War is hell. War is hell on leaders’s health. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill were firemen who were struggling to put out the fires of domestic and international strife. War was hell for Lincoln and Churchill – on their feet, on their bodies, on their overall health. Colleagues continually worried that Churchill – who endured very serious pneumonia on two occasions and two heart attacks during World War II – would not survive the conflict. The stress of Churchill’s and Lincoln’s new offices came quickly. Historian Russell McClintock wrote of Lincoln: “The strain of the crisis at [Fort] Sumter was onerous enough, but the added challenge of organizing the government, and especially dealing with the relentless crush of office-seekers, had worn his nerves thin. One Republican senator observed, ‘Our poor President is having a hard time of it. He came here tall, strong and vigorous, but has worked himself almost to death.’”1
“Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition to my comfort,” wrote President Lincoln in 1862 to endorse the podiatric skills of Dr. Isachar Zacharie.”2 Sarcastically, the New York Herald observed “that many of the haps and mishaps of the nation, during this war, may be traced to a matter no greater than the corns and bunions which have afflicted the feet of our leaders…The President has been greatly blamed for not resisting the demands of the radicals, but how could the President put his foot down firmly when he was troubled with corns.”3
Lincoln was a vigorous 52 at the beginning of the Civil War. He was in much tougher physical condition than Churchill was when the latter became prime minister in May 1860 at age 65. In July 1862, Senator Orville H. Browning visited President Lincoln at the White House: “He looked weary, care-worn and troubled. I shook hands with him, and asked how he was. He said ‘tolerably well’ I remarked that I felt concerned about him — regretted that troubles crowded so heavily upon him, and feared his health was suffering. He held me by the hand, pressed it, and said in a very tender and touching tone – ‘Browning I must die sometime’, I replied ‘your fortunes Mr President are bound up with those of the Country, and disaster to one would be disaster to the other, and I hope you will do all you can to preserve your health and life’. He looked very sad, and there was a cadence of deep sadness in his voice. We parted I believe both of us with tears in our eyes.”4 Another Illinois friend, attorney Henry C. Whitney, recalled: “If Lincoln could, like an average workman, have quit work at sundown and resumed at sunrise, and had one day in seven for recuperation, his cares would not have worn out his soul and body, prematurely. ‘I laugh because I must not cry; that’s all – that’s all,’ said he, despairingly.”5 Whitney noted: “It was the abrasion of responsibility that brought to his pillow sleepless nights, that caused deep furrows of care and anxiety to be ploughed through his sad face, and gave to his eyes that preternatural expression of exquisite grief which caused many a sensitive person to turn away in tears, and which made him exclaim in the depth of anguish, ‘I shall never be glad any more.’”6
Lincoln had been used to do manual labor and he prided himself on his strength, but the presidency, especially in war time, was a constant strain on his constitution. The result was written in the increasingly furrowed photos of President Lincoln over his four-year term. When possible, his wife liked to get him out for a late afternoon carriage ride. Historian Kenneth J. Winkle wrote that “Mary grew particularly crucial in maintaining her husband’s health and spirits. When she was away, for example, Lincoln wrote, ‘have not rode out much yet but at last go new tires on the carriage wheels & perhaps, shall ride out soon.’”7 Even on the final full day of his life, the Lincolns went out on a carriage ride before going to the theater. In the final weeks of his life, Lincoln visited Virginia, saying: “It is a great relief to get away from Washington and politicians. But nothing touches the tired spot.”8
President Lincoln’s health was undoubtedly impaired by the end of the war. Lincoln scholar Daniel Mark Epstein wrote: “The photographs that Alexander Gardner took of him between February and April [1865] show a startling change in his features. Hollow-eyes, sunken-cheeked, his forehead deeply furrowed, the fifty-six-year-old president looks seventy – although he managed a faint smile. He had lost thirty-five pounds and had a nagging chill in his hands and feet. The main problem seemed to be his digestion, but his circulation was not good either. He liked to removed his shoes and sit close to the fire with his feet near the fedner, watching the steam rise from his socks.”9
