The wartime prime minister loved bricklaying ? and had a union card to prove it
If Churchill's Other Lives (Radio 4) began with the expected ? it was only 40 seconds into the programme when we heard "fight them on the beaches" ? it soon delved into lesser known material. In the first of 10 programmes about the life behind the political career and keynote speeches, David Cannadine revealed Churchill's fondness for bricklaying.
It was more than a hobby: Churchill built many walls and cottages at his home at Chartwell, and he even joined the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers. This made him, Cannadine suggested, "one of the very few members of the Conservative party ever to possess a trade union card". An ideal day, Churchill wrote, would include "the laying of hundreds of bricks".
But did this mean he had anything in common with ordinary workers, Cannadine's analysis went on to ponder. Er, no. Churchill never stepped foot into a shop, he went on the tube only once, disastrously, and he maintained an idea that most working people lived in cottages. "All my life I've played with toys," he wrote to his daughter, and bricks were simply some of those.
This was a well-produced programme, with great use of warm, jazzy music to counter Cannadine's rather formal style, and a sleek intermingling of archive clips and actor Roger Allam as the off-duty, bricklaying Churchill.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/mar/15/churchills-other-lives-radio-review
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