THE TELEGRAPH: Winston Churchill, who died today aged 69, never quite managed in 27 years as a Conservative MP to shrug off the burdens of having had the wartime leader as his grandfather and the ebullient, self-destructive Randolph Churchill for a father.
Faced with the choice of emulating Sir Winston or pursuing a career outside politics, he opted for the former, proved competent if mercurial, but lacked the exceptional flair to establish himself in his own right.
Churchill was at a disadvantage not only through his legacy but because his preoccupation with it led some to consider him bumptious; alone of more than 650 MPs, he insisted on signing Commons motions without using his Christian name.
He caused a furore in 1995 when he negotiated the payment to the Churchill family of £12.5 million in National Lottery funds for his grandfather’s personal papers to remain at Churchill College, Cambridge, rather than be sold abroad, himself retaining the copyright for 20 years. It had not been widely appreciated, even among historians, that the papers were eligible for sale as the family had already received £393,000 for them in 1946.
There were suggestions that Churchill needed the cash to offset his losses as a “name” at Lloyds, to finance his divorce from his first wife or even to bail out his mother, Pamela Harriman, who had almost exhausted the £100 million railroad fortune of her final husband. The Churchill trustees insisted first that he would only receive some of the investment income, then said they would consider a request to fund the divorce.
Randolph Churchill had observed of his son: “His name is such a disadvantage”, but young Winston saw both sides: “A famous name can be terrible if you are lousy, but if you are any good, it helps.” It may have seen him bullied at school, but later it did secure him the best tables at restaurants. It did not always carry weight, however; when after the Gulf War he introduced himself to a squaddie in the desert, he received the reply: “Yes, and I’m Rommel.” >>> | Tuesday, March 02, 2010
