Claude Auchinleck - Later Life

Later Life

In 1948 Sir Claude returned to Britain to live in a modest Mayfair flat off Green Park. When naively asked who was doing his cooking, his reply was that he kept "a few tins and things". On developing a painful stomach ache, he packed a small case to go to hospital. Having climbed the stairs he presented himself, giving the doctors a shock as they found his appendix was ruptured. Being the soldier he was, calling an ambulance when able to walk was out of question.

He was awarded the honorary degrees of Doctor of Law (LL.D.) by Aberdeen University and St. Andrews University in 1948. He was a director of Grindlays Bank, and chairman of Murrayfield Real Estate Company.

In later years, he lived with his sister in Beccles, Suffolk until she died, after which he moved to Marrakech. There he lived quietly and alone in a modest flat for many years, taking his morning coffee at the La Renaissance Café in the new part of the city where he was known simply as le marechal.

Auchinleck was befriended and aided by Corporal Malcolm James Millward, a serving soldier in the Queen's Regiment, and his wife, Malika, for three and a half years up until his death on 23 March 1981 aged 96.