Churchill's War [antikvár]

Introduction WINSTON CHURCHILL trod carefully into the middle of the second floor clubroom and paused, deliberately surveying the dozen faces that had turned towards him. As he stood there, short and squat, in a tuxedo that had seen long and honourable service, it occurred to him that he was probably a quarter century older than any of them. Hosting this dinner at the Union Club in New York City was Henry R. Luce, publisher of the magazines Time, Life and Fortune. It was March 14, 1946: the uneasy interlude after the end of World War II had ended, and everybody could sense it. Luce's fellow editors and executives scrutinized the famous Englishman as if taken aback to find him so small, in the way that movie fans are startled to find that their idols are less than the twenty-foot giants of the silver screen. In the words of a lucid and penetrating memorandum* that Charles Murphy wrote for Luce's private files, there was just a dress-shirted cave where the chest should have been, and a swelling paunch that bore testimony to years of rich fare. Henry Luce, who had brought him in, turned to greet his other guests. As Churchill swayed alone and splendidly in mid-room, the image struck Murphy of the Cunard Line's Queen Mary at the moment when she cast off her tugs in Southampton Water — heavy and loggy, drifting as the Solent's current pressed her hull until her screws bit water and she forged ahead again. WITH SOFT ROLLS of flesh linking his head and body he looked to Murphy like a congenial, well adjusted bullfrog. The frog's arms and legs were short and stubby, the hands small-boned and white. The complexion was pasty. Then Churchill's expressionless and *The memorandum, sixty-three pages long, is now archived in Life executive C.D. Jackson's files in the Eisenhower library at Abilene, Kansas. Among those present were John Billings, John Davenport, Allen Grover, Jackson, Henry R. Luce. Charles Murphy and Charles Wertenbaker.