Churchill Winston

Winston Churchill TLS Regarding Marlborough: His Life and Times--his Ancestor's Biography

1p typed letter inscribed and signed by Winston Churchill (1874-1965), future British Prime Minister, to C. C. Wood, chief copy editor at George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd. The “Dear Sir” and “Yours v.s., / W S Churchill” are in Churchill’s hand. Written at Chartwell, Churchill's home in Westerham, Kent, on May 13, 1933. On watermarked cream stationery with "Chartwell, Westerham, Kent" letterhead. Docketed, and with a diagonal line running across the page in green ink. Expected paper folds, else near fine. 5" x 8".

In full:

"[in Churchill's hand] Dear Sir,

[typed] Thank you for your letter. I am having the book carefully read by Mr. Marsh for his orthography, and will send him your instructions at the same time.

[in Churchill's hand] Yours v.s.,

W S Churchill".

This correspondence related to the publication of Churchill's monumental biography Marlborough: His Life and Times. Churchill, who was named after Marlborough’s father and was the nephew of the Eighth Duke of Marlborough, wrote this history of his famous ancestor to refute earlier criticisms of Marlborough leveled by the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. “Though it was a commissioned work, Churchill would not have invested nearly a million words and ten years had it not had special significance for him. For he wrote about a man who was not only his ancestor, an invincible general, the first of what became the Spencer-Churchill dukes of Marlborough, and a maker of modern Britain, but also a supreme example of heroism in the two vocations which mainly interested Churchill and in which ultimate triumph seemed to have eluded him—politics and war making” (Wiedhorn, 110).

According to another scholar: “It may be his [Churchill's] greatest book. To understand the Churchill of the Second World War, the majestic blending of his commanding English with historical precedent, one has to read Marlborough. Only in its pages can one glean an understanding of the root of the speeches which inspired Britain to stand when she had little to stand with” (Langworth, 164). “The scholarship seems formidable, as in no other of his works. Picking his way through conflicting testimony and evaluations, Churchill, while leaning on William Coxe’s 1818 biography of the duke, carefully weighs each writer’s reliability. Yet the tone is not as detached as might be expected from an academic historian…Marlborough, with his broad European view and his apparent sense of Britain’s imperial destiny, is the fulcrum, and all the other characters, parties, and issues take their places accordingly…the literati hostile to Marlborough—Pope, Swift, Thackeray, Macaulay—are harshly expelled from the witness stand” (Wiedhorn, 113-114).

John Churchill (1650-1722), the first Duke of Marlborough, started his court service as a page during the reign of Charles II and ended it as Master-General of the Ordnance of the English army under George I. He served under five sovereigns, distinguished himself on the battlefield and as a diplomat, and was once even imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason. Handsome and charming— Lord Chesterfield described him as “irresistible to either man or woman”— Marlborough’s military strategy led the Duke of Wellington to say that he could “conceive nothing greater than Marlborough at the head of an English army.”

This letter highlights both Churchill’s meticulousness as a writer and his relationship with his editor, Charles Wood. Wood's first project with Churchill was Marlborough in the 1930s; he was hired full-time in 1948 to proofread Churchill’s massive multi-volume work-in-progress, The Second World War, joining Churchill’s literary staff of secretaries (who typed on silent typewriters as Churchill dictated), research assistants, and advisors. Wood became “an essential member of the team and no error escaped his eye” (Gilbert VIII: 344). “Slight and small, Wood was the same age as Churchill but did not smoke or drink. His main virtue…was ‘a ruthless eye for misprints and inconsistencies…A meticulous proofreader, Wood was pedantic and opinionated. This, as much as Churchill’s habitual parsimony, probably explains the reluctance to bring him on board. Even then, Churchill issued firm instructions about reducing, not increasing, the number of commas, identifying inconsistencies without arguing their merits, and certainly not going through original documents. But Wood was soon exceeding his brief in typically abrasive style…[Churchill once called] Wood ‘indefatigable, interminable, intolerable—but he was determined not to repeat the errors in The Gathering Storm. So… [Wood] became a fixed if fractious member of Churchill’s team… [The work was] subjected to the green pen of Mr. Wood—a process that became known as ‘Wooding'” (Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War, pp. 149-150, 153).

Winston Churchill, the mighty "British Bulldog" evaluated not as a stateman, but as an author, historian, and biographer!

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.