Archival documents, testimony and images detailing Sir Winston Churchill’s unconventional working style during the Second World War have been made public, to coincide with the UK release of biopic Darkest Hour.
The film depicts Churchill as a heavy drinker, prone to working in bed, both in the day and at night, often with a glass of Champagne or whiskey and a Cuban cigar to hand.
And it seems that portrayal is fairly accurate. The former prime minister’s private secretary, Elizabeth Layton, who published her memoirs shortly before her 1993 death, recalled Churchill dictating his famous speeches, sometimes until 4.30am, from his bed or while roaming around the room in his red, green and gold dressing gown, says the Daily Mirror.
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Layton and other secretaries who worked for Churchill in his wartime HQ - in an underground bunker below London known as the War Rooms - were completely devoted to him, although he was inclined to be impatient and demanding, The Guardian reports. In archived files, Layton recalls: “The negative side was only on the surface. Underneath he was a very caring person.”
Indeed, his staff weren’t afraid to play the odd joke. “In need of a little light relief,” says The Daily Telegraph, “a number of Winston Churchill’s secretaries working in the War Rooms concocted a tongue-in-cheek memo as the prime minister prepared to embark on his second visit to Washington at the height of the Second World War”.
Operation Desperate, typed on official paper marked Top Secret, “demanded that a force commander be urgently dispatched from Britain to the US to obtain supplies of three vital commodities - silk stockings, chocolate and cosmetics”, the newspaper says. The mission was deemed a “complete success” as a member of staff who travelled with Churchill to the US returned home with all three.