Winston Churchill generally prided himself on his good health. He wrote in 1937: “All my household has been down with this minor scourge [flu], and a certain number of days of complete relief from work of any kind is absolutely necessary for perfect recovery. So far I have survived and if I escape altogether I shall attribute it to a good conscience as well as a good constitution.”10 Churchill remained remarkably vigorous – especially at the beginning of World War II. His companions noted that he disdained exercise – with the exception of brief tours of the Chequers garden. Meeting with Churchill for the first time in 1940, General Bernard Montgomery told the prime minister that he “neither drank nor smoked and was 100 percent fit.” Churchill responded: “I drink and smoke and I am 200 percent fit.”11 MP Harold Nicolson wrote: “He seems better in health than he has ever seemed. That pale and globular look about his cheeks has gone. He is more solid about the face and thinner. But there is something odd about his eyes. The lids are not in the least weary, nor are there any pouches or black lines. But the eyes themselves are glaucous, vigilant, angry, combative, visionary and tragic. In a way they are the eyes of a man who is much preoccupied and is unable to rivet his attention on minor things (such as me).”12
Churchill’s energy reserves were deep but not inexhaustible. General Hastings Ismay wrote that “Churchill’s fiery energy and undisputed authority dominated the [Operation Overlord] proceedings. The seemingly slothful or obstructive were tongue-lashed, competing differences were reconciled, priorities were settled; difficulties which at first appeared insuperable were overcome and decisions were translated into immediate action.” Churchill liked to make fun of his personal physician, Dr. Charles Wilson. (One secretary recalled that Dr. Wilson “was always in and out of the Annex, constantly watching and checking up on his charge, and was always ready at the shortest notice to put aside whatever he was doing and accompany the Prime Minister on his travels by land, sea or air.”13 Churchill aide John Colville wrote that Dr. Wilson “underestimated his patient’s strength, for as easily as September 1944 he told me that he did not give him a long life and thought that he would die, perhaps before the war ended, from a stroke or a heart attack.”14)
When the doctor fell ill with stomach problems in Cairo, Churchill said: “Sir Charles has been a terrible anxiety to us the whole time, but I hope we’ll get him through.”15 In truth, Dr. Wilson sought to not to inflate Churchill’s anxiety about his own health – never telling the prime minister in December 1941 that Churchill had suffered a mild heart attack while staying at the White House. Dr Wilton told the prime minister: “You have been overdoing things,” adding, “Your circulation is a bit sluggish. It is nothing serious.” Churchill responded: “Now, Charles, you are not going to tell me to rest. I can’t. I won’t. Nobody else can do this job. I must.”16
At the beginning of Dr. Wilson’s diary on his work with Churchill, the physician wrote: “I have become his doctor, not because he wanted one, but because certain members of the Cabinet, who realized how essential he has become, have decided that somebody ought to keep an eye on his health.” Wilson’s memoirs detail acknowledged health problems, but also detail the deterioration of Churchill’s stamina at the end of the war. By the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Wilson wrote: “The P.M.’s health has so far deteriorated that he has no energy left to size his opportunities. Bridges and Leslie Rowan tell me that a great deal depends here on Anthony, because the P.M. is not mastering his brief. He is too tired to prepare anything; he just deals with things as they come up.”17
The health crisis suffered by Churchill were recurring and frightening. In mid-March 1941, noted biographer Martin Gilbert,”Churchill was too ill to return to London [from Chequers] for the Monday War Cabinet. His persistent cold had turned into bronchitis.” Still, Churchill worked on.18 It was, however, generally not work in cold, clammy war-time Britain that most threatened Churchill’s health. Virtually every time that Churchill ventured abroad, he got sick before, during, or after the trip.
