Deserving a kick
Sir: In the Alastair Forbes review of Bob Boothby by Sir Robert Rhodes James (27 July), he insinuates, as he has often done before, that my grandfather, Lord Ran- dolph Churchill, died from syphilis. There is no definite medical evidence in the records that he ever contracted that dis- ease.
My source is my grandparent's archive which I possess, and I am also Trustee of the pertinent part of Sir Winston's archive. I am presently going through family docu- ments from the mid 1880s, and intend to deposit in the Archives a brief rdsume. on Lord Randolph's death and his rela- tionship with his two young sons. This will put the record right and change much that has been written on the subject hitherto.
Alastair Forbes has never produced any factual evidence for his repeated misstate- ments which, I presume, he only heard from idle gossip, and for which he appears to rely for support from a caption in Lady Soames's book, A Churchill Family Album.
Now, according to the archives, in 1938 the young 20-year-old Alastair Forbes used 16-year-old Mary Churchill to gain access to Sir Winston. Sir Winston found out. Young Forbes apologised at great length. He admitted, among other things, that he deserved a kick for showing lamentable disrespect, that he might seem to have hidden behind skirts in the matter, and that he had learnt his lesson.
Sir Winston, with his usual magnanim- ity, forgave him and all was well.
Fifty-three years later, here is the same old Forbes hiding behind the skirts of the same lady, now Lady Soames. On his own admission he deserves another kick. It is pathetic that this journalist, with the advantage of a Winchester education, should scribble such unnecessarily distaste- ful innuendoes about people who are dead, without any evidence of truth.
Peregrine Churchill
Fairdovvn, Vernham Street, Vemham Dean, Hampshire
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