Winston Churchill Announces He Is Nearing Completion of His Newspaper Series “Great Events of Our Time”, One Article of Which Contains One of His Earliest Critiques of Adolf Hitler

In this letter Churchill reveals and changes some titles, and asks News of the World Director Percy Davies to Meet Him to Receive the Balance of the articles

“These articles have taken me a good deal longer than those of last year as they consist so largely of entirely new matter. I think they make a very varied and readable series and I hope you will be thoroughly pleased with them.”

Winston Churchill’s main source of income was not his salary as a Member of Parliament, but as an author. He was a journalist as early as the mid-1890s, and then reported from captivity during the Boer War. As a serving MP he began publishing pamphlets containing his speeches or answers to key parliamentary questions. Beginning with Mr Winston Churchill on the Education Bill (1902), over 135 such tracts were published over his career. He wrote 43 book length works in 72 volumes, including his 6-volume history of the Second World War. His first book was printed in 1898, and the last in 1958, a remarkable span of 60 years. Four of the works were fiction, showing the breadth of his writing genius. There were 28 books published containing collections of his speeches. He also wrote some 10,000 articles for newspapers and magazines over a period of decades on a broad variety of subjects.

In many cases, these newspaper articles were for-hire, commissioned by such publications as Colliers, News of the World, the Daily Mail, and the Sunday Dispatch. The News of the World was so fond of his work that from 1936 and 1939, they paid him £400 for article, which would be £12,000 (or over $15,000 ) in today’s money. Quite a sum to pay a columnist during the Depression, and enough to keep Churchill in his Pol Roger champagne and Romeo y Julieta brand cigars. Major Percy Davies was director of the News of the World, and Sir Emsley Carr was the editor in the 1930s. When Carr died in 1941 Davies ascended to the editorial position. It was with these men that Churchill dealt.

In early 1936, and ending in April of that year, Churchill contracted to write a series on “Great Men I Have Known”, and he the News of the World executives discussed subjects. Articles were written by Churchill on Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Admiral Fisher of World War I note, King George V, General Sir John French, General Douglas Haig who was the senior British commander during World War I, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Lord Curzon, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau, among others. In April Churchill wrote Davies with another idea, a way to continue and expand the concept. His new idea: “Great Men of All Time,” and included a list of proposed subjects. He encouraged Davies to “pick a dozen of these names…and add any that occur to you. I would then make a further suggestion.” Articles would then be written on these historical figures. Some of the names included such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Buddha, Confucius, Julius Caesar, St. Patrick, Moses, and Leonardo da Vinci.

But those were not the only articles Churchill wrote for News of the World at that time. He also wrote about “Great Events of Our Time”, concluding this in the late fall of 1936. Here he traced the evolution of the British democracy from the feudal ages, the destruction of continental monarchies during the Great War, and the rise of the Bolsheviks, Fascists and Nazis. One article was “This Age of Government by Great Dictators,” in which he wrote of his soon-to-be adversary, Adolf Hitler, speaking of Hitler’s “guilt of blood” and “wicked” methods. This was a very early written critique of Hitler by Churchill (and placed here by no accident), as the Foreign Office had asked Churchill all along to soft-pedal his statements about the Nazi dictator, and for a time Churchill pulled his punches. But not here, where he decides to no longer honor the Foreign Office injunction. And looking to the future, he wrote articles on “A Vision of the Future,” which included an assessment of the impact of the marvels of science, freedom of the seas and skies, and “Our Supreme Task,” which title ended up as “Mankind is Confronted by One Supreme Task”, and lists some of the recent achievements of science, technology, and medicine.

Typed letter signed, on his Chartwell letterhead, Westerham, October 9, 1936, to Davies, announcing that his Great Events series of articles was nearing completion. “You will be surprised and I hope glad to hear that I have almost completed the whole series of articles for the News of the World. I have made only one alteration in the series of titles which you gave me, which I hope you will approve. The article entitled “Preedom of Sea, Land and Air, marvels of transport and wireless”, would run better as I have written it under the heading “A Vision of the Future”; whereas the article “The Vision of the Future ” might be better called “Our Supreme Task”. These articles have taken me a good deal longer than those of last year as they consist so largely of entirely new matter. I think they make a very varied and readable series and I hope you will be thoroughly pleased with them. If not I will gladly make any alterations which you may desire.

I must thank you for the skill and thought with which you selected the topics, showing how well you knew the kind of subjects it would be easy and congenial for me to write upon. In fact I have taken every single one of then, only suggesting one change of title. I shall have the whole series fair copied and completed by the end of this week and it would be very nice if you could come down here and lunch either on Monday or Tuesday next, as I should like to hand them to you personally.”

On October 30, 1936, Davies sent Churchill a News of the World check for £5,000 in payment of series of 12 articles “Great Events of Our Time”.