#594： How Churchill (and London) Survived the Blitz of 1940
Episode Stats
Summary
A few months after Winston Churchill took office as Prime Minister in 1940, the German military began an eight-month-long bombing campaign on the United Kingdom which became known as the Blitz. The bombing, which lasted for 57 consecutive days and nights over London, killed 45,000 Britons. What was life like for the people who experienced the Blitz? My guest today zoomed in on this question by looking at the lives of Churchill and his inner circle during this precarious year of the war.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast a few months after
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winston churchill took office as prime minister the german military began an eight-month-long
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bombing campaign on the united kingdom which became known as the blitz the bombing which
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lasted for 57 consecutive days and nights over london killed 45 000 britons what was life like
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for the people who experienced the blitz my guest today zoomed in on this question by looking the
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lives of winston churchill and his inner circle during this precarious year of the war his name
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is eric larson and in his latest book the splendid in the vile he shows readers how the blitz could
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be absolutely terrifying unexpectedly normal and strangely beautiful at the same time and does so
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by profiling how churchill as well as his family members and advisors handle both the unexpected
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horrors of war and the predictable pickles of interpersonal drama we begin our conversation
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discussing the extent of the blitz and then spend the rest of our conversation discussing key members
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in what churchill called his sacred circle we learn how churchill's wife clementine supported her
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husband during the blitz how his son randolph created trouble with his gambling and affairs how
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his teenage daughter mary managed to keep doing typically adolescent activities even while bombs fell
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on london and how his advisors contributed to his leadership these characters offer a great lesson
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how life goes on even in the midst of a crisis and how one can be fearless even in the face of a threat
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after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash larson
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all right eric larson welcome to the show thank you very much so you got a new book out the splendid
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and the vile yes indeed a saga of churchill family and defiance during the blitz so there's been a lot
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of biographies written about churchill i think he's like one of the most written about human beings from
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the 20th century what were you aiming to accomplish by focusing on the blitz well you know the thing
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that drew me to the story is not so much churchill not so much the blitz not so much world war world
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war ii but what happened was that i had been living in seattle and my wife and i moved to manhattan
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and when we moved to manhattan i had this epiphany about the nature of 9-11 right in seattle you know
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like millions of people around the world we we watched the twin towers collapse in real time
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but it was a very different thing when i got to new york i realized these people had seen the smoke
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smelled it you know heard sirens the whole deal but above all they had that sense of violation of
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their personal city of their home city and i started thinking how on earth if this 9-11 threw us for such
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a loop in the city in particular how did people survive the bombing of london when it was 57
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consecutive nights of bombs and then six more months of intensifying raids at somewhat longer
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intervals but still you know very intense bombing attacks how do you survive that i started thinking
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well i could get at that by talking about maybe writing a book about a typical london family
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and then i thought wait why not the quintessential london family churchill and his family you know
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his his his you know youngest daughter youngest living daughter mary his son-in-law randolph and
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so forth and they're you know his own advisors take a look at exactly how they got through that year
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which is what makes this very different than other things that have been done thus far
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and that's one of these you mentioned your sources the source section of your book is that you
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purposely went to look for those frivolous stories that often get thrown out or maybe just mentioned
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in passing in other churchill biographies i'm glad you did it because like i remember reading those
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things those little stories and other biographies and i always thought i wish they would go there's
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more there and i want them to go right yeah well i mean it's not so much that i look for the frivolous
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stories but that i look for i like to think of more as context is everything right and you know
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there tends to be with churchill a tendency toward hagiography you know making him seem like he alone
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won world war ii when of course that's that's not at all the case and and i wanted to look at just how
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he went about his days during this period and how his advisors and family did and necessarily in terms
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of context that means getting into some of the some of the little stories that you know like we all have
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i mean even in the midst of the crisis of 9 11 we still had to take our kids to school and you know
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we had all all that and so churchill was was no different so i did really try to hunt for those
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things that would sort of shed light on what life was really like day by day so before we get into
