CHURCHILL IN HIBERNATION, WEEK 8
Tomorrow is the 80th Anniversary of Winston Churchill’s ascension to the office of England’s wartime Prime Minister.
Tomorrow is also the launch of our Sotheby’s auction commemorating the occasion with 100 lots of rare books, photographs and manuscripts from the shelves of Chartwell Booksellers encompassing the entirety of Churchill’s long life and career.
The auction, titled: “CHURCHILL IN CHARGE / 80TH ANNIVERSARY“ will commence at noon on Sotheby’s website and run for 10 days.
You can view it all now, HERE.
There is no dishonor in the acknowledgment that Winston Churchill was a gambler. Armed with reams of research and his incessant consultancy of experts, Churchill loved to think out of the box. His wartime leadership consisted almost entirely of exhorting those around him to strategize more creatively, and to inspire those he led with the expectation that the unexpected had been rigorously anticipated.
Winston and Clementine Churchill both loved to gamble, in the casino sense. Their letters to each other were filled with asides about their winnings and their losses; mostly the latter. “I went into Monte Carlo . . . armed with a Chinese system for Roulette,” Clementine wrote in February 1921 from Lou Mas, St. Jean Cap-Ferrat. “It did not work at all well but I think it is better than playing without a system as one certainly loses one’s money more slowly.” “I must confess to you that I have lost some money here, though nothing so much as last year,” Churchill wrote the following January from the Hotel Mont-Fleury at Cannes. “It excites me so much to play—foolish moth.”
Churchill also adored tabletop games of chance. Bezique—an eighteenth-century French card game for two players—increasingly replaced mah-jongg as his favorite table sport before and after the war. He played it voraciously.
Our third month of good wishes for your health and safety begins with the admonition to play your games of chance with all of the wisdom and preparation that Winston Churchill gave to his.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us for any reason at all.