Churchill & The Dail Mail

Kyt · Feb 9, 2008

Interesting how an article purporting to highlight the historical "reality", in response to the recent survey result that Churchill was a fictional character, should skew/omit historical fact:

Winston Churchill's extraordinary relationship with the founding fathers of the Mail | the Daily Mail

Anyone with a care for either education or history will have been appalled by this week's latest manifestation of national dumbing down - the survey which showed that 25 per cent of British people believe that Sir Winston Churchill was a mythical figure rather than a real human being.

One person who would probably be rather tickled by this woeful statistic, however, is Churchill himself. For if anyone appreciated the need for legends in modern times, it was the biggest wartime legend of the lot.

And today, at last, we will see the unveiling of a permanent memorial to one of Churchill's most volatile but enduring friendships - his relationship with the Press.

Churchill's wartime broadcasts to the nation and the Empire played a crucial role in bolstering national morale and Allied solidarity. But they were underpinned by his image as a bold and statesmanlike bulldog.

And he fully understood the importance of the Press in perpetuating that image. He didn't need spin doctors or focus groups. He had an innate understanding of the relationship between the papers and the public, not least because he was a prolific journalist and writer throughout his life.

It was no surprise when the route of his 1965 state funeral was arranged to include Fleet Street.

That rapport with the media is celebrated today with the opening of a new exhibition, called Churchill And The Press, in the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, just round the corner from Downing Street.

Visitors will see the way in which Churchill was very much a celebrity from cradle to grave, starting with the announcement of his birth on the front page of the Times in 1874.

After Sandhurst, he became, simultaneously, a war correspondent and a soldier, an unthinkable hybrid in today's Services.

His lively accounts of the British Army's last ever cavalry charge at Omdurman and his capture and escape during the Boer War made him a household name.

Whether it was crossing the floor of the Commons or his 1908 wedding to Clementine Hozier, he was always front page news.

Through World War I, during which he served in both the Cabinet and the trenches, and on through the inter-war years, Churchill was either making news or, when he needed the money, writing it.

At the peak of his powers, during World War II, he remained an assiduous student of all the newspapers, often ringing the news desk of the Mail to demand midnight briefings on the latest war reports. At the very end, his state funeral was a global news event to rival the Coronation.

While this exhibition will run for three months, a permanent monument to this crucial aspect of Churchill's life was unveiled last night in an adjacent part of his wartime bunker.

The Harmsworth Room was opened by Esme, Countess of Cromer, alongside her nephew Lord Rothermere, chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust. It will serve as a fascinating reminder of the public and private links between Churchill and one of Britain's pre-eminent newspaper dynasties, the Harmsworth family, founders and owners of the Daily Mail.

Illustrated through private correspondence and press reports spanning Churchill's life, it reveals a relationship which could veer from warm friendship to open hostility but which could never be ignored.

"Mr Winston Spencer Churchill, who goes to India tonight for a few months, is the youngest man in Europe," wrote the Daily Mail in 1898 in a piece entitled 20th Century Men, Some Peeps At Futurity.

It went on: "In years, he is a boy; in temperament he is also a boy; but in intention, in deliberate plan, purpose, adaptation of means to ends he is already a man."

Nearly half a century before Churchill's finest hour, this newspaper had singled him out for greatness. It was a view fostered by the paper's founder, Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, who took a keen interest in the young Winston's career.

During Churchill's first quest for a Parliamentary seat in 1899, the newspaper proprietor took the 24-year-old candidate campaigning around Oldham in his dazzling new contraption, a motor car. A series of punctures intervened.

"My dear Harmsworth," Churchill wrote in a subsequent thank you letter, "I am sorry that neither of our enterprises were successful in connection with Oldham. But I don't expect my career or your car will be seriously damaged."

With the Times, the Sunday Times, the Observer and the Daily Mirror also in his control, Northcliffe was a vital ally for Churchill. They played golf together and when Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, he invited Northcliffe to take a trip in a new-fangled submarine with him.

"If anything goes wrong with the submarine with both of us in it," Northcliffe replied, "I am sure it will be the cause of much satisfaction to many."

The two men would later fall out over the ill-fated Gallipoli landings. Northcliffe and his papers directed much of the blame at Churchill - who went on to lose his seat in the Cabinet and took himself off to the Western Front.

But Churchill remained friendly with Northcliffe's younger brother, Harold Harmsworth, the first Viscount Rothermere, who took control of the business in 1922 after Northcliffe died without an heir.

