ST HOUR - Winston Churchill

BOOKS, ARTS& CURIOSITIESSales Department for the Production ChiefRICHARD M. LANGWORTHIn the interest of full disclosure, thisreviewer played a minor role inimplementing publication of thisbook, for which he receives overgenerousthanks from Martin Gilbert in theAcknowledgements.I was pleased and touched to seethis chronicle of collaboration andfriendship appear, but I never expectedit would amount to much more than auseful research tool. I was wrong. I seewhy Wendy Reves and Martin Gilbertwere so keen to get it published.The Churchill-Reves Correspondenceis simply marvelous. For anyone interestedin Churchill, it shows how anunknown Hungarian came to be his literary"diffuser" (or as Reves put it, "theSales Department" for Churchill the"Production Chief"); how skillfully heused Churchill's screed like apalimpsest, spreading it to the far reachesof Europe, the Empire and NorthAmerica; how gradually Reves's outletsclosed as Hitler's power waxed andneutral countries began to dread Germananger; how Reves twice escapedthe Nazis; how he earned Churchill millionsabroad for the war memoirs andHistory of the English Speaking Peoples;how Emery and Wendy became WSC'shosts when kindly breezes brought theaging statesman to the Riviera.Reves started on a shoestring, sellingWinston Churchill's pieces (most ofthem readable today in Step by Step) forlittle more than a pound or two each tonewspapers in poorer nations, graduallybuilding an impressive business by1939, producing £30,000 a year or so intoday's money. Churchill, remember,was then politically very incorrect.Reves got him on the front pages of thirtynewspapers, 750 different outlets peryear, with fifteen to twenty millionWinston Churchill and Emery Reves:CorrespondenceWINSTON CHURCHILL1937-1964, edited byJJMLRY REVESSir Martin Gilbert.Austin: UniversityL, of Texas Press, 398pages, illustrated,$39.95. New BookService price $32(shipping $5 firstbook, $1 each additional)do the Editor.readers in twenty-five languages. (Isoon learned that Sapnis, the ChurchillSociety's 1995 translation of The Dreamfor President Ulmanis (FH 87, p27) wasnot the first Latvian translation—EmeryReves was publishing Churchill articlesin Latvian as early as 1937.)Imre Revesz (his father had adaptedthe surname from Rosenbaum) wasborn in Hungary in 1904, studied inBerlin and earned a degree in economicsfrom Zurich University. In Berlin in thelate Twenties he organized CooperationPublishing, a unique organization. Itsgoal was to make the thought of leadingEuropean statesmen available to peoplein other countries: Britons in Germany,Frenchmen in Italy, and so on. ShunningNazis, fascists and Communists,Reves promoted democrats. Drummedout of Germany with the clothes on hisback in 1933, Reves reestablished Cooperationin Paris, representing Britain'sleading political writers, Churchill,Eden, Attlee and Herbert Samuel.When France fell in 1940 he fled toLondon, losing his fortune and his business,but not his determination. Anglicizinghis name, he soon set up shop inNew York where, after the war, he wasagain instrumental in placingChurchill's writings. Without EmeryFINEST HOUR 96/34Reves, the canon would today be muchless widely known than it is.A tenacious salesman and negotiator,Reves was gentle and generoustoward the British statesman he respectedmore than anyone in the world. Inthe Thirties he waived commissions tohelp Churchill place articles with foreignpublishers WSC had contactedbefore Reves's own involvement. Hewas never put off by the gentleman/player relationship that marked theirearly encounters, when Churchill kepthim at arm's length despite his evidenttalents. During the war the Prime Ministerrefused to grant Reves several favors—probably it would have set bad precedent—anddid not answer Reves's lettersoffering to help distribute Britain'smessage of defiance to neutral countries.Though he passed Reves's proposals toDuff Cooper at the Propaganda Ministry,WSC carefully noted that he was"not wedded" to them. In their lettershe is "Mr. Churchill" and the Hungarianis "Reves"—Sir Winston didn't callhim "Emery" until he began to holidayat Reves's villa in 1956. Yet in a 1946meeting, when Reves told him how hismother had been cruelly murdered bythe Nazis, Churchill wept in bitter grief.Their business relationship was ofa style many around Churchillexperienced. WSC expected hisfamiliars to be on call constantly, convenientor not. They repaid him withdevotion. The most dramatic account inthis book, in fact, starts with a perplexedReves trying desperately to meetChurchill's order, on one day's notice,that he drop everything and sail withLord Camrose to America to negotiatebook and serial rights to The SecondWorld War.Emery Reves is in Paris when thecommand arrives, out of the blue: sailwith Camrose from Southampton at1PM tomorrow, and stop at Chartwellfor a briefing. Le Bourget is fogged in—no commercial flights. "Can't you get aprivate plane?" Churchill says impatiently.Emery finds a rickety two-seaterwhere he sits in dread for twenty minutes,until the pilot is denied a take-off"because my motor gives off sparks."Tenaciously, he finally gets to Croydon