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Winston Churchill's schooling at Brunswick School, Brighton and the story of how his Collected Works, containing over 5 million words, came to be presented to a school library!
John Bartlett (Brunswick headmaster 1965-1981) with William Ryder (headboy) in the Stoke Brunswick library, Ashurst Wood, Sussex 1975
Bound in vellum with gilt edges each volume is in an individual slipcase and all are contained within an inscribed bookcase. The Centenary Edition is the only full collected works of Winston Churchill, reproducing his fifty books in thirty-four volumes. It was a limited edition of a stated 3,000 sets but it is probable that only 1,750 sets were ever published. This set was just the 12th set ever presented. Numbered sets were presented to:1 The Baroness Spencer Churchill (1973)2 The Westminster Parliament (1973)3 The Australian Parliament (1974)4 The New Zealand Parliament (1974)5 The Canadian Parliament (1974)6 The South African Parliament (1974)7 The Parliament of the United States of America (1974)8 The Commonwealth of Virginia (1975)9 The Rt Hon Sir Robert Menzies (1974)*10 The Rt Hon John Diefenbaker (1974)**11 Harrow School (1974)12 Brunswick School (1975)
*Australia's longest-serving prime minister died in 1978
Library of Imperial History in association with the Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd, 1973–6, 1973. 38 volumes, octavo. Original full calfskin vellum with 22-carat gold blocking, including titles to spines, armorial device to front boards and ruling to spines and front boards, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, printed on Archive Long Life Text. With the original green slipcases stamped with the Churchill arms.
Volume XXXlV replaced with a second copy of Volume l (unsigned). The first volume is signed by Lady Churchill and has a note about the presentation to Stoke Brunswick School from the Library of Imperial History when presented.
This set includes the additional four volumes of collected essays, which were published in 1976.
To achieve publication, 11 publishing houses in Great Britain, the United States and Canada released their individual copyrights in exchange for the promise that no other complete edition of Churchill's works would be published until the expiration of international copyright in 2019
The Collected works of Sir Winston Churchill was published by the Library of Imperial History upon the centennial of his birth. The first volume, in this the 12th set, is signed by Clementine Spencer Churchill.
"I was accordingly, in 1883, transferred to a school in Brighton kept by two ladies"― Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, 1874-1904
These "two ladies" were the Thompson sisters, Kate and Charlotte. They ran Brunswick School where Churchill found "kindness and sympathy".
These were Churchill's formative "Wonder Years" and have mostly been ignored by historians.
Before leaving for Harrow, after the Easter term at Brunswick 1888, Churchill particularly enjoyed "swimming and riding" and these extras were added to his school fees and can be seen in his 1987 Brunswick accounts. He was charged nearly £9 extra for them on top of the standard term's fee of £21. His account also gives an insight to the other things that he enjoyed including Art.
In 1888 Churchill paid his last school fee at Brunswick. His term's tuition and personal expenses totaled £34 7s 4d (including Drawing £2 2 shillings)
1943/44 letters to Mr Goldman (Brunswick headmaster when the school was in Haywards Heath) from Winston Churchill's Personal secretaries. His school accounts from 1887 ledger are behind the letters.
Churchill's school bills recorded in the school's account book provide an insight into his schooling with the Thomson sisters.
There were just 24 boys in the school in 1888
Of those, two were Lords, and one was Arthur Ernest Guinness (2 November 1876 – 22 March 1949) second son in the Guinness family who were the richest family in Britain at the time. Guinness usually went by the name of Ernest and, as a trained engineer, went on to be the technical expert among the Guinness family directors at Guinness from 1900 to the 1930s.
In April of 1888, Churchill aged 14 and a half, left Brunswick and started school at Harrow.
Brunswick School Accounts 1887 -
From Wikipedia:
Independent and rebellious by nature, Churchill generally had a poor academic record in school, for which he was punished.
He was educated at St. George's School, Ascot, Berkshire where he was very unhappy, then at Brunswick School in Hove, near Brighton.
Brunswick School, which relocated to Haywards Heath, then Ashurst Wood in West Sussex. He attended Harrow School from 17 April 1888.