Parliament, taking care of constituency business and continuing her role as hostess at lunches and dinners. As we know, Winston Churchill worked during all his meals: She attempted to keep him on schedule—no easy chore.
During Harry Hopkins’s important first visit to London—sent by Franklin D. Roosevelt in early 1941 to appraise Britain’s ability to survive alone—Clementine “planned virtually every moment of his day with the aim of furthering the British cause,” even putting hot water bottles in his bed. Hopkins was so grateful that he sent her cheeses, ham, chocolates, lipsticks, nail polish, and a satin nightdress. She was doing her bit to personify British courage, resolve, and determination.
And not only to Harry Hopkins. When Eleanor Roosevelt visited American troops in Britain in 1942, Clementine accompanied her and came to value Eleanor’s outspokenness and energy. She worked also with Agnes Maisky, wife of the long-serving Soviet ambassador in London, on joint philanthropic projects.
Her most significant work was for the Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund, started in late 1941 after Hitler’s armies invaded the Soviet Union and Britain found itself with a new ally. Raising over $8 million—some $300 million in today’s money—Clem-entine tirelessly “recruited factory workers, millionaires and widows; organized auctions, flag days and galas; and persuaded celebrity musicians to give concerts.” She asked schoolgirls to knit gloves and hats for Red Army troops.
Stalin invited her to tour the Soviet Union, on her own, in order to thank her personally for her fundraising efforts on behalf of his country, a “singular and rare personal honor.” She reveled in the enthusiastic attention that greeted her hastily learned Russian as she traveled from Leningrad to Stalingrad, visiting hospitals built with donated British funds. She was given the Soviet Red Cross Distinguished Service Medal and was cheered at the ballet in Moscow. Away for six weeks, Clementine returned to London a more confident woman, at ease on a public platform and with the press.
There is no doubt that Clementine Hozier’s rise from genteel poverty to wealth and power, and, more important, from a young woman unsure of herself to one capable of dealing with politicians and tyrants, depended in part on the access to power generated by her husband. Sonia Purnell gives less weight than she might have to the advantages in life for Clementine—as well as the costs of being married for 57 years to the demanding, famous, and often mercurial but always loving man that was Winston Churchill—and to explaining that one of her important roles was a traditional wifely one: to shower care, advice, and affection on a man given to brooding over political defeats and subject to enormous pressures that dictated so much of her life.
That Winston Churchill appreciated all that she contributed to his life is revealed in their voluminous correspondence, and by his response to a journalist who asked who he would like to be in a second life: “Mrs. Churchill’s second husband,” Winston replied.
Cita Stelzer is the author of Dinner with Churchill: Policy Making at the Dinner Table.
