the career of David Irving The From the memoirs of David Irving From the David Irving unpublished memoirs. Written in Vienna prison, 2006. Posted here The Mayor of Toytown and Mr Churchill’s speeches (extract) ONE episode in my first volume of the Winston Churchill biography provoked much acrimony from the Churchill family.

A voice, I can define it in retrospect no better than that, but it may have been that of the former broadcaster Ted Leather , the Governor of Bermuda, whispered to me that at least three of Churchill’s most famous broadcasts in 1940 had been delivered by an impersonator, as Churchill himself was too tired, or whatever, to go on the air himself. The speeches included that after Dunkirk, June 4, 1940 (“We shall fight them on the beaches”) and that

on June 18, 1940: (“Their finest hour”); and even the Battle of Britain speech, “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”), and they had actually been declaimed by the BBC actor Norman Shelley . He had been Uncle Mac on the BBC’s Children’s Hour, and closed each evening with the words, “Good night children – everywhere.” * Was he still alive after all these years, I wondered?

I wrote to him at the BBC. A few days later, one of my phones in Dukie Street rang. As I heard the voice, rich, educated and slightly fruity, I sat bolt upright. I can recall today exactly where I was. My eyes prickled. It was Uncle Mac, calling me, David Irving. In a twinkling, I was forty years back in time, and thirty miles away in the Essex countryside.

I was back at Park House, with tousled hair, wearing grey school shorts, lying on the carpet near the radio, my chin cupped in my hands, listening. “Yes,” he sighed. “It was 1940. I got an urgent call, would I come straight over to Broadcasting House, as Churchill was, uh, indisposed. I was well known for my mimicry of the Great Man.” His broadcast went over so well, that the BBC had asked him to step into the breach twice more.

The BBC had turned over the recordings to the Decca Gramophone Company; it was not difficult to identify the speeches concerned. Very few if any listeners noticed, though one did write urging the prime minister to look after himself better, as his official biographer Martin Gilbert guilelessly printed, publishing the letter, while not knowing the whole story: “You did not sound yourself last night,” it read (CH).

Well, as I wrote, “last night” Churchill had indeed not been himself at all; he had been our Uncle Mac. As Norman Shelley went on with his revelations to me, I did not want that wonderful voice ever to stop. I thanked him, and he said Goodbye. I raised my hand instinctively, and hung on a few seconds, expecting him to add: “– and goodnight children, everywhere.” OF COURSE, I anticipated that my revelations would bring trouble in a big way.

Not satisfied with finding in Washington and Ottawa archives the documents showing that FDR had referred scathingly to Mr Churchill as “that drunken bum,” I would now be printing that he had been too incapacitated in the evenings of 1940 to deliver his own, most famous words to the world. I had to make sure of the facts. I checked the Churchill desk calendars, which I had from Simon Ward Thompson . There were other entries reading, “broadcast”, but not on those three nights .

The five thousand pounds spent on renting those sheets was incrementally proving a sound investment. I sent SSG over to search the BBC Archives at Caversham. Their Churchill file showed that he loathed broadcasting; apart from discovering that, she returned admitting that she had drawn a blank. “I searched the Churchill contract file and there was none relating to these three broadcasts,” she chirruped, adding: “Sorry.” The others were all there.

I pointed out that if Churchill himself did not attend to deliver the broadcasts, there would not have been any Churchill contract, and I went ahead and included the story. When the book appeared in 1986, the Churchill clan closed ranks into one incoherent phalanx of rage, and foamed over with verbal sputum in the newspaper columns. Young Winston, the politician’s grandson, called me a “lunatic”, while Martin Gilbert sputtered in more scholarly terms.

Even the BBC Archives paddled over to the Grand Old Man’s defence, while offering no evidence. Shelley had since died, in 1980. It seems however that there is some justice in heaven. [NUMBER] years later, the Sensimetrics laboratory used voice-recognition software to test the Decca discs against recordings of known authenticity — in this case, Mr Churchill speaking to background applause. The software found that the voices were definitely different.

The magazine New Society printed the results. [Or was it New Scientist ?] Even though, mysteriously, my name and my book were not mentioned, I felt vindicated. Even more convincing proof came in October 2000. The late Norman Shelley’s son Antony, rummaging in the family attic, found a large format BBC disc stamped in September 1942 with a BBC label, declaring the content to be ” BBC, Churchill: Speech. Artist Norman Shelley”.

I should have felt childishly pleased, and probably I did — very pleased. But nothing will ever compare again with the very adult thrill of getting that phone call from the past, from “Uncle Mac.” * Norman Shelley (February 16, 1903 — August 22, 1980): I thought he had been Mayor of Toytown, others later corrected me: he was Uncle Mac. Others again say that Uncle Mac was Derek McCulloch. © 2010

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