Kate Chisholm

General de Gaulle’s advice to the young Queen Elizabeth

Peter Hennessy’s timely series sheds light on how past politicians behaved in the shadow of imminent apocalypse

issue 14 September 2019

There were so many ear-catching moments in Peter Hennessy’s series for Radio 4, Winds of Change, adapted from his new book by Libby Spurrier and produced by Simon Elmes. Harold Wilson answering a journalist’s question after a sleepless night while awaiting the results of the 1964 election, quizzical, cheeky and so quick off the mark. When asked if he felt like a prime minister, he replied: ‘Quite honestly, I feel like a drink.’ Later he was waylaid at Euston station having just got off the morning train from Liverpool and was still unsure of the result. (Labour won by just four seats after 13 years of Conservative rule.) At 3.50 that afternoon, Wilson, sitting by the phone in Transport House, at last received a message from the Palace. ‘Would it be convenient for you to come round and see Her Majesty?’

Earlier, in 1962, in the build-up to the Cuban missile crisis, Nikita Khrushchev was away from Moscow at his summer residence on the Black Sea coast.

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