Winston Churchill 1944

10 Downing Street
Whitehall
December 15th 1944
My Dear ,
To continue from my El Alamein speech of 1942 - now is not the end but it is, perhaps, the beginning of the end!
Clemmie suggested that this year we might include a brief synopsis of events with our Christmas card and then suggested that, with my experience of writing, I might like to compose it on the family’s behalf.
In January, like a Websters dictionary I was Morocco bound and, as I was still recovering from that nasty bout of pneumonia, took some time out in Marrakech at La Mamounia to paint. Harris informed me that this month his men dropped two thousand eight hundred tons of bombs on Berlin and that he could win the war without a ground assault. Following Teheran last November we are turning our attention to Europe post war and I must make a mental note to “clip his wings” before he does something completely abhorrent.
A German air raid in February blew out many of the windows in number ten. We were unharmed and the mess was quickly cleared up with little or no damage. Charlie the parrot showed the right spirit and was particularly vociferous after the raid repeating “f*** Hitler” much to everyone’s delight.
We had a family party for Clementine’s fifty-ninth birthday and Diana, Sarah and Mary were with us at Chartwell. Randolph could not join us as he was in Yugoslavia helping Tito’s partisans. In November the red army liberated Belgrade and: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia (including Herzegovina), Macedonia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo were made into the new Yugoslavia. I fear for the long-term future, as must anyone who has read the history of the Balkans. Given the proximity of this new state to Greece we are planning to fly out to Athens this Christmas in the hope that we may stop Josef from excessive expansionism.

June of course saw the liberation of Rome on the 4th with the operation Overlord Normandy landings on the 6th. I had wanted to go over with the first wave but H.M. prevailed and we visited Monty on the 10th. I wrote to Uncle Joe who had been asking for the western front that the enemy is now bleeding on every front at once; perhaps this will stop his perfidy.
In August I visited Pope Pius XII and we discussed the dangers of communism, which in light of the treatment before this war of the Orthodoxy in Russia was a subject close to his heart. This month also saw the liberation of Paris much to the delight of my “bete noir” General De Gaulle. I have already made arrangements that, if he outlives me, my funeral cortege should stop at Waterloo station to give the radio announcers something to relish.
Following Teheran last year I had hoped that Roosevelt, Stalin and I might meet together but in the eventuality I sailed to Canada in September and flew via Cairo to Moscow in October. Although Stalin made a large tick on my piece of paper (Romania 90% Russia 10% rest, Hungary 50:50, etc.) we left after the usual dreadful rounds of interminably long, drunken (even by my standards) dinner parties with no formal solution to either the Balkans or Poland. If and when Russia takes the lot it will be interesting to see how long it retains them, my money is on considerably less time than our Empire has already lasted.
November saw us in Paris to mark the Armistice, Franklin won a record fourth term in office and I celebrated my seventieth birthday and even His Majesty King George stayed until after one in the morning. The three events combined to make me question what next? Europe is already preparing for the peace but what of the Albion and the Conservatives? Although my party colleagues assure me that once the war is won we will be returned to government I am less convinced. Beveridge’s “Full employment in a free society” will remind the populace of the general strike and depression rather than the homes for heroes campaign.
Whichever way next year’s election goes I believe in destiny and am sure I will be PM again. In the meantime, if people ask me what I will do if not re-elected I will tell them that when this war is over history will be kind to me as I intend to write it!
Yours always,
Winston S Churchill

Guy Burgess letter 1959 - he was one of the Cambridge spies

Hotel Mockba
Manezhnaya Square
Mockba

Christmas 1959

Dear,

I don’t really know why I bloody writing this as I won’t post it and even if I did it wouldn’t get past the censors. I trust you will get it eventually as I have asked Donald to hang on to all my ramblings and do something with them when I have finally succeeded in drinking myself to death, not that I am in his good books again despite his darling wifey and sprogs now being out here too.

God, you would not believe what a depressing fucking place Moscow is in December. They don’t celebrate Christmas, of course, the sky is grey, the buildings are grey, the slush is grey, the people are of the same hue inside and out and it is brass monkey cold. Sorry for this depressive outpouring but there are months where I feel sorry for myself and then there are months without an “r” in them, not that you can get oysters in the capital of the glorious Soyuz Soviet Socialist Republic.

I can’t believe it is eight years since Donald and I left England for the last time, meandered through France and Czechoslovakia to wind up here. I have heard that my going with him stirred up a ruckus and put poor Kim under suspicion but what to do? Kim was saying one thing but Yuri was insistent that, without me, Donald would wobble and crack and send us all down. I know he found leaving Melinda on his birthday a terrible wrench but she’s here now. He has gone completely native, working up the road in the Lubyanka and teaching the spooks in perfect Russian, whereas I hate their glottal tongue, it always sounds like they are arguing, so I just get Andrei to translate everything for me.

I hope Kim will find it in his heart to forgive me; after all I did recruit him and even interviewed him for the BBC about the Spanish Civil War. I have to say the way he got me out of America to tip off Donald was masterly – “Go and get into as much trouble as you can” he said, red rag to a bull. I think I was arrested three times in one day mainly for being drunk but they knew that my passenger was not a hitchhiker, for God sake he had his pants down to his knees. How is it that these distant memories are so clear and I have no ruddy clue what I did yesterday?

Andrei is a dear, sweet boy. Even though I know they are paying him, and the USSR is more like Victorian England “a love that dare not speak it’s name”, he acts like he cares and doesn’t seem repulsed by my increasingly bloated form.

Macmillan was over this year with his entourage, which made downtown Moscow look a bit like an Old Etonian re-union. I dined with Randolph Churchill up at the National overlooking the Kremlin and entrance to Red Square. I’m afraid my suit has seen better days, with a bit of darning here and there, and that actress (Coral what’s her name?) I met must have forgotten to pass on my measurements to my tailor. I think Randolph hoped that I would have renounced communism and become straight so the conversation was a bit strained. Even though this place is not exactly happy valley, everyone is treated more or less equally badly and the vodka is incredibly reasonable. I had to tell him that I would never lose the views I formed way back in the thirties with the Cambridge Apostles. Strange to think it is twenty-five years ago since I first visited Moscow. I don’t suppose they will give me a silver Ferris wheel trophy to mark the first time I passed out in Park Culture back then.

Anyway, if and when you read this have a drink on me
Yours truly,


Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess

Dostoyevskys House in Baden Baden

 

By way of a diversion here is the house where Dostoyevsky lived whilst he was wasting his money in the Casino and being inspired to write the Gambler.