Posted on 10/09/2001 5:13:22 PM PDT by dighton
MARIAN HOLMES, who has died aged 80, was one of the small team of secretaries working for Winston Churchill during the Second World War; she kept a remarkably pithy and revealing diary at the time, and more recently gave her reminiscences to a number of radio and television programmes, including Churchill, made by his biographer Sir Martin Gilbert.
In a letter to Gilbert in 1985, Marian Holmes recalled how Churchill required the highest standards and could be impatient if anything less were forthcoming. "But in all his moods - totally absorbed in the serious matter of the moment, agonised over some piece of wartime bad news, suffused with compassion, sentimental and in tears, truculent, bitingly sarcastic, mischievous or hilariously funny - he was at all times splendidly entertaining, humane and lovable."
She was born Marian Clare Lumley-Holmes at Clapham, south London, on September 26 1921, the youngest of four children. Her father, A E Lumley-Holmes, was a former Scots guardsman and subsequently a conductor and arranger at Victoria Palace.
Marian was educated at Notre Dame, a convent in Clapham. She joined the secretarial staff of 10 Downing Street at 17 in August 1938, a month before Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement. She was fond of Chamberlain, whom she described as "one of the most maligned men in our history", but when Churchill took over as Prime Minister in May 1940 "it was as if a superhuman current of high voltage electricity was let loose".
By 1943, when Marian Holmes joined the small pool doing dictation work for Churchill himself, his secretaries were working from 8.30 am until long after midnight, under the general supervision of Kathleen Hill. On March 24 1943, Marian Holmes recorded in her diary: "At last my initiation and baptism of fire. 11:30pm Mr Rowan introduced me very firmly and said twice 'This is Miss Holmes'. The PM was so absorbed in the documents he was reading that he did not hear and did not even look up.
"He went straight into dictating and I took it down on the silent typewriter. 'Here you are' - he still didn't look at me. I took the papers, he reached for more work from his despatch box and I made for the door. Loud voice 'Dammit, don't go. I've only just started.' He then looked up. 'I am so sorry. I thought it was Miss Layton. What is your name?' 'Miss Holmes' 'Miss Hope?' 'Miss Holmes' 'Oh'.
"He then carried on dictating directives and comments on various documents from his box, every so often glancing at me over his spectacles. 'That is all for the moment. You know you must never be frightened of me when I snap. I'm not snapping at you but thinking of the work.' This was said with a cherubic smile. When I took the work back to the PM, he said he wouldn't need me for the moment but to stay around. This was my first formal encounter working for him and I think I have been accepted."
Some months later, Churchill asked her name again, but failing to catch the answer turned to his Principal Private Secretary (later Sir) John Martin for enlightenment. "Mr Martin said 'You know - Sherlock Holmes.' 'Ah,' said the PM, 'Miss Sherlock!' I hope the tag doesn't stick."' But it did.
Marian Holmes recalled that Churchill was kind when he was dictating. "For instance, when I had read various bits of the statement over to him, he murmured 'Very clear' by way of encouragement."
Long and arduous nights were par for the course. On one occasion in 1943, she drove back to London with Churchill from Chartwell: "He dictated most of the way, and it was a balancing act, as we were driven at great speed, trying to keep despatch boxes from falling on the flowers, finding the right papers and taking dictation on them all at the same time. Back at No 10, sorted the papers, transcribed the shorthand notes, and got to bed at 2 am."
On July 25 1943, Marian Holmes was at Chequers when the telephone beside her rang. It was the BBC Monitoring Service asking her to inform the PM, who was watching a film, that Mussolini had resigned. "The film was stopped, the lights went on and the PM announced the good news. Everybody clapped."
Occasionally, Churchill would confide in her. On October 7 1943, as he prepared to fly to Tunis to meet Eisenhower, Marian Holmes noted: "The PM said he had had a bad day, a very bad day. He said 'The difficulty is not winning the war; it is in persuading people to let you win it - persuading fools." He admitted to her that he felt "almost like chucking it in".
