In the summer of 1941, with Nazi Germany on the march, British prime minister Winston Churchill and US president Franklin Roosevelt rendezvoused on warships anchored off the Newfoundland coast. Even with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance as the leaders discussed how to win the second World War, Churchill found time to invite an old friend to meet for lunch.
The friend was Sir Hugh Tudor, a retired general living in self-imposed exile “amid the northern mists”, as Churchill termed Britain’s island colony on North America’s eastern rim. It was the least Churchill could do for the once-esteemed military commander he had parachuted into Ireland in 1920 to lead the notorious Black and Tans in a fight-terror-with-terror campaign against the IRA.
Bestselling author Linden MacIntyre pieces together the strands of Tudor’s checkered career and shows how a leader praised for devotion to his troops during the first World War became a reviled villain of the War of Independence. Churchill served with Tudor in France and, as secretary of state for war, handed him the task of policing Ireland in the face of the IRA’s postwar insurgency. Tudor added thousands of battle-hardened soldiers to the ranks of the RIC and unleashed ruthless reprisals against suspected rebels and sympathizers – torture, assassinations, the destruction of shops and homes – knowing that Churchill and then-prime minister David Lloyd George had his back.
[ The day Winston Churchill attacked Ireland over its neutralityOpens in new window ]
Tudor’s reward for doing the Empire’s dirty work in Ireland was an uneventful stint as leader of British forces and local police in Palestine. When Churchill was booted from office in 1922, Tudor was left in limbo, and moved to Newfoundland to escape IRA assassins who might have him in their sights. After trying his hand as a fish wholesaler, he retired, and died there in 1965, eight months after the death of the political benefactor who never forgot him.
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Newfoundland-born MacIntyre, one of Canada’s finest investigative reporters, painstakingly researched the life of his reticent subject, scouring memoirs, diaries and official records for insights into a man who guarded his secrets. He portrays Tudor as a tragic figure who came to detest the Irish and allowed blind loyalty to Churchill and the men under his command to cloud his judgment. In one man’s transition from battlefield hero to peacetime monster, the author has found ample fodder to explore whether villains are born or made.
Dean Jobb’s latest true crime book is A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue (Algonquin Books). deanjobb.com.
