Minnie Churchill is the granddaughter-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill and the Director of Churchill Heritage. She has spent the last six years locating the approximately 500 paintings Sir Winston made. She spoke on campus this week at the Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar.
Could you describe the day you first met Sir Winston Churchill?
I went to have lunch with him in 1963, and it was just Sir Winston, Winston Jr., — his grandson whom I later married — and myself. I wasn’t sure what we would be talking about, but before lunch, my Winston talked about a trip he’d made ‘round Africa in a single-engine airplane. And then Sir Winston talked about his experiences in Africa in the Boer War. And at the end of lunch, he rang the bell for the butler and asked the butler to bring back the cream jug. He poured the cream onto the table, and then his cat jumped onto his lap, jumped onto the table, and lapped up the cream. I thought, “My goodness, what would Lady Churchill think?” But I couldn’t say anything — I was the guest. Many years later, I saw a picture at Chartwell, which was a drawing of tea at Chartwell by Nicholson, and in it, it has Sir Winston and Lady Churchill having tea ‘round the table at Chartwell. And on the table is the cat lapping up the cream.
When did you first get the ideas to track down all of Winston Churchill’s paintings?
We went down to Chartwell while he was still alive. And we saw in the dining room all these pictures in pallets on the floor. Winston and I were given some as a wedding present by Sir Winston and Lady Churchill — we were given four paintings. But it was some 20 years later that Peregrine Churchill, who was the son of Sir Winston’s brother Jack, was running Churchill Heritage. He came down one day saying, “Minnie, I need to see you.” He arrived with a lot of boxes, and he said “I would like you to take over the running of Churchill Heritage.” Churchill Heritage owned the copyright to his pictures. It was a good 10 years later, I realized that a lot of his pictures were being sold. When things go through the sale room, nobody can tell you who buys them, so they were disappearing. I thought I’d had such an interesting life thanks to Sir Winston, that I’d like to do something to say thank you to him. So I found a publisher, and we got the paintings photographed, and for six years, I wrote to people all over the world seeing if they had any in their collections. We photographed as many as we could, and we published the book. The best thing for me was that we were able to go up to Churchill College, Cambridge, and give for his archives the disks with all his paintings on. They didn’t have that before, so it was wonderful to be able to add that to the archive.
Do you have any favorite stories from when you were hunting down the paintings?
There was one picture that he’d given to his secretary, Grace Hamblin, which was of the Béguinage at Bruges. And she had sold it to buy a house, and it disappeared. All we knew is that it had been bought by Arthur Murray of the school of dance. I contacted them on their website for tango lessons and asked how we could get in touch with one of the Murray sisters. They sent an email, and she said that, yes, indeed she had a Churchill picture. She said that her sister had got the Pissaro, but she had got the Churchill. And the next thing she asked was if it would be possible to see any paintings when they next came to England. I said that I would take them to Chartwell — Winston Churchill’s old house which is now a museum. She said, “I’m bringing my driver.” So we went down to Chartwell to meet them there. When we got there, this very handsome man stood up, and he turned out to be Dr. Henry Heimlich — of the Heimlich Maneuver. It was a huge privilege to meet him and his wife, Jane, who owned the Churchill.
