Great Contemporaries: Jan Christian Smuts

Winston Churchill had met Jan Christian Smuts when he returned from the Boer War in 1900. Elected to Parliament at the end of that year, he never again visited South Africa. Yet that country was to play an important part in his life for the next fifty years.

Werner Vogt has identified an unplumbed aspect of the saga with a well-documented account of Churchill’s encounters with Switzerland: “Winston Churchill und die Schweiz” (Zürich: Verlag Neue Züricher Zeitung, 2015)

At Bradford, Yorkshire on 14 March 1912, Churchill made a contentious speech defending Irish Home Rule. Defying his Unionist opponents, he concluded: “If the Government and the Parliament of this great country and greater Empire is to be exposed to menace and brutality [for any] sinister and revolutionary purpose—then, gentlemen, I can only say to you let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof.”

He combined two qualities: generous loyalty to those he loved, and an acid tongue and pen for those he didn’t. Most of the latter, I tend to think, richly deserved what they got. Randolph Churchill’s public persona was based on the latter quality. In the mid-1950s, surgery revealed that a tumor on his lung was benign. His friend Evelyn Waugh burst into the bar at White’s Club: “They’ve cut out the only part of Randolph that isn’t malignant!”

Churchill’s first piece of published fiction, Man Overboard! appeared in January 1899. Ronald Cohen’s bibliography dates its writing March 1898. In late March or early April, Churchill sent a draft to General Ian Hamilton: “The story I send you as it may amuse you for an hour….”

Robert Harris, author of the famous historical novel Fatherland, has published a new novel on Munich. He says it will rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain’s decision to accept Hitler’s demands for the Czech Sudetenland. His thesis—“Chamberlain’s finest hour” as he calls it—is that Munich bought time for Britain to prepare for war. Among other things, he contends in interviews that by the summer of 1940, the Royal Air Force had ten times as many aircraft as it had had in 1938.

There seems to be a new trend in publishing: serious books in a format once the preserve of books for young people. Last year we had Cate Ludlow’s attractive "I Love Winston Churchill: 400 Fantastic Facts." Now, at the same keen price, we have this title by Richard Wiles in a series which already offers “graphic biographies” of Jane Austen, Cézanne, Leonardo and Shakespeare.

Voltaire once said the problem with the Holy Roman Empire was that it was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire. One could say of Churchill’s Secret War that it is neither a secret nor a war, nor has it much to do with Churchill.

From the time he became Prime Minister it was manifest that Churchill’s safety was of paramount importance. So looking after him was regarded as a military operation, called “Operation Elephant,” the elephant being the PM himself.

Daniel Wybo requested this essay on King Leopold and Churchill’s remarks about the May 1940 Belgian surrender. Mr. Wybo’s interest is through his father, who fought in the battle to defend the canal at Ghent-Terneuzen. Taken prisoner by the Germans, the elder Wybo escaped and became part of the Belgian underground. “My father was always bitter about how our King was treated,” Mr. Wybo writes. “He was distressed by the great lies propagated about his actions.” Churchill, it will be seen, tried to correct the worst of those lies.

This slim volume contains two jewels: Winston Churchill’s signal 1946 speeches at Fulton and Zürich. It also provides much interesting background information on the two milestones.

Taken together, these two attractive books provide significant contributions to our knowledge of Churchill’s entourage and favourite haunts on the Côte d’Azur from the early 1930s almost until his death.