Dignified Silence

Years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Peter Carington over lunch at his home in Buckinghamshire. He was 93 years old and the last surviving member of Winston Churchill’s post-war Government.

We covered a lot of ground (Carington had served as Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and was Secretary General of Nato) but before I left I asked him about the Military Cross he had been awarded as a tank commander in the final months of the Second World War. He refused to talk about it: “Good heavens no, it was all such a rough raffle. Pot luck.” I looked at his autobiography. No mention.

Willie Whitelaw, Carington’s senior colleague in the Thatcher Cabinet, also received the Military Cross during the war. He wouldn’t talk about it either.

Almost all the magnificent wartime generation shared this reticence.