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Articles
Winston Churchill and his Magnificent Hats
- By GARY L. STILES
- | September 25, 2022
- Category: Explore Personal Matters
A variegated collection
Churchill’s fascination with hats, and their use to promote desired image, was a lifelong endeavor. He believed every prominent person needed a symbol. As he wrote in The Strand Magazine:
One of the most necessary features of a public man’s equipment is some distinctive mark which everyone learns to look for and to recognize. There had been in the past Disraeli’s forelock, Gladstone’s collars, Lord Randolph Churchill’s luxuriant moustache, Austen Chamberlain’s monocle and Stanley Baldwin’s homely pipe.1
Churchill himself nurtured many such features: his forward leaning stance, cigar, “V” sign and jutted jaw. Certainly hats are prominent among this group of immediately recognizable features. His choice of a hat for an occasion was never happenstance but a thoughtfully conceived notion of the image and the impact he wanted to portray.
Over his long life Churchill acquired hundreds of hats in every genre: military, political, formal, equestrian, leisure. There was even an Indian headdress (although this appears to be one piece of headgear he never wore). His multiplicity of headgear has consequently often been misdescribed. I offer herewith the correct definitions of some items. My complete census of some 80 documented hats is available to the reader upon request.2
Over the years, many hats were lost, discarded, replaced or dispersed. Churchill certainly had multiple examples of his favorites: Homburgs, Cambridges, stetsons, top hats. He also owned dress and undress versions of military hats—at least three different bicorns, for example.
Hats for all occasions
Roy Howells, Churchill’s male nurse in his declining years, aptly described the great man’s vast hat collection:
At some time or other he must have been photographed in every conceivable kind, ranging from American stetsons to Russian Astrakhans. Many of these were stacked in hatboxes in a special cupboard outside Lady Churchill’s bedroom. There were military hats, naval hats, a white pith helmet, an Australian bush hat and countless others.
He had six broad brimmed stetsons, four grey and two white, all kept above the wardrobe in his bedroom. With them were piled two black Homburgs, two grey Homburgs, a Panama hat given him by Margot Fonteyn, two black top hats and a grey one. [Someone said he] owned more hats than his wife. They were right. Lady Churchill rarely wore them. Her husband thoroughly enjoyed discovering new headgear and he had a tremendous flair for looking exactly right no matter what he put on his head…. On holiday he would have a variety of hats but always there was a stetson near at hand. It was the type of hat he seemed to like most. He would take all six whenever he went abroad and there were often as many as eight hatboxes among his luggage.3
The largest collection of Churchill hats (23) is at his country estate at Chartwell. Most of the collection is on display for visitors to appreciate. A sampling of some of the most striking hats is shown herein.
Suppliers
Churchill shopped widely for hats around the world and the known vendors are listed below. This represents only those hats for which receipts were saved and archived—a fraction of the total. The list does highlight how many different vendors Churchill frequented.
He also received hats as gifts from a wide range of admirers. These included the American newspaper owner Amon G. Carter; and the British politician and friend Ralph Assheton (Lord Clitheroe). Officially, Churchill received hat presentations from the City of Calgary, the Ottawa Parliamentary Press, the British Press, and the National Congress of American Indians.
Hat lore
Stories about Churchill and his hats are numerous and interesting.4 The earliest is from 1893, when his mother admonished him:
Dearest Winston, You are a lazy letter wretch! I thought of course I w[ou]ld hear from you this morning. Write. I hear y[ou]r new hat is a “terror”! Aunt Clara said you looked too funny in it. Please send it back to C. & Moore & tell them that it is too big. What a goose you are‚ write!5
Nor was his nanny Mrs. Everest impressed later the same year: “I have sent you your pot hat [bowler] but it is very shabby why don’t you buy yourself a new one at Brighton. I have also sent your tall hat [top hat] in your hat box.”6 Although his trip to Brighton was for relaxation, Churchill clearly felt the need for the right headgear.
Even on the spur of the moment, Churchill would reach for the right hat. He was visiting friends in 1906 when a fire broke out at their home. “Typically, it was Winston, donning a fireman’s brass hat, who was seen on the roof plying a hose from a ‘tiny fire engine’ brought over from a nearby village.”7 Another version speaks of him wearing this hat and his dressing-gown, giving orders to the fire brigade.8 Sadly, no image of this remarkable vision has survived.
Military headgear
Churchill’s love of military uniforms is well known; he wore them whenever possible. Formally he wore uniforms of the Royal Military College (1893-94), Fourth Hussars (1894-99), 21st lancers (1898), South African Light Horse (1900), Oxfordshire Hussars (1902-12), Grenadier Guards (1915), Royal Scots Fusiliers (1916) and Territorial Army, Oxford Yeomanry (1908-24).
The associated headgear was worn with each. Douglas Russell’s Winston Churchill, Soldier,9 is an excellent source for images and descriptions of these.
