January 1, 1970

Introduced by Richard M. Langworth

Little known until 1995, the earliest painted portrait of Winston Churchill was by Cyron Ward in 1878 when Churchill was four. The painting appears in the frontispiece to the book by Churchill’s granddaughter, Celia Sandys: From Winston with Love and Kisses: The Young Churchill.

As a boy, Winston was frail in health and seemingly accident-prone. ‘He could also be’, says Celia, ‘naughty and bumptious, inclined to put people’s backs up’. Pronounced ‘difficult to manage’, he once rang for the maid and instructed her to ‘take away this governess’ because she was ‘Very cross’. Celia has her own memories of Churchill at Chartwell, ‘a major and magical part of my childhood. With my sister and brother I spent many holidays there, just as Winston had spent many holidays with his Marlborough grandparents at Blenheim’.

Read the full article here: ‘Celia Sandys: Chartwell Revisited’ by Madeleine Kingsley, Finest Hour 88 (cover story) Autumn 1995, scroll to page 16..