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The Churchill Center is a global organization educating new generations
on the leadership
statesmanship, vision and courage of Winston Churchill. The Center is
partnering with the George Washington University
to create the new national Churchill Library and Center
in the heart of Washington. The facility will be at the University's Gelman
Library
and will include a library of books written by and about Churchill,
rotating exhibits and space for seminars. An endowed professorship in Churchill and
British studies will also be created
as part of this partnership.
Winston Churchill once wrote that the stomach
governs the world. In addition to being a great statesman
Churchill was known to enjoy the best food drink and cigars
but for him the most important part any meal
was the conversation. Churchill was a master at using the occasion of meals
to charm and persuade his guests and he deployed those skills at dinners with
Roosevelt, Stalin and others
to shape world events. Author Cita Stelzer
has written a book about Winston Churchill and his dinner party diplomacy.
It's called "Dinner with Churchill" and she joins me in the studio.
Cita, welcome. Thank you. So
Cita, set the stage for us. What would dinner with Churchill
have been like? Well you used exactly the right words--
"set the stage." A dinner with Churchill
would have been one of two kinds--a grand occasion
with presidents Roosevelt or Truman or it could have been
friend--ten or 12 people
at one at the London hotels when he was out of office.
I can give you an example of a dinner--let's say at Checkers,
the Prime Minister's country house during the war. It would have started off
a with champagne in the
in the Grand drawing room at Checkers and that would have
lasted a half hour and then dinner would be sort of nine to ten thirty.
The ladies would have been excused
as it was then even then and during the war and the men would have stayed behind to
smoke cigars for another 20 minutes.
Conversation was not confined to just when the men were smoking cigars. A
political conversation would been throughout dinner
and then the men would rejoin the ladies
and then a movie would be shown. This is on
work nights during the war. The movie would have lasted till
11:30 or 12 o'clock at which point Churchill would stand up--Prime Minister
Churchill would stand up and say
"now to work," and he and his generals and politicians who were at the dinner
would go
into the dens and work until two or three in the morning.
But he always took a nap so he was okay with staying up late.
He did take a nap every day. He got
undressed and into bed, under the covers--
so that is what allowed him to go on until three o'clock in the morning. But
not everybody could do that.
Very few people, very few generals and admirals and
any staff people could have done that. I don't know how many of them got
through
with that kind of exhaustion but they did. Why do you think it's important to
know
about Churchill's dinner diplomacy? A lot of things--
a dinner was not just a social occasion-- dinner was
an opportunity for Churchill to--as you said--
to learn things. For instance, it was not a 24-hour news cycle in those days
so the best way to find out information from say
the Soviet Union would have been to invite
the American ambassador who had just been
in the Soviet Union and had sat down with Stalin. So
Churchill would always include people who had up-to-date information
at his dinners. It was a way of gathering
data that he couldn't ordinarily get. And also he used those dinners
to persuade people at
the other side of the table of his policies--
to get--to try to talk them into agreeing with him.
And he was quite persuasive, quite charming. He was very persuasive; he was
very charming as you say and he was very
funny, so that one of
the reasons I have a whole book about dinner with Churchill is because
so many people
were entertained at his dinners,
they all wrote about it. There is so much information out there
about those dinners. Right, because people wanted to remember
his stories and his arguments and his persuasions and they wrote it
journals and letters back to family and in diaries.
Do you think that he cared about the food itself so much
or I mean did he set the menu to say "this is what we're going to be
eating at this dinner" or was it more the conversation and the people.
Well, he did care about what was served and cared about how it was
prepared
but at the end of the day it was the conversation. You're quite right; it was the
conversation.
But the food--what Churchill liked to eat was
slightly different from our impression of what an Edwardian,
grand British Tory would have liked.
Churchill liked plain, simple
perfectly cooked food. No French sauces, no concoctions, no fancy pies,
no fancy desserts, and when Churchill was in charge of the menu yes, in fact, he
set the menu.At one dinner
that he was giving for the King and Queen
Churchill started to amend the menu and Lady churchill at that point
said he couldn't do it; it was too late. But he was tinkering
with the stage that he wanted to be on.