By the Second World War Churchill was long past active service, but the conflict provided renewed opportunity for military uniform and headgear from all three fighting branches. In 1939 he was appointed a Royal Air Force: Honorary Air Commodore, 615 (County of Surrey) Fighter Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force. (He received his “wings” in April 1943.)
Aboard naval ships, Churchill usually wore the dress uniform of the Royal Yacht Squadron. Aboard yachts or pleasure vessels, he preferred that of an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the British lighthouse authority, to which he’d been appointed in 1913. Nicole Day, house officer at Chartwell, observes that the badges on both these caps are set askew, the reason for which remains unknown.
With the army, he dressed as Colonel, 4th (Queen’s Own Hussars), his original regiment from 1895 to 1899 He was appointed Colonel of the Regiment in 1941. Wore this uniform in Egypt and Italy, and also in Paris in 1947, when he was presented with the Médaille Militaire. Also in 1941, soon after becoming Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, he donned the uniform of honorary Colonel, 4th/5th (Cinque Ports Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment). This uniform was worn prominently at Yalta, the Rhine Crossing, Berlin, Potsdam, and briefly in Italy.
Tiny hats
No discussion of his hats would be complete without mention of Churchill’s association with hats too small for his head. Walking on a beach in 1910, he donned an old felt hat which by chance was too small. A photographer snapped a picture, and the tiny hat became a kind of trademark.10 Churchill encouraged the association. Addressing the Worshipful Company of Feltmakers (hatmakers) he said that
…the most essential desideratum of a hat, and that was that it should be too small. Whether it began by being too small, or became in time too small depended on the wearer; but there was something smug and cowardly about a hat that fitted. It suggested failure.11
The image of Churchill with tiny hats was particularly adopted by cartoonists, to their advantage and his. For a robust discussion of the subject, see my book, Churchill in Punch, and my Hillsdale article, “Churchill in Punch: His Fanciful Hats Helped Fashion his Image.”12
Jocular images gave way to sterner ones with the Second World War, and Churchill’s tiny hats disappeared from cartoons. He then appeared in more dignified headgear, but still a wide variety. Indeed, the public response to his variety of hats may suggest a subtle strategy by the wearer. A wide range of hats represented the breadth of the British public, who could associate with them, adding to his public affection.13
Official and academic
Five of Churchill’s appointed or elected positions featured striking and magnificent headgear: Knight of the Garter, Worshipful Company of Mercers, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Elder Brother of Trinity House and Privy Counsellor. Churchill wore these beautiful hats whenever he could. He kept his three bicorns (Cinque Ports, Trinity House, Privy Counsellor) all his life. They are still at Chartwell.
Churchill received many honorary academic degrees and held several academic positions including Rector of the University of Aberdeen (1914–18), Rector of Edinburgh University (1929–32), and Chancellor of Bristol University (1929–1965). He wore their robes, mortarboards and tams. Receiving honorary degrees or at academic convocations, he commonly wore the black academic tam (velvet bonnet) of Oxford University.
Oddities and miscellany
There is controversy over whether Churchill owned two or three fur or skin hats added to his collection in the 1940s. He received a sealskin or “wedge” hat from the Ottawa Parliamentary Press.14 The British Press gave him a black Persian lamb hat in Teheran.15 It is not clear whether the Russian Astrakhan hat worn at Yalta was a purchase or a gift—perhaps it was Canadian sealskin.16
Unlike his cigars, Churchill hardly ever gave a hat away. An exception was in 1941 when Roosevelt’s envoy, Harry Hopkins, lost the only hat he had brought with him to Britain. The Prime Minister, deeply attached to Hopkins, gave him one of his grey Homburgs, bearing his gold initials on its silk lining. Hopkins wore it until his death in 1946.17
Churchill derived much pleasure from collecting and wearing hats, and the images they cast were widely appreciated. He was always careful to those the right ones for each occasion, and traveled with a large wardrobe. As his son Randolph remarked, “My father never met a hat he didn’t like.”18
Endnotes and further reading
1 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), “Cartoons and Cartoonists,” in The Strand Magazine, June 1931, 582-91; reprinted in Thoughts and Adventures (1932 et seq.).
2 List available by email from the author: [email protected].
3 Roy Howells, Simply Churchill, London: Robert Hale, 1965, 119-20.
4 Barry Singer Churchill Style (New York, Abrams, 2012); David Long, The Hats that Made Britain (Cheltenham: History Press, 2020); Editors of Life, “Mr. Churchill’s Hats,” in The Unforgettable Winston Churchill (New York, Life, 1965); “Mr. Churchill’s Hats,” in the Evening Standard, 15 November 1924, 5; “Mr. Churchill’s Hats,” in The Ottawa Journal, Ottawa, 23 September 1940, 4 and 19 May 1943, 8; “Churchill’s Hats Symbol of Hope,” in Daily Reporter, Greenfield, Indiana, 30 November 1940, 3;”Winston Churchill’s Hats are Famous,” in The Australian Women’s Weekly, 20 June 1940, 33; “ Gary L. Stiles, “Churchill in Punch: His Fanciful Hats Helped Fashion his Image,” Hillsdale College Churchill Project, 2022.
