Winston Churchill Part III

His “ratting” did not endear him to many of his Tory friends and family..   He stood as a Liberal for a seat in Manchester and won…

Iin 1906, after a long period of Tory rule, the Liberals got into government again, under Henry Campbell Bannerman.  Churchill was now good friends with David Lloyd George…

Winston was also engaged in writing a biography of his father, (who had died of syphilis in 1895) which was popular and well received.  He became under Secretary for the Colonies, under Lord Elgin.  He was a hardworking and energetic political though he also enjoyed life and travelled a good deal in Europe and then in Africa. He gambled and played Polo and spent time big game hunting during his African trip.

When Henry Asquith became Prime minister in 1908 Churchill became President of the Board of Trade and he worked hard to improve labour relations and to protect workers.  Although he was disliked by many for his overt ambition, and wilfulness, he had a genuine sympathy for the underdog and took his reform work seriously...

In 1909 he married socialite Clementine Hozier, who was like him sympathetic to Liberal causes.  She supported Votes for women.. and he didn't but both of them had genuine sympathy for working people.  Clemmie gave birth to their first daughter Diana, a year later. His marriage had its ups and downs, but it was a love match and lasted all Winston’s life.  He never seems to have been interested in any other woman. 

Winston Part II

Lord Randolph Churchill had been a “Tory Democrat” which claimed that there was a certain relationship between the wealthy property owning classes and the working class...  Tory Democracy tried to insist that the Tory party was willing to help ordinary people, rather than simply existing to protect the wealthy.

Winston, admiring his father, though he didn’t know him well, agreed with this philosophy and was sincere about it.  He favoured the capitalist free enterprise system and admired the Empire but also wished to improve the lot of the poor, by State action.  He did not support women’s suffrage, nor Home Rule for Ireland, but he was sympathetic to the cause of secular education.

He wrote a book on the Siege of Malakand, in India, in 1897, and followed it by his only work of Fiction, Savrola, a novel.  He then went to Africa, where he published an account of the battle of Omdurman. 

In England, he used his family and society contacts to try to start off a political career.   He managed to get nominated to stand for Parliament but lost the election, in 1899.  He then went to Africa again to cover the Boer war as a journalist, but was captured by the Boers.  He managed to escape and returned to England…

 He stood again for parliament for Oldham and this time won, but he was not well off, and at the time MPs were not paid a salary.  So he had to work as a writer and speaker to earn a living... a pattern of life that would keep him busy for many years….

His flamboyant nature got him noticed in Parliament…and although he was initially a Conservative, he became friendly with many Liberal MPs and began to support the Liberal party.  He got on well with Liberal Imperialists like HH Asquith, supported Trade Unions and expressed opposition to a bill to restrict immigration into Britain, particularly Jewish immigrants.  In 1904, increasingly he was dissatisfied with the Tory party and crossed the floor to become a Liberal. 

Winston Churchill, Statesman Part I

Winston is probably the most famous Prime Minister of the 20^th century.  I don’t usually blog about politicians but he was a world famous figure…and while he was a Tory most of his life, he was always an independent thinker.

Winston was born in November 1874 to a society couple, Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough and his American wife, socialite Jennie Jerome. 

 Jennie was one of the “Dollar Princesses” who came from a wealthy American family.  Her father Leonard Jerome was a financier.. But like many of these families, her mother took her and her sisters to Europe and wanted to marry the girls off to upper class English and Europeans. 

More often than not, these marriages were less than happy.  The Europeans were usually on the lookout for a wealthy wife, and did not expect love or domestic happiness.  The brides often felt that after marriage, they were treated badly and that European men saw their wives and sisters as second class citizens… But all the same, the young American wives seemed to accept the idea that there was a cachet to marrying an English or continental nobleman. 

Randolph and Jennie had made a love match, though It did not end up very happily… and so Winston grew up in a home that was full of storms. 

