Maggs Bros.

Inscribed by the author to Grace Hamblin OBE (1908-2002), the longest-serving member of Winston S. Churchill’s secretarial staff, in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘For Dearest Grace with much love from “the author” Mary Soames September 1982’.

Hamblin originally served as a junior secretary to Churchill from 1932-1937 during the so-called “Wilderness Years”, then acting as Clementine Churchill’s assistant from 1939-1945, accompanying Clementine on her post-war tour of red cross hospitals in the Soviet Union. After the war, Hamblin was appointed secretary and administrator at Chartwell, continuing in her role as Chartwell’s first Curator after the house became a National Trust property in 1966. In 1965, Hamblin was one of the very few non-family members invited to attend Churchill’s burial service at St Martin’s Church, Bladon. “Grace Hamblin died in 2002, aged ninety-four. She had spent seventy of those years working with the Churchills and strengthening and promoting their memory, the longest-serving member of Churchill’s secretarial staff” (Stelzer, Working with Winston, p. 45). Hamblin earned some posthumous notoriety when her apparent role in the suppression of Graham Sutherland’s controversial portrait of Churchill was revealed.

A good copy only, contents clean and unmarked, jacket rather loose and unevenly faded with long closed tear to front panel.