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a sustaining part of his war leadership. One was Desmond Morton, his liaison with governments in exile, including the Poles, Dutch and Belgians, and with De Gaulle. Morton was also a link between Churchill and the Intelligence services. As Secretary of State for War, Churchill had appointed Morton to his first Intelligence post in 1919. Even closer to Churchill was Brendan Bracken, a political ally during the anti-appeasement battle, whom Churchill appointed Minister of Information. At the many weekends spent at Chequers, when work and relaxation combined, Lindemann and Bracken were often overnight guests, able to enhance the free flow of ideas that so often led to action. Churchill also gained strength from two Americans in London, both of whom were frequently with him at Chequers and on his journeys to the bombed cities: Roosevelt’s emissary, Averell Harriman, and the American Ambassador, Gilbert Winant. Harriman accompanied Churchill on several of his overseas journeys and provided a link between Churchill and Roosevelt over a wide range of military and international needs. “I have made great friends with him,” Churchill wrote of Harriman in a private letter to his son, Randolph, “and have the greatest regard for him. He does all he can to help us.”

Forming an indispensable adjunct and support to Churchill’s war leadership were the Ministers he appointed to his Cabinet, as well as the Ministers of State and Ministers-Resident overseas. Several of these Ministers were brought in by him from outside the political world. He sought, and found, those who were able to carry out most effectively the departmental tasks he had to delegate, and he delegated with confidence, regularly scrutinizing their work but seldom feeling the need to interfere in it. Later he wrote of Lord Leathers, his Minister of War Transport—a post Churchill established in May 1941 to amalgamate the often conflicting needs of the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Transport: “Leathers was an immense help to me in the conduct of the war. It was very rarely that he was unable to accomplish the hard tasks I set. Several times, when all staff and departmental processes had failed to solve the problems of moving an extra division or trans-shipping it from British to American ships, or of meeting some other need, I made a personal appeal to him, and the difficulties seemed to disappear as if by magic.”

Another Minister whose work sustained Churchill throughout the war was Oliver Lyttelton (later Lord Chandos). First as a member of Churchill’s Defence Secretariat at the Ministry of Defence, in charge of all liaison with munitions production, then as Minister of Trade, and finally as Minister of State in the Middle East, he brought his formidable qualities as an industrialist to the task of war organization. Churchill’s son-in-law Duncan Sandys was also a pillar of strength, serving first on the Defence Secretariat as liaison with the Home Defence and Air Raid Precautions departments, and later as the person in charge of ascertaining the facts about German flying-bomb and rocket-bomb research and devising countermeasures. It was the Chiefs of Staff who suggested Sandys for the post, and Churchill accepted their advice.

The qualities of Churchill’s war leadership were shown in his appointments, and they were sustained by the men he appointed.

One essential feature of Churchill’s war leadership was his ability to act with decision and, if necessary, with ruthlessness. During the interwar years the Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk—who had played a crucial part in the Turkish defences at Gallipoli—noted in the margin of his copy of Churchill’s First World War memoirs, against a passage describing the lack of decision-making at a crucial moment of the Gallipoli campaign, the Turkish saying: “History is ruthless to those who lack ruthlessness.” Did Churchill possess such ruthlessness? In a letter to the Prime Minister, Asquith, in May 1915, as her husband was being forced to stand down from the Admiralty, Clementine Churchill wrote: “If you throw Winston overboard