“This close and foetid stillness of our national life has continued long enough. The time has come for a wind of change to blow though this country—a wind that will blow away every cobweb, and, with the light that accompanies it, will renew England as a young country. The forces of conservatism have held sway for too much of the present century. The moment has arrived for breaking the mould of how things have been done and to reforge Britain in the white heat that our minds alone can generate.”
Macmillan turned and reached down for the foolscap envelope he’d placed against his chair. He straightened up, charred and fresh pages of the Churchill Memorandum now reunited. He looked down at me and raised his eyebrows. He glanced about the room. Every face but one was turned in his direction. Michael Foot alone looked at me. He had his hands together under the table. He smiled, and, as he did so, his spectacles once more caught the light and stopped me from seeing into his eyes.
“I have in my hand,” Macmillan continued in a thrilling voice, “an account written by Winston Churchill of a meeting that will excite the same disgust and horror in your minds as it did in mine when Michael Foot first showed it to me. It is a long account, but you will surely forgive me if I now read it out to you in full.” He looked down at the pages. Most of the charred sheets had now broken in half, and there was a brief pause as he made sure they were in the correct order. This done, he picked up the first of them and began to read. In a voice no longer old and avuncular, he read out the Memorandum in its entirety. He read it out to the complete silence of everyone else in the room. Some of the men lit cigarettes. A few looked nervously at each other. Listening to the parts I hadn’t read over with Pakeshi, I found my own mouth falling open. Macmillan had been right that this later part made no sense without the pages I’d brought from America. Read in conjunction with what I’d supplied, it was hard to imagine that anything more scandalous had ever been agreed in the past by two great powers. The Partition Treaty that Swift had pilloried was nothing by comparison. The most cynical agreements made during the Great War, and published afterwards to universal condemnation, were, by comparison, open covenants, openly arrived at. If Foot ever got to read all this out on his television programme, it would have the emotional effect of an atom bomb.
As he dropped the final sheet onto the table before him and looked round, Macmillan smiled. He looked round the now troubled gathering.
“This is fucking dynamite, Harold,” Kenneth Tynan slurred out of the surrounding silence. “But how can we know that any of this is genuine?” he turned and waved at Foot. “We’ve all heard Michael’s whining about the Zinoviev Letter. How do we know this isn’t another of them?” Nicholas Kaldor nodded eagerly. Sitting close by me, a certain Robin Day put up a hand to ask why Macmillan hadn’t simply destroyed the document and bullied Foot into silence. Macmillan smiled ruefully and continued.
“Of course,” he said, “whatever I might think of the men who govern this country, it would be my duty to suppress the evidence of their wrongdoing. The problem is that Michael has already shown this document, and had it authenticated, in too many places behind the scenes. There really is nothing I can do to stop the Monday morning newspapers, here and elsewhere, from publishing it in facsimile and with full authentication. My purpose in calling you all together at such short notice is to let us consider how—even at this late stage—we can ensure that some good comes out of evil.
“And, yes, I must expect a certain incredulity regarding what I have just read out. If true, it shows just what rotten foundations underlie the present order of things in this country and the world. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. It is because of this that I have invited the eminent young historian, Anthony Markham, to join us this evening and repeat what he has done elsewhere for Michael. You will, no doubt, be aware that Dr Markham has been the subject of some alarming allegations. These are, I do assure you, quite untrue, and there will be full apologies and compensation paid in due course. For the time being, though, I would remind you that young Anthony is the world’s leading authority on Winston Churchill. When he came here with Michael and showed me the original of this document, he told me of his certainty that it was truly in Churchill’s handwriting. He also told me that there were good external reasons for believing in the truth of the document’s contents.
“Dearest Anthony,” he said, looking down at me, “would you care to repeat to this eminent company what you explained to me yesterday afternoon?” He stooped forward and pushed the now disordered heap of manuscript in front of me. I thought of standing up, but decided to remain seated. Everyone was looking at me. I doubted if I’d need to raise my voice. I took a last pull on my cigarette and propped it in the ashtray. It was burned half down. I picked it up again and stubbed it out. I took a sip from my wine glass and gathered my thoughts.
“When assessing whether a document is genuine,” I began, “there are various matters to consider. Obviously, you must check that it really is in the handwriting of its alleged author. You must read the contents very closely, to see that there are no anachronisms—that is, no references to later events or to things not yet invented. The day and date need to match. If, as with this document, other people are said to be present, you need to know that they were indeed alive at the time, and either that they were or that they could have been in the place where they are said to be. There are many other tests that I will not for the moment describe.
“I like to think myself a modest man. But I suppose Mr Macmillan is right when he says that I am the leading Churchill scholar. Then again, bearing in mind Winston Churchill’s current obscurity, it would have been less flattering, though more correct, to describe me as the only Churchill scholar.” I paused, expecting at least a titter at the joke. I looked round a gathering that might as well have been turned to stone for all the response I got from it. I swallowed and picked up half of one of the charred sheets and one of the sheets that Macmillan had found in England.
“I must have read every surviving document in Churchill’s hand,” I went on. “I do believe that, if you showed me an undated sample of his handwriting, I could date it purely from the ways in which the formation of letters changed throughout his life. Applying this test, I cannot deny that this document is in the handwriting of Mr Churchill, and that it dates from the last five years of his life.” I checked the murmur that now broke out round the table and smiled easily.
“No, gentlemen,” I said, speaking firmly, “this does not in itself authenticate what our host has just read to you. We are all scholars of one kind or another. I think you have the right and obligation to hear all that I have to say before you reach your own conclusion. Perhaps the most preliminary test of authenticity is to examine the paper on which a document is written. Let me hand some of these good sheets about. Please, Mr Day, do have the kindness to take this one and pass the others on. Do please hold them up to the light to inspect the watermark.” I waited for everyone to be settled again. I continued: