The American Connection

Reading Andrew Roberts' absorbing Masters and Commanders about British-American joint leadership in World War II, I stumbled on a curiosity: American mothers. It's well known, of course, that Winston Churchill's mother was an American. But it turns out that in the corridors of power, he was hardly alone. The mother of Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the British Army's man in Washington, was a Kentuckian. The mother off First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound was from Boston.

Two swallows hardly make a summer, nor even three. Perhaps it shouldn't even be surprising: we all know that there is a huge folklore about rich Americans girls marrying impecunious British aristos in Pareto-enhancing transactioins (recall: every marriage is a deal). But it does suggest that there may be more texture to the "special relationship" than we, or at least I, had supposed.

Afterthought: I suppose nobody ever did more to cultivate the myth of the "special relationship" than Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, whose mother was from Spencer, Indiana. Maybe four swallows really do make a summer.