The prime minister was sick in August 1944 just before he went to Canada aboard the Queen Mary to the Canada for important strategy talks. As one admiral described the pre-trip scene: Dr. Wilson “still there & two nurses; a specialist had been sent for. I hope it is only wise precaution it would be a tragedy if anything should happen to him now. With all his faults (& he is the most infuriating man) he has done a great job for the country, & besides there is no one else.”19 Sickness did not improve Churchill’s disposition. General Hastings Ismay wrote of the trip to the Quebec Conference: “Mr. Churchill had not yet recovered from his illness, but instead of having a rest, he insisted on working harder than ever. Large doses of M and B had wrought miracles with his pneumonia but had not improved his temper; and although the seas calm, some of us had a rough passage.”20 Field Marshal Alan Brooke was driven to rage by the irritable prime minister at shipboard conferences: “We had another meeting with Winston at 12 noon. He was again in a most unpleasant mood. Produced the most ridiculous arguments to prove that operations could be speeded up so as to leave us an option till December before having it withdraw ay forces from Europe! He knows no details, have only got half the picture in his mind, talks absurdities and makes my blood boil to listen to his nonsense…..Never have I admired and despised a man simultaneously to the same extent. Never have such opposite extremes been combined in the same human being.” Years later, Brooke commented: “My criticism of Winston’s wrath on that day was obviously unnecessarily hard, it should however be remembered that they were written at a moment of exasperation due to his attitude during the meetings we had held, and desperation as to how I was to handle the conference in front of me with his continuous obstruction.”21
Death and injury were a part of war. Illness did not spare leaders. In January 1942, Winston Churchill returned to Britain after a long series of war conferences in America – during which he suffered a mild heart attack while visiting the White House. In late February 1942, daughter Mary observed after lunching with her parents,”He is not too well physically, and he is worn down by the continuous pressure of events.”22 Britain meanwhile suffered the sinking of two battleships, the loss of much of its territory in Southeast Asia, and the interruption of its ability to decipher German messages. While Churchill and Lincoln pursued war aggressively, they never lost sight of the casualties that their decisions entailed. The night that the Allies invaded Sicily in 1943, Churchill told his daughter-in-law. “So many brave young men going to their death tonight. It is a grave responsibility.”23
His family felt its responsibility to take care of Churchill. On January 3, 1943, Clementine and daughter Mary went for a walk at Chequers: ”We talked entirely of the family – & especially of Papa,” Mary wrote. “I appears that might get a coronary thrombosis – it might be brought on by anything like a long &/or high flight – The question is whether he should be earned or not. Mummie thinks he should not – I agree with her.” They were right to worry, and arrangements were usually made for Churchill’s flights to be limited to a low altitude.25
In Cairo in December 1943 after the summit conference in Teheran, Churchill had stomach ache. He had already been suffering from a bad cold before the summit and had to spend two days in bed in Malta on the way to Iran. Churchill arrived exhausted in Teheran, but revived for the meeting. In Cairo on his return, Churchill’s stomach problems turned to general fatigue. Martin Gilbert observed: “At no time since the war began had he been so exhausted.”25 Churchill had intended to travel to Italy to visit the war front there. General Alan Brooke tried to dissuade him: “I granted that the troops would be delighted to see him and that he would enjoy the trip, but said that I did not think he had any right to risk his health in this way when he had such far more important matters in front of hm connected with the war. I was beginning to make a little progress, and then I foolishly said: ‘And what is more, [Dr. Charles Wilson] entirely agrees with me.’ He rose up on the elbow in his bed, shook his fist in my face and said: ‘Don’t you get in league with that bloody old man!’”26 Churchill did not like to be coddled about his health. Historian Gerald Pawle wrote: “Since he regarded even temporary capitulation to any ailment as a sign of weakness he was an impossible patient. In a high fever he would sit up in bed reading State papers and drafting memoranda.”27
