CHURCHILL WINSTON (1874-1965).

Lot 31
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15000 - 20000 EUR
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Result : 39 000EUR
CHURCHILL WINSTON (1874-1965).
29 signed letters, signed « Winston S. Churchill », with a few autograph addenda, 1934-1951, to A.G. WATERS editor of News of the World, or other employees of the newspaper; approximately 34 pages, most in-4 format, on embossed letterhead; in English. A remarkable archive of Churchill’s long relationship with News of the World which provided a much-needed source of literary income during the early 1930s and turned into an important platform for his warnings against Nazi Germany later in the decade. Initially contracted to write a series on “Great Men I have Known”, Churchill steadily expanded into great figures from the Bible and “Greatest Men of All Time”. His thumbnail sketch for the latter series (7 April 1936) is amusingly succinct: “Confucius. Explains China [...] Mahomet. Splendid action - the counter-drive to Christianity Alcibiades. Alexander. Great Greeks [...]”. - 13 November 1936: “With regard to the Biblical series I should be glad if this could be provisionally settled in writing. My political affairs are still in the uncertainty which lapped them last year, and it would be convenient to me to have an agreement made as before”. In December 1937, he joked that with commitments to the paper stretching into 1941, “I shall certainly expect an invitation to the annual outing of the staff”. - Starting in 1938, the Nazi threat dominates the letters: “[...] There is at the present time an almost total absence of defence, apart from the R.A.F., for our cities and vulnerable points. We have not got a dozen modem anti-aircraft guns in the country. The 3.7 guns which are modem, are now trickling out in small numbers every month, but the total order is itself on a scale hopelessly below our requirements. The Germans have actually between 3,000 and 4,000 modem antiaircraft guns, all made since 1933 [..j” (June 5, 1938). - On 28 April 1939 he suggests an article on “Air Raids and the Population”. Once war breaks out he wr
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