A YOUNG WINSTON CHURCHILL COMMENTS ON THE TAXING NATURE OF
HIS MUCH PRAISED ORATIONS

CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON S. (1874-1965). British politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945, 1951-1955). Autograph Letter Signed, “Winston S. Churchill,” on imprinted Ashby St. Ledgers, Rugby stationery. Two pages, octavo. Rugby, February 5, 1905. Fine condition. To “My dear Renton.” Churchill writes:

“I begin to think that after all I had better stay with you for the night, and go by the 7:42 next morning. It is cruelly early, but a broken night’s rest is a still greater trial after a long speech and cross-country journeys and I cannot find that there are any sleeping cars. I am coming by a 2 o’clock train from Rugby arriving at Gainsboro a little before 6 o’clock. I hope you will give me a hot bath before the meeting. Yours very truly, Winston S. Churchill.”

As a young man, Winston Churchill, following a brief but distinguished period of military service, was elected as the conservation MP for Oldham in 1900. A distinctly independent politician, Churchill was initially counted among the “Hughligans,” a group of conservative dissenters who were dissatisfied by the leadership of conservative Prime Minister Balfour. Two years later, he began to distance himself from this group while continuing his attacks on Balfour, a course of action that alienated many conservative members of Parliament. Tensions between Churchill and the conservative came to a head in May of 1904 when Churchill crossed the floor and took a seat on the liberal benches. For the next eighteen months, Churchill, the new free-trade candidate for the Liberal Association of North-West Manchester, leveled even fiercer attacks against the conservative party’s policies in speeches such as the one noted in our letter, causing a lasting enmity between himself and members of his former political party. A fluent writer (at this time he was working on a biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, which would be hailed as a masterpiece when it appeared in 1906) Churchill’s speeches were carefully crafted orations, achieved through long and elaborate preparation. Churchill’s tireless devotion to his political ideals was rightly rewarded when the newly elected liberal PM Henry Campbell-Bannerman appointed him Under-Secretary of State for the colonies in 1905, an early political milestone in the career of one of the most admired and influential orators, strategists, and politicians of the twentieth century.

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