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This is the 28th instalment of #deanehistory.
Bob Boothby was an astute observer of, & player in, British politics. He was one of the few Churchill loyalists in the wilderness years, & benefited from that in subsequent advancement in government, & eventually to the Lords.
Bob Boothby was an astute observer of, & player in, British politics. He was one of the few Churchill loyalists in the wilderness years, & benefited from that in subsequent advancement in government, & eventually to the Lords.
(Albeit officewise he considerably foreshortened his own horizons as he preferred the TV studio to a ministry.)
Anyway, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Churchill when he was Chancellor in the 1920s – a “sterile” time for Churchill, in Boothby’s view, which seems right.
Anyway, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Churchill when he was Chancellor in the 1920s – a “sterile” time for Churchill, in Boothby’s view, which seems right.
Despite his no doubt onerous duties at No. 11, Churchill was busily turning out “The World Crisis,” his six volume account of the First World War.
Churchill summoned his PPS, as (Boothby tells us, the classically brazen namedropper often putting the declaration of his *extremely* good connections in the quotes of others in his memoirs) he knew Boothby to be “a great friend of Lloyd George”.
Churchill asked Boothby to fix a meeting with LG to fill in some points on the Great War for the book; he did. Churchill & Lloyd George had an hour together privately in No. 11. After LG had left, Boothby went in to see his boss. The meeting had gone well, it seemed. But then…
“A hard look came into his face… “Within five minutes the old relationship between us was completely re-established. The relationship between Master and Servant. And I was the Servant.””
Quite a thing for *that* ego to have been able to concede, isn’t it?
Quite a thing for *that* ego to have been able to concede, isn’t it?
Today’s lesson is a useful one: advice is seldom truly free.
Postscript. Boothby was one of many prominent Brits in Germany during the 1930s, and one of the few who emerge with much credit. On the receiving end of a “Heil Hitler” complete with salute, he famously returned the gesture with a cheery “Heil Boothby!”
Second postscript. Despite much legal action to keep things out of the papers at the time, it eventually emerged that Boothby was on intimate social terms with the Kray twins. It may not surprise you to know that these are names he *doesn’t* drop in his memoirs.
