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Articles
The Churchill Papers: Largest Private Repository of Recent British History
- By MARTIN GILBERT
- | September 18, 2023
- Category: Resources Understanding Churchill
The Papers: retrospective
The purchase of the Churchill Papers with British Heritage Lottery funds in 1995 caused a brief kerfuffle. Critics protested that public money was being used to reimburse a private estate. This drew a snort by the Churchill biographer William Manchester. Churchill was a professional writer, Manchester wrote to The Times. His literary estate was his property, passed to his survivors through his trust fund:
Some critics believe that the Churchill Papers should have been donated to the country. That has a familiar ring. Authors are forever being told that they should give their work to society, that to expect money in return is, well, tacky. The origin of this presumption lies in a misapprehension of the word “gifted”—the belief that talent is literally a gift, which the writer should pass along. The fact is that writing is very hard work, and that here, as elsewhere, the laborer is worthy of his hire. Surely any working man should be able to understand that.
Manchester’s views were underscored by Churchill’s official biographer. In his patient and methodical way, Sir Martin Gilbert explained why the Churchill Papers were so valuable. The price paid was indeed, as most came to understand, a bargain. The Churchill Papers, so vital to his work, remembered by Sir Martin, published here by kind permission of Lady Gilbert. —RML
Saved for the nation
The purchase of the Churchill Papers by the Heritage Lottery Fund was an imaginative stroke of national policy. These papers, on which I began work in 1962, are the largest single private repository of recent British history. In their published form they constitute twenty-three substantial volumes. The actual paper is estimated to weigh fifteen tons. Scholars have long worked on these papers, and individual items have been reproduced, often in facsimile, in many books. But it was the possibility that they might be sold to an overseas buyer that focused concern on their physical future.
The first alarm was over certain specific documents, such as Churchill’s wartime speeches, which clearly constitute part of the national heritage. Photocopies and reproductions are all very well, but the actual pieces of paper are what matters. It is the originals alone that convey the full sense of historical drama. The idea that Churchill’s final draft of “We will fight on the beaches” would end up in a library overlooking a beach in the Pacific, or some other distant shore, was not attractive.
The use of national lottery funds to secure the Churchill Papers preserved more than Churchill’s letters. Guarded in the specially designed archives of Churchill College, Cambridge, is far more than his own notes and manuscripts. Churchill kept handwritten or typed versions of most of his books and hundreds of his speeches. He did not keep copies of all the letters he wrote. But he did keep every letter that he ever received. These letters, not written by him but written to him, constitute the real historical value of this collection.
Other archives
The largest number of Churchill’s own most valuable letters, both in historical and monetary terms, are scattered in archives worldwide. The Royal Archive at Windsor is particularly rich in letters from Churchill to every sovereign since Edward VII. The Asquith papers at Oxford, the Baldwin papers at Cambridge, and the Chamberlain and Eden papers at Birmingham, contain hundreds of handwritten letters from Churchill of the utmost importance.
There are more than 500 archives, and family collections up and down Britain, in which the treasure trove of Churchill’s letters can be found. In the United States, the New York Public Library has, among other Churchill letters, a long letter he wrote to an American friend when he was a prisoner of war in South Africa. The papers of Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower are rich in original Churchill letters.
(It is important to note that the Heritage Lottery acquired the Churchill Papers through 1945. The post-1945 documents, known as the “Chartwell Papers,” had previously been donated to Churchill College by Lady Churchill.)
The Churchill Papers defined
In the Churchill Papers, by contrast, a feel for the whole range of Great Britain’s recent history can be experienced over seventy years. Here we have letters from leading Liberals, chief among them David Lloyd George. Here are set out the most radical proposals for social reform before the First World War. We have the letters of Lord Kitchener during the early months of that war, including the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition.
Included are the Irish leaders on both sides struggling to work out a compromise in 1921 which could end the civil war. The documents show Sinn Fein finally agreeing to halt their murder campaign and come to the negotiating table. In the Churchill Papers too, we have Labour leaders of the day negotiating with Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to resolve the General Strike of 1926, and their secret visits to him at a house in London to work out a compromise.
Throughout the 1930s, the Churchill Papers abound in letters from civil servants, airmen and members of the intelligence community, sending Churchill secret information, much of it from Nazi Germany, to enable him all the more effectively to wage his campaign for greater rearmament.
Every file contains gems
While his own letters consist in the main of carbon copies, it is the originals from other people that are the great glory of the Churchill Papers. A letter from his great friend Val Fleming (the father of Ian Fleming) describes the slaughter on the Western Front. There Fleming himself was later killed. Another, by Winston’s brother Jack, discusses the first awful moments of the Gallipoli campaign.
There are letters from his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, full of the political gossip of 1916. That was when Churchill, his political star in eclipse, had gone to the front to command an army battalion. There are letters from Admiral “Jackie” Fisher urging Churchill to return from the trenches and lead a campaign to break the government. (Churchill did return, but his attacks on the government in Parliament were a dismal failure.)
Every twist and turn of the British political debate is represented in the Churchill Papers. His maiden speech, as a twenty-six-year-old Conservative MP, opposing too much government spending on the army, brought letters of praise from government and opposition alike, and a strong caution from the Conservative grandee Lord Curzon, then Viceroy of India, that Churchill should not be too quick to attack his own side. Forty-five years later, in 1945, a letter from his daughter Sarah urges him to make health and housing central parts of the Conservative election campaign. Every file contains similar gems.
“Liberty itself”
Having read them all and edited most, I could only conclude that the Churchill Papers will provide in the future, as they are already doing, a rich seam of historical gold—the richest in fact outside the Government’s own National Archives, which houses Churchill’s voluminous wartime papers, as well as the papers of his four-year peacetime premiership.
Soon we will celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE-Day. It is interesting to find in the Churchill Papers a message from Anthony Eden, written on VE-Day itself. “All my thoughts are with you on this day which is so essentially your day,” Eden writes. “It is you who have led, uplifted and inspired us through the worst days. Without you this day could not have been.”
And among the hundreds of letters from Churchill’s children is one from his daughter Mary. It was written when he was an old man, long parted from power or influence. “In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving generous father, I owe you what every Englishman, woman and child does, Liberty itself.” For this reason alone, the assurance that the Churchill Papers remain in Britain was to be welcomed.
The author
Sir Martin Gilbert CBE (1936-2015) was an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College. In 1962 he began work as one of Randolph Churchill’s research assistants. In 1968, after Randolph Churchill’s death, he became the official biographer of Winston Churchill. Over the next four decades, he wrote and published six volumes of the Churchill biography and twelve volumes of Churchill documents. During forty-eight years of research and writing, Sir Martin published eighty-eight books. His film and television work included a documentary series on the life of Winston Churchill.
Sir Martin at Hillsdale
As a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Sir Martin taught and lectured on Churchill, Jewish history, and the 20th century. He also partnered with Hillsdale College Press to maintain in publication the entire official biography of Winston Churchill. Sir Martin’s archives are entrusted to Hillsdale College, and form the foundation for the last seven volumes of The Churchill Documents. Hillsdale College is currently digitizing selected papers, research documents, notes, and personal correspondence by Sir Martin Gilbert. Sign up here to be notified by email when the Sir Martin Gilbert Document Library is released.
Hi Folks,
I am reading volume I of “The World Crises”.
Given his age at the time of the writing, how did he develop the ability to make such far reaching decisions? Example, converting the fleet from coal to oil, redesigning the fleet in response to the German Navy expansion, his actions at Antwerp and many others.
I am just astonished at his capabilities and that is why I asked the question.