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churchill and his inner circle during the blitz let's talk about the blitz itself yeah because one
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of the things that i think you did a really good job with this book is conveying how terrifying
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how catastrophic the blitz was but also how weirdly normal it became so let's give listeners a bird's
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eye view of the blitz yeah you mentioned 56 nights 57 consecutive nights of bombing after well so again
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context so one of the things that actually i was i was a little bit surprised at in my own research i
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mean i knew a little bit about the blitz and the bombing and the battle of britain and so forth
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but i didn't realize was there was this this long slow ramp up essentially from when churchill became
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prime minister to the point when the first bombers attacked made their first deliberate attack on
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london and it was this kind of slow and i think fairly suspenseful accretion of you know hitler doing
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one thing churchill being defiant one thing leading to another and only then did the bombers come to
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london on september 7th 1940 until then hitler explicitly forbade the luftwaffe from making any attacks on
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central london i mean deliberate attacks on central london there had been an accidental attack on august
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24th so there was this long slow run up which i found very very interesting and very sort of spooky
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actually but then comes the blitz september 7th 1940 the first bombers arrive that afternoon at tea time
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it's a beautiful day warm in the 90s people are you know the stores are full and piccadilly you know
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suddenly these bombers arrive and start dropping incendiary bombs and high explosives on the city
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of london it was it was incredibly incredibly shocking and terrifying the bombing continued
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night after night after night for 57 consecutive nights as this happened people did begin to adjust
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in some very interesting ways and that's part of the story you know is how how they began to adjust and
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and you know for for for example for mary churchill who is my favorite character in the book
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she's 17 at the start of the action she turns 18 you know life is still full of parties hanging out
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with raf pilots dances there's this annual queen charlotte's ball which is sort of the debutante
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ball which that year was held in an underground ballroom and it goes on anyway it goes on anyway you know
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bombs are falling as this ball is underway that's how that's how that's how people did sort of normalize
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the day yeah i mean you know business kept going on yeah and and it was just it was just so interesting
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to see that that they were they manage like what do you think was going on there was it churchill's
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leadership his rhetoric or was it just that's just human nature you somehow managed to adjust to even
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crazy craziness yeah well you know i think it's a mix of all things i mean 57 consecutive nights of
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bombing i mean what are you going to do stay at a high high state of terror for 57 straight nights i mean
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you know you people people brought their own abilities to to to adjust to the program but it
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didn't it didn't hurt that churchill i mean it actually helped helped immensely that churchill as
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leaders true leaders should that churchill was out there trying to provide solace when he could
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trying to show the people at all all opportunities how how courageous he was in hopes of transferring some
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of that courage to them and i think it all went into the mix where where people began to to to
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normalize their lives it helped also that the that the luftwaffe decided that daytime raids were just
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too costly because the raf was really pummeling them on daytime raids bombers were slow much slower
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than the raf about hurricanes and spitfires so the germans abandoned daylight raids which really helped
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because then during the day people led relatively normal lives they came to work they they commuted to
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work they left they left early enough to get home before the blackout they brought their gas mask to
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work just in case you know that kind of thing so that helped also if you have if you were pretty
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certain relatively certain or you could be relatively certain that during the day the bombers would not
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come that kind of helped level out the day however the flip side of that was the equal certainty
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that they would come that night almost for sure during that first period one of the i mean one of the
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things you did you went to diaries written during this time and i thought one of the interesting
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stories you pull out of that like love making affairs actually picked up during the blitz because
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people would use the the the blitz as an excuse to like oh well i was gone i was taking cover yeah
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yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i mean you think about that you know i mean bombs are falling and it's it's
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it's terrifying and you know you've you got to live your life and what have you got to lose you know
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so so people were having affairs seemed seemed to be like everybody was having an affair you know there
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was a lot of sex going on and that was one of the things that i found kind of delightful too in the
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research so how many britons were in ended up being killed during the blitz okay so you're taxing my
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my uh always faulty short-term memory but i believe it by the time the blitz ended the 1940 41 period i
