Saturday 25 November 1944 was a difficult day for Anglo-American relations, though only a select few knew it. The American ambassador, Gilbert Winant, brought Winston Churchill, down at his official country residence, Chequers, for the weekend, a telegram from President Roosevelt ‘about aviation’ – that is, the question of aircraft supplies from the United States under the loan agreement known as ‘Lease-Lend’. John Colville, private secretary to Churchill, wrote in his diary, ‘It was pure blackmail, threatening that if we did not give way to certain unreasonable demands, their attitude about Lease-Lend supplies would change.’ Despite this, the weekend took its usual course. ‘Winant was shame-faced about presenting [the telegram] and didn't want to stay to lunch, but the P. M. said that even a declaration of war should not prevent them from having a good lunch.’ In the evening ‘Mrs C. and Sarah [Churchill] came and we saw the film of Henry V in Technicolor, with Laurence Olivier. The P. M. went into ecstasies about it. To bed at 2.30.’

We will never know whether Churchill's ‘ecstasies’ were enhanced by the refreshing simplicity of the politics of Henry's campaign, in comparison with the complexities of dealing with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Did Henry's brisk reception of the French ambassador strike a chord? Colville's account of the day at Chequers points up the realities not so much of combat as of economics at a time when the ‘special relationship’ with the United States had to be presented publicly as one of steadfast and uncompromisingly generous support.