The young couple had produced their first child, Winston, only about 7 months after the wedding.. It is possible that he was premature, or that they had been intimate before the marriage...which may have been one reasons why they were allowed to marry....

Lord Randolph was a younger son but he was a member of the governing elite, and was involved with politics.  He was a rather unstable individual, and eventually died of a sexually transmitted disease.  He and Jennie seemed to be in love and were close for some  time, but his eccentric behaviour and their money problems put a strain on the marriage.  Jennie had another son, Jack, in 1880, but by then she and Randolph were not getting on well together.  Jennie took other lovers, and she and her husband led separate lives and it was rumoured that her second son was not fathered by Randolph.

 Her life was largely devoted to socialising, and her children while they loved her, were not close to her in childhood. 
 Winston turned for maternal affection to his Nanny, Mrs Everest, whom he called “Womany”.   Randolph was busy with politics and socialising and he was also distant from his son.

Winston was sent to boarding school, like most of his class, but he did not at first do well there.  He was a rather difficult child, and although he was intelligent, his academic performance was poor.  He managed to pass the exam for Harrow, but while he was good at some subjects, particularly English, he did not enjoy school and did not do as well as he should.  His father insisted that he should be prepared for a career in the army, believing that he wasn't fit for anything else.. So Winston was expected to go along that path and to study at Sandhurst.  He was interested in military life and keen to see action – but he had difficulty passing the entry exam for Sandhurst. 

 Eventually he graduated from army training and got into the Hussars.  His nanny died and he was very grieved, going to see her on her deathbed….

Soon after he left Sandhurst, in 1896, his regiment was sent to India, and Churchill had mixed feelings about it.  He found many of his fellow officers boorish and uneducated and tiresome and he himself believed that he had lost out on education, so he embarked on a programme of self training and learning.  There was little soldiering going on, there and he had plenty of time.  

He read the classics and studied and began to develop a taste for politics. Although his family were Conservatives, he was tending towards the Liberal side..

Catherine Parr Part III

Catherine soon found though that her new marriage had caused problems.  She was very happy with Thomas at first, but it caused a rift in the Seymour family.  The Princess Mary disapproved of her step mother remarrying so quickly.

 There was already tension in the Seymour family, between Edward and his brother Thomas.  Thomas was ambitious and unstable... and Edward was determined to retain his position as Lord Protector and young King Edward’s guardian.  Tom however was a lively and amusing character and he was ready to use his charm to amuse and please the boy King.  He lent him money, and was fun to be with and Edward though a solemn young boy in many ways, liked his uncle Thomas and preferred him to  his official guardian...

Anne, the Protectors wife was not happy that Catherine was trying to take precedence over her, because she was the Dowager Queen.   Anne regarded herself as the first Lady of the land until Edward VI had a wife.   There were rows about the use of jewellery, and Catherine was angry with her husband’s brother and his arrogant wife.

But she soon was to find that her marriage was a lot less stable and less of a love match than she had hoped for.  Young Princess Elizabeth was part of the household and Thomas was attracted to her though she was only 14. 

 Elizabeth had something of a crush on the older man, and Thomas was not averse to playing around with his wife’s step daughter.  Elizabeth tried to avoid his attentions, but her own feelings were probably ambivalent and she was no match for a man of his age and experience.  He came into her bedroom, in the mornings, teased her and smacked her familiarly.  Catherine seems to have tried to overlook this horseplay but she realized that it was all dangerous... That her step daughter’s reputation could be damaged by it and that Thomas’ inability to resist his attraction was damaging her marriage.   So she sent Elizabeth away to live in a different household with her governess Kat Ashley... who had not been very skilled at protecting her young charge – but Elizabeth was very close to her. 

The young Princess seems to have been relieved when she left the Queen’s household, and remained friends with her stepmother.  Catherine was now having her first pregnancy and was not in good health.   