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think the number killed was 47 000 the number seriously injured was like another 50 000 so
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yeah and as you talked about the destruction it was you could have you know one block completely just
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annihilated right but the block over fine well yeah yeah because of the nature of the nature of the
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inaccurate nature of of bombing and and and the and the character of of some weapons for example the
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the germans the luftwaffe use what were referred to as parachute mines which were very large basically
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explosive pallets that were dropped by parachute into a into a neighborhood if one of those landed in
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your neighborhood went off you had no neighborhood i mean it would just destroy that that complete area
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similarly they had the germans had a bomb 4 000 pound bomb 13 feet long which they named satan and
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if that landed in your neighborhood you also lost your neighborhood but then the reality was
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that you know two blocks away you could drive down a street that looked like there had not been a war
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yet yeah well let's talk about the title of the book the splendid in the vial yeah where did that come
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from so splendid in the vial comes from a diary entry by a key character in the book john colville who
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was one of churchill's private secretaries he had a number of those all young men who were
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very hard working and they're really sort of more or less like almost like assistant prime ministers
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really john colville was one of the the hardest working one of the most interesting because he kept
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a daily diary he should not have kept that diary it was a violation of national secrets act but he kept
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a daily diary and one night he he writes about this in his diary one night during a particularly
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severe raid he was looking out the window watching this from a bedroom as one does apparently and he's
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watching this raid and he is struck by the beauty of the bombs and searchlights and guns firing and so
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forth and he and he writes this beautiful beautiful entry in his diary which ends with how this was such
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a this was a juxtaposition of of he called it natural splendor and human vileness as soon as i read
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that that entry i thought yeah this is going to be my title the splendid and the vial that stayed ever
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since i mean i had to fight for it a little bit but right now i'm glad you thought it was such a great
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title because that that really does encapsulate war and sometimes we forget that the latin word for war
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bellum like it's also bella beautiful yeah okay that's weird yeah it's weird um so let's talk about
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this inner circle that churchill used i mean he he actually referred to it as secret circle it was
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these are the people that buoyed him up during this time and we'll talk about john colville here in a bit
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but let's talk about the one the ones closest to him and is one that played a big role in this book
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was his wife clementine yes who was a character i mean i think she uh doesn't get the attention that she
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probably deserves i think i said they're all characters in this book yeah they are anyway but
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yes well let's talk about clementine she was a very interesting compelling compelling woman yeah i mean
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what was her role in the blitz and during this first year in this in in this first year she really did
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decide what her job was going to be was to support churchill that was going to be her job and you know
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she she is sort of threaded through the narrative not as much as mary but she's threaded through the
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narrative as supporting him but also she's a very it's a very independent person she had her own
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bedroom and she she did not care that much honestly for for most of churchill's friends and she would
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prefer some of these nights just not not to be around you know when he had his his parties but she
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proved very very interesting in in this in a couple ways for one there was a point where churchill
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in her view was starting to become even more inconsiderate than usual he had a real
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inconsiderate rude side and his employees were starting to to chafe at this and and clementine
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writes him this letter where she she says you know you are not as nice as you used to be and and advises
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him on how he should be behaving and so forth which is very good sort of a nice nice break on on him
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getting completely off the planet with his harassability and so forth but there's also a point where
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she goes and visits all the shelters not all the shelters but a number of public shelters which were
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a mess and she just she just ventures in clementine churchill ventures in and captures dickensian detail
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about how awful these places were and that was that was very cool and she was a big part of the reforms
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that happened in the in the shelters yes yes she was she was a very she was a big part of advising
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churchill on the reforms that he he accepted that they her her views yes and so i mean you know some of
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the things they talked about they just wanted people to be comfortable so they made sure they
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got their tea well the tea was an interesting thing yeah i mean tea well tea runs through the whole
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whole book also because tea was was everything tea was england but one of the characters frederick
