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Giving up was not an option. There were to be no excuses, no complaints, just the determination to carry on with life—however challenging it became.
He was accustomed, as Clementine wryly observed, to living his life exactly as he pleased, and here was another occasion when his unbounded ego blinded him to reality. Chartwell
“for everyone except [Winston] life at Chartwell was continual chaos.”
“She was a perfectionist, and at times, she sacrificed too much on the altar of that stern goddess,”
He was perhaps one of the few men in Britain whose wardrobe was more playful than his wife’s.
“servants exist to save one trouble and shd never be allowed to disturb one’s inner peace.”
“The Tories don’t want to be made to think!”
“She’s a Liberal, and always has been. It’s all very strange for her. But to me, of course, it’s just like coming home.”
“sympathy for the poor was eloquent; his sympathy for the rich was practical.”37
“It is well to remember that the stomach governs the world,”
Edward Heath.
Sarah compared her mother to a “chandelier,” an idea that also appealed to Mary as “she did give forth great life and sparkle.”41
regular escapes from Winston were essential to Clementine’s health.
“[I]t took me all my time and strength just to keep up with [him]. I never had anything left over.”
“never did anything he didn’t want to do, and left someone else to clear up the mess.”
“Father always came First, Second and Third.”
that their first child “ought to have some rare qualities both of mind & body,” before presciently adding that “these do not always mean happiness or peace.”53
Randolph was unpopular at school and uncontrollable at home.
she may have spent up to 80 percent of their marriage without him.
“expect their women to understand them totally. And they don’t spend much time trying to understand their women
“one’s children are like a lot of live bombs. One never knows when they will go off, or in what direction”);
It does not do to wander Too far from sober men, But there’s an island yonder, I think of it again.
“less schedule than a forest fire and less peace than a hurricane,”
many now believed that Winston’s fanatical drive made him the only politician capable of leading Britain through the darkness of another war to victory.
she threw herself into all aspects of the war effort and it visibly thrilled her. Clementine was “more beautiful now than in early life” and was as “fearless and indefatigable” as her husband,
and in doing so influenced for the better Winston’s views of women’s capabilities.
“Nonsense. All you need to be married are champagne, a box of cigars and a double bed.”
He himself considered his escape from censure a “marvel,” later attributing his good fortune to the fact he had been proved right about so much else.22
“wanted honour and glory for Winston . . . and she was always, always fending off things that might be difficult for [him],”
“I was always amazed,” he said, “that this great man could be led along like a sheep by her whenever she thought it necessary.”
“She [had] a first-class brain [and] everything she did was, above all, for his good.”
Part of the problem was that Britain’s largely unwritten constitution has never defined, or even recognized, the role of the prime minister’s unelected spouse.
Clementine recognized from the beginning that this was to be a war fought by men but that victory would depend on the endurance and strength of women.
The scion of a ducal dynasty relied on the granddaughter of an earl to take the common man’s pulse. And
“Since 1940 we do not think of the PM as handicapped by living apart from the people. His countrymen have come to feel that he is saying what they would like to say for themselves if they knew how.”
So she sought to be his antennae; she acted as his social conscience as well as his advocate in chief.
