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weeks later, after Churchill had suffered an arterial spasm which could have been the
precursor of a stroke, his doctor, Lord Moran, had consulted Colville and Salisbury about
the possibility of persuading him to retire, or, as Salisbury suggested, to continue as
Prime Minister in the House of Lords instead of the Commons. Moran, knowing
Churchill’s reverence for the monarchy, suggested that the Queen should do it, and was
disconcerted when Lascelles told them to forget it. ‘If she said her part, he would say
charmingly: “It’s very good of you, ma’am, to think of it” and then he would very
politely brush it aside.’ Churchill did not tend to take women seriously on an intellectual
level; still less the inexperienced young Elizabeth, although he was moved by her
attractiveness, her seriousness and her grasp of the responsibilities of her position. As he
got to know her, he became more and more besotted with her; by 1955 when he was
eighty-one and on the eve of retirement, Colville described him as being ‘madly in love’
with the Queen and the half-hour audiences as stretching to an hour and a half.
‘Winston treated the Queen with extraordinary deference and courtesy,’ a member of
the household at the time recalled:
On one occasion the film chosen for the Royal Command Film Performance was, I think, Beau Brummel, in
which George III is depicted as very mad and George IV as a libertine. The Queen clearly complained to
Winston the next day about seeing her ancestors thus portrayed. Winston was outraged. The old boy came
out muttering, ‘The Queen had an awful evening – this must not recur.’ By the next evening the Home
Secretary or the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office had been summoned and told that the Queen
must not be subjected to such an experience again and that a selection committee must be set up to vet films
for the Royal Command Performance. And who do you think was appointed to chair the selection
committee? Only Lord Radcliffe who chaired all the most important Commissions and Committees. This
instant reaction to the Queen’s complaint was typical of Winston.
At audiences their conversations ranged far and wide. ‘Winston would come out saying,
“She was asking me about my pig-sticking days on the North-West Frontier…”’
In the first year of their relationship as Queen and Prime Minister, Churchill took the
initiative in inviting himself to Balmoral to acquaint himself better with Elizabeth. He
spent from 1 to 3 October there. According to Colville, who accompanied him, the stay
was a success:
The Queen and Prince Philip, who had a very young party staying with them, may have been a little
reluctant, but the visit went off well and was in the event enjoyed by both sides, although Winston (aged
nearly seventy-eight and not having touched a gun for years) complained to me on the way home that he
thought he should have been asked to shoot! 10
It was at Balmoral that Churchill had first met Elizabeth when she was two and a half
years old and been impressed by her as ‘a character’. In his thank-you letter to her his
mind ranged back to the days when he had been a guest there not only of her father and
grandfather but even of her great-grandfather, Edward VII. He commented favourably
on Prince Charles: ‘I was keenly impressed by the development of Prince Charles as a