Sublime

King George VI told his own diary, “I cannot yet think of Winston as P.M.” The king encountered Lord Halifax on the grounds of Buckingham Palace, through which Halifax had royal permission to walk in his commute from his home in Euston Square to the Foreign Office. “I met Halifax in the garden,” the king wrote, “& I told him I was sorry not to

Edward VII ruled the British Empire with a slightly pudgy cigar-stained hand, assuring his subjects that duty was important but so too was fun. “It doesn’t matter what you do,” he said, “so long as you don’t frighten the horses.”

Where Chamberlain—the Old Umbrella, the Coroner—was staid and deliberate, the new prime minister, true to his reputation, was flamboyant, electric, and wholly unpredictable. One of Churchill’s first acts was to appoint himself minister of defense, which prompted an outgoing official to write in his diary, “Heaven help us.” The post was a new one, t

News of the invasion reached Whitehall within hours, causing outright panic. Clement Attlee, Leader of the Opposition, immediately called up the War Office file on Norway, only to find that it was completely empty. On the cover were the cryptic letters SFA. ‘I suppose it means Sweet Fanny Adams,’ he said to Winston Churchill when the two of them me

Gould did not take a title, but had a seat on the executive committee and had four additional board seats, which he filled with his brokers.