A Daughter's Tale

Resumen del libro

Now in her eighty-ninth year, Mary Soames is the only surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. Younger by several years than her siblings, she went to day school and enjoyed an idyllic childhood played out in her very own 'Garden of Eden' - Chartwell. Here she roamed house and grounds, tended diligently to her adored collection of pets, and had her first glimpses of the glittering social world in which her parents moved. Then, in 1939, Chamberlain's declaration of war dramatically ended this world as she and her family had known it. Hereafter we follow Mary's life through her fascinating personal diary, published here for the first time. Through the immediacy of her private observations we are drawn into an almost surreal world where the ordinary minutiae of a packed family, social and romantic life proceed against a background of cataclysmic events. Joining the ATS and serving in mixed anti-aircraft batteries, Mary takes on her own set of professional demands while sharing the many fears and stresses brought to bear upon her family through her father's position. Invited to accompany Winston on several of his most important wartime trips abroad - to Canada and America in 1943 as guest of President Roosevelt; to Paris with her parents in 1944 to celebrate Armistice Day with General de Gaulle; to Potsdam in 1945 as her father's ADC - Mary conveys in her vivid eye-witness diary and letter account the thrill, and sometimes strain, of those unique experiences. We also read her graphic first-hand descriptions of the devastation of Europe, including her sombre and moving account of her trip to Belsen in June 1945. The mutual love and affection between Mary and her parents is evident on every page, from her earliest years at Chartwell to Winston's defeat at the 1945 general election, when Mary recounts her own pain and devastation on her father's behalf.