LAUSR

In the summer of 1949, Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine spent their summer holiday on the shores of Lake Garda, where they had stayed before, shortly after Churchill’s defeat in the 1945 General Election. The Churchills flew to Bergamo in a Dakota on 25 July 1949 and first stayed with their entourage in an apartment with 12 rooms, on the third floor of the new wing of Grand Hotel Gardone Riviera, Lombardy, Italy. Despite being on vacation, Churchill remained in continuous contact with London via a special phone line managed by two secretaries, Miss Marston and Miss Gemme. In addition to political work, Churchill combined ‘hours of painting with hours of writing’ his war memoirs. However, as the Churchills found the temperature and humidity in Gardone unbearable, they continued their holiday at the Grand Hotel Carezza, Nova Levante, in the Dolomites which was much cooler than Gardone and had ‘more paintable scenery’. On 10 August, the Churchills went to Strasbourg where Churchill was to attend the Inaugural Session of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe. Churchill led the Opposition section and Herbert Morrison (Deputy Prime Minister) the Government section of the British delegation at Strasbourg. The first meeting was held on 12 August 1949 and on 15 August, applauded by large crowds, Churchill received the Freedom of the City. Churchill was under the impression that the public holiday was in his honour; he had not realised it was for the Feast of the Annunciation! On 17 August, Churchill gave a speech (Figure 1) which Harold Macmillan (Minister Resident in the Mediterranean [1942–1945] and future Prime Minister) ‘ranked in its effect with those in Fulton and at Zurich’. While Mrs Churchill flew home, Churchill left Strasbourg by air the next day for Monte Carlo to continue his holiday and left Macmillan in command of the Opposition group.