Winston Churchill Typed Letter Signed and Cigar Case.

CHURCHILL, Winston S.

Item Number: 142585

Typed letter signed by Winston Churchill to his Private Secretary during his wartime term, Sir John Howard Peck, with the gift of Churchill’s cigar case. One page, typescript on Churchill’s 28 Hyde Park Gate London letterhead and addressed to J.H. Peck, Esq., the letter reads in full: May 31, 1946 “My Dear John,” It was such a pleasure to me to receive your letter and to have news of you again. I have happy recollections of our long association, and am indeed glad to know that you are getting on well and liking your new position. I am sorry to have been so long in sending you the enclosed souvenir as a small mark of my appreciation for all the help you gave me during the intense years of war, first at the Admiralty and then at No. 10. “Your friend, Winston S. Churchill.” The recipient, British diplomat Sir John Howard Peck, served as a Private Secretary to Sir Winston Churchill and was the only secretary to serve with him during his wartime term of office between May 1940 to July 1945. Peck joined the Civil Service in 1936 and was appointed Assistant Private Secretary to First Lord of the Admiralty. When Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, he was appointed as one of four Private Secretaries, and was the only one to serve him throughout the war. Following the loss of the General Election in 1945, Peck served Attlee briefly, and then transferred to the Foreign Office in 1946. In very good condition. Double matted and framed with the souvenir Middlemore cigar case Churchill refers to in the letter as “a small souvenir of my appreciation for all the help you gave me during the intense years of war.” An exceptional piece with outstanding provenance. 

Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on May 10th 1940, Winston S. Churchill became Prime Minister of England and took the lead in warning about Nazi Germany and in campaigning for rearmament. His speeches and radio broadcasts helped inspire British resistance, especially during the difficult days of 1940–41 when the British Commonwealth and Empire stood almost alone in its active opposition to Adolf Hitler. A non-academic historian, artist, and prolific writer, Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his overall, lifetime body of work.