Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 173

CHURCHILL (WINSTON)
Typed letter signed to E.S. de Beer Esq., with another from Harold Macmillan, thanking him for a gift of £300 "for the benefit of men of letters", 1954 and 1961

22 – 23 June 2022, 11:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £1,147.50 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

CHURCHILL (WINSTON)

Typed letter signed ("Winston S. Churchill"), to E.S. de Beer Esq. ("My dear Sir"), thanking him for making the sum of £300 a year available for him and subsequent Prime Ministers to award as a grant "...for the benefit of men of letters who care for their craft and who, because of that care, may find themselves in financial difficulties..."; with typed envelope, one page, on Downing Street headed paper, creased at folds, filing hole top left, 4to (240 x 190mm.), 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, 3 September 1954; typed letter signed ("Harold Macmillan"), to E.S. de Beer Esq. advising that he has approved a de Beer grant to Ernest Martin and thanking him for renewing the covenant; with typed envelope, marked Confidential, on Admiralty House headed paper, creased at folds, filing hole top left, 4to (240 x 190mm.), Admiralty House, Whitehall, 14 December 1961

Footnotes

'FOR THE BENEFIT OF MEN OF LETTERS WHO CARE FOR THEIR CRAFT': LETTERS OF APPRECIATION FROM TWO PRIME MINISTERS TO A GENEROUS BENEFACTOR.

The recipient of these letters of thanks from Churchill and Macmillan was Esmond Samuel de Beer (1895-1990), historian, patron and philanthropist. Born in New Zealand, he read history at Oxford and was able to devote the rest of his life to scholarship thanks to a considerable fortune inherited through his maternal family, the Hallensteins, whose clothing chain is still trading today. His scholarly reputation was assured with definitive editions of the diary of John Evelyn, published in 1955, and the letters of John Locke, published over twenty years from 1976 to 1989. An unfailingly generous benefactor, he not only supported the Bodleian, British and London libraries and countless other institutions and societies, but also, as shown here, provided smaller grants via third parties to worthy causes, in this case an annual gift of £300 to impoverished writers. De Beer built up a large private library which he dispersed in the 1980's, mostly to the University of Otago in Dunedin and donated his art collection to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Provenance: Given by E.S. de Beer to the father of the present owner.

Additional information

Bid now on these items

A Presentation Copy of Kennedy's First Book to Spencer Tracy. Kennedy, John F. 1917-1963. Why England Slept. New York: Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1940.

Signed to Spencer Tracy 1952 Hemingway, Ernest. 1899-1961. The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

CORNELIUS, MATTHEWS, editor. 1817-1889. The Enchanted Moccasins and Other Legends of the American Indians.