For those of you unfamiliar with polemic German, that translates “Churchill the World Liar.” This subtle and gently nuanced critique, below an unflattering original caricature of Winston S. Churchill appears to have been inked by a German soldier on 3 October, just a month after the Second World War began. This ostensibly unique, hand-drawn poster survived nearly five years of war before it was recovered from captured German barracks by an Allied solder. The piece measures 12.25 x 8.5 inches (31.1 x 21.6 cm). The drawing features a slightly demonically-rendered countenance of Winston S. Chur ..read more

Robert Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon (1897-1977) famously resigned his Foreign Secretary post in the British Cabinet on 20 February 1938 in protest of the Government’s appeasement policies. “Although Eden had resigned over the appeasement of Italy rather than Germany, there was no doubt that he was also frustrated and irritated by the pro-Germans in Chamberlain’s Cabinet…” (Roberts, Walking with Destiny, p.423) Like his fellow anti-appeaser, Winston Churchill, Eden was out of step with both his Party leadership and prevailing public sentiment in his assertion of the imperative to rearm an ..read more

Recently, I went to a record store with my teenage daughter, where she showed shiny-eyed reverence for old vinyl records – objects that I would have been unable to unload at a garage sale just a few decades ago. I pointed out that she has a subscription to multiple music platforms, each with enormous, on-demand song catalogues that stream with high fidelity through the device of her choice. I pointed out the aesthetic and practical inefficiencies of spinning a frisbee under a needle as a means to consume music, not to mention the silliness of filling shelves with heavy, fragile vinyl discs. Th ..read more

If you are an antiquarian bookseller, then no physical object is just an object. Each item we handle, however mundane it may physically appear, encapsulates, represents, preserves, or conveys something greater than just the sum of its physical attributes. Take, for example, four old typed sheets, pasted on some blue notepaper. These humble sheets are a proverbial front row seat to one of the most gifted orators in recorded history and a physical artifact of the Second World War. They are also a connection not only to Winston Churchill in the early days of his wartime premiership, but also to ..read more

Florence Vivienne Entwistle, nee Mellish (1889-1982) first photographed Winston S. Churchill sometime between late December 1949 and early February 1950. Her journey to both photography and the Churchill family was intriguingly oblique. She had trained and performed as a singer. Upon marriage to the artist Ernest Entwistle, she took up a successful career as a miniaturist. Her photographic career did not begin until 1934, when, midway through her forties, she began assisting her husband and son, Antony Beauchamp, with photography. When Antony set up his own studio, she did the same, adopting t ..read more

In late 1919, T. E. Lawrence was still fifteen-and-a-half years away from his untimely death. That summer, Lawrence had taken the first steps to realizing his pre-WWI ambition to set up a private press with an Oxford Friend by purchasing a property on the edge of Epping Forest. Only months before, he had begun the famously long and tortuous process of writing his account of the Arab Revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was only beginning to realize that the rest of his life would not be the retired and retiring printer of books, but would instead be defined by his First World War role in Arabia ..read more

We write today about a compellingly expansive, eclectic, and interesting collection of material that provides a window on the world of, and adjacent to, Winston Churchill. Only one of our customers will own this archive, so we write about it to share it with everyone else. Among the many items in this archive is a 29 September 1941 photograph of then-Prime Minister Churchill and his Private Office Second World War staff on the 10 Downing Street garden steps. The image conveys just what a small and intimate group it was. There are only nine figures in the image, including Churchill. At the ba ..read more

A few months ago, just before Christmas, I lost a friend and the Churchill world lost an erudite scholar. Patrick Powers spent more than half a century teaching at various Catholic colleges in New England. He leaves a wife and sons, relatives and friends and colleagues, but, perhaps most of all, students. So many students, whom he engaged and provoked, challenged and inspired. Among Patrick’s admirers, there are many more capable of writing traditional obituaries, which have already been composed and read. What I wish to say here about Patrick, I say as a friend. I learned of Patrick’s bleak ..read more

Some rarefied and significant material finds our shelves here at Churchill Book Collector, but seldom something both truly singular and so absolutely compelling. We have just finished researching and preparing to offer a Second World War album. We call it an “album” but the nature and substantive diversity of the contents really render it more of an archive. But “album” we’ll call it for simplicity’s sake, and respecting the fact that it is contained between two covers. Between the covers are found meticulously captioned photographs and mementos of an R.A.F. officer’s work flying VIPs during ..read more

Albums and archives? No, we don’t mean vinyl records and stodgy old buildings full of dusty whatnot. Here’s what we mean. “Album” is fairly straightforward – a group of photographic prints collected in the form of a book. “Archive” is a broader term – and typically a more variegated collection of material. The Society of American Archivists says that “the word archives… refers to the permanently valuable records – such as letters, reports, accounts, minute books, draft and final manuscripts, and photographs – of people, businesses, and government… They are the documentary evidence of past eve ..read more