Wartime speeches, photographs and other Churchilliana...

The most important entries in the London sale comprised a recently discovered cache of papers from the estate Mrs Kathleen Hill, who for a period of 10 years, and throughout WWII, was Winston Churchill’s private secretary at Chartwell, at the Admiralty and at 10 Downing Street. This property was sold in 14 lots.

The autograph draft of a speech on the relative naval strengths of Britain and Germany that Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, delivered before the House of Lords just three months after the outbreak of WWII, was sold at £35,000, while a typescript, with substantial autograph revisions and additions, of part of a speech about Italy that he made in the House of Commons at the end of July 1943, went to Quaritch at £17,000.

The latter was delivered following the invasion of Sicily and three days after the overthrow of Mussolini, but Churchill nonetheless continues to sound a note of caution.

An extensive working draft for the lengthy speech that Churchill made in the House of Commons in October 1945 concerning the demobilisation and repatriation of over two million soldiers then serving overseas, comprising numerous pages of typescript with copious autograph alterations, deletions, etc., was another Quaritch purchase at £26,000.

Sold at £12,000 to an American dealer was an example of that famous “Sail on, O Ship of State” card that Churchill had published in 1941 to celebrate the emerging alliance between Britain and America. Roosevelt had, at Wendell Wilkie’s suggestion, included a quote from Longfellow’s poem Building of the Ship in a supportive message of 1941 and this copy of the card with its decorative image of a sailing ship and boldly printed Longfellow quote was signed by both Churchill and Roosevelt.

Four sheets of working proofs for Marlborough: His Life and Times, chiefly for a section describing the Battle of Malplaquet and littered with autograph corrections and extensive insertions, was sold at £10,000 to a collector.

A wartime photograph of Winston, standing in a military vehicle and apparently inspecting bomb damage, that was sold for £2600 in a Dominic Winter sale of June 25 was one that he had inscribed for his bodyguard, Detective Inspector W.H. Thompson, a copy of whose own book, I Was Churchill’s Shadow, accompanied the lot.

In a different section of that same Swindon sale, a 34 vol. ‘Centenary’ edition of the Collected Works, 1973-76, vellum gilt bound in slipcases, brought a bid of £2400. (Four volumes of Collected Essays issued to accompany this set were not present).

A Dominic Winter sale of July 23 contained a number of inscribed Churchill photographs. All were black and white press photographs and one showing both Churchill and Anthony Eden walking towards the camera, signed by both, sold at £3200, while another showing Churchill with General Alanbrooke and a group of Russian generals, with clipped signatures of both, plus that of Eden, in separate window mounts beneath the image, sold at £2000. Another, showing a top-hatted Churchill in a car, greeting onlookers after being returned to Parliament in 1950 – see above – sold at £2500.

All of the above went to the same bidder, but it was someone else who gave £2800 for a framed authograph display of Boer War period.

Alongside a 1902 Christmas card featuring printed silver leaves were four real South Africa silver leaves bearing the signatures of Churchill, Lord Kitchener, Robert Baden-Powell and Rudyard Kipling.

There were more inscribed press photographs of Churchill on offer in Swindon on August 27. One, showing him leaving a polling station (Epping Forest, 1936?) and inscribed as a dear friend to a Minny Thompson, made £3500 and another, dated 1955, which shows Churchill and Lady Clementine on the steps of No.10, was bid to £3600.

Sold at £900 in that August 27 sale in Swindon was a first American edition of his 1900 book, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria. In the original, gold lettered red cloth, it had a note bearing the words “duly inscribed by Winston S. Churchill”, affixed to the front pastedown. An unsigned copy of the English first edition, the pictorial cloth binding a little rubbed and marked, made £115.

In a June 20 sale held by Sotheby’s New York, a signed and inscribed copy of the 1948 first edition of Churchill’s Painting as a Pastime was bid to $3500 (£2095). The publisher’s cloth binding was soiled and the outer leaves showed some dampstaining, while passages of text had been underlined throughout in pencil, but the inscription in this copy was doubly appealing.

The book had been first presented to Miss Fanny Holtzman, a theatrical agent, by one of her clients, the singer and actress Gertrude Lawrence, whose own inscription includes the words: “Now it is up to you, dear Fanny, to get the great man’s autograph”. This she managed to add in 1954.