And ham always had to be served with mustard? Yes.
So he was picky. He was very picky.
The book we're discussing is called "Dinner with Churchill," Policy-Making at
the Dinner Table.
Author Cita Stelzer is in the studio with me. She is a freelance
journalist and
research associate at the Hudson Institute.
What do you think sets Churchill apart-- just in
the general sense--from other world leaders?
Well, I think um two things really: I think
what made him different from other people--
ah, maybe three things, the first one I think is his foresight.
I mean he--in the early,
beginning in the early 1930's he started to
to see that the Germans were building up
a navy and a military structure that would someday
be a threat to Great Britain
and he was in the wilderness but he was able to
get information from people who were still in the government and friends and
relations who were in Germany
so that he could document the fact that Germany was moving towards war with
Great Britain.
And then of course he was absolutely right that is what happened
but he saw it coming very early and the second part of his foresight was
really almost from the day after victory in Europe,
Churchill started to worry about Stalin and Communism.
He knew (and he was right about that too) he was right about that too,
and he was worried about the Cold War.
I mean it hadn't started in 1945 but he knew
that the communist forces on the ground would be able to dictate
the future structure of Europe. So after Pearl Harbor
Churchill insists on going to the White House
personally and staying there with FDR.
What was he trying to do? Well, as soon as he
heard about Pearl Harbor he jumped up from the dinner table at Checkers and
said, "I'm going to Washington."
It was instantaneous. Much like Tony Blair said
when he heard about September 11th.
And Churchill--at great personal risk--
got in a navy ship and crossed the North Atlantic when there were U-Boats
everywhere
and got to the White House and moved into the Lincoln Bedroom
(For three weeks over Christmas.)
for three weeks over Christmas and the staff at the White House had no idea.
They knew somebody was coming for dinner
but they didn't know that it was going to be prime minister of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland Winston Churchill and thirty or forty of
his staff. But he really wanted to convince FDR to
forget about Asia for now, let's work on Europe first.
Exactly right. (Even though it was Japan that attacked us.) That's right
but I think that to President Roosevelt's credit
he understood that if he didn't fight Hitler in Europe
that a Europe and Great Britain under fascism would have been
a much more difficult problem--especially
if Japan had taken over in Southeast Asia.
And he did accomplish that. He did accomplish that and he set up--
that was the primary accomplishment--he also set up
a combined Chiefs of Staff which is very unusual.
That means that the three services--
the Army, and the Navy and the Air Force,
the generals each of those and their staffs would work side by side. There
would be no
military secrets or strategies that weren't shared by these two countries.
Very, very unusual, never been done before. So,
was he happy with the food at the White House?
He hated the food at the White House; everybody hated the
food at the White House except Eleanor Roosevelt.
Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt strikes fear into the heart of anybody who's read
any history
about Roosevelt's White House. She cooked
boiled broccoli, creamed chip--or creamed beef or something
for mushrooms on toast,
Bavarian Cream Pie--dated foods but not only
do they sound silly to us but they were badly prepared
and she served leftovers--she served Chicken ala King three times a week and
the President--President Roosevelt hated it. Churchill didn't complain because he was
there
to woo President Roosevelt so he didn't say anything.
Cita Stelzer is in the studio with me. She's the author of "Dinner with
Churchill," Policy-Making at
the Dinner Table. Well, a lot's been made of Churchill's drinking,
was he an alcoholic? I don't think he was an alcoholic.
I've read really
hundreds and hundreds of diaries and reports and journals
about what it was like to have dinner with Churchill, to be around Churchill
day in and day out and there are really no--there are only two
people--who mention that Churchill was drunk.
One of those was a staff person who was reporting
to Stalin thinking this is what Stalin would have liked
him to know. The other was an aide to Anthony Eden
and certainly that aid would have would
have thought that his boss wanted to know the Churchill was drunk.
