The following letter was published in The Spectator magazine on 5 February. It was prompted by some comments from Charles Moore in the previous week’s issue about George VI’s death in his sleep following a happy day’s shooting at Sandringham, after which Churchill said to his doctor: ‘I hope you will arrange something like that for me. But don’t do it till I tell you.’
Sir: Shortly after expressing wistful envy of the manner of George VI’s death on 6 February 1952 (Notes, 29 January), Churchill received a sharp intimation of his own mortality. On 21 February he lost the power of coherent speech for a few minutes.
Friends and colleagues thought he should be persuaded to see out his premiership in the Lords where he could make the occasional great speech (‘in 1952 no one but Winston could be Prime Minister in the Lords’, they said).
Churchill scoffed: ‘I should have to be the Duke of Chartwell and Randolph would be the Marquis of Toodledo.’ Lord Salisbury, who had come up with the idea, backtracked: ‘I am afraid he regards us in the Lords as a rather disreputable collection of old gentlemen.’
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords, London SW1
