Winston Churchill’s interest in strange phenomena and UFOs makes the cover story in the November 2018 issue of Fortean Times magazine.
Top Secret War chronicles the British Prime Minister’s curiosity about a range of unexplained phenomena during his long career as army officer, politician, wartime leader and writer/journalist.
Richard Nixon is said to have described him as the only political leader in history ‘who has his own crystal ball’.
Many people are familiar with Churchill’s famous 1952 memo to the Air Ministry demanding to know ‘the truth’ about flying saucers.
But fewer know that he ordered the very earliest British government inquiry into a UFO sighting in 1912, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty.
Or that in 1939, as the world stood on the brink of WW2, he took time out to write a lengthy essay on the possibility that ET life existed outside our solar system – and came out to say he believed this was a distinct probability.
Or that he took a personal interest in the controversial prosecution of spiritualist medium Helen Duncan during World War 2, that has been described (wrongly) as the ‘last Witchcraft Trial’.
Is there a common thread linking these disparate expressions of interest? Did Churchill ever learn ‘the truth’ about UFOs? And did he really believe in the existence of supernatural forces, as Major Wellesley Tudor Pole told a friend in 1964?
My research into Churchill’s papers at the University of Cambridge and at The National Archives have thrown up some intriguing clues. Read my article and make up your own mind.
Fortean Times 372 (November 2018) is available from newsagents or via subscription.
David Clarke is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Arts and Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He teaches media law and his research specialism is contemporary legend. Previously he worked as a journalist for The Sheffield Star and Yorkshire Post and spent four years working as a Press Officer in local government. His PhD in Folklore and was completed at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, in 1999. From 2008-13 he acted as consultant and curator of the MoD UFO files project with The National Archives. His books include The Angel of Mons (2004) and How UFOs Conquered the World: the history of a modern myth (2015). In 2018 he co-founded the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University. This blog covers his twin research interests in journalism and folklore. The views expressed in the contents are entirely his own.
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Sounds like a fascinating piece–and rare glimpse. Thanks, David, for the update.
Churchill’s “crystal ball” might have been a (perhaps unwitting) reference to a man by the name of Wellsley Tudor Pole, an army Major and O.B.E. who was also an advisedr to Churchill during WW2 in the capacity of a psychic spy working for British Intelligence. WTP was something of a Mystic, described by some as a “Spiritualist”, by others as an “Adept”. He published several interesting books in his old age and also gets a mention in ‘The Avalonioans’ by Patrick Benham, about some esoteric mystical events in Glastonbury in Edwardian times.
Great blog I enjoyed readinng