Rothermere lost two sons, Vere and Vyvyan, in World War I. Vere endured the horrors of Gallipoli only to die on the Western Front leading a charge at the Battle of the Ancre in 1916. Vyvyan died of his wounds after gallant action at the Battle of Cambrai.

Later in life, Churchill would recall an emotional moment when dining with Rothermere while a weary Vyvyan was home on leave from the front. Rothermere invited Churchill to tiptoe with him into the boy's bedroom where he proudly showed Churchill the young officer fast asleep. As Churchill noted fondly, Rothermere was "eaten up with love of this boy".

After World War I, Rothermere remained a firm friend in public and in private. During one of Churchill's leaner patches, Rothermere paid him a hefty wage to write columns for the Mail. When Churchill lost a pet swan in 1932, the paper even ran an appeal for its safe return.

Through the Thirties, the two men joined forces in attempting to fortify Britain's presence in the air. Though a supporter of appeasement*, Rothermere was also adamant that the RAF was in urgent need of serious rearmament.

Exasperated by the lack of action, he commissioned his own plane - called Britain First - and gave it to the RAF in 1935 for evaluation as a bomber. It eventually went in to mass production as the Blenheim**.

Churchill, who needed all the help he could get during his "wilderness years", remained eternally grateful.

"I have not hesitated to give warning in Parliament of the danger of German rearmament," he wrote in 1935. "I have done it repeatedly and, for a long time, I was not believed at all. But we also have had the aid of a great newspaper - The Daily Mail - which has cried the alarm on the housetops."

Fearing for Churchill's health, Rothermere would offer him hefty wagers to reduce his drinking.

"Rothermere offered me two bets," Churchill wrote to his wife at the end of December 1935. "First, £2,000 if I went teetotal in 1936. I refused as I did not think life would be worth living.

"I have, however, accepted his second bet of £600 not to drink any brandy. It was kind of the old boy to take so much interest."

In the end, it was the health of the "old boy" which was in trouble. Once World War II had broken out and Churchill had taken charge, Rothermere joined his old Press rival, Lord Beaverbrook, in working to boost Britain's aircraft production. While on a transatlantic mission, he died in Bermuda in 1940.

"Your father was a very close and old friend of mine and I had the greatest regard for him," Churchill wrote in a letter to Rothermere's surviving son and heir, Esmond.

"The news of his death came to me as a most painful shock."

Many years later, with Esmond at the helm, this newspaper returned to that remarkably prescient item from 1898 and reproduced it on the day Churchill became an octogenarian: "This morning, when the world greets Sir Winston Churchill on his 80th birthday, we recall, with pride, that it was a Daily Mail reporter who, 56 years ago, first discerned his quality."

Even in life, he was well on his way to becoming the stuff of legends.
Click to expand...

* Rothermere and The Mail weren't just appeasers - they were active supporters of both Mussolini and Hitler, and for a while supporters of the British Union Of Fascists. The paper continued to trumpet Hitler's ""successes" to almost the beginning of the war see:

Taylor, S. J. (1996). The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail
Griffiths, Richard (1980). Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9.

** Rubbish - as the The Blenheim Story Vol 3 states "The prototype for the Blenheim was designed and built for Viscount Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail. It was ordered so that his journalists and photographers could fly anywhere in Europe, where news was breaking, and be back in time in London to have the story and pictures in his newspaper the next day. When this aircraft, which Rothermere called 'Britain First' was tested, it proved to have a top speed of over 300mph - 50 mph faster than any of the British fighters then in the first line. The outcome was the RAF immediately asked to test 'Britain First' and Lord Rothermere had no hesitation in presenting the aircraft to the nation."

Thus it was the RAF who sought out his private aircraft, not an alturistic gesture by Rothermere.

That's just a couple of examples of dubious reporting in that article

Antipodean Andy · Feb 9, 2008

Ah yes, but it's in the paper so it must be true! Read the Daily Mail, we're aligned with the greatest Briton therefore we have credibility.

Love the line about Rothermere giving the the aircraft to the RAF.

I'd be tempted to write a letter, Kyt. If it doesn't get published, send it to another newspaper. I'm sure they'd love to stick the boot into this piece of propaganda!

Log in or Sign up

Churchill & The Dail Mail

Kyt Άρης

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Churchill & The Dail Mail

Thread Tools

Kyt Άρης

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Useful Searches