Career
Thompson grew up in the working class neighborhood of Brixton, South London. From a family of thirtheen children he worked a number of jobs before becoming a police officer. He initially operated out of the Paddington Green police station. When the suffragette movement exploded the police expanded Special Branch. Thompson took the test and passed, later was part of the huge surveillance effort, by Special Branch, of the suffragette movement he got to know most of the women's rights leaders. He eventually moved on to tracking anarchists and other foreign threats before he moved to the protection detail. He was assigned to Churchill in 1921 and worked with him till his retirement in 1935. Working at a grocer he had bought with his family on 22 August 1939 he received the infamous telegram that called him back into service as Churchill's bodyguard.
During his time with Churchill, Thompson traveled over 200,000 miles and is reported to have saved Churchill's life on some 20 occasions, including times when Churchill's own foolhardiness exposed him to danger from shrapnel during the Blitz, plots by the IRA, Indian nationalists, Arab nationalists, Nazi agents, Greek Communists and the deranged. The stress of his duties during his time with Churchill caused Thompson to suffer a breakdown, which took him away from Churchill, but within weeks, Thompson had recuperated and returned to his duties. Thompson was so endeared by Churchill that when Thompson's daughter fell ill, Churchill arranged for her to be attended to by his own doctor and insisted that the invoice be sent to him for remittance. The stress of the job, compounded by long absences away from his family, led to the dissolution of Thompson's first marriage in 1929; during long hours waiting around whilst Churchill was in meetings, he grew close to and eventually married Churchill's junior secretary, May Shearburn. For his service in protection of Churchill and to his country, Thompson was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1945.
In June 1945, with Churchill out of office and Thompson about to retire for a second time from the Metropolitan Police, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and Downing Street decided that it would be improper for him to publish his memoirs for the foreseeable future and threatened Thompson with the loss of his police pension if it was published, even though he had nearly completed a 350,000-word manuscript. An expurgated version, I was Churchill's Shadow was published in the 1950s, but the full manuscript was discovered only after Thompson's death, by his great-niece Linda Stoker.
After his book was published he became quite famous and embarked on a book tour across the UK and when the American version of his book was released in America he did over 400 lectures with his wife May even doing a number of TV appearances on shows like To Tell the Truth, an American TV game show where he beat the panel and won $300 (US$ 2,571 in 2013).
Read more about this topic: Walter H. Thompson
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