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Articles
A Remembrance of Lady Williams of Elvel, 1929-2023
- By CITA STELZER
- | July 24, 2023
- Category: Explore Personal Matters
Lady Williams, née Jane Gillian Portal, died on July 15th at the age of 93. Her interesting life has prompted so many obituaries that another would be superfluous. What is needed, I think, is a note from someone who knew her well for the last twenty years, who will miss her wit, generosity and, less well chronicled, her devotion to the memory of a great man. For him she toiled tirelessly as he returned to Downing Street to steer Britain through its postwar problems. She did much to preserve the memory of his achievements. That man was Winston Churchill. This note is no obituary; call it a remembrance.
It was my good fortune to know Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and deeply interested in another former Chancellor, Winston Churchill. Gordon took an interest in the fact that I was writing my first book, Dinner with Churchill. Always eager to help young scholars, Gordon told me that Lady Williams would be an important source and introduced us. Jane invited me to luncheon at the House of Lords and we became good friends.
It was immediately obvious to me that I had met an extraordinary woman. I was eager to learn a bit about her early years from published sources, as Jane was reticent about her past, more interested in the future.
Women of the Raj
Jane Portal was born in India in 1929, as was her mother, the indomitable Iris Butler. Iris married Lieutenant-Colonel Gervase Portal in India in 1927. She was a sister of Rab Butler, one of Britain’s more successful postwar Chancellors. Her uncle was always willing to help Jane along when she decided to live in Britain.
Iris Portal was a writer and biographer who published under her maiden name. Several of her books remain in print and are available on Amazon. A good sample of her work is “Social Life in Pre-First World War India” in Country Life, 1977. Iris found time, while in India, to work to improve the lives of soldiers’ families. Jane followed her example of service in Britain as a Probation Officer and on the National Parole Board, and was a Prison Visitor. I have always believed that Lady Williams, a lifelong member of the Labour Party, was devoted to Churchill in part because of his history of seeking reforms for the lives of working-class Britons and the less fortunate—an expression of his humanity she found so appealing. As do we all.
Jane’s father, Gervase Edward Portal, was the half-brother of Charles Portal, who became head of the Royal Air Force , and later, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford. Jane called him Uncle Pete. With her Uncle Rab and Uncle Pete, Jane had two well-connected uncles with stature and influence in Churchill circles. It was her Uncle Rab who recommended that she apply to work for the most famous man in the world.
Joining Churchill
Churchill, then leader of the Opposition, hired Jane Portal, aged 22, after a typical cursory interview. She began working at his house at 28 Hyde Park Gate. She was the junior of several other “young ladies,” as Churchill called them. All shared work as private personal secretaries. Their tasks included everything that needed doing. The boss had wide-ranging interests: “taking down” (as dictation was called), typing and filing. She also handled personal chores, such as taking his poodle Rufus to the dog spa, ordering precisely correct colors for WSC’s paints, and receiving live maggots in the post for Churchill to feed his Chartwell goldfish.
For Jane, there were uniquely personal chores. She read to a stroke-ridden Churchill in 1953—he blinked his eyes when he wanted her to turn the pages of Phineas Finn. She assisted in his triumphant return to the political wars only four months later, with a rousing speech to the Conservative Party at Margate.
Lord and Lady Williams
At one point in my relationship with Lady Williams, our husbands entered the picture. I met Lord (Charles) Williams, whom Jane had married in 1977. The four of us shared many dinners together over the years. And many opera performances of Wagner’s Ring cycle in London as well as in New York, evenings on which my husband was happily otherwise engaged. My first view of Charles as rather brusque changed one evening when he joined Jane and me at the interval meal during Die Walküre at Covent Garden. Tears streaming down his face, he was too moved for casual conversation. We finished the meal in silence, each of us struck by the grandeur of what we had seen.
On one trip to New York, we four visited the FDR Library at Hyde Park. There Jane rightly corrected a guide’s description of Churchill as a heavy drinker. I recorded Jane’s version of Churchill’s drinking habits in my book. She, not the Hyde Park guide, had it right. She would repeat her performance as a commentator at Chartwell during our several visits. Once she explained to me how the current arrangements differed from the Churchills’ time, She was extraordinarily generous with such information, which I as a fledgling historian much appreciated.
A pledge of loyalty
Early in our relationship, Lady Williams explained to me that, like most people who worked for Churchill, she had promised never to talk about him or to reveal information about him or his family. She cited the “trouble” his doctor Lord Moran caused when, to the consternation of the Churchill family, he violated that understanding by publishing his “diaries,” which the family considered too personal.
