The Works of WSC
A guide to the Churchill canon
The CanonIn May 1915, following the disasterous failure of the Dardanelles campaign, Churchill was dismissed from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty. It was a crushing blow to his ego and his ambition. "The change from the intense executive activities of each day's work at the Admiralty to the narrowly measured duties of a counsellor left me gasping. Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted up, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it.... And it was then that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue - out of charity and out of chivalry, because after all she had nothing to do with me - and said, 'Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people'".
Thus Churchill gave credit to the hobby he felt had saved him from one of his deadliest bouts of depression. Clementine described it rather more seriously in a later interview with Martin Gilbert. "He always believed in it. When he left the Admiralty he thought he was finished.... I thought he would never get over the Dardanelles. I thought he would die of grief".
Painting as a Pastime evolved from two separate essays written for The Strand magazine in 1921. "Hobbies" appeared in December 1921 and "Painting as a Pastime" in January 1922. Following Churchill's inveterate practice of milking his writings for all they were worth, both essays appeared again several times, both separately and combined, including in Thoughts and Aventures, before Odhams finally published them in volume form in 1948.
As one of Churchill's most exhuberent works Painting as a Pastime has gone through several editions and is relatively easy to find at moderate prices. Publishers include Odhams, McGraw-Hill, Pocket Books, and Penguin. Most recently Levengers has produced an extremely attractive leather-bound edition. Rarest of the appearances is the limited edition of 500 copies produced by Gump's department store in San Francisco.
Translations
Finnish, French, German and Japanese