Nobody else said he was drunk. Now he didn't drink
a lot by our standards today. I mean it it sounds
a lot--half a bottle of champagne which is slightly smaller than our half
bottles today--
at lunch. One or two brandies after dinner;
that's a lot, um, and then the same thing again at
dinner but he could not have worked
so many years so successfully,
prosecuted the war to to victory, if he'd been incapacitated by alcohol.
And he also--remember he liked the myth that he drank a lot.
Churchill liked the idea that he was one of the people--that he could go down to
the pub and
have a drink with the guys and
he certainly didn't hide it. He talked and joked about his drinking.
And there's that ever-present cigar.
He loved cigars right from very early on.
He used them for three purposes really. He loved the
sheer pleasure and flavor of a cigar.
The other is he was such a good politician
that he could use a cigar as a trademark
like Roosevelt uses (inaudible)
cigarette and holder like this sort of optimistic and smiling.
And Churchill knew that the cigar was an emblem that the people
would use to identify him. But in what way,
I mean, was it that he's so confident we're gonna win the war that he can just light
up a cigar? Was that it?
Well, I think he had the lit cigar with him all the time
and certainly when he went out during the blitz which he did very often
into neighborhoods. He would hold up his cigar
and people could see that it was him. Remember he wasn't standing on
a
podium or anything, he was walking the streets. They could see that it was Churchill
and the cigar and also he used the cigar
at a dinner to extend the meal
because he didn't want people to disperse, he wanted them to stay
together.
So he would have all the rituals of lighting a cigar with the
special matches in drawing it out.
He live to ninety years old--I mean this man smoked and drank and ate whatever he
wanted and traveled, how?
He must have had good genes, although we don't know because his
father died early.
He did not really have any serious illnesses,
he had pneumonia and in the middle of the war but
he was in bed for three days with a temperature
and then it was gone. (He had a stroke though as well.) He had several,
yes, but there were no serious--I don't know what you'd call it medically--
there were no
other kinds of diseases. He was just
plain lucky. So during the war food was rationed
in Britain. Did that effect Churchill in the dinners that he gave?
Churchill was very worried about rationing.
He was worried about how it would effect the people in terms of their energy
levels and morale
and he didn't want to allow the people to think that he was not
playing by the same rationing rules that they were
subjected to. The book were discussing is called "Dinner with Churchill,"
Policy-Making at the Dinner Table.
Author Cita Stelzer is in the studio with me. Let's talk about the big
three conferences.
What was the purpose of those conferences?
Well, it the big three--the grand alliance--
the basic purpose of them is for Churchill to get
to know the people opposite him.
They were allies but he wanted to get to know them. He also wanted his staff
to get to know the staffs of the other too.
(So this was Churchill's idea to come together?) He believed face to
face conferences
were the way to get ahead and people agreed with him.
Certainly President Roosevelt wanted to go in Tehran and meet with Stalin; he
had not met him before and he wanted to
make sure that Stalin understood that that Roosevelt's great idea for the
United Nations was what
Roosevelt was interested in. And Stalin had his own purposes, of course,
as we know from the structure Europe after the war.
So the tradition was that each leader
would host a dinner? How did that work?
Well it set up--it was sort of a tradition that started,
when Churchill was first in the White House
he didn't have his own dinners but when they were on neutral territory then
they would set up--they would say "ok my dinner is the first night, your
dinner is the second night..."
In Tehran it was interesting because Churchill said,
"right, I'm the oldest, it's my birthday
and so I'm gonna have the dinner on (that) day,"
and everybody had to agree.
But then it was, you know, that three the big three would have these dinners
and there would be maybe as many as 20--
fifteen to twenty--of the staff in the room and then the staff's--
the other staffs that were left over would be having their own dinner
elsewhere and that's where serious work was done. That's why these were so
important.
So how did Churchill's dinner compare with the other two?
Well if you take Tehran I think that was a very interesting dinner because
it was his birthday and he insisted on having a birthday cake.
