Painting as a Pastime.

London: Odhams Press & Ernest Benn Limited,, 1948. Inscribed to a fellow politician and author First edition in book form, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper "For Lord Gorell from Winston S. Churchill 1949". Ronald Barnes, 3rd Baron Gorell (1884-1963) sat in the House of Lords firstly as a Liberal and from 1925 for Labour. From July 1921 to October 1922 he served as Under-Secretary of State for Air, and though that was the extent of his ministerial career he retained a prominent place in public life in the following decades, sitting on a wide range of government committees and the boards of public bodies, charities, and schools. During the Second World War, he was chairman of the Refugee Children's Movement. "These varied interests notwithstanding, he remained true to his first love, literature, and it is as a literary man that he will be remembered" (The Times obituary, 3 May 1963): he published several works of detective fiction and poetry, and edited Cornhill Magazine from 1933 to 1939. Churchill began painting during the First World War, and remained a keen painter throughout his life, judging "the cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest... a policy of first importance to a public man" (p. 8). Painting as a Pastime was originally published in the Strand Magazine in two parts in December 1921 and January 1922, and was included in Churchill's Thoughts and Adventures in 1932. This marks its first appearance in separate book form. Octavo. Original light green cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece and 15 plates with 18 colour reproductions of Churchill's paintings. Jacket rubbed and a little worn, unclipped: a fine copy in very good jacket. Cohen A242.1.a.