interview
Island Life - April/May 2010
PHOTO: Anthony
pictured with
Andrey Berezkin on
President Putin's
yacht in his role
as trustee for the
World Ship's Trust
Petershof, Peter the Great’s palace, and
student in Russia are good for the Isle of
has strong Island connections. Many
on the wet grass she danced, without
Wight today:
remember Cowes’s wartime debt to the
any music, the Dying Swan. It was really
“We invite people over, such as the then
Blyskawica, the ship which was moored in
rather beautiful I must say,” says Anthony,
number two in St Petersburg, Admiral
the harbour during the bombardment on
adding: “And I love St Petersburg, its
Grishanov, and his colleague Andrey
Cowes: it fired off so much ammunition in
architecture is superb.”
Berezkin who stays here frequently”
the town’s defence against the Germans
When he and his travelling companions
As he talks you wonder why you hadn’t
that her guns had to be cooled by sea
(Tom Enfield, who became Lord Stafford,
noticed all the Island’s links with Russia
water. “The Captain of the Blyskawica
and Peter Adams, whose father later
before. “Ventnor used to be known as a
has a concert pianist granddaughter Eva
ran the London School of Economics)
Russian enclave,” Anthony tells me. The
Maria Doroszkowska, who came over and
returned to Moscow, the authorities fell
famous Russian author Ivan Turgenev
played Chopin for me at the Royal Yacht
for their story that they’d spent those
dreamt up his epic novel Fathers and
Squadron, which even my friend [Prime
unaccounted days suffering from excess
Sons while he was bathing off the sea
Minister] Ted Heath bothered to attend,”
of vodka, but all in all the trip cemented
in Ventnor. And he stayed in the house
says Anthony, adding: “Ted didn’t
in Anthony’s mind the belief that “all this
which is now owned by the violinist
really like Chopin very much. He was a
James Bond stuff ” had to stop between
the two countries. “Europe had to get on
terms with Russia because unless Western
Europe and a reluctant America moved in
with the Russians we could never solve
our major problem – of sitting down to
talk out our differences with the Islamic
countries.” He adds, barely pausing for
breath, “so even now I’m involved with
that kind of area because here on the Isle
‘‘What Edward Heath
loved was to surround
himself with people who
knew more than he did
about anything –music,
politics and sailing.
He could pull us all
together’
of Wight I set up, with Johnny Caulcutt
Bruckner, Beethoven and Brahms man.”
Here is a junction. Do we follow the
Chopin connection (he lived the first half
of his life in Poland), which runs like a
vein through Mr Churchill’s life, or do we
veer off towards sailing? Though in fact
even these two are linked.
It was while he was president of
the Explorers and Travellers Club at
Cambridge that he got involved in
sailing. “We bought a very old boat to
of Yarmouth the British Russian Sailing
Richard Studt who performs at Anthony’s
do an expedition down the west coast
Trust.”
annual “Piano for Ventnor” concerts. “So
of Africa, and we sailed it up the coast
all these things meld in. The policital side
to be repaired. But a big gale came and
of my life and the sailing side.”
unfortunately I was shipwrecked off the
And so we have the first of Anthony
Churchill’s connections, which will build
into something of a spider’s web as
Time to get the pencils out again to
Essex coast.” Africa ending in Essex
this article progresses. The friends and
make those connections. Anthony’s
didn’t put him off sailing, however, and
contacts that began when he was a
second place of study, Poland, also
after university Anthony started racing big
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