"I shall greatly welcome any suggestions or corrections" - An 18 June 1933 typed letter signed from Winston S. Churchill on his Chartwell stationery featuring Churchill's autograph salutation, valediction, and signature to his friend, supporter, and anti-appeasement ally Duff Cooper, later 1st Viscount Norwich, soliciting editorial input on the first volume draft of Churchill's mammoth history of his great ancestor, the First Duke of Marlborough.
Chartwell, Westerham, Kent, England: 18 June 1933. Letter. This is an 18 June 1933 typed letter signed by Winston S. Churchill to his friend, supporter, admirer, and anti-appeasement ally Duff Cooper, later 1st Viscount Norwich. Testifying to their friendship, mutual respect, and past and future collaboration, the letter solicits Cooper’s editorial input on the first volume of Churchill’s history of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, Churchill’s great literary project of the 1930s.
The letter is on Churchill’s Chartwell stationery, with Churchill’s autograph salutation “My dear Duff,” and Churchill’s autograph valediction and signature “Winston S. Churchill”. The letter presents “a clean proof” for Cooper of “the first eleven chapters” promising the rest of the chapters and stating “I shall greatly welcome any suggestions or corrections especially on a large scale, or any criticisms constructive or corrective.”
Condition and provenance
Condition of the letter is near fine, the stationery substantially complete and only lightly soiled with a single filing hole punched at the upper left and folds presumably from original posting – three horizontal and one vertical. This letter was part of the Forbes family’s incomparable Churchill collection, thereafter part of the Churchill collection of Richard C. Marsh, from whence it came to us. The letter is protected within a clear, removable, archival sleeve housed in a rigid, crimson cloth folder.
Duff Cooper
Sir Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich (1890-1954) was educated at Eton and Oxford, served with the Grenadier Guards during the First World War, and was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1924. He served as: Secretary for War (1935-37); First Lord of the Admiralty (1937-38); Minister of Information (1940-41); and Ambassador to France (1944-47). Cooper was married to Lady Diana Manners, daughter of the Duke of Rutland and a successful actress. Cooper was knighted in 1948 and created Viscount in 1952.
Winston and Duff
Winston Churchill and Duff Cooper were friends for 40 years. The two met for the first time in 1914, during the First World War. Cooper was 24, Churchill 39. Churchill was serving as First Lord of the Admiralty – a position Cooper would hold and subsequently momentously resign nearly a quarter of a century later. A friendship was seeded, despite Cooper being a young Conservative, the party Churchill had abandoned and to whom he was then anathema.
Cooper’s regard for Churchill was both admiring and prescient. In March 1924, when the then-Liberal Churchill lost his seat in Parliament, precipitating Churchill’s return to the Conservatives, Cooper wrote to him: “I know you have the lion’s courage which will enable you to make light of this cruel blow… there are a number of young and eager Conservatives whose enthusiastic support you command… They look forward to the time which cannot be far distant when you will be their inspired and inspiring leader.”
In 1929, both men suffered a serious political blow. Cooper lost his seat as a Conservative Member of Parliament in the 30 May 1929 General Election, which cost the Conservatives their majority and Churchill his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer, even though he survived his own reelection bid. For only the third time in 21 years, Churchill was without Government portfolio. He would remain so until the outbreak of the Second World War, a decade later.
Both men applied themselves to similar literary purpose. “Within two weeks of returning his Seal of Office to the King at Windsor, Churchill began work on his biography of the First Duke of Marlborough.” As for Cooper: “..after my defeat in the election of 1929, I sat down to write the first lines of my first book.” Talleyrand, Cooper’s biography of the eponymous French diplomat (Marlborough’s contemporary) was published in 1932.
Anti-appeasement allies
As evidenced by this letter, not only were both men friends, but Cooper had Churchill’s respect in measure sufficient that Churchill solicited Cooper’s editorial input on the first volume of his mammoth biography of his great ancestor, the First Duke of Marlborough. Volume I of Marlborough would be published on 6 October 1933. By then, both men would be collaborating on matters far more urgent than Napoleonic era Anglo-French history. On 8 September 1933, Cooper wrote to Churchill from Austria after transiting through Germany to report “They are preparing for war with more general enthusiasm than a whole nation has ever before put into such preparation” and to express his concern that the British government was “discussing disarmament…”
Cooper would become an essential partner in Churchill’s 1930s struggle against the British Government’s refusal to either prepare for or oppose Nazi aggression. Cooper arguably had his own “Finest Hour” five years later in October 1938. He was dining with Churchill at the Other Club when it was announced that the Munich Agreement, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s craven attempt to appease Hitler, had been signed. At the time, Cooper was First Lord of the Admiralty – the position Churchill had held from 1911-1915 and would hold again from late-1939 to mid-1940. The next day, Cooper resigned from the Government in protest. Cooper’s wife, Lady Diana, telephoned Churchill to tell him the news and later recalled in her memoirs how, as she spoke, “his voice was broken with emotion. I could hear him cry.”
References: Cooper, Old Men Forget; Gilbert Vol. IV & The Churchill Documents Vol. 12; ODNB. Item #008407
Price: $6,500.00