November 30, 2024

The World of Churchill Collectables

By BRIAN KRAPF

On 22 December 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington. His entourage included British Ambassador Lord Halifax, Minister of Supply Lord Beaverbrook, and Charles Wilson, Churchill’s personal physician. This would be the first of Churchill’s five Washington visits made between 1941 and 1945. 

The Prime Minister initiated this trip to Washington soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in order to discuss with President Roosevelt how Britain and the United States could best coordinate wartime strategy. The two world leaders had met only four months earlier in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland for the Atlantic Charter Conference. This second meeting lasted three weeks, extending through Christmas and into the new year. Staying at the White House while in Washington, Churchill utilized the second-floor Rose Suite as office space for the British government; messengers routinely brought documents to and from the British embassy. Likewise, Churchill routinely traveled with wartime maps and regularly referenced or consulted them. This trip to Washington was no exception. He tacked his maps on the walls of the Monroe Room, where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt held her press conferences. 

Churchill celebrated Christmas 1941 with President and Mrs. Roosevelt. On Christmas Eve, he joined FDR at the annual White House Christmas tree lighting, moved as a wartime precaution from Lafayette Park to the South Portico of the White House. The Prime Minister gave a brief greeting before a crowd of 15,000 gathered for the lighting.

2025 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 42nd International Churchill Conference. Washington, DC | October 9-11, 2025

2025 International Churchill Conference

After attending a Christmas Day church service with President Roosevelt, Churchill spent most of the holiday writing and revising the speech he would deliver the next day to a joint session of Congress. Most of Churchill’s 26 December 1941, speech to Congress was an attempt to summarize the course of the war from the standpoint of the British people. His goal was to convince the American public that an effective alliance between the United States and Great Britain could win the war and preserve the peace afterwards. At the end of the speech, as he flashed the V sign, Congress gave him a standing ovation. 

Churchill’s speech to Congress was considered a special event. While Britain had been fighting the Axis since 1939, America had just entered the war. The poster shown here was printed shortly after the Prime Minister’s address. It includes a wonderful quotation from the speech about the British and Americans uniting to work side by side for the good of all. You will notice that on the poster the image and the text are not squarely aligned. This is not a misprint. These posters were hastily printed for use in Britain after Churchill’s speech, and the printer’s mission was to put them into use as soon as possible. This is one time we conservators welcome errors: because they have a historical basis.

The words on the poster are the same as those now engraved on the plinth that supports the bust of Churchill donated to Congress by the International Churchill Society in 2013 and now on permanent display in the US Capitol building’s Freedom Foyer.

Brian Krapf’s book A Churchill Treasury: Sir Winston’s Public Service through Memorabilia is now available in the UK and the US.