Elizabeth wrote to her, and for a time all was well but Thomas’s ambitions had not disappeared.  Catherine may have been disappointed by his flirtation with a young girl, who was also a royal princess.

However she settled down to await the birth of her child, and in due course in September 1548, she gave birth to a daughter, Mary.  However she became ill with puerperal fever and within a few days, she died.   Her fourth marriage had been very short lived and had not been very happy for long.  During her delirium before she died she accused Thomas of poisoning her.

Her daughter Mary died in infancy and Thomas, while he grieved for a time, went on with his plots to gain control of the boy King.  And it led to his being accused of treason and executed.

Catherine was an intelligent and educated woman, who did make Henry VIII’s last years more comfortable and happier.  She also had an important role in pushing forward the cause of Protestantism in England, even writing a book which no previous queen had done.

Catherine Parr Part II

After the marriage, Catherine enjoyed the “perks” of being queen, dressed well, and did her best to soothe and amuse the increasingly elderly and poorly King.  Henry was now very overweight and his health was declining. He had been very depressed by the infidelity of Catherine Howard, and his new wife knew that she had to tread carefully to entertain and cheer him.  Henry’s increasing ill temper and his behavior towards his other wives, was enough to frighten many ladies… Some princesses had been very reluctant to consider him as a husband, in spite of his being a King.  He had killed 2 of his wives, divorced two and it was said by some that Jane Seymour had died because she had not been well looked after in childbirth… or that Henry had been willing to sacrifice her in order to have a male heir.

Catharine was fond of the royal children and did her best to reunite Henry with them.  He had not been close to his two daughters for some time but Catherine tried to have them brought to court more often and to re establish a relationship with their father.   In spite of Mary’s being a devout and somewhat bigoted Catholic and Catherine’s being an ardent Reformer, they became friends.  Catherine grew close to the young Elizabeth, and was involved in her education.

Henry respected his wife’s intelligence, though he was less committed to the cause of Protestantism.  He appointed her Regent in 1544 when he was away on a military campaign.

But in 1546, Catherine’s loyalty to the Reformists came close to ending her career as Queen. Conservative Catholics at court were anxious to ensure that when Henry died, England did not fall to Protestantism.  But Edward, his heir had been educated by Protestants and his uncle Edward Seymour, was likely to be Regent.   Stephen Gardiner and other Catholics acted against Anne Askew, a “heretic” woman who knew Catherine, and hoped that she would reveal under torture that the queen shared her beliefs and had heretical books which she read and which were forbidden.   Anne however did not crack under torture and Catherine found a paper which warned her of the plot against her.  She realized that she had been too overt in talking about her religious beliefs and that she was in danger of losing Henry’s favor and possibly her life.  She threw herself on his mercy, and told him that she had only argued with him on religion, in order to “learn from his superior intelligence” and to take his mind off the pain in his bad leg.  Henry turned on the Catholic plotters and dismissed them, leaving his Protestant courtiers in the ascendant.  He and Catherine made up their quarrel and were “perfect friends” again.

Catherine was more discreet, in the last years of Henry’s life.  He died in 1547, and she was then free to remarry.  She had bene left comfortably off and her old suitor Thomas Seymour was still free.   However he was an ambitious and somewhat erratic, not very intelligent man... He was probably in love with Catherine but he also toyed with the idea of marrying one of Henry’s daughters, and forming an alliance with the Royal family.  However he settled for a marriage with Catherine but it had to be performed in secret.  Catherine was still in mourning for her Royal husband but she was so in love with Thomas and so eager to make up for the difficult years as Henry’s wife, that she hurried into the marriage.

 More follows:-

The Fashionable Flirt - an Edwardian novella On Pages section

This is a "long short story" or novella...

Set in Edwardian England.
Pampered and flirtatious, Christabel Morney is of marriageable age and a trial to her doting father. At their house party in Scotland, she encounters the politically aspiring Darcy Brookfield.