Anthony Eden recalled Churchill at Cairo returning from Teheran telling him as they boarded the plane for Casablanca: “I feel very ill.” By December 14 in Tunis, Churchill had developed full-fledged pneumonia. Mideast advisor Harold Macmillan wrote on December 14, 1943: “P.M. is definitely worse, and has got pneumonia, and they fear pleurisy.” Dr. Wilson called in an “M&B Specialist” from Italy. “He is an expert on how to give the stuff. He seems clever, determined, rather gauche and rude – just the chap we need. I had a long talk with him and begged him to be firm and forbid telegrams or visitors,” wrote Macmillan.28 Even President Franklin Roosevelt joined the mob clamoring that Churchill rest and not work. “The Bible says you must do just what [Dr. Wilson] orders, but at this moment I cannot put my finger on the verse and chapter,” wired FDR.29 The arrival on December of Clementine Churchill may have been the tonic that the prime minister needed. His wife admitted that she overstayed her visit with her husband the first night. “But Papa showed no signs of fatigue, and once or twice when I got up to go to bed, he would not let me go.” Clementine wrote home: “Papa is very upset as he is beginning to see that he cannot get well in a few days and that he will have to lead what for him is a dreary monotonous life with no emotions or excitements.”30
Churchill progressively regained his strength and resumed work, but rather than fly back to winter in London, he decided to stay in relatively balmy Morocco to recuperate. At the beginning of 1944 as Churchill was visited by General Bernard Montgomery, who prided himself on fitness. Together, they went on a picnic and afterwards to a scenic overlook. When Montgomery marched directly up the hill, Churchill “warned him not to waste his vigour, considering what was coming. I emphasized the truths that energy of mind does not depend on energy of body; that energy should be exercised and not exhausted; that athletics are one thing and strategy another. These admonitions were in vain.”31 Nurse Dori Miles recalled Churchill’s “immense vigour and enthusiasm, his determination to get over his illness as quickly as possible. He told me that he ate and drank too much, (Roast beef for breakfast) and took no exercise at all, but was much fitter than ‘old so-and-so who is two years younger than me.’”32 President Roosevelt himself fell ill that spring, but in May, he wrote again to Churchill: “Remember what I told old [Dr. Wilson] to make you do – obey his orders.”33
MP Harold Nicolson wrote in January 1944 after his recovery in Morocco, the private secretary to King George asked if he might want to take the elevator at Buckingham Palace: “‘Lift?’ said Winston and ran up the stairs two at a time. When he reached the top he turn round to [the private secretary] and cocked a snook.”34 Nicolson wrote: “Winston not being able to talk, was absolutely miserable. Aching with self-pity, he drummed on the table. Then he called his servant. ‘I am feeling very ill indeed: I have lost my voice.’ ‘Would you wish me to fetch you a cough-lozenge, Prime Minister?’ ‘No, you bloody fool, a whisky-and-soda, of course.’”35 In February 1945, Churchill congratulated Nicolson on a speech in the House of Commons, adding” I only wish that I could also have given you one of my throat lozenges. Excellent they are. That horrible man, Lord Moran, who bullies the life out of me, prescribed them.”36
Born in Blenheim Palace, Churchill was used to domestic service. He did not like to exert himself. When the 70-year-old prime minister dropped his pen during dictation in early December 1944, he said to his secretary: “Miss Holmes I am sure you would help an old man weighed down with age by picking it up for me.” General Hastings Ismay observed: “His most fervent admirers would not say that he was considerate, but neither could his fiercest critics deny that, so far as waging war was concerned, he was more inconsiderate of himself than he was of others. Even when he was really ill, perhaps running a high temperature, he insisted on continuing to work.”37
The war drained him. On May 1, 1944, South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts had lunch with Churchill, Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Smuts “lectured” Eden on Churchill’s health. “He may be mentally the man he was, he may be, but he certainly is not physically. I fear he over-estimates his strength, yes, he over-estimates his strength and he will wear himself out if he is not careful.’ Some of which W. May have heard and was probably meant to hear.”38 At a Chiefs of Staff meeting a few days later, General Alan Brooke observed that Churchill was “terribly tired.”39 In August 1944, Churchill contracted another bout of pneumonia on his return from Italy and as he prepared to cross the Atlantic. The medicine for his condition – combined with the illness itself – to make Churchill miserable aboard ship. “Papa is in low spirits and not very well. I hope it is just the M & B working off and perhaps some anti-Malaria tablets which have to be taken for four weeks after leaving Italy and are very depressing,” wrote Clementine Churchill, who accompanied the prime minister.
