Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers who Broke the World

by Liaquat Ahamed

That weekend Churchill had the star of The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin, as a guest at Chartwell695, his country house in Kent—they had met in Hollywood when Churchill was visiting the United States in October 1929 at the time of the crash. Over dinner Chaplin opened the conversation by saying, “You made a great mistake when you went back to the gold standard at the wrong parity of exchange in 1925.” Churchill was somewhat taken aback. As the film star proceeded to hold forth at length about the subject with a great deal of knowledge, Churchill, who hated to be reminded of past mistakes, sank into a morose silence, a mood broken only when the comedian picked up two rolls of bread, put two forks in them and did the famous dance from the movie.