Randolph Churchill - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford and became a journalist. In 1931 he shared Edward James's house in London with John Betjeman.

While attending Oxford, Churchill became embroiled in the controversy of February 1933 King and Country debate. Three weeks after the associated pacifist resolution was passed, Churchill proposed a resolution at the Oxford Union to delete the "King and Country" motion from the Union's records but this was defeated by 750 votes to 138 in a rowdy debate (one which was better attended than the original debate), where Churchill was met by a barrage of hisses and stink bombs. A bodyguard of Oxford Conservatives and police escorted Churchill back to his hotel after the debate. Sir Edward Heath records in his memoirs that Churchill was then chased around Oxford by undergraduates who intended to debag him (i.e. humiliate him by removing his trousers), and was then fined by the police for being illegally parked.

He was married twice. His first marriage, to the well-known socialite The Honourable Pamela Digby (later and better known as Pamela Harriman), produced a son, Winston Churchill, who became a Member of Parliament. The marriage ended in divorce in 1945. His second marriage to June Osborne produced a daughter, Arabella Churchill. It is alleged that he had an illegitimate daughter in Oklahoma in 1956. For the last twenty years of his life, he had an affair with Natalie Bevan, the wife of a friend and neighbour, Bobby Bevan. American author Christopher Ogden in his biography of Pamela Harriman has stated that while in Cairo in II World War he had a long affair with Maud (Momo) Marriott who was the wife of the senior British army officer Major General Sir John Charles Oakes Marriott.