In late January on the way on the way home from the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Churchill developed a temperature. Rather than move him on landing, Churchill was allowed to sleep for six hours, then moved to a British ship where he again went to bed. But he recovered rather quickly, Within a day, he declared to his daughter Sarah: “My temperature is down – my tummy ache gone – my functions have resumed their norm; in fact, I’m in the best of form!”40 At the conference itself, Churchill had born up well “despite the strain of getting through so much in really so short a time, and the accompanying patience and toil that a million complexities call for,” wrote his daughter Sarah.41
Toward the end of the war, Churchill’s health was undoubtedly impaired. Historian Simon Schama wrote by 1944, “Increasingly, [Churchill] would bluff his way through cabinet meetings, muttering into his cigars, focusing bewilderingly on some small detail that had nothing to do with the main tasks at hand, making the meetings unconscionably long. Often he seemed incapable of making members shut up, so that there were times when everyone was talking at once. Decisions, especially military ones, had to be dragged from him.”42 Aide John Colville wrote in December 1944: “Obviously he is hopelessly overtired and at seventy his powers of recuperation may not be very good.”43 Bodyguard Walter Thompson acknowledged: “By April 1945 the strain of organising victory and the continual round of conferences, together with his routine work in the House of Commons, were taking their toll of Mr. Churchill’s strength. Those of us nearest to him were becoming increasingly alarmed at his health.”44
Trips affected all the Allied leaders adversely, but it was Churchill traveled farthest and most frequently. Stalin complained in September 1944 “about his own health.” Stalin said “he never kept well except in Moscow, and even his visits to the front did him harm. His doctors were averse to his flying, and it took him a fortnight to recover from Teheran, etc.’”45 By the time of Yalta in February 1945, it was President Roosevelt who was in the worst shape of the Big Three – a fact which was noticed by virtually all the British delegation. “He seems to have lost so much weight, has dark circles under his eyes, looks altogether frail and as if he is hardly in this world at all,” wrote one of Churchill’s secretaries pf FDR.46 Travel to that conference was particularly difficult because once visitors reached Sevastopol, they have to travel five hours over generally bad roads through the mountains to Yalta. Once at Yalta, the ability of President Roosevelt to concentrate on the discussions was often in doubt.
Opinions have differed about the size and impact of Churchill’s liquor consumption. Although he did drink throughout the day, his morning whisky was much more water than whiskey. Still there were occasional reports of his excessive consumption. He was described as “[v]ery tired and too much alcohol” by an admiral attending a war meeting in July 1944.47 After a speech in the House of Commons in October 1944, Churchill went to the bar of the nearby smoking room: “Collins, I should like a whisky-and-soda-single.” For a moment, he took his seat in an armchair before returning to the bar: “Collins, delete the word ‘single’ and insert the word ‘double.’”48 But, noted Cita Stelzer, “Churchill’s drinking has been ‘grossly exaggerated.’”49
Some of the exaggeration was done by Winston himself. Naval commander C. R. Thompson recalled Churchill’s drinking habits: “At home he usually drank a glass of white wine at lunch, champagne at dinner, and then a glass of port or brand afterwards….he disliked afternoon tea, and if he had anything at all at that time he would ask for a whisky heavily diluted with ice and water. Cocktails he avoided altogether. He liked to provide champagne for his guests, but as the war went on champagne became more and more difficult to obtain. I therefore suggested that since champagne agreed with him and our stock was running low he might have half a bottle with his meals while his guests were given something more easily obtainable. This was brushed aside. ‘What happens if we run out’ I asked. ‘Get some more!’ he said. He obviously thought the question was slightly ridiculous.”50
Abraham Lincoln himself was a teetotaler. As a shopkeeper in New Salem in his twenties, Lincoln had been a purveyor of liquor. Lincoln’s early contemporary Philip Clark wrote: “Lincoln was a friend of temperance also. We were together one night in a country neighborhood when some one proposed that we all go to the church close by to hear Rev. John Berry preach a sermon on temperance. After listening attentively ‘Abe’ remarked to me that the subject would some time be one of the greatest in this country.”51
Although himself abstemious, Lincoln as a young man had owned a general store that sold liquor. This became an issue in the 1858 Senate campaign with Stephen A. Douglas, who himself had a drinking problem. Biographer Benjamin Thomas wrote: “Unquestionably Lincoln dispensed liquor at his store; every general store on the frontier sold whisky. Later, however, when Stephen A. Douglas publicly accused Lincoln of having kept a ‘grocery,’ the frontier name for a saloon, Lincoln replied truthfully that he never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. The distinction lies in the fact that every store could sell liquor in quantities greater than a quarter, for consumption off the premises, without taking out a license, whereas a license was required to sell liquor on the premises by the drink. No stigma attached to the former practice only when one was licensed to permit drinking on his premises did one engage in the questionable occupation of grocery keeper.”52
Lincoln and Churchill demonstrated that in war, liquor is neither a certain asset nor a certain impediment to effective leadership. Good health, however, a requirement.