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lindamon churchill's science advisor you know ordinarily a cold fish but in one memorandum to
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churchill he he tried to get the government to reconsider a decrease in the amount of tea available under
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the racing program and it's a very interesting memorandum because he he makes the point that
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tea is it was crucial to the underclasses in terms of their only luxury and and how important it was to
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maintain at least that and and so so that was kind of a a very warm-hearted interesting interesting
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memorandum so you talk about one of the goals of your book is to explore what family life was like
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during the blitz and so besides managing a country during a siege there was family drama going
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on uh with the churchills and a source of that a big source of that drama was his son randolph
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yeah tell us about randolph churchill yeah so randolph randolph churchill was kind of a i guess the term
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would be a wastrel i mean he's a very bright guy very handsome guy but he was a a very heavy drinker
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and he was a um he was a spendthrope and uh an inept gambler he lost a lot of money and he was
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married to uh young woman pamela digby digby who but you know she took his name so it's pamela pamela
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digby churchill and their relationship um was you know fine at first uh when the action begins they've
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been only married for a like about a year and you know she she loved him he he may or may not have
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loved her i think he did but he also was a philanderer on the day that she gives birth to
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their child winston jr he is in bed with somebody else's wife but so he was but he was a really
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difficult character he was really sort of uh outrageously outspoken annoying
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difficult character well i i think uh churchill once said that he loved he loves randolph just
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doesn't like him yeah that's right yeah and i mean he was dealing this throughout the war he there'd be
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something well randolph's got these gambling debts and and that pamela had it's the point where
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pamela stopped telling stop telling the churchills about the gambling debts that church that randolph
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was accruing so yeah i mean at one point she you know the debts were accumulating to the point where
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you know they were really in hard straits she she they got a bail out at one point from churchill but
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he said you know this better be the end of it and that was not the end of it so so there's one
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moment where pamela's in harrods the famous department store and you know her her credit
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line of credit with the store was suddenly withdrawn because of excess debts by randolph and
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this was a tremendous humiliation she flees the store and in tears and their marriage through the
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book begins to wobble and degrade and eventually to to explode well we'll talk about the explosion here
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in a bit because it was an interesting dynamic between the churchills and and pamela but let's go back
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to john colville so this is a personal secretary he was keeping diaries during the whole entire time he
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he didn't have to he wasn't supposed to do that what was so captivating about his story what do you
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think his story tells about that you're trying to convey well the most important thing about john
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colville is that his diary well there's a number of things about john colville but but really his diary
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was the best insight into the daily functioning of of 10 downing street during during this 1940 41 period
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he should not have been keeping the diet was essentially illegal it was a violation of national
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security laws but he kept it kept it anyway but the thing i felt about john colville i mean i'm obviously
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not the first person to use that diary not the first to refer to him he makes a cameo i believe in
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the tv series the crown but i felt that john colville really needed to be sort of wanted to step forward and
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become a more full-bodied character in a work of history about churchill nobody has done that really
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until till till now and so to me you know i i wanted to know more about what his life was like you know
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what you know it's one thing to be a secretary private secretary in churchill's office but what else
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was going on so at one point i went in to take a look at his diary in the the actual diary at the
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churchill archives center in cambridge the the there's the published version the fringes of power
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which is very good very accurate very true to the original diary but in that he made a reference to
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the fact that things he cut out were were he cut out trivialities trivialities so i was interested in
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those trivialities so i set about trying to find out well what what did he cut it's very evident when
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you go through the through the the two diaries but i don't think anybody else has bothered bothered to do
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that honestly and i found that the things he cut out were certainly not trivialities at the time he
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was in love he was in love and this is this is what this is what sort of defined his his his emotional
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his emotional concerns in those days he was in love with this young woman gay margison and obsessed
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with her really and she was not returning the favor so this runs through the book as well and and
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you know again context to me is everything yeah it's one of those again it shows how life went on