Mr Brookfield is immediately attracted to Christabel, but she seems to spend most of her time with a German baron.  She thinks  her father would never accept him as a proper suitor.

Then a tenant's son goes missing and Christabel seeks Darcy's assistance to look for him. Will they solve the mystery or will their time together lead to other things....

The story is on the pages section......

Queen Catherine Parr Part I

Catherine was the last wife of Henry VIII and queen of England from 1543-47.  She was an intelligent and learned woman and well known for her Protestant sympathies.  She was the first Queen of England to write a book under her own name…She was born to a Westmorland gentry family, in 1512. Her mother was a lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon, and her father Sir Thomas Parr, was an associate of Henry’s.   At 17 - she married Sir Edward Burgh (sometimes spelled Borough).  She was portrayed in fiction as a woman who had been married off to much older husbands, but in fact her first husband was only a few years her senior.   He died within a few years and her next marriage was to John Neville, Lord Latimer, who was a good deal older than her... and had children from his first marriage.

Latimer was a Catholic and when there were various Catholic uprisings against Henry’s new Church of England, his reputation was somewhat tarnished. In 1540, the Latimers were at court and he became a Member of Parliament.  However he died in 1543, leaving Catherine as a rich widow.   She remained in London and renewed a friendship with the Lady Mary, later queen Mary I.  During this time, she mourned her husband but developed a romantic friendship with Thomas Seymour, the brother of Jane Seymour.

Then she caught the eye of Henry VIII, whose marriage to Catherine Howard had ended in disaster….  Catherine probably did not want to marry him, but she had little choice.  Seymour was posted abroad and she married the King in July 1543.  Henry wanted a stable and sensible wife, unlike the giddy young girl who had deceived him, so a widow like Catherine Parr was his preferred choice....

Crystal Gayle

Crystal Gayle was born in Kentucky in 1951 and is the younger sister of country singer Loretta Lynn.   Their father was Ted Webb a miner, who had a small farm and there were several children in her family.
 Crystal was born Brenda Gail Webb, and chose Crystal Gayle as a stage name.   Gayle was from her second name and Crystal was from a brand of hamburgers. 

When she was a child, the family moved to Indiana where her father ran a small store.  He died a few years later of black lung disease, which often affected miners.   When Loretta began her career as a country singer, Crystal began to sing and play in her band, and thought of becoming a singer herself.  She learned to play guitar and in 1970 she signed with Decca Records.  Since there was already a singer called Brenda Lee, she chose her stage name… In 1971, she married…to Bill Gatzimos, her high-school sweetheart.

She tended to follow her sister’s country style but within a few years, she began to move towards middle of the road country pop, which suited her better. She had a big hit with the ballad “Don’t It make my brown Eyes blue...” and began to establish herself as independent of her sister’s kind of music.  She toured worldwide and had another huge hit with “Talking in your Sleep”… In the early 1980s she recorded songs for the soundtrack of Coppola’s film, “One from the Heart”, with Tom Waits.  She had striking good looks, with long dark hair which for many years was never cut....

 By the 1990s like many older country stars, she found that the country radio stations were less interested in them… However, like many country singers, she has worked as an actress and recorded theme songs for TV shows and is still working.  She has produced albums of songs for children.  In 2016, she became a member of the Grand Old Opry.

Beds and Blue Jeans a country story

Beds and Blue Jeans is set in present day America. It is about a love affair between a young couple - one of them a small time country singer... who drift into living together and having a baby, and how they make things work
http://www.amazon.com/Beds-Blue-Jeans...

Lady Aurelia's Adventure

The story is on my pages..... a Regency Romance Novella

Marty Robbins

Marty Robbins (born Martin Robinson) was born in Arizona in 1925, and he was one of the most famous and talented country singers of his era.   Like many singers of his era,  he was born to a large and impoverished family.  At 17 he joined the US Navy and served in the Solomon Islands.   He learned to play the guitar and got to like Hawaiian Music.  He left the services in 1947 and married.  He began to play on the radio and in local venues in Phoenix Arizona. He met Little Jimmy Dickens, who got him a record deal with Columbia Records and he began to play at the Opry in Nashville.  He wore embroidered cowboy suits and many of his songs were about cowboys and the west... His most famous song was the ballad, El Paso, a story of a fight over a girl between cowboys, which ended in the death of the song’s narrator.