Now, so you do think of children
up to the ages of 10 maybe insisting on a birthday cake and candles
but Churchill the Prime Minister wanted a birthday cake.
And he was 69. And he was 69 and he got a cake
and he blew out the candles on the side board in the
British Embassy in Tehran. Those
tables are still in the dining room in the British Embassy in Tehran today.
He was so human.
He was
just at ease with himself so that he could insist on having a birthday cake
and nobody minded. But Stalin didn't speak English
so he always had an interpreter with him. Correct.
Was Churchill ever able to break the ice with Stalin?
Even with an interpreter you mean? There are some
people who said that Stalin understood a little more English than he ever let
on.
He certainly couldn't speak it but he understood and at one point he said
to Churchill,
"I don't know what you're saying but I like your spirit." So there's
communication that's not just
in language. But did they get along?
I think they got--in the beginning Churchill tried very hard to keep this
new ally happy.
Ah, it was very difficult because Stalin was insisting on a second front in 1942
and there was no way that the anglo-american alliance could
could provide that and so Churchill had to go
and face the bear in his lair and say, "I'm sorry we can't do this but we
still need you as an ally," and try to
again like he did with Roosevelt to woo Stalin
which he did and successfully because in that meeting in '42
Stalin agreed that in fact a second front would have been premature.
The meeting at Potsdam--this is now with Truman--
Churchill actually did the seating arrangements himself for his dinner
which I find incredible because I don't see an American president ever doing the
seating arrangement for a dinner.
I don't think anybody ever did except Churchill, ah,
it just shows his attention to detail.
He did, he did it for all the big dinners.
Churchill also placed the interpreters. Do you want the interpreters to sit
next to a person or slightly behind? Churchill wanted--
Churchill sat in the middle of a table, never at the head,
and he put Stalin and Roosevelt on either side of him.
But Roosevelt on his right.
Yes, exactly right but the interpreter slightly behind.
So you see Churchill was always managing
the event so that it would come out the way he wanted.
But what was his strategy with the seating--I mean, always
the one that he wanted to honor the most (would be) on his right? What about,
who would sit in front of him? Uh, across the table,
that's a good question because when he had Roosevelt and Stalin on
either side he would put the three foreign ministers opposite each other on
the other side so they could talk to each other
but Churchill was gonna talk to the two other big leaders.
He wasn't gonna share them with anybody else and it is unusual that it did the
seating
and amended menus. The book were discussing is called "Dinner with
Churchill,"
Policy-Making at the Dinner Table. Cita Stelzer is in the studio with me.
She's an author, freelance journalist and research associate at the Hudson
Institute.
Well, two months after the Yalta conference FDR dies, Truman
does come to office, Truman and FDR are very different people;
how did Churchill and Truman get along?
Um, the first thing that Churchill did was to
send Truman a note sort of welcoming him into this grand alliance.
Truman was not prepared for for all this but
uh, I think from the letters, not from the official
diary and biographies of Truman--
that Truman was a little cautious
with Churchill's enthusiasm and exuberance and brio and
Truman was very careful and smart and wise in
in holding back a little bit. But then when
Truman arrive there um
he succumbed like everybody does too Churchill's charm.
Churchill was very worried about his first meeting with Truman but it went
very well
as of course it would have because Churchill Churchill.
And going back to the relationship with Stalin, I thought it was interesting that
Churchill once said that, "if I could have lunch with Stalin every week
things would be different," or something like that? Right, "if I could dine with
Stalin once a week there would be no trouble at all."
Now he said that (very confident) well yes, he was supremely confident,
um and with reason. But he said that in
in on the beach in Normandy in '44 after the invasion. He said it to General
Montgomery.
So he was still--even after victor--it was
pretty sure he was still thinking how he was going to
stay in touch with Stalin and continue this relationship because he was
worried about it. So what was his vision for the post-war world?
Churchill believed in--like Roosevelt did--in some sort of United Nations.
