As Boris Johnson and his cabinet prepare for a year of tense negotiations, Downing Street will play host to a number of diplomatic dinners. Dozens of caterers will be involved, providing lunchtime refreshments, cakes for tea and full-scale banquets in the evening.
Seventy-five years ago, though, one woman was in charge of everything, from the prime minister’s breakfasts, to the food for his weekly meetings with the King.
Georgina Landemare, Winston Churchill’s longest-serving cook, usually gets a cameo role in biographies of Britain’s wartime leader. In my new book, Victory in the Kitchen, she takes centre stage.
Women and the working class tend to be relegated to supporting roles, their lives given significance only by proximity to a figure who has become as legendary as any other in British history. Churchill did not act alone, however, and, whatever the view of his decisions taken before, during and after the Second World War, his actions were facilitated by a whole range of people – women, men, upper, middle and working class.
Georgina is one of the most vital. Churchill even gave her a place in his memoirs, recounting the story of how he saved her life when bombs fell near Downing Street, urging her down to the shelter just in time, as the huge plate-glass window at one end of the kitchen imploded, covering the room with shards of glass. He wrote of having had a “premonition”. Her version, little told, was more prosaic, dwelling on the pudding she was steaming, and the mess left in the kitchen.
Georgina also recalled Churchill’s nightly lament: “If Mr Hitler gets you, I won’t get my soup.” And on VE day, after his victory speech, he thanked Georgina personally for her work, taking her to the balcony to see the cheering crowds.
There is much more to Georgina’s story than a few vignettes, though. This book is, above all else, a biography of Georgina, looking at her life beyond her most illustrious employer. I started with the desire to look at the way food changed in the 20th century, as well as to showcase life in domestic service at a high level.
Interpretations in books, film and television tend to be black and white. Being a maid was either dreadful or cosy; servants were either drudges or happily knew their place, and life was easy and simple.
But domestic service employed nearly 70 per cent of working women at the end of the 19th century and continued to be the biggest area for women’s employment until the Second World War. The history of service, then, is the history of women.
I came across Georgina while browsing an archive. In 1958, she published Recipes from No. 10, a lovely book, but one which gives little hint of her own character. I met her granddaughter, Edwina, who in her mid-seventies is Britain’s oldest Ironman competitor, and gradually started to gather together the threads of Georgina’s life story.
Georgina was born in 1882 in Hertfordshire. Her parents had been in service, too, and she joined them as a scullery maid in around 1896. She was determined and focussed from the start, working only in large, wealthy households with career prospects. She made cook by the time she was 25, a relatively typical trajectory for a girl with a good work ethic, although the majority of servants worked in very small households, something Georgina never did. In 1909, she left live-in service to marry a French chef more than 25 years her senior. The deep affection between Paul Landemare and his wife shines through in their photograph albums. After his death, in 1932, she never remarried. Georgina later said she had learnt much of her skill working at his side, building on her own experience but now adding the techniques of classical French cuisine.
In the 30s, Georgina worked as a cook-for-hire. She worked on and off for the Churchills, who would have come across her when she was a kitchen maid for Ian and Jean Hamilton, with whom the Churchills were friendly. Her client list was impressive, although as a woman, she still could not quite scale the peaks her husband had: women simply did not head up grand restaurants, and it was still rare for them to make head cook in titled households. Most of her employers were extremely wealthy, but they were not dukes or earls; rather, they were politicians, merchants and those at the bottom end of the titled ladder, ennobled within the last one or two generations. Generally they were part of the new “fast” set, who looked upon country houses as locations for socialising and preferred not to be burdened with large, loss-making estates.
The Churchills were typical: Winston’s cousin was the Duke of Marlborough, and Clementine’s grandparents had been titled. They had a country house, Chartwell, and they were connected into a wide social network which was fuelled by boozy dinners at the Savoy and lavish house parties.
Where they differed was that, despite their class, they ran a rackety household, constantly in debt, and reliant on temping agencies for their staff. Clementine employed a series of young girls as cooks, who she trained up herself, but they left when they gained enough experience, or could no longer put up with the erratic hours and unreasonable demands of their employers. Georgina’s calm nature and much-lauded skill was a solace – but they could not afford her full-time.
All of this changed at the outbreak of war. Georgina had worked through one war, and was aware that her trade in ball suppers and debutante parties would now dry up. Churchill’s star, meanwhile, was in the ascendant. When she suggested she come to work for them, Clementine accepted with enthusiasm, and “Mrs Mar”, as she became known, donned her apron for what she would later call her “war work”.
Georgina cooked for the Churchills throughout the war, and beyond, finally retiring through ill health in 1954, aged 72. By then she was not only a trusted family retainer but had become a quietly famous figure among those who knew the Churchills, even tangentially. Few people passed through the doors of Downing Street without meeting her, and many memoirs of the time comment upon her rotund figure, unflappable nature and exquisite food.
Clementine Churchill and Georgie had forged a bond which would last until the end of their lives, and Clementine was a regular visitor to Georgina’s home after she had retired. Georgina’s early life was typical of her era, but she ended her career contributing to the informal dinner-party diplomacy for which Churchill was known.
As I reached my final words, I was not just writing about domestic service and changing foods. I was trying to show how all lives deserve to be valued, not just those who, by various mixtures of birth, luck and work rise to have the power to shape the futures of others. It is, after all, easy to achieve greatness with a highly skilled support team.
