Winston’s War. Michael Dobbs

how it was a resounding parliamentary success, its barbs striking home. How it shamed the Government’s troops into silence, even. That sort of stuff.’

      ‘Then change it.’

      ‘Steady on, Joey. Editorials are one thing. Chopping a news reporter’s copy around is considerably more tricky. A little like kicking cradles. Not made any easier by the fact that, according to my sources, he’s got it absolutely bloody right.’

      Wilson and Ball glanced at each other uneasily. ‘Right only on the day, perhaps. Not in the overall context,’ Wilson mused. ‘He had to go. Duffie is a man who lives his life on the very edge of disaster. Not a man of sound judgement, Geoffrey – why, just look at his women. Pulls them off the street. Some of them are foreign, with completely inappropriate contacts … I sometimes wonder whether his rather lurid liaisons haven’t weakened his mind.’

      ‘And The Times of all newspapers can’t go peddling Jew propaganda, Geoffrey,’ Ball added. ‘Heavens, it’s an organ of propriety and eminence. Of the Establishment, not the revolution. We all recognize your newspaper’s special position – just as we recognize your own personal contribution to it.’ Ah, the final twist. All three of them were acutely aware that Dawson was the only man in the room who hadn’t yet been handed his knighthood. It was occasionally the subject of uneasy banter between them, an honour pledged but a promise yet to be delivered. And while he waited, he would behave.

      ‘That’s why I needed your guiding hand. Is the Duff Cooper story so damned important? Worth the aggravation I’ll get if I play the heavy-handed censor and rewrite the damned copy?’

      The expressions of the other two men eased. Ball’s feet swung up onto the desk. The eminent servants of the people smiled at their guest, and expressed their mind as one.

      ‘Oh, yes, Sir Geoffrey. Please!’

      

      The editor of The Times did as he was told. Destroyed the copy as though he were laying siege to a mediaeval fortress. Then he reconstructed it. ‘Emotional gourmets had expected a tasty morsel in Mr Duff Cooper’s explanation of his resignation,’ he wrote, ‘but it proved to be rather unappetising. Speaking without a note, the former First Lord fired anti-aircraft guns rather than turret broadsides. The speech was cheered by the Opposition, but Mr Chamberlain disregarded it for the moment with only a pleasant word of respect.’

      The copy still went out under the name of Anthony Winn, the paper’s parliamentary correspondent. The following morning he resigned. He would be one of the first to be killed on active service in the war that was to follow.

      

      And so the House of Commons gathered to debate the Munich agreement. The arguments continued for four days – far longer than the resistance shown by Chamberlain at Munich. It was a debate awash with nobility and bitterness, defiance and servility, with servility by far the larger portion – although, of course, at Westminster it is never known as that, being dressed up in the corridors and tea-rooms under the guise of loyalty and team spirit. Play the game, old fellow! Chamberlain demanded loyalty and dominated his party – those men of mediocrity who gathered around him knew he had the offices of state at his disposal, along with the substantial salaries and residences those offices commanded. Duffie had thrown away his London home and five thousand pounds a year – a small fortune in an era when those who enlisted to die for their country still did so for ‘the King’s shilling’ plus a couple of coppers more a day. Anyway, an election was due at some point, perhaps soon, and disloyalty to the Great and Popular Leader was certain to be repaid in kind. Appeasement was inevitable, it was argued, and nowhere more vociferously than in the Smoking Room of the House of Commons, where MPs throughout the ages had gathered in pursuit of alcohol and the secret of everlasting electoral life.

      ‘What’s your poison, Ian? Gin? Tonic? Slice of the Sudetenland?’

      ‘Make it a whisky, Dickie, would you?’

      ‘Large whisky coming up.’

      A pause for alcohol.

      ‘You ever been to Czechoslovakia, Ian?’

      ‘Not even sure I could find it on a map. Faraway places, and all that.’

      ‘What did Neville say the other night after he came back from Munich?’ Dickie imitated a tight, nasal accent. ‘“And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”’

      ‘Somebody’s bed, at least. Whose was it last week, Dickie?’

      ‘I adhere to a strict rule. In the six months before any election I deny myself the pleasure of sleeping with the wife of anyone with a vote in my constituency. Which includes my own wife, of course. Sort of self-discipline. Like training for a long-distance run.’

      ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell Central Office. It might become compulsory.’

      ‘It’s good politics. I work on the basis that I shall always get the women’s vote – so long as their husbands don’t find out.’

      ‘Better than leaving it dangling on the old barbed wire.’

      ‘Can’t stand all this bloody war-mongering, Ian. Any fool can go to war.’

      ‘Particularly an old fool like Winston.’

      ‘Been at it half his adult life. Look where it’s got him.’

      Slightly more softly – ‘And if war is to be the question, how the hell can Bore-Belisha be the answer?’

      Their attention was drawn across the cracked leather of the Smoking Room to where the portly and dark-featured figure of the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha (or Bore-Belisha or Horab-Elisha, according to taste), was ordering a round of drinks.

      ‘Do they make kosher whisky, Ian?’

      ‘Judging by the amount he knocks back it’s a racing certainty.’

      ‘Fancies himself as a future Leader, you know.’

      ‘Elisha? Really? Not for me. Always thought it might be helpful if we found a Christian to lead us on the next Crusade.’

      ‘Precisely.’

      ‘He’s getting even fatter, you know. Strange for a man who proclaims his devotion to nothing but the public good.’

      ‘A genetic disposition to –’

      ‘Corpulence.’

      ‘I was thinking indulgence.’

      ‘Christ. Gas masks to the ready. Here comes St Harold.’

      Harold Macmillan, the forty-four-year-old Conservative Member for Stockton, drifted in their direction. He was not often popular with his colleagues. Not only did he have a conscience, he would insist on sharing it.

      ‘Evening, Harold. Dickie here’s been telling us that he’s a reformed character. He’s given up sleeping with his constituents’ wives. Saving it all for the party in the run-up to an election. Suppose it means he’s going to be sleeping with our wives instead.’

      Macmillan drifted by as silently as a wraith.

      ‘My God, you can be a brutal bugger at times, Ian.’

      ‘What the hell did I do?’

      ‘Don’t you know? Macmillan’s wife? And Bob Boothby, our esteemed colleague for East Aberdeenshire? Apparently he’s been chasing her furry friend for years – catching it, too. Open secret. Supposed to have fathered Harold’s youngest daughter.’

      ‘What? Cuckolded by one of his own colleagues? I’ve heard of keeping it in the family, but that one takes the biscuit. Why doesn’t he …?’

      ‘Divorce? Out of the question. Tied to her by the rope of old ambition. Harold’s reputation for sainthood would never stand a scandal.’

      ‘Ridiculous man. Won’t fight for