Randolph Churchill
Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer Churchill was a British journalist, writer and politician.
The only son of future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, Randolph was brought up to regard himself as his father's political heir, although their relations became strained in later years. In the 1930s, he stood unsuccessfully for Parliament a number of times, causing his father embarrassment. He was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston at the 1940 Preston by-election. During the Second World War, he served with the SAS in North Africa and with Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. Randolph lost his seat in 1945 and was never re-elected to Parliament. Despite his lack of success in politics, Randolph enjoyed a successful career as a writer and journalist. In the 1960s, he wrote the first two volumes of the official life of his father.
Randolph was married and divorced twice. His first wife was Pamela Digby ; their son Winston later became a Conservative MP. Throughout his life, Randolph had a reputation for rude, drunken behaviour. By the 1960s, his health had collapsed from years of heavy drinking; he outlived his father by only three years.
Childhood
Randolph Churchill was born at his parents' house at Eccleston Square, London, on 28 May 1911. His parents nicknamed him "the Chumbolly" before he was born.His father Winston Churchill was already a leading Liberal Cabinet Minister, and Randolph was christened in the House of Commons crypt on 26 October 1911, with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and Conservative politician F. E. Smith among his godparents. Randolph and his older sister Diana had for a time to be escorted by plain clothes detectives on their walks in the park, because of threats by suffragettes to kidnap them. He was a page at the marriage of the Prime Minister's daughter Violet Asquith to Maurice Bonham Carter on 1 December 1915.
He recalled the Zeppelin raids of 1917 as "a great treat", as the children were taken from their beds in the middle of the night, wrapped in blankets, and "allowed" to join the grown-ups in the cellar; he also recalled the Armistice celebrations at Blenheim Palace.
He went to Sandroyd School in Surrey, and later admitted that he had had a problem with authority and discipline. His headmaster reported to his father that he was "very combative". Winston, who had been neglected by his parents as a small boy, visited his son at prep school as often as possible. Randolph was very good-looking as a child and into his twenties. In his autobiography Twenty-One Years he recorded that at the age of ten he had been "interfered with" by a junior prep school master, who made Randolph touch him sexually; Randolph had only realised that something was amiss when a matron came in, causing the master to leap embarrassed to his feet. At home, a maid overheard Randolph confiding in his sister Diana. He later wrote that he had never seen his father so angry, and that he had made a hundred-mile trip to demand that the teacher be dismissed, only to learn that the teacher had already been sacked.
He remembered that he and Diana returned from ice-skating in Holland Park on 22 June 1922 to find the house guarded and being searched by "tough-looking men" following the assassination of Field Marshal Henry Wilson.
Eton
Winston gave his son a choice of Eton College or Harrow School, and he chose Eton. Randolph later wrote "I was lazy and unsuccessful both at work and at games... and was an unpopular boy". He was once said to have been given "six up" by his house's Captain of Games for being "bloody awful all round". Michael Foot later wrote that this was "the kind of comprehensive verdict which others who had dealings with him were always searching for." He once wrote apologising to his father for "having done so badly and disappointed you so much". During the general strike of 1926 he fixed up a secret radio set as his housemaster would not allow him to have one. In November 1926 his headmaster wrote to his father to inform him that he had caned Randolph, then aged 15, after all five of the masters then teaching him had independently reported him for "either being idle or being a bore with his chatter".As a teenager Randolph fell in love with Diana Mitford, sister of his friend Tom Mitford. Tom Mitford was regarded as having a calming influence on him, although his housemaster Colonel Sheepshanks wrongly suspected Randolph and Tom of being lovers; Randolph replied, "I happen to be in love with his sister".
