Where Excellent Shorthand Can Take You

Positively the most delightful obituary I've ever read. Winston Churchill's confidential assistant Patrick Kinna passed away March 14 at the age of 95. I'd never heard this before:

At Christmas 1941, while Churchill was staying at the White House, Kinna was summoned to take dictation by the prime minister, who was soaking in his bathtub, planning the speech he would make to Congress on Boxing Day. Finding the muse, Churchill stomped in and out of the tub, evading the ministrations of a valet with a bath-towel. As the prime minister paced the room "completely starkers", Kinna recalled, there was a knock on the door and Churchill went to open it. It was Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Mortified at finding his guest with nothing on, the president prepared to make his excuses, but was prevented by Churchill. "Oh no, no, Mr President," he said. "As you can see, I have nothing to hide from you."

He sort of fell into intelligence work because of excellent clerical skills, which led him to adventures: preventing the Duke of Windsor from ever taking a paper home, lest it fall into the hands of Wallis Simpson; shredding documents in Paris against the encroaching Germans; hitchhiking to safety; become Churchill's man and...well, RTWT.