A Letter from Grosvenor Square: An Account of a Stewardship

by John Gilbert Winant

In England’s darkest hours, John Winant, U.S. Ambassador, became to the British a symbol of American fellowship and support. They looked up from the still-smoking rubble of their homes and saw him standing strong with the King or with Winston Churchill.

As Ambassador, his chief concern was not only immediate agreement and understanding between the two countries, but also long-term good relations. In the account of his stewardship, he not only shows American generosity, but stresses the less known—but not less important—contributions which the British made to us through reverse Lend-Lease.

Genres: History

220 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strange book, written, evidently just before he shot himself. It's hard to know if possibly he intended to write more. This book goes up to the Pearl Harbor attack, but actually he stayed in London as ambassador until 1946. Or possibly he wrote most of it earlier and then never finished it.

The initial chapters seem chronological and they seem to be directed at a general (Americans) audience, but then he gets into “Differences Between the Two Governments” which seems at first useful but gets so detailed that even most Americans are likely to get confused. And the next chapter is about Lend Lease and Foreign Exchange which get really technical, to the extent that he quotes from official documents. Maybe readers in 1947 knew much more about these topics, but I know a lot more and got totally lost in the detail. The book is organized chronologically and after these two chapters falls back into a tone similar to be beginning—-and continues to Dec 7th 1941 and stops with no real ending.

I enjoyed it. He’s a fascinating man. I first ran across him first in Lynne Olson's book, Citizens of London, where it seems he felt pushed out of ambassadorial duties by Averell Harriman who was the Lend Lease coordinator. Then I read that he had an ongoing affair with Sarah Churchill, possibly one where she rejected him in the end, possibly a cause of his suicide in November of 1947. Olson implies also that with Roosevelt dead, his hopes of becoming secretary-general of the UN were gone. The implication was that as a republican who’d embraced Roosevelt, there was no place for him???

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of my main guys when it comes to American history, so I was thrilled to finally get my hands on a hard copy of his book, "A Letter from Grosvenor Square." He was a diplomat and a politician, not primarily a writer, so as with any autobiography, it's not perfectly stitched, but the immediacy of his writing is revealing and deeply moving. There are plenty of insights into that ever haunting question of "how we got to now," and he calls special attention to many overlooked services and strategies involved in successful modern warfare.