How Winnie got top spot

QUESTION Is it true Winston Churchill was chosen as prime minister because favourite nominee Lord Halifax had to go to the dentist with toothache? The notion that halifax would have been PM if not for a bout of toothache was recently perpetuated by Andrew Marr on TV’s history of Modern Britain.

It mirrors a scene from Alan Bennett’s The history Boys. ‘If halifax had had better teeth,’ the schoolboy Dakin points out, ‘we might have lost the war.’ It’s probably not true.

edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st earl of halifax, was Neville Chamberlain’s tall and cadaverous Foreign Secretary. halifax was as responsible as Chamberlain for the appeasement of Adolf hitler.

halifax had visited hitler in 1937 and described him as ‘most sincere’. he also had an embarrassing familiarity with hermann Goering, who he described as ‘frankly attractive’.

Matters came to a head on May 7 to 8, 1940, when Chamberlain faced attacks from all sides of the house of Commons.

A stormy session ended with a vote of no confidence, and the Labour Party refused to serve under him.

halifax and Winston Churchill were seen as the only possible successors. halifax was the favourite of the establishment. he was a close friend of King George VI, and his wife was one of Queen elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting.

Churchill had backbench support and was popular among the people.

The momentous decision to select Churchill was made behind closed doors on May 9 and 10, 1940. According to the 2002 film The Gathering Storm, halifax had ruled himself out because he was a peer and it would be difficult to command the Commons. This appears to be generous — it seems most probable that halifax ruled himself out because he knew he couldn’t do the job.

The dentist story comes from the diaries of henry ‘Chips’ Channon, Conservative MP and parliamentary gossip. According to Channon, Chamberlain had baulked at the idea of Churchill becoming PM. Several attempts had been made to persuade halifax to take on the role, mainly through Rab Butler, then Under-Secretary of State Nominees: Winston Churchill with Establishment favourite Lord Halifax for Foreign Affairs. Butler, who called halifax ‘The Pope’, consented to one final try. he rang through to halifax’s secretary Valentine Lawford to let halifax know that he was on his way. ‘When he got there halifax had slipped out to the dentist.’

Channon accused Lawford of having deliberately not told his boss of the visit and that he ‘may well have played a decisively negative role in history’. Lawford denied this, stating: ‘e[dward] didn’t want to see Rab again, obviously.’

The truth is halifax had no appetite for the job of war. The prospect made him physically sick — he suffered from chronic stomach pains and toothache.

Mr Michael Bennett, Ipswich, Suffolk. QUESTION Which country has the fewest rivers? TheRe are some 19 nation states without any permanent rivers at all. At 830,000 square miles, Saudi Arabia is the largest sovereign state in the Middle east, the fifth biggest in Asia and the 12th biggest in the world. It has no permanent rivers.

The country is 95 per cent desert. It does have wadis, which are valleys or ravines which fill up during the rainy season. Saudi Arabia invests heavily in water distribution, seawater desalination and wastewater and sewerage treatment.

Libya occupies an area of about 679,363 square miles. It is the fourth largest country in Africa and the 16th largest country in the world. The Libyan Desert occupies 90 per cent of the country and is one of the most arid places on earth.

The other riverless states are the Bahamas, Bahrain, Comoros, Kiribati, Kuwait, the Maldives, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Oman, Qatar, Tonga, Tuvalu, United Arab emirates, Vatican City and Yemen.

Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow. QUESTION Who was the first person to use the catchphrase ‘It’ll be all right on the night’? ThIS was a theatrical phrase from the late-19th century, expressing that everything will be all right for the first performance of a show.

The first known literary reference comes from Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky And Co: ‘Aladdin came to his own at last, Abanazar lay poisoned on the floor, the Widow Twankey danced her dance, and the company decided it would “come all right on the night”.’

The phrase was subverted for Dennis Norden’s ITV show It’ll Be Alright On The Night (1997-2006), which consisted of outtakes and bloopers from film and TV.

Gill Lloyd, Bury, Lancs. QUESTION Dr Beeching is blamed for closing down Britain’s railways. Is this fair? AS SUGGeSTeD in a past answer, Alfred ernest Marples (1907-1978), Conservative Minister of Transport from 1959 to 1964, was the real agent behind the closures. he probably profited from them, too.

Marples held 80 per cent of the shares in Marples Ridgway, a road-building business. A parliamentary conflict of interest resulted in Marples trying to sell his £400,000 shares to Ridgeway, but he was prevented from doing so. Marples then sold them to his wife on terms which gave him the possibility to buy them back at their original price.

Marple ordered Dr Richard Beeching’s report. his ministry produced the 1962 Transport Act, which broke up the British Transport Commission, allowing for easier closure of the railways. This resulted in more than 4,000 route miles of railway lines closing so increasing road traffic.

Alan Bowden, Bristol.

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