CHURCHILL (Winston S.)
Typed Letter Signed (‘WSC’) to Grace Hamblin (‘Dear Miss Hamblin’).
A letter from Churchill to his personal secretary Grace Hamblin OBE (1908-2002), one the Churchill family’s longest serving personal assistants, written aboard the yacht Rosaura during a month’s holiday in the eastern Mediterranean at the hospitality of Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne (1880-1944), Churchill’s friend and former Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
The letter mainly concerns arrangements for a meeting of the India Defence League hosted by Churchill at Claridge’s on October 30, 1934, with Churchill writing to Hamblin with a ‘list of invitations’ (lacking) and requesting that she ‘Have some cards made’ for RSVPs. The aim of Churchill’s October 30 Claridge’s dinner was to muster opposition against the joint parliamentary select committee appointed by the National Government to review the Government of India Act of 1919 and consider proposals for future constitutional reform of India. Among the guests were Page Croft, James Watts, Commander Diggle, Ian Colvin and Sir Michael O’Dwyer (Gilbert, Vol. V, p. 585).
Horizontal fold, small punch hole to upper left corner, thin strip of toning along right fore-edge.