He was worried--he was very worried about Stalin
and the what turned out to be the Eastern Bloc--the Warsaw Pact
but there was nothing he could do about that because Stalin was in fact--
he had boots on the ground. I mean it was there was nothing that could be done.
There was no way that the Anglo-American's could
have a new army and and have another war. It was not possible
so he had to make do.
So Churchill later arranges a conference
at Bermuda, this is now during the Eisenhower administration.
What was his purpose, what was his aim to put a conference together?
Well that was in '43 and in 1945
Churchill, as I said, started to worry about
the Communists problem in Eastern Europe
and with Stalin dead in
early 1953, Churchill felt that he could
make some headway if in fact
President Eisenhower and Churchill would go
and meet with the Russians. Now,
Eisenhower--for a variety of reasons-- was having none of this
but Churchill did get him to agree to a summit meeting
in Bermuda. But the Soviets were not involved in that. Soviets were
not because Eisenhower didn't agreed that they would be invited.
He did agree for some reason that nobody can figure out today--to invite
the French. The French
President at at that moment landed in Bermuda,
got sick and stayed in bed the whole three days so that was nothing to do
there.
But it was sadly one of Churchill's
failures. He did not get Eisenhower to agree
to go to Moscow or to invite the Russians to come to Washington for
another big three summit. It might have helped
it might not have. I think the Soviets were in such flux then anyway after the death
Stalin that it might not have helped.
Why do you think he failed? I think it's always better to have a conversation
with an enemy or perceived enemy.
Ah, it would have helped, it might have helped if the Russian
leadership then had come to Washington
to meet with Eisenhower and Churchill or had Churchill and Eisenhardt agreed to go to
Moscow again
uh, certainly Eisenhower knew
all the players. He knew what he was up against with the Russians
that's probably why he didn't want to go but it might have helped.
We don't know. So Cita, how did
Churchill deal with defeat and failure in general?
He had what he calls his "black dog," his depression,
that has now been tracked to mostly when he had no work to do
so as soon as he got work to do
that disappeared. Although he did have a family history of some depression but it
never really affected his
his work. He dealt with
with defeat by getting up and trying again. It's
what he did; he just never gave up, never, never, never, never give up
and he kept trying to get a summit meeting. When Eisenhower said no, he
himself said, "well, I'll go to Moscow."
But he didn't but he just kept running.
Well let's circle back to the food now since we started this with the dinner
table diplomacy,
what would you say was Churchill's favorite food?
0h, he liked--in fact designing a meal to serve to him that would make him happy-- I
would serve him
clear consomme. He
for some reason hated cream soups and made a fuss about them all the time.
At the White House he would not eat clam chowder
at one of the dinners. So I would give him a clear consomme
and then I would give him up underdone or
or medium rare, perfectly cooked
chicken or a game--goose or venison.
He raised geese at his farm in Chartwell.
At one point the goose was put in front of him to carve, he looked at it and he said
"I can't carve this Clemmie, this goose was a
friend of mine."
(laughter) So maybe he even ate it anyway. He ate it.
So I then I would give him his favorite which is ice cream
with chocolate sauce, chocolate or vanilla, and then
after that in the British manner a savory--
ah, a pear, some roquefort cheese, Stilton
which he loved best. And let let him see that the brandy was right there
and he would have been happy. And then everybody else would have been happy too.
Cita Stelzer--she's an author, freelance journalist and a research
associate at the Hudson Institute.
The book is "Dinner with Churchill," Policy-Making at the Dinner Table.
It's published by Pegasus books. Cita, thanks so much for being on the program.
Thank you, it was fun.
it
my
in the Churchill center is a global organization
educating new generations on the leadership statesmanship
vision and courage of winston churchill the center's partnering with the George
Washington University
to create the new national churchill library and center
in the heart of Washington the facility will be at the university's Gelman
library
and will include a library of books written by and about churchill
rotating exhibits and space for seminars an endowed professorship in Churchill in
British studies will also be created
as part of this partnership