There are very few people alive today who can say that they met Winston Churchill but there are two West Devon people who can say they did indeed meet the great man, writes Guy Boswell.

Yvonne Sutton and Bill Murray, two of the children of Churchill’s last bodyguard Edmund Murray, moved to Devon in 1965 with their sister Aileen, when their parents purchased the Burton Hall Hotel, in North Tawton. It was six months after the state funeral of Sir Winston had taken place in London on a damp and dismal February day. Edmund had lost the man that he had closely guarded and tended for the past fifteen years, and he knew his days as a Metropolitan Police, Special Branch officer would soon be over.

In 1950, Churchill chose Edmund to be his bodyguard because of his unusual background and combination of attributes combined with a shared love of painting, Winston was very much looking forward to spending much of his remaining days, painting on the French Riviera.

Edmund Murray, born and brought up in the coal fields of Durham, moved to London in the thirties to work with his brother Joe, in the Holborn Restaurant but that was not for him and in 1937, he took a cheap day-return trip to Boulogne and joined the French Foreign Legion.

His service in the Legion took him to the infamous Sidi-bel-Abbes in North Africa, for basic training. In his book ‘I was Churchill’s Bodyguard’ he wrote ‘I must confess that I really enjoyed the life of the Legion. It was very, very hard but there was a great esprit de corps. Above all, it was a real man’s life’.

In August 1938, aged 20, Edmund became a member of the Military Band of the First Regiment of the Legion. He played the saxophone, but he also worked in the band office where his duties included showing visiting entertainers such as Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker the barracks and town. In 1939 the band played in Paris on Bastille Day and Edmund who was also an excellent singer, danced with Marlene Dietrich.

This easy life was not to last and in 1940, his regiment was sent to Indochina to face the Japanese. He was engaged in dangerous sabotage behind enemy lines and in 1945 when the Japanese invaded Tonkin, his regiment was forced to make a rapid 800 miles retreat though the jungle to the safety of the Chinese border.

He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and palm leaf for his bravery. He resigned from the Legion and from China moved to Calcutta, spending the rest of the war training allied troops in jungle warfare.Edmund became a top marksman and he could speak French fluently and it was these qualities that attracted the attention of Churchill.

Bill said his father was also a very good artist and that Edmund’s wife (Bill’s mother) Beryl, gave him a set of oil paints for his birthday.

Edmund was summoned to meet Churchill at Chartwell, his country residence in Kent.

In his book, Edmund recalls: “The great man shook my hand, inspected me carefully….and belched. As I struggled to keep surprise from my face, a smile, an immensely friendly smile suffused his cherubic pink and white features. ‘So, you are Sergeant Murray. I trust that we will get on well together for I have heard much about you. You have had a most interesting life and I hear you even paint in oils’.”

Yvonne said: “As children growing up, we did not appreciate the significance of dad’s job but now we are amazed at the life my dad led and how we took it for granted.”

We met Lord Beaverbrook in the South of France and Lord Montgomery gave us a budgerigar that he had bred.

Bill added “We had a brick in our garden barbecue that came from The White House, a momento from President Eisenhower together with a golf ball inscribed ‘Mr President’. Dad did get on very well with Ike who always called him Ed.

“At my first Cub Scout camp, instead of a sleeping bag, I had one of Churchill’s wartime roll-up beds with leather straps to sleep in. It took up half the tent and so I was not allowed to use it again.

“We were introduced to Sir Winston on several occasions, sometimes at Chartwell, where I would be allowed to fish for perch and roach in the lake. As a family, would go to pick blackberries at Chartwell in the late summer.

“Sir Winston was always very pleased to see us, he would ask our names, but he knew our ages, perhaps because he remembered that I was born just three weeks before dad became his bodyguard. He had very soft hands spoke quietly but very clearly, and he had a most appealing smile.

“Lady Churchill invited us to tea at 28, Hyde Park Gate, the Churchill residence in London. I think it was after one of dad’s two-week trips to the South of France with Sir Winston had been extended to a seven week stay.”

Yvonne recalled: “Our dad was Sir Winston’s best friend in his final years and the person who spent most time with him. They had common interests, the most important of which was painting. Dad had sole responsibility for ensuring that all of Sir Winston’s equipment was packed and for setting up the paraphernalia on location.

“In addition to dad’s duty to find suitably safe and accessible locations for Sir Winston to paint. Churchill also gave him a camera to photograph the scenes, so that his unfinished works could be completed in the studio at Chartwell.”

Mr and Mrs Murray continued to run the Burton Hall Hotel in North Tawton until 1972 when they moved to Bath. Yvonne now lives in Tavistock and Bill lives in Gidleigh. Aileen lived for many years in Topsham but a few years ago she moved to Liverpool.