Watching Winston: Churchill and His Personal Bodyguards

Watching Winston Churchill was no easy task. The use of personal bodyguards for Churchill began in 1921 and continued for the rest of his life. The story of the remarkable men who guarded him exemplifies courage and devotion that never wavered. Here follows a look at the two longest-serving bodyguards, Walter Thompson and Edmund Murray, and two others of notable interest, Bill Day and Neville Bullock.

WALTER H. THOMPSON

On 9 November 1920, the Director of Intelligence at Scotland Yard told Churchill, then a Liberal MP and the Secretary of State for War and Air, that a Sinn Fein cell in Glasgow had decided there should be kidnapping reprisals in Britain for reprisals in Ireland. Among those to be kidnapped were Churchill and Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Churchill was warned not to go to Scotland “for the next few days or weeks” and provided temporarily with a personal armed bodyguard, Walter Henry Thompson. Thompson’s temporary appointment lasted the next nine and a half years. After a gap of ten years, however, Thompson was recalled from his retirement in 1939 to protect Churchill again, serving with him for another six years until the war ended.

First Meeting

Thompson, a Detective Sergeant of the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, first called upon Churchill at the Cabinet minister’s house in Sussex Square in early February 1921 to discuss what would be their “routine.” By the end of an extremely satisfying talk, Churchill said: “Thank you very much Thompson. I have no doubt that we shall get on well together.”¹

Soon after joining Churchill’s staff, Thompson’s importance as