Extract from a confidential report from Frederick H. Boland
to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Secret) (Copy)

The Canadian High Commissioner and I make a practice of lunching together informally from time to time for the exchange of views and gossip. When I lunched with Mr. Robertson at his house on the 12th October, he had a number of things of passing interest to say.

2. Mr. Robertson confirmed the story I had heard that Sir Winston had fixed a definite date for his retirement but had subsequently changed his mind, with the result that preliminary soundings with a view to the holding of a Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference had been abandoned. He said that Sir Winston is now subject to extraordinary mental ups-and-downs which are tending to get more frequent. One moment he is as bright as a cricket, another he is like a man in a stupor. Before his visit to European capitals about the proposed Nine Power Conference, Mr. Eden spent a whole morning at Chartwell discussing the tour with Sir Winston; but at lunch an hour later, Sir Winston said to Mr. Eden: ‘You are going away, Tony. Where is this you said you were going?’ Similarly, Mr. Robertson said, when the official communiqué was being discussed in Washington last July, a few hours before the National Press Club lunch, Churchill was so scattered and woolly in his ideas that it was impossible to get anything done; yet, at the public lunch the same day he spoke extremely well and made a great impression. These ups-and-downs are said to be due to a circulatory defect which leaves Sir Winston from time to time with an insufficient flow of blood to the head.

[matter omitted]