On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 11:01:27 PM UTC-4, Brad Tolppanen wrote: > > The Daily Telegraph recently had an interesting article on the destruction > of the infamous Graham Sutherland portrait of Winston Churchill in which > Sonia Purnell reveals the painting was burned by Grace Hamblin at the wish > of Clementine Churchill. The article is available at: > > > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/winston-churchill/11730850/Secret-of-Winston-Churchills-unpopular-Sutherland-portrait-revealed.html > > <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fwinston-churchill%2F11730850%2FSecret-of-Winston-Churchills-unpopular-Sutherland-portrait-revealed.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGl2U_0rCGbhyVsS-_Z7iOROw7blw> >
One of the few times I have seen the late Sir Martin Gilbert upset was when a recent author "revealed" that Churchill employed a ghost to draft some of his 1930s "potboilers," that one such draft was anti-semitic rubbish, and that Churchill (who at best would rewrite and sign off on those drafts) adamantly refused to publish it—facts that Martin himself had published 30 or so years before in his Document Volumes for the official biography. I should think Lady Soames would react similarly to the "revealed secret" that Lady Churchill destroyed the Sutherland portrait—a fact she noted in a press statement shortly after her mother's death in 1977, and disclosed in full in her biography, *Clementine Churchill,* in 1979. In her book (pp 662-66, Houghton Mifflin edition). Mary Soames wrote "a complete and personal record of how Winston had felt, and of how [Clementine] herself had come to feel. It suffices to add that Clementine never regretted what she had done, and indeed only a few months before her death she confirmed that she had not changed her mind on this subject by one iota." That Grace Hamblin should have kept mum about her part in the story is hardly surprising to anyone who knew Grace. But to treat the Sutherland story as a revelation is preposterous. Whenever Lady Soames would read long-known facts republished under shock headlines as "news," she would just sadly shake her head. Perhaps we should, too. The subject book will be reviewed in due course by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, to which readers may wish to subscribe: http://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
