Churchill fell in love with the United States of America, the land of his mother’s birth, during his first visit in 1894. It was an unlikely match, but it endured, culminating in the special relationship he shared with President Roosevelt, which was the bedrock of Allied victory during the Second World War.
On a trip to California, Sandys visits San Simeon to tour Hearst Castle, where Churchill was a guest at the table of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies in the late 1920s. Worried about Prohibition, Churchill had stashed 10 flasks and 50 bottles of alcohol in his luggage, although once in the States, he found liquor flowed freely. She motors down the Pacific Highway, just as Churchill did on a pleasure trip to Hollywood, where he visited his friend Charlie Chaplin.
In Virginia, she meets former Senator Harry Byrd Jr., son of the Virginia governor who hosted Churchill on a visit to the U.S. While Byrd’s father had fond recollections of the famous guest, his mother found Churchill’s predilection for wandering the house in his underwear rather offputting.
During her concentration on this middle period of his life, Sandys focuses on Churchill’s growing gift with words and his deepening passion for painting, both of which help illustrate the inner man. Sandys travels extensively throughout the United States and to Egypt, which seemed to lure Churchill to the banks of the Nile at crucial moments in his life.
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