5 Lady Randolph to WSC, 7 February 1893. Churchill Archives, CHAR1/8/42.” C. & Moore” is Chapman & Moore, Hatters, Old Bond Street.
6 Elizabeth Everest to WSC, 4 April 1893, in Randolph S. Churchill, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 1 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press. 2006), 373.
7 Brian C. Kelly, Best Little Stories from the Life and Times of Winston Churchill (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2008), 84.
8 Michael Paterson, Winston Churchill: Personal Accounts of the Great Leader at War (Newton Abbott, Wilts.: David & Charles, 2005), 19-20.
9 Douglas S. Russell, Winston Churchill, Soldier: The Military Life of a Gentleman at War (London, Brassey’s, 2005), passim.
10 Jonathan Black, Winston Churchill in British Art, 1900 to the Present Day (London, Bloomsbury, 2017), 4; Gary L. Stiles, Churchill in Punch: His Fanciful Hats, Hillsdale College Churchill Project.
11 “The Roofs of the Mighty,” in Punch, 18 June 1919, 486.
12 Gary L. Stiles, Churchill in Punch (London, Unicorn, 2022) and Churchill in Punch: His Fanciful Hats, Hillsdale College Churchill Project.
13 Ben Tucker, Winston Churchill 1874-1955 His Life in Pictures (London, Allman & Son. 1955), 153.
14 Carlyle Allison, “Man of Many Hats: Winston Adds Canadian Sealskin to Collection,” in the Winnipeg Tribune, Winnipeg, 31 December 1941, 1.
15 “Churchill’s New Headgear,” Winnipeg Tribune, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 20 December 1943, 1.
16 “Churchill’s Fur Hat is from Canada,” in The Lethbridge Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, 5 March 1945, 13.
17 “Harry Hopkins has New Hat,” in The Lethbridge Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, ;18 August 1941, 5; “With Duke Earlier,” in The Ottawa Journal, Ottawa, Ontario, 24 July1941, 1; “For Sale: The Hat that Helped Bring America into War,” in The Independent, London, 4 June 1999.
18 Paterson, Michael, Winston Churchill: His Military Life 1895-1945 (Newton Abbott, Wilts,: David & Charles, 2006).
Acknowledgements
Dr. Stiles thanks Nicole Day and Katherine Carter of the National Trust, Chartwell for their much appreciated time, effort and insights while permitting me to explore the Chartwell hat collection and in obtaining detailed images of each hat.
The author
Gary Stiles is a physician, medical researcher and corporate executive, a student of history and art with a 40-year interest in Churchill and his writings. He is the Ursula Geller Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Research (Emeritus) at Duke University and is widely published in the medical and scientific literature. His first non-medical book was William Hart: Catalogue Raisonne and Artistic Biography (2020). His new book, Churchill in Punch, was launched in North America in September 2022.
Appendix: Churchill Haberdashers
This information is from invoices held in the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University. It is not inclusive nor exhaustive of the hats acquired throughout his life. —GLS
Aage Thaarup, London: Felt hat (1936); remodeled a black straw hat (1937).
Arthur James Boyce, Hat Maker, London: Unknown type and date.
Arthur James White, Hat and Cap Maker, London: Pith-style polo helmet (1914).
Austin Reed Ltd., Regent Street, London: Purchases included group captain’s RAF forage cap and service dress cap of Air Commodore, RAAF.
Baker & Co. Ltd., London: Black naval cap with badge of Trinity House, date unknown.
Battersby, London: Black “Bowker” morning hat, date unknown.
Chapman & Moore, Old Bond Street, London: Felt hat (1901). The company later closed and reopened as a shoemaker.
Christys’ Hats, London: Unknown type and date.
***
Ede & Ravenscroft, Chancery Lane, London: Black bicorn dress hat of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports (1946). Black academic tam as Chancellor of Bristol University, date unknown.
Lock & Co., London: Churchill greatly favored their Cambridge and Homburg hats. The Cambridge is a flat top, heavier-weight version of their famous Bowler or “John Bull” hat. In 1909, WSC purchased a Cambridge Homburg and white naval hat bearing the Royal Yacht Squadron badge.
Rita, London: Navy blue felt hat; later altered.
Scott & Co., Old Bond Street, London. In 1893 WSC bought a hat his mother and aunt detested. Other purchases (1909-46) included a Panama hat, tweed hat, black silk opera hat). grey and brown Homburgs, grey top hat, black Cambridge (called “Coke”), collapsible opera hat and undress service cap for Trinity House. Scott also repaired his hats, 1915-37.
Stetson Company (John B. Stetson Co.), USA: Various types and dates.
Sulka & Co., New York and Old Bond Street London: Unknown type and date.
Poole Co., Saville Row, London: Bicorn hat of Elder Brother of Trinity House (1936).