Daily Mirror

WINSTON HAD A SECRET AFFAIR

Aides feared blackmail plot

- BY PAUL BYRNE paul.byrne@mirror.co.uk

WINSTON Churchill cheated on his wife Clementine with the great-aunt of model Cara Delevingne, it has been revealed.

And aides feared the four-year affair with aristocrat Doris Castleross­e would leave him open to blackmail.

Doris is also thought to have slept with his son Randolph. The affair was revealed in a recording by John Colville, Churchill’s right-hand man.

He made the tape in 1985, two years before he died, for the archives at Churchill College, Cambridge.

In it he said: “He [Churchill] did one terrible thing. He was not highly sexed and I don’t think he ever slipped up, except the once. He had a brief affair with Doris Castleross­e.”

Doris Delevingne was born in 1900 and married Viscount Castleross­e in 1928. But she had a string of lovers.

Churchill, who had been married to wife Clementine since 1908, met Doris frequently in France in the 1930s and would secretly visit her London home.

Doris’s niece, Caroline Delevingne, Cara’s aunt, said: “When Winston was coming to visit her, the staff were all given the day off. That’s one of the stories my mother told me.”

Doris was also rumoured to have been sleeping with Randolph, who was 21 years younger than her.

Churchill’s aides feared he was “vulnerable to blackmail” over the affair. In 1940, Doris, 42, was found dead in the Dorchester Hotel, in Central London, after a believed accidental overdose of sleeping tablets.

The affair is explored in a documentar­y on Channel 4, on Sunday, at 8pm.

 ??  ?? FRENCH LIAISON Churchill with Doris in France in the 1930s
FRENCH LIAISON Churchill with Doris in France in the 1930s
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