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even yes life went on exactly and what i also liked about uh colville is at the beginning when
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he started working with churchill he wasn't really sure about him but then as his relationship with
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churchill progresses he he starts deeply admiring yes yes and i'm important to know that colville
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prior to to this he was he was a private secretary for for neville chamberlain and neville chamberlain
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was a very different kind of guy neville chamberlain was um sort of a more austere character he his
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nickname was the coroner or the old umbrella and then suddenly this dynamo churchill comes in and
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colville ends up working for him and colville really liked and was loyal to chamberlain and he was like
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oh yes this is this is going to be no this is he felt this was going to be a a difficult a difficult
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thing to have churchill there as prime minister but over time he came to see the thing that the world
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eventually came to see which is that churchill was was quite a brilliant leader in this period he was the
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man for the hour i mean you can criticize churchill for a lot of things his you know his early 20th
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century depredations as a you know a classic imperialist you know in in in in africa and so
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forth and his post-world war ii you know actions in kenya and india and so forth but in this period
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he was the man of the hour and colville came to recognize that how did churchill rely on colville did
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you were able to see that that he leaned on colville you know he well he leaned on all of
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his private sexism because believe me he without them he could not have done what he did these guys
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worked their tails off yeah give him like an idea like they were working from like six o'clock
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sometimes till two o'clock or three o'clock they weren't until two or three o'clock in the morning
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you know and uh whoever was on duty was like was the appointment for for for all this and they
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were you know they would they would they were you know helping him uh gather memoranda helping him
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you know his his other secretaries took dictation for speeches and so forth but colville and the others
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were responsible for putting this stuff in in shape for getting you know uh getting things published in
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the in the appropriate places for talking to other ministers it was these these poor guys just just
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they had no lives but and and again churchill could be incredibly rude he could be i mean overbearing he
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could be very very much boorish but he had this other side to him that was so so so very warm and fun
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and that's you know these no matter how hard these guys worked they loved him and they would they would
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not have traded that whole period for anything that was this other interesting thing so churchill never
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apologized he never he never said i'm sorry but he would do things after a blow-up that would
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convey i'm sorry we're still good he never apologized he never apologized but he somehow managed to
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communicate through whatever signal of the moment seemed appropriate that all was forgiven like beaver
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brooks says at one point that that when this happened with churchill that that he might then after the
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initial anger had subsided he might then in a moment put his hand on beaver brook's wrist just
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gently and that was the signal that all is good you know it's a momentary blow-up it's over we're
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gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show well let's talk
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about lord beaver brook because this is another character what was his role during this first year
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uh beaver brook's role during this this first year was really very important now beaver brook and
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churchill had been friends off and on throughout the years but mostly friends and now at this point
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we're friends again and as soon as churchill becomes prime minister on may 10 1940 he makes
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beaver brook his minister of aircraft production very important job beaver brook is is at this point
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he's a newspaper mag that he publishes newspapers he doesn't know really know much about manufacturing you
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hard things but uh churchill recognizes in him this kind of galvanizing energy that's going to be
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necessary to to step up production of fighter aircraft which churchill rightly recognized from
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the get-go was going to be the crucial ingredient in trying to hold off any effort to invade england
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by hitler and that that threat of invasion at this time was was a very concrete thing there were
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concerns that you know hitler the german air force and army could invade the next day you know on any
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given day that one day you'd be sitting there in hyde park and and you know a hundred paratroopers would
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descend you know around the serpentine in the park you know it was a very real possibility but
00:24:34.440
churchill recognized that the way to stop that the way to deny the luftwaffe air superiority which is
00:24:40.640
what they would have needed if they were going to try to invade if the germans were to try to invade
00:24:45.640
england he recognized that fighters were the only way to do that did not have enough fighters
00:24:50.160
what points beaverbrook minister of aircraft production beaverbrook works what amounts to
00:24:57.060
sort of an act of magic over time radically steps up production of spitfires and hurricanes not as
00:25:03.420
radically as he would like to think but he radically stepped up production and really sort of saved the
00:25:08.300
day at the same time he was an irascible potentially cantankerous cataclysmically energetic guy demanding
00:25:18.240
