‘I must always know what is in the documents I sign’

Abstract

Although he had accompanied Churchill to Potsdam, the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, had made little impression on the other delegations, though Truman had informed him as well as Churchill of the successful testing of the atomic bomb. He had as much difficulty emerging from Churchill’s shadow as Truman did from that of Roosevelt. But they had many of the same qualities and Attlee in due course was to belie Churchill’s unkind description of him as ‘a modest little man, with much to be modest about’.