His style of singing and image began to be seen as “Nashville establishment” and overly conservative... In the 70s, there was a rebellion against this style.  The “outlaw movement” included great singers like Willie Nelson, Bobby Bare, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, who dressed more simply and sang with an earthier rougher sound.

Marty  loved NASCAR racing, driving Dodge Chargers and spending as much time as he could spare form his work, maintaining and racing his cars.   But he suffered from heart trouble and had several heart attacks.  In 1982 at the age of 57 he had a bypass operation in Nashville. But he did not survive it. He died a few days after the operation.

He was married for 34 years and had 2 children.

Malvina and the Merchant

This story was published as Malvina's Boudoir.. and is now available on my blog in the pages section.  It is a romance set in Victorian Britain.  It is a romance between an aristocratic lady and a young man who is making money as a merchant.. and how they fall in love and overcome their differences....

Roman Bride a story

some years ago, I published some romantic novels and stories, under the name Clova Leighton.  I now am writing more modern 20th and 21st century stories....so they are now out of print.

 One of my favourites was Roman Bride, a story set in Arthurian Britain.  I hope some time to write another Arthurian story.  Im now putting this one on my blog as a short novella...on the Page section....

Ruby Ferguson and the Jill books

Ruby Ferguson was most famous for writing “pony books" in the years after World War II.  I learned to ride but was never very good at it  - certainly not up to “pony club” standard, but I liked the stories. It was a little bit dull compared with “Wild West” riding and rodeos but still, her novels were pleasant and realistic. 

Ms Ferguson also wrote other adult novels including one called Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, which is said to be one of the Queen Mother’s favourite books.

 She was born in Yorkshire, as Ruby Ashby in 1899. She was the daughter of a church minister.   She had a good education and went to college -which was becoming more common for middle class girls. She read English at Oxford but then got a job as a secretary in the early 1920s. She began to write and had some detective stories published. In 1926, she had her first novel published and wrote romantic fiction. 

 In 1934 she married a man (Samuel Ferguson) who had 2 children.  She went on writing mainly romantic novels…and it wasn’t until she began to write some stories to entertain her step grandchildren, that she got into the “pony” genre.  It was quite popular in the post war times.  Young middle class girls were keen on riding and competing in gymkhanas or going on pony treks. (There’s a comic poem by John Betjeman about the “pony club children"). 

 Girls who couldn’t afford horsey lifestyles were often interested in reading about it, just as they often enjoyed reading about boarding school.

 In the first book, Jill Crewe is a young teenager who has just moved to a country cottage with her widowed mother, who is a writer of children’s books.  She’s not well off and most of the local children have ponies so she feels out of place in the village. When her mother begins to make some money, Jill buys a pony and starts to train him with the help of a wheelchair bound ex pilot for a riding coach.  She becomes an ardent horsewoman and does well at the various events.

She is a reasonably realistic character, not much liking her mother’s “goody goody” books... or finding them very twee.  She does try to behave well, works hard with her horses, but she sometimes sulks and behaves badly. They are children’s books so there is a certain amount of moralising.  Honesty and “non snobbery” are praised and selfishness is criticised. 

I’ve never managed to find the last couple of Jill books, but the final one has had a lot of criticism from fans.. because Jill gives up on the idea of getting a job with horses.  Some fans think it is not fair not to give her a happy ending as a successful equestrienne.  Others felt that it is more realistic to point out to eager young “horsey” girls that it is very difficult to succeed in that field. And that they may have to give up any dreams and become at best “weekend riders”.