peevish toddlerish in the course of 1940-41 he resigns 14 times mainly to get attention from
00:25:26.920
churchill and but churchill churchill knew him he knew his his man he knew that that that max and
00:25:34.320
max was his real name lord beaverbrook you know styled uh lord beaverbrook max aiken was his real
00:25:39.220
name he knew that max was going to be a problem he knew he was going to be a problem but that's what
00:25:44.220
he wanted he wanted him to be a problem he wanted him to sow conflict because he wanted aircraft
00:25:49.540
production um juiced up as much was possible and he gossiped like a church lady he what he's a gossip
00:25:57.400
like he loved to gossip about what was going on he loved that he loved as i as i talk about in the book he
00:26:03.860
loved to collect secrets secrets he he loved to collect other people's secrets he liked knowing
00:26:09.600
the things that were in people's closets and then manipulating those people if he if he could he was a
00:26:15.760
real a real talent in that respect and that that didn't hurt either you know in terms of well i mean
00:26:21.240
it hurt some people but it didn't hurt in terms of getting things done well uh this happened like
00:26:27.040
pamela randolph's wife eventually went to beaverbrook for the debt problem that she was having well yeah i
00:26:33.260
mean when when yeah and that was when when pamela realized that the debts that she thought had been
00:26:39.240
paid off by by churchill but that there was actually like were actually not fully paid off because there
00:26:45.040
were other debts in the pipeline which is horrifying to her she went to beaverbrook and told him the story
00:26:50.920
and wanted to get help with with the debt and in the process sort of put herself into the the sway of
00:26:57.660
his of his world in a very interesting way and in the end you know he did help her but you know
00:27:04.800
sort of the devil's bargain right randolph even told her don't ever go to beaverbrook i've had told
00:27:08.640
her before don't ever let yourself get under under under beaverbrook's control i think to give some
00:27:14.000
context to some of the things that that surprised me because whenever i think whenever i imagined you
00:27:18.840
know people from a long time ago i always imagined like in their 30s or their 40s pamela was only 21
00:27:25.400
when this when this was going on so i couldn't imagine being 21 years old new baby and you've
00:27:31.240
got hundreds i mean what today would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt right
00:27:35.820
right right right yeah and and and she was and she was i mean she seemed much older than her years
00:27:41.820
she was 21 but she was she was a very flirtatious very easy way with people and sexually knowing
00:27:48.640
person very much sort of i i would say coveted by by by men and and knew what she had and was very
00:27:57.560
willing to to to to use that to to help her help her get away so she was a very dynamic character and
00:28:04.560
when their marriage began to fail which it did quite spectacularly and once she recognized that she
00:28:10.900
was on her own she she really took very concerted steps to just carve carve her own way and one of the
00:28:17.660
ways she did that one of the people that entered into the churchill secret circle was an american
00:28:22.860
harriman yes avril harriman what was his story what was his role there so so avril harriman was a was a
00:28:29.220
businessman from america he was actually the founder of sun valley the resort in idaho really to
00:28:35.600
founded that to try to get increased rail travel for his his family railroad in the winter time
00:28:42.480
harriman harriman was an immensely attractive man tall very handsome very very athletic he was sent
00:28:51.620
by roosevelt president roosevelt franklin d roosevelt to london to administer the so-called lend lease
00:29:00.660
program after it had finally been passed which was a long saga in itself nominally his mission was to
00:29:07.760
was to to determine who got what aid and how they got and what was done with it and so forth but
00:29:15.300
really he was he was sent by roosevelt to kind of report on what was really happening with churchill and
00:29:23.460
with the war and to send back reports about what was really really happening but it turns out that
00:29:30.580
yes he had that mission but then churchill recognized that he was roosevelt's
00:29:34.960
emissary he said about really bringing him into his inner circle like so almost like the courtship
00:29:40.540
of a woman brought him into his into his innermost circle to try to you know to try to to by by by
00:29:48.840
proxy win roosevelt's intervention ultimately in the war um he hoped that roosevelt would intervene
00:29:55.300
and of course pearl harbor comes along and he does but harriman also was a was a you know again he was a very
00:30:02.040
very attractive guy and at one party he meets uh pamela churchill who at this point is convinced
00:30:08.820
that her has decided her marriage is done and they during a during an air raid they go down to his
00:30:16.040
his apartment which is deemed to be safer it's in this hotel called the dorchester and one thing
00:30:21.700
leads to another and dot dot dot and did churchill did the churchills know about it to be fair yeah i i
00:30:28.500
believe the churchills did know about it not immediately but they did know about it um i don't
00:30:33.860
think anybody really seriously doubts that that they did but they did not make a big thing about
00:30:37.940
the affair when later later randolph got really annoyed when he found out about the affair that
00:30:44.380
that his parents had been sort of you know wittingly supporting a cuckold in the in the cuckolding him in
00:30:53.120
in the in the in the in the churchill family so do you think he would i mean was do you think to what
00:30:57.780
randolph accused him like did churchill kind of use pamela as a as a political you know connection
00:31:02.500
or i'm sure he did once he realized that i mean he was he was very very good at at this courtship
00:31:09.480
of america i mean it's like a like a like an ace fly fisherman using every single technique he could
00:31:14.860
that just sort of reel roosevelt closer and closer and closer and when he found out and i have no doubt
00:31:21.420
that he found out that pamela and and harriman were having an affair i'm sure he was delighted
00:31:26.420
you know this is like all the family you know especially now well i think churchill was used
00:31:31.080
to that sort of thing i mean his mother was how would you say she got i mean she was she did that
00:31:36.560
she was unfaithful she was known as a i don't know courtesan i mean basically yeah well basically
00:31:42.420
in this time everybody was unfaithful i mean that's one of the things that comes through in my in my work
00:31:46.000
actually it almost doesn't matter what era i'm looking at um there's a lot more sex going on
00:31:51.620
that you would ever imagine right and so the sort of the happy ending with that i mean if you can
00:31:55.440
call it a happy i mean it's kind of a happy ending with pamela and harriman they eventually they
00:31:59.280
go their separate ways they stay married to their respective spouses but then well she she eventually
00:32:04.280
divorces yeah she divorces but decades later they end up getting married well that's that's true
00:32:10.320
that's that's it's very sort of it's kind of a romantic story romantic also in the sense that
00:32:14.740
that harriman did stay with his wife despite the revelation of this affair and and they actually
00:32:20.080
grew closer and closer over the years and when his wife died decades after after the war harriman was
00:32:27.120
was absolutely crushed and at one point though he is invited to a party at uh catherine graham's house
