CHURCHILL IN HIBERNATION

Along with most of New York City, we too have now opted to go into hibernation (as opposed to self-quarantine). Our health is good, our spirit is strong, but our store is closed — though we are continuing to process all online orders.

It seems a good moment to recall how Winston Churchill diverted himself on those rare occasions when fate forced him to just sit still.

In late-December 1943, shortly after the Teheran Conference, Churchill suffered two mild heart attacks. Over the ensuing days of recuperation, his daughter Sarah read to him, at his request, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

Flown from Carthage to Marrakech for three weeks of rest at Villa Taylor, Churchill spent the evening of New Year’s Day 1944 listening delightedly to two gramophone records of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas — The Pirates of Penzance and Patience — part of a complete set given to him that Christmas by his daughter Mary. “On the whole one of the happiest hours I have had in these hard days!” he wrote to her the next day. “How sweet of you to have the impulse! How clever to have turned it into action and fact!”

We wish you good health, a sufficency of hand sanitizer and boundless Churchillian diversions of your own.  Please contact us if we can help.