Inscribed by the author to Grace Hamblin OBE (1908-2002), “the longest-serving member of Churchill’s secretarial staff” (Stelzer), in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘To Grace E Hamblin from Winston S Churchill 1942 Christmas’. With a carbon-copy of a typed letter signed loosely inserted from Grace Hamblin to Churchill thanking him for the gift.
Grace Hamblin originally served as a junior secretary to Churchill from 1932-1937 during the so-called “Wilderness Years”, briefly leaving the Churchills service in 1937 to care for her ageing mother, before returning 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.
Originally published in 1932, Thoughts and Adventures was the second of Churchill’s autobiographical writings, covering his early political career, the battle of Sidney Street, a near silence on Gallipoli, service on the Western Front, the negotiation of the Irish settlement, thoughts on the ‘Mass effects of modern life’ and life ‘Fifty years hence’. Containing a collection of Churchill’s magazine and newspaper journalism written in the same lighter, informal style as My Early Life, the success of Thoughts and Adventures came as a considerable surprise to the publisher. The publishing rights were transferred to Macmillan in 1942.
A very good copy indeed, faint spotting to endpapers, contents otherwise generally unmarked, just a hint of faint marking to covers, trivial shelf wear to tips of spine and corners.
Cohen, A95.4.b.