Randolph was "a loquacious and precocious boy". From his teenage years he was encouraged to attend his father's dinner parties with leading politicians of the day, drink and have his say, and he later recorded that he would simply have laughed at anyone who had suggested that he would not go straight into politics and perhaps even become prime minister by his mid-twenties like William Pitt the Younger. His sister later wrote that he "manifestly needed a father's hand" but his father "spoiled and indulged him", and did not take seriously the complaints of his schoolmasters. He was influenced by his godfather Lord Birkenhead, an opinionated and heavy-drinking man. Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer from late 1924 until 1929. Busy in that office, he neglected his daughters in favour of Randolph, who was his only son. On a visit to Italy in 1927 Winston and Randolph were received by Pope Pius XI. In later life "relations between Winston and Randolph were always uneasy, the father alternately spoiling and being infuriated by the son."
In April 1928 Winston forwarded a satisfactory school report to Clementine, who was in Florence, commenting that Randolph was "developing fast" and would be fit for politics, the bar or journalism and was "far more advanced than I was at his age". His mother replied that "He is certainly going to be an interest, an anxiety & an excitement in our lives". He had cool relations with his mother from an early age, in part because she felt him to be spoiled and arrogant as a result of his father's overindulgence. Clementine's biographer writes that "Randolph was for decades a recurrent embarrassment to both his parents".
In what would turn out to be his final report on leaving Eton, Robert Birley, one of his history teachers, wrote of his native intelligence and writing ability, but added that he found it too easy to get by on little work or with a journalist's knack of spinning a single idea into an essay.
Oxford
Randolph went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in January 1929, partway through the academic year and not yet eighteen, after his father's friend Professor Lindemann had advised that a place had fallen vacant.In May he spoke for his father at the May 1929 general election. Between August and October 1929 Randolph and his uncle accompanied his father on his lecture tour of the US and Canada. His diary of the trip was later included in Twenty-One Years. On one occasion he impressed his father by delivering an impromptu five-minute reply to a tedious speech by a local cleric. At San Simeon he lost his virginity to the Austrian-born actress Tilly Losch, who was also at one time the lover of his close friend Tom Mitford.
Randolph was already drinking double brandies at the age of nineteen, to his parents' consternation. He did little work or sport at Oxford and spent most of his time at lengthy lunch and dinner parties with other well-connected undergraduates and with dons who enjoyed being entertained by them. Randolph later claimed that he had benefited from the experience, but at the time his lifestyle earned him a magisterial letter of rebuke from his father, warning him that he was "not acquiring any habits of industry or concentration" and that he would withdraw him from Oxford if he did not apply himself to his studies. Winston Churchill had also received a similar and oft-quoted letter of rebuke from his own father, Lord Randolph Churchill, at almost exactly the same age.
Speaking tour of the United States
Randolph dropped out of Oxford in October 1930 to conduct a lecture tour of the US. He was already in debt; his mother guessed correctly that he would never finish his degree. Contrary to his later claims, his father attempted to dissuade him at the time.Unlike his father, who had become a powerful orator through much practice, and whose speeches always required extensive preparation, public speaking came easily to Randolph. His son later recorded that this was a mixed blessing: "because of the very facility with which he could speak extemporaneously failed to make the effort required to bring him more success".
Randolph very nearly married Kay Halle of Cleveland, Ohio, seven years his senior. His father wrote begging him not to be so foolish as to marry before he had established a career. Clementine visited him in December, using money Winston had given her to buy a small car. Contrary to newspaper reports that she had crossed the Atlantic to put a stop to the wedding, she only learned of the engagement when she arrived. She found Randolph, to her horror, living in an extravagant suite of hotel rooms, but was able to write to Miss Halle's father, who agreed that it would be unwise for their children to marry.
Clementine wrote to her husband of one of Randolph's lectures "Frankly, it was not at all good" and commented that he should have had it well-practised by now, although she was impressed by his delivery. She went home in April 1931, having enjoyed Randolph's company in New York. She would later look back on the trip with nostalgia.
Randolph's lecture tour earned him $12,000. By the time of his mother's arrival he had already spent £1,000 in three months, despite being on a £400 annual parental allowance. He left the US owing $2,000 to his father's friend, the financier Bernard Baruch; a debt which he did not repay for thirty years.