For Further Reference
- Russell McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession, p. 228.
- Roy P. Basler, editor, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (CWAL), Volume V, p. 436 (September 22, 1862)
- CWAL, Volume V, p. 436 (New York Herald, October 3, 1862).
- Theodore Calvin Pease, editor, Diary of Orville H. Browning, Volume I, p. 559-560 (July 15, 1862).
- Henry C. Whitney, Life on The Circuit with Lincoln, p. 131.
- Henry C. Whitney, Life on The Circuit with Lincoln, p. 144.
- Kenneth J. Winkle, Abraham and Mary Lincoln, p. 105.
- Don E. and Virginia Fehrenbacher, editors, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, p. 43.
- Daniel Mark Epstein, The Lincolns, p. 461.
- Richard Langworth, editor, Churchill by Himself, p. 522 (Letter from Winston S. Churchill to Sir Thomas Inskip, January 14, 1937).
- Bernard Montgomery, Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery Bernard Montgomery.
- Nigel Nicolson, editor, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, p. 127 (November 20, 1940).
- Elizabeth Nel, Winston Churchill by His Personal Secretary, p. 60.
- John Colville, Winston Churchill and His Inner Circle, p. 245.
- Brian Lavery, Churchill Goes to War: Winston’s Wartime Journeys, p. 149.
- Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, Winston Churchill: the Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, p. 18 (December 27, 1941).
- Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, Churchill, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran: the Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, p. 5 (May 24, 1940), p. 300. (July 22, 1945).
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour, 1939-1941, p. 1032.
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory, 1942-1945, p. 922.
- Hastings Lionel Ismay, Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, pp. 372-373.
- Alex Danchev, Daniel Todman, editors, Lord Alanbrooke: War Diaries, 1939-1945, p. 590-591 (September 10, 1944)
- Mary Somes, Clementine Churchill, p. 314.
- Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, p. 748.
- Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill, p. 436.
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 602.
- Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, editors, Lord Alanbrooke War Diaries, 1939-1945, p. 496-497 (December 11, 1943).
- Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 232.
- Harold Macmillan, War Diaries, p. 327 (December 14, 1943).
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 609.
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory, 1941-1945, p. 610.
- Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Closing the Ring, Volume V, p. 393.
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 354.
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 774. (Letter from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill, May 20, 1944).
- Nigel Nicolson, editor, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, p. 345.
- Nigel Nicolson, editor, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, p. 386 (July 5, 1944).
- Nigel Nicolson, editor, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, p. 438 (February 28, 1945).
- Hastings Lionel Ismay, Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, p. 177.
- Anthony Eden, The Reckoning, p. 442.
- Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, editors, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke: War Diaries, p. 544-545 (May 8, 1944).
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 1166 (Letter from Sarah Churchill to Clementine Churchill, February 1, 1945).
- Sarah Churchill, Keep on Dancing, p. 76.
- Simon Schama, A History of Britain, Volume II, The Fate of Empire, 1776-2000, p. 535.
- John Colville, The Fringes of Power: The Incredible Inside Story of Winston Churchill During World War II, p. 537 (December 21, 1944).
- Walter Thompson, Beside the Bulldog: The Intimate Memoirs of Churchill’s Bodyguard, p. 139.
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 979 (Telegram from Winston S. Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 29, 1944).
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 1167 (February 2, 1945).
- Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 844. (Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham, July 6, 1944).
- Nigel Nicolson, editor, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, p. 408 (October 27, 1944).
- Cita Stelzer, Dinner with Churchill, p. 190.
- Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, p. 239.
- Rufus Rockwell Wilson, editor, Lincoln Among His Friends, p. 63 (Philip Clark, Chicago Times-Herald, March 13, 1901).
- Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, p. 36.