00:32:33.700
the uh you know the owner of the washington post reconnects with pamela and the next thing you know
00:32:39.480
they're they're married this this long saga has you know come full circle in their their their
00:32:45.280
husband and wife so you mentioned uh mary mary churchill was your favorite character why was she
00:32:49.700
your favorite character mary was my favorite character because well first of all she's brand
00:32:54.500
new in terms of churchill scholarship i when i was granted thankfully permission to look at her diary
00:33:02.240
by her daughter i was one of two scholars who had been given that opportunity i don't know who the
00:33:07.680
other scholar was but mary has not been you know heavily written about in any work on churchill until
00:33:14.040
until now and what i really liked about her was that you know she was again context she was this
00:33:21.920
very charming smart pretty very intelligent 17 year old who whose life followed a very interesting
00:33:33.760
arc in this time she was a she she was a very compelling counterpoint to what was going on
00:33:40.060
in the world like she she loved her father and she commented on on the action day by day and in her own
00:33:47.280
daily in his daily diary and it was really a really a a wonderful insight not just into what was actually
00:33:53.640
happening on the broader world stage but also what was happening in her life the context
00:33:58.840
snogging in the hail off with the raf pilots you know that kind of thing and and uh the raf pilots
00:34:05.360
at a nearby base bomber pilots you know these are young guys in their 20s you know 1920 21 22
00:34:11.840
they knew mary was at checkers the prime ministerial estate in the country outside london they knew mary
00:34:18.500
was there they knew her friends were there and they would engage in a process that she refers to
00:34:21.980
repeatedly in her diary as beating up which is when the bombers would fly over at treetop level
00:34:27.620
and just buzzed the girls they were thrilled they loved this and i mean as you read her diaries
00:34:32.940
life went on for her too she was she got proposed to and she had to you'd see the agony of like whether
00:34:38.280
to accept or not and the the tension between her and her mother about whether to accept or not
00:34:43.080
no i mean this so i mean she she follows a very uh a very interesting arc through through a book i mean
00:34:49.460
i don't want to just like give away exactly what happens but suffice it to say that you know one
00:34:55.160
reason this book this book takes place in that first year of his prime minister ministership
00:35:01.260
premiership may 10 1940 to may 10 1941 but it was not that year per se that drew me this is not a book
00:35:09.240
about the first year of the prime minister this is a book that i did because the action happens to
00:35:15.080
match conveniently that first year on may 10 1941 three different narrative threads all converge
00:35:23.360
and end on that day which almost never happens in the world of you know historical writing and one
00:35:28.900
of those was was her particular saga right what i find interesting about mary when i read about her
00:35:34.980
seems like out of all the churchill children she was the most well-adjusted she didn't have like the
00:35:40.140
personal drama like a randolph or even her older i think she had older sister as well yes yeah yeah she
00:35:45.580
had two sisters diana and sarah what do you think went on there like why did the other churchill's
00:35:49.320
children kind of end up have all these personal problems and mary didn't i don't know i mean you
00:35:54.300
know i didn't spend a lot of time obviously thinking about looking into the the other the other
00:35:59.060
sisters i wanted to focus on a few important characters but you know i mean three three four
00:36:06.920
five times a charm i mean as she was the youngest and and uh and was doted upon by her parents i don't
00:36:13.220
know maybe that's part of it so you mentioned checkers that was the the prime minister
00:36:19.080
state out in the country outside of london and that seemed to play a pivotal role that's where
00:36:24.340
churchill would convene his inner circle yes and not only continue they continued to work there but
00:36:29.440
they also blew off steam there what were some of the stories that one of you know a few of your
00:36:33.400
favorite stories from checkers that you really showed that really conveyed that inner circle
00:36:37.160
so checkers really did become kind of a character in the book i was fascinated by checkers fascinated
00:36:42.820
by how churchill used it checkers was this lovely old house on some sprawling grounds outside london
00:36:51.960
that had been donated to the government by a very generous guy and the rule for the house was
00:36:59.080
supposed to be that prime ministers were not supposed to do any work there it's supposed to be a place
00:37:04.700
where you just recharge mentally psychically the idea being that maybe the house would help
00:37:10.600
improve the governorship government of the governing of of britain and then churchill comes along and
00:37:18.020
churchill is like he's not going to not work he's he lived for work you know so so every weekend this
00:37:22.820
place is filled with guests and i think my favorite story about checkers is when one night you know he
00:37:30.760
had these dinner parties for all these dignitaries and people from abroad and whatever there's a lot of
00:37:37.740
booze and a lot of a lot of fun and uh after one of these uh churchill in the great hall at checkers he
00:37:43.880
puts on the gramophone to play military music and then he proceeds to begin doing a series of
00:37:51.380
very seriously for him bayonet drills using his manlicker rifle with a bayonet attached to the end but
00:37:56.960
the thing is he's wearing at this point his pale blue siren suit which honestly makes him look like
00:38:03.140
a pale blue easter egg you know the siren suit was this one piece jumpsuit he had designed so that
00:38:08.140
it could be pulled on at a moment's notice so he's wearing that but he's also wearing his gold dragon
00:38:13.220
silk dressing gown so here he is at checkers with this rifle pursuing these these bayonet drills you
00:38:20.840
know on the on the on the great hall of of checkers with all his guests gathered around just in
00:38:26.760
hysterics you know but because here's the prime minister of england doing this thing in this purple
00:38:32.260
in this light blue this light blue jumpsuit you know it's tremendous i love the stories i mean i
00:38:38.200
think you mentioned at one point you said that churchill churchill never stopped being a boy
00:38:41.560
churchill there's no i yeah i really feel like he never stopped being a boy and that was part of
00:38:45.480
his charm part of what made his private secretary's tolerate that sort of intense work schedule so
00:38:52.120
another thing you do throughout the book is make these cuts to german leaders and they're sort of
00:38:56.920
their thought process during this what were you hoping to convey with those cuts i thought it was very
00:39:01.580
important to get the german input because it because it's important to know what they were
00:39:08.440
thinking about as all this unfolded because the british as you know luftwaffe began attacking first
00:39:16.060
attacking and sort of in a way that really sort of mystified the raf the british were having trouble
00:39:23.120
understanding exactly what the luftwaffe was trying to do and i felt it was important then to understand
00:39:29.580
what the luftwaffe was trying to do not just as a way of saying okay this is this is how they saw it
00:39:34.780
this is what they were actually this is what herman gering head of the luftwaffe was actually trying to