But she also witnessed many lighter moments. On October 13 1943 she wrote: "PM was entertaining. When I went in he said 'I ain't seen you for a long time'. He accidentally lit his cigar at the wrong end. 'Oh Lor! Look what I've done.' He read a newspaper account of his own statement in the House today and acted it out gesticulating wildly towards the fire as if he were delivering the speech all over again." On Saturday October 16, she reported: "PM working from bed. Went in at 10 am and emerged at 1.15 with packets of work. Inadvertently blew his cigar candle out in his face. Faux pas no 1 today."
Although Churchill could display an explosive temper, to his secretaries he was generally solicitous and sweet-tempered, and a thoroughly reassuring presence. On June 22 1944, Marian Holmes wrote: "Sat in the study for ages listening to the PM talking with Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan. After the heavy raids of the the past few nights, doodlebugs started coming over again about 2 am. It was very noisy. The PM asked me if I were frightened. I said 'No'. How can one feel frightened in his company?"
The tension of waiting for the doodlebugs was, however, in many ways greater than the Blitz of 1940-41. Churchill wanted to address the public concern about the flying bombs in a speech he was to give to the House of Commons on August 2 1944. Three days earlier, he dictated 3,500 words of the speech to Marian Holmes, telling her: "You need not type it tonight as I won't open my eyes until Big Ben strikes 10 tomorrow." On August 1, Churchill continued work on the speech, which as Marian Holmes recorded in her diary "came out in dollops to be typed". He read part of it to Brendan Bracken, Duncan Sandys and Leslie Rowan, and then said "I've only half the life in me these days". "Brendan Bracken assured him that he had never looked better," Marian Holmes wrote in her diary. "Sat typing up the speech until 7 am."
A week previously, while Churchill was entertaining friends at Chequers, he asked Marian Holmes if she would get him a whisky and soda. One of the guests, John Peck, later told her that while she was out of the room, Churchill had said: "That's a damned pretty girl - lovely. Sort of girl who'd rather die than have secrets torn out of her."
Churchill perhaps appreciated - in retrospect at any rate - the fact that Marian Holmes was not too daunted to offer the odd helpful intervention. On September 22 1944, she noted in her diary, after taking down 2,000 words of a speech: "When I told him he had repeated himself, he said 'Alright, alright. Don't break your heart about it - I can always cross it out' rather snappily."
Nor was she protected from his occasional inadvertent displays of naked flesh. On September 23 1944, she noted how she "got the best view of his behind that I have ever had. He stepped out of bed still dictating and altogether oblivious of his all-too-short bed jacket. Anyway, he was in a kind and conciliatory mood and I felt waves of approval."
On several occasions she travelled overseas with Churchill. These trips included Quebec, Moscow, Cairo, Naples, Athens, and Yalta. In all these places, Churchill's appetite for work was as insatiable as ever. In Quebec, Marian Holmes recalled how "He kept saying 'Come on. What's the matter with you. Gimme more.' In the end I said 'There IS no more.' Bed 2 am".
Shortly after the Labour Party, led by Clement Attlee, won the general election of 1945, she noted in her diary: "Working for the new PM is very different. He calls us in only when he wants to dictate something. No conversation or pleasantries, wit or capricious behaviour. Just staccato orders. Perfectly polite and I'm sure he is a good Christian gentleman. But it is the difference between champagne and water."
Nevertheless, she continued working at 10 Downing Street, and in 1950 went to Panama to help arrange the Queen's visit, for which she was appointed MBE. An outgoing, fun-loving and attractive woman, Marian Holmes was pursued throughout this period by a string of eligible bachelors.
In 1957 she married Steve Walker, a mediaevalist who had become a popular history master at St Benedict's School, Ealing (among those he taught were Chris Patten). Steve Walker died in 1974, leaving her to bring up their three sons and a daughter. Having given up her job in Whitehall when she married, she then worked for many years for the University Grants Committee.
She married secondly, in 1979, James Spicer, an engineer, who survives her along with her four children from her previous marriage.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2001.
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius" (Sherlock Holmes, from "The Valley of Fear").
Great quote.
Thanks for the post.
I found it anyway! ;)
I also wonder if she ever published her diaries...it would be wonderful to read!
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