But as our relationship deepened, and she realized that I was interested in Churchill not only as a historic figure, but as a man who retained his humanity, his appreciation of the good—actually, the best—things in life through war and peace, in and out of Downing Street. Jane then decided that she had something to add to Churchill scholarship, both through me and, later, more importantly, on her own.
Dinner with Churchill
I explained to her that my first book, Dinner with Churchill documented how Churchill used dinners as policy-making events. To him they were tools to continue the work at hand. He was, I discovered, an attentive and very considerate host, so dinners could sometimes be fun. She agreed to comment on what I was digging up in the Churchill Archives at Cambridge. She expanded on what I was discovering and added some wonderful stories. Most of them, with her permission, are in my book.
Jane suggested that Sir Martin Gilbert might agree to have a look at my manuscript. I was overwhelmed and extremely grateful. Sir Martin did agree and read and commented on my draft, deploying his wide knowledge, sharp pencil, and intellectual generosity. He often met with me late in the afternoon, after grueling days serving on the Chilcot Commission’s enquiry into the 2003 Iraq war. Jane had only our friendship and her loyalty to Churchill’s memory as reasons for making this invaluable introduction. My book benefited enormously.
Lady Williams willingly became a star attraction at the Dinner with Churchill book-launch at the Churchill War Rooms in 2011. To add to my pleasure, she and Charles joined us for supper after our last guests had reluctantly departed.
Fortunately, we were later able to organize another launch party, this time at the Reform Club in London. This was for Charles’s biography of Marshal Petain. The event prompted raised eyebrows from many friends because of Charles’s generally favorable view of Petain. Perceptive as always, Jane knew what was going on, and stood with us, ignoring the unspoken objections.
Working with Winston
Along the way I began work on my second book, Working with Winston: The Unsung Women Behind Britain’s Greatest Statesman. That book began when I discovered in the Churchill Archives some old-fashioned audio tapes on a back shelf. They were oral histories by Churchill’s personal private secretaries: eleven women and one man. A tape by Lady Williams was among the batch. I arranged for transcriptions of all save Jane’s. She was still very much alive, and the Archives ruled that only after a person’s death could these histories move into the public domain.
Lady Williams waived that and granted me permission to transcribe her tape. Her kindness probably made me one of the few people to hear her detailed descriptions—including laughter and sighs—revealing Churchill in unguarded moments, alone except for his staff. They were a great addition to my book. She knew and had worked with many of the secretaries whom I knew only by listening to their oral histories.
Like the first book, Working with Winston benefitted from Jane’s corrections of errors of omission and commission—gently and softly, as was her style. One correction remains in my mind: “Cita, it is not lunch, but luncheon” as Winston Churchill insisted.
Witness to greatness
As that book reached a wider audience, Jane’s prominent role in the life of Churchill became better known. She began to receive requests to speak publicly. She was reluctant because of her promise to Sir Winston and his family, and did not consider herself a “public person.” Her wealth of experience added to historians’ views—not only of a prime minister but a person with family and all the other problems, joys and sorrows.
At the War Rooms in 2007, Jane spoke to an appreciative audience that asked intelligent, even affectionate questions. One man asked about Churchill’s exercise. (“None,” she answered.) Another asked about his relationship with Clementine, and how the secretaries got along with her. See my book for the answer.
She was surprised to discover that she enjoyed these experiences. One questioner urged her to write a book, but sadly, she did not. I do hope she left some personal recordings for her grandchildren, as she promised me she had.
In 2017, Jane attended a New York Churchill conference to address a large crowd, with Celia Sandys as moderator. She recalled “taking down” with Churchill in 1952, as he was driven to the airport to greet 25-year-old Queen Elizabeth on her return from Kenya after the death of her father, King George VI. As he dictated in the car the speech he would later broadcast to the nation, she said Churchill wept unashamedly at the enormity of this event.
Jane’s son, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, presided at the crowning of King Charles III some seventy-one years later. I like to think that the influence of this kind and intelligent woman extends across those years—years in which she helped Churchill serve his country and, indeed, the world.
The author
Cita Stelzer graduated from Barnard College and was a special aide to New York Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Hugh Carey before joining an economic consulting firm specializing in regulatory policy. She is the author of two works on Sir Winston: Dinner with Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table (2013) and Working with Winston: The Unsung Women Behind Britain’s Greatest Statesman (2019). Her next book, Churchill’s American Network: Winston Churchill and the Forging of the Special Relationship, will be published by Pegasus in February 2024.
Further reading
Cita Stelzer, “Getting to Know You”: First Dinners with Winston Churchill,” 2022.
Andrew Roberts, “Defending Churchill from the woke assault on his ‘truth’ just got harder,” The Telegraph, 17 July 2023.
Richard M. Langworth, “A Needed Tribute to Churchill’s Devoted Staff by Cita Stelzer,” 2019.