00:39:39.280
trying to do at this point but it was important also to in terms of suspense because because if you
00:39:44.900
know that they're planning okay the next giant raid on on a city in in england and you know of
00:39:52.100
course that the british don't know or maybe have a sense that something's coming through their
00:39:55.700
intelligence network um that's suspense that's suspense you want to find out what happens you
00:40:00.800
know you know this is going to happen because the germans are are talking about it the british don't
00:40:06.200
and and you know that's that's one of the essences of crafting suspense i also liked how you conveyed
00:40:13.240
i mean sometimes like the surprise by the germans about how defiant the british were they just thought
00:40:18.100
that they would just roll over yep but they never did and they were always they were in there they're
00:40:22.120
trying to figure out how to spin this yeah constantly the the germans really did think
00:40:26.420
that the that the british would would cave after this this this punishing aerial attack they were
00:40:31.640
stunned each time that that churchill would not give in and churchill did not give in churchill
00:40:37.680
churchill just grew more and more defiant which in turn annoyed the germans no end especially hitler
00:40:44.500
and it was ultimately his you know intransigent defiance that led hitler to finally approve
00:40:52.080
the bombing of uh of central london the bombing of civilian parts of cities which hitler previously
00:40:59.160
had had banned he he had explicitly said you cannot to to herman gering you cannot bomb london you cannot
00:41:05.220
bomb central london because churchill because hitler did not want to so galvanize the the british
00:41:12.860
people and and churchill that they would not consider coming to the peace table and churchill was
00:41:18.280
you know absolutely defiant there's no way he was going to do that right and so one thing leads to
00:41:23.040
another and then churchill the hitler finally says finally authorizes attacks on london and and
00:41:28.760
massive attacks on london you know and now the strategy has changed to try to bring churchill to
00:41:33.960
the peace table by just sheer brutality you know and once again it fails but but this is what was
00:41:38.620
now happening and i mean that's what eventually led to the dresden bombings too like well you know
00:41:43.240
tit for tat i mean you know what preceded the september 7 1940 the first deliberate raid on
00:41:49.940
central london the first the the night that is typically credited as being the start of the blitz
00:41:54.860
what preceded that was a raid on august 24th 1940 when bombs did fall on central london nobody in london
00:42:05.420
understood at that point though that this was an accident this was from a for lack of a better i mean
00:42:10.720
i don't want to use the german terminology a german bomber squadron had gotten lost and had dropped
00:42:17.580
bombs on central london this was a jarring shocking thing incredibly shocking but it also gave
00:42:23.760
churchill moral justification now start bombing berlin that was what he decided you know that
00:42:29.820
that's what he wanted to do he was waiting for moral justification to do that then comes you know
00:42:34.600
september 7 1940 and this tit-for-tat you know bombing raids you know luftwaffe against british cities
00:42:43.200
um raf against german cities you know just continues to intensify it through the war until
00:42:50.000
yes the the major campaigns against german cities like dresden and so forth that order of magnitude
00:42:59.220
worse actually than what the luftwaffe did to london and there's some other great stories from out of
00:43:03.740
the german side that i mean that's what i love about this story because there's so many different
00:43:06.880
little stories and then one of them my favorite i'm not going to talk about it too much but it's
00:43:10.360
like this renegade nazi officer who goes rogue to try to to broker a piece right which is a lot of fun
00:43:16.920
i mean what do you hope readers walk away with after they finish this book like what do you want them to
00:43:21.620
you know my feeling is my goal always with my books first of all is to to invite readers to sink
00:43:29.580
deeply into the past and and experience it as if as if almost they were there to try to have a visceral
00:43:37.200
experience and maybe emerge from the book later feeling like maybe they have a better appreciation
00:43:42.020
of history or even feeling somewhat somewhat changed but i think also i didn't intend this
00:43:49.320
really at the beginning i mean i started this book about five conception maybe five years ago four and a
00:43:55.680
a half years ago but really i i think what the book provides is a kind of a kind of a refuge for
00:44:02.900
people who it's it i think it reminds people of what real leadership looked like at a time when
00:44:11.220
that reminder is very handy you know because we don't have a lot of it right now so i think that
00:44:17.060
that's that's what the book i think could serve as a could be valuable for people and one thing i took
00:44:22.660
away from this and i don't know this was one of your intentions but that maybe i'm capable of doing
00:44:26.880
what they did too right like go even in this in the face of adversity like that we can still continue
00:44:33.260
to build a build a life yeah yeah yeah well i mean there is that of course i mean the idea that you
00:44:39.920
know i always think of churchill as having taught people the art of being fearless and i do feel that
00:44:47.960
in some ways uh not not courage per se but fearlessness of being able to venture into a
00:44:54.360
situation that is everything tells you is not the situation you should be venturing into you know and
00:45:00.820
to venture in there without fear i do feel that that can be it's kind of a learned experience you
00:45:07.380
know i mean and and you learn by observing others and one of the things that churchill was very very
00:45:12.900
good at he understood the power of symbolic acts he understood the power of visiting bombed out
00:45:18.940
neighborhoods he understood the power of instead of cowering in a shelter when an air raid happened
00:45:24.180
he more often than not would climb to the nearest roof and watch that air raid you know and and it
00:45:30.160
and it became known of course that he did that so you know the the art of of fearlessness can can i
00:45:38.580
think i think can be taught and when you're in your in your darkest hours and you think about how
00:45:43.380
these guys got through this whole thing and how they did it and i think that can help you too well
00:45:48.440
eric is there some place people go to learn more about the book and your work you know website yeah
00:45:52.500
um yeah i have a website eric larsonbooks.com and i've neglected it badly for the last three weeks
00:45:58.880
of book touring but that's going to change so that's that's good but more than anything i just say you
00:46:04.480
know read it fantastic we'll put a link to it on the show notes eric larson thanks
00:46:08.500
for your time it's been a pleasure thank you very much it was i very much enjoyed it my guest today
00:46:13.140
was eric larson he's the author of the book the splendid and the vile it's available on amazon.com
00:46:17.120
and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about the book and his work at eric
00:46:20.860
larsonbooks.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash larson we find links to resources
00:46:27.540
well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:46:39.100
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00:46:42.140
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