“It is difficult to believe that twenty-one years ago there was only derelict downland where [Zoological Society of London’s Whipsnade Zoo] now stands, and the change that has been wrought is evidence of the increasing knowledge of and interest in animals that is becoming so much a part of our daily life.”
I’m going to be blunt – I never really saw Winston Churchill as zookeeper material. Plenty of other leaders throughout history have loved keeping and caring for exotic animals, but something about the famous, bulldog-faced British prime minister flashing his “V for Victory” sign never really struck me as someone likely to shovel manure and wrangle animals. Apparently, I was wrong. It turns out Winston Churchill was a lifelong aficionado of wildlife, which he interacted with in a variety of ways, from pet owner to hunter to zookeeper.
An overview of the former prime minister’s history with the animal kingdom can be found in Churchill’s Menagerie: Winston Churchill and the Animal Kingdom, by Churchill historian Piers Brendon. Brendon has sifted through decades of correspondence, journals, and newspaper articles to show his readers the many, many ways in which the most famous of modern Britons saw and interacted with the world of wildlife. The book is arranged alphabetically by species, from the Albatross to the Worm, with a final chapter detailing Zoos.
Winston Churchill is best known as a statesman and an orator, so it perhaps won’t surprise the reader to see that most of his animal interactions were of a rhetorical nature. His speeches are full of animal analogies (mostly insults), hurled at Hitler, Stalin, the Irish Republican Army, the Sudanese dervishes, and anyone else who found themselves in the old man’s oratorical crosshairs. Many of these zoological slurs – “snakes,” “hyenas,” “rats,” etc – were commonplace enough in their era, or today. Others were informed in part by Churchill’s experiences abroad, including his hunting expeditions in Africa.
Among the literal animals in Churchill’s life, there are of course the dogs and horses that would have been the companions of any upper class Englishman, as well as the rabbits and foxes and gamebirds that he hunted. As one of the premier politicians and recognizable men in the world, however – especially one in an era of tremendous global uncertainty surrounding both of the World Wars – Churchill had exposure to a host of other animals that crossed his path.
In recent decades Americans may have become familiar with China’s Panda Diplomacy, and sure enough they predated Nixon’s visit to China in the 1970s. When England acquired its first panda in 1938, Winston Churchill was one of the first to see it. Likewise, after World War II, Churchill accepted a pair of Chinese alligators as a token of goodwill from the Chinese government. Churchill certainly understood the value of animals as symbols. Well aware of the legend that Britain will only be able to hold the Rock of Gibraltar as long as it is home to its tailless Barbary macaques, Churchill made arrangements for their protection when their numbers began to dwindle, even securing new “recruits” from North Africa to bolster their numbers. And perhaps in one of the most bizarre, but seldom-reported, anecdotes of World War II, Churchill, in the interests of British morale, set out to smuggle a platypus for the London Zoo. What’s amazing is that he almost succeeded – the bizarre little beast was almost to England, when the ship caring it was forced to drop some depth charges to repel a submarine, and the shock killed it. The little platypus, whose body was donated to the Royal College of Surgeons, was named Winston.
Some of the wild animals in Churchill’s life were gifts not to the nation, but to him, personally. Among these were a lion and a leopard, owned by Churchill but prudently kept at the London Zoo, where he would come to visit them and feed them. Other, less dangerous animals found a home on his estate. When the pressures of statesmanship bore down on him, Churchill could take refuge by his lake, watching his beloved black swans cruise their domain. It was his dearest wish to build up a big flock of the birds, but the consulting staff of the zoo broke it to him gently that the birds wouldn’t tolerate being in flocks year round.
Winston Churchill loved some animals and hated others. He cosseted some as pets and shot others for sport, and ate others still. In this, he was no different from the average person of his age, or any age, really. Churchill’s Menagerie offers an unexpected look into what many of us thought was a life we already knew very well. It also invites us to consider the many varied roles that animals play in our lives.
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