“A Good Deal of Politics and No Christianity”
Winston Churchill would have met many leading Churchmen during the course of his career, often at public dinners. This is clear in a letter from Arthur Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, early in the war, requesting permission to dedicate a book to him, and reminding him of the acquaintance they had made on such occasions.1 Yet scarcely any could have struck him so favourably as Herbert Hensley Henson (1863–1947), Bishop of Durham from 1920 until 1939. Henson was an astute political observer, an early critic of Nazi Germany, and—rare among bishops of his generation—a vociferous opponent of socialism. He paid lavish tribute to Churchill after the war in the dedication of the third volume of his autobiography:
To Rt. Hon. WINSTON CHURCHILL O.M., M.P., &c. Statesman, Historian, Orator, the valiant and untiring champion of personal liberty and modern democracy, in recent years threatened both by external power and by ‘class-conscious’ political theories, the one man who has come through the Great Tribulation of the Second World War with a clear title to be hailed, as the Ancients hailed those citizens, who by their personal exertions and character saved the State, as Pater Patriae.2
This is a striking statement, from one of the most prolific and penetrating English writers of the early twentieth century, its “all-too-kind terms” accepted by Churchill as “a great honour.”3 Yet it has hardly ever been noted. Henson’s relations with, and opinions of Churchill deserve attention, not least as revealed in his extensive journals, a rich source on public life and the leading figures of his day that are now being brought into publication.4
