Reviewing the television play Churchill’s Secret, Sam Wollaston says: “Even more fun are Churchill’s offspring: Diana, Sarah, Mary and Randolph – squabblers and alcoholics and casualties of never having lived up to their father’s expectations or name” (A Churchillian picture of hope, power and ghastly children, Last night’s TV, G2, 29 February). That implies all of them, and was true enough of three. But Mary, the late Lady Soames, a tough lady who would chastise me for writing with insufficient respect about her father, was the exception, the one sibling who grew up safe and sound. She wrote an excellent biography of her mother, served as chairman of the National Theatre and, as it happens, drank sensibly.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Bath
