It’s a curiosity of modern British politics that, in stark contrast to U.S. presidents, prime ministers don’t play (or at least don’t admit to playing) golf.
Winston Churchill would stretch his legs on the links, mostly before he gained high office and mostly not very well. His son, Randolph, reported that he “fails to keep his head down and foozles his drive.” But other than Churchill, since the Second World War, only Harold MacMillan (a regular partner of Henry Cotton) confessed to a fondness for the sport.
It was not always so, however. In fact, before, during and after the First World War, a very handy four-ball made its way to and from 10 Downing Street.
Chief among them was Sir Arthur Balfour, who learned to play the game in North Berwick, captained the R&A, and is feted as “the father of English golf.”
He was followed by fellow enthusiasts Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar Law, a trio who discovered, as the early 20th century lurched into worldwide havoc that would leave an estimated 20 million dead, that the golf course became less of a playground and more of an office.
Some of this business was conducted at Walton Heath, the club south of London which will host next year’s AIG Women’s Open. And while, in one sense, what took place there was little more than a series of fleeting episodes amid the tragedy, in another sense these were critical episodes in such a terrifying period of history.
It was, of course, exactly 104 years ago tomorrow when the armistice was signed, followed soon after by the ceasefire which is still recognised on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Spin the clock back a further four years and Europe was a tinderbox with its diplomats and politicians increasingly aware that they were unable to prevent lethal sparks flying in all directions.
Three days after Austria declared war on Serbia, thus setting the continent ablaze, British Minister for War Lord Kitchener attended a meeting alongside Sir George Riddell, managing director of the News of the World newspaper and the chief liaison between the press and government throughout the war.
Kitchener declared: “We must make the British people understand that we are at war. They should give up playing and watching games. War is the game now!”
Gary S. Messinger writes that in October 1913, Colonel John Edward Bernard Seely, secretary of state for war, played 18 holes with Riddell and the publisher Hedley Le Bas.
Two days later, Riddell was playing golf at Walton Heath alongside Lloyd George, the then-chancellor of the exchequer, soon to be the minister for munitions, and eventually prime minister in the final two years of conflict.
Later in 1914, Lloyd George hosted Charles Masterman, a fellow Liberal Party politician, at the club.
The latter’s wife and biographer, Lucy, later wrote: “(At) a Sunday luncheon … Mr T P O’Connor (the Liberal Irish Nationalist MP for Liverpool) pressed on Mr Lloyd George the necessity for countering propaganda already run by the Germans in the United States.”
She reported that Lloyd George asked: “Will you look into it, Charlie?” Her husband agreed and was appointed head of the British War Propaganda Bureau.
It was not the first time that the dark arts of manipulation had been discussed on the course.
In his book British Propaganda and the State in the First World War, Gary S. Messinger writes that in October 1913, Colonel John Edward Bernard Seely, secretary of state for war, played 18 holes with Riddell and the publisher Hedley Le Bas.
Seely was desperate to increase army recruitment. Le Bas advised him to advertise, and the very next day signed a contract to undertake the work himself.
An associate of Le Bas, Eric Field, is quoted by Messinger saying: “It marked an epoch in the history of advertising – the first real government advertising.”
Much of this feels very familiar – politicians saying one thing and doing another, agitprop for the masses, jobs for the boys – and there’s more because Asquith and Lloyd George had more in common than high office and mashie niblicks. Both also had secret lovers. Lloyd George even combined both activities, spending frequent weekends at his country home in Walton Heath with his secretary and mistress, Frances Stevenson.
In June 1917, in the middle of his term as wartime leader, Lloyd George had night-time activities that were of the much more poignant variety.
Reports vary as to precisely what happened, with one legend suggesting that he was playing golf when he heard a planned explosion on the Wytschaete-Messines Ridge.
We’ll close with another tale of golf and the Great War, but one that took place away from the on- and off-the-course games at Walton Heath.
The reality, it seems, was less callous.
The Kings Country Chronicle on 9th June reported: “Mr Lloyd George, while staying at Walton Heath, last night, asked to be called at three in the morning, and had the satisfaction of hearing the terrific mine explosion opening the Messines offensive.”
The use of words grates on our modern ear. It is also horrifying to consider that he might have been able to hear an explosion 150 miles away across the English Channel.
But did he really hear it?
Almost 400 tons of explosives were ignited that evening, so maybe he did. But Captain John Carr was actually at Messines. And in “Tommy at War – 1914-18 The Soldiers’ Own Stories,” he is quoted as writing in his diary: “Captain Payne came along to our bivouac and we sat with our watches on the table. The time for Hill 60 to go was 3.30 a.m. Ten minutes before; we filled up our glasses and waited. The time came and, almost to the second, there was a rumbling noise and the whole world seemed to shake. I could see whisky and water in our glasses quivering for some time but there was no huge report. Mr Lloyd George at Walton Heath who said he heard a huge report must have had his nerves worked up to some pitch as it was a dead sort of noise and how we knew it had gone was by the shaking ground but the noise from the guns after that moment was fearsome and deafening.”
Why, then, the story of Lloyd George hearing the explosion?
Perhaps he heard the guns that came afterwards. Perhaps tension made him want to believe he heard it. And perhaps it was a rounding of the circle: from discussion of those dark arts to its implementation. Maybe.
We’ll close with another tale of golf and the Great War, but one that took place away from the on- and off-the-course games at Walton Heath.
In 1917, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon were patients at Craiglockhart, an Edinburgh hospital specialising in psychological trauma. There is evidence the pair played golf at Mortonhall Golf Club during this time. Pat Barker wrote her acclaimed novel Regeneration about their stay and included an episode in which another patient (Anderson) suffered a panic attack on the course and threatened to kill Sassoon with a club.
Owen and Sassoon were, of course, two of the great war poets.
Before the conflict, Owen taught in a schoolhouse not 50 yards from where I type these words in Shrewsbury, England. After the war, his poem Dulce et Decorum Est (“It is sweet and fitting [to die for one’s country]”) came to be regarded as one of the most compelling condemnations of war ever penned.
He was entirely ignorant of its reputation, however.
Owen was killed in action on November 4th, 1918, just one week before the ceasefire.