Winston Churchill cigar auctioned at Christie's
ONE of Sir Winston Churchill’s famous cigars which he gave to a dinner guest was among a stunning collection of the wartime Prime Minister’s memorabilia sold for more than £500,000 yesterday.
Revealing letters, speeches and rarely seen photographs, chronicling his life in great detail, were snapped up in an auction at Christie’s, London.
The unsmoked Havana cigar came with a note from fellow diner Christopher Dunn saying “Sir Winston Churchill... gave me this cigar at Luncheon – Hotel de Paris [Monte Carlo]” 12 April ’63.”
It went for £2,125, well above the estimate of £1,500.
The collection was amassed over 30 years by American Malcolm S Forbes Jnr. Yesterday’s auction, which saw 84 lots go for £577,063, is just the first in a series of three sales from the private collection.
The total is likely to rise to well over £1million when it is all sold at two further auctions, the second in New York and the third in London next year.
The most sought-after lot is Churchill’s war diary which could fetch up to £120,000.
A highlight yesterday was a letter from Churchill’s former private secretary in 1940, urging him to seek “the best peace terms possible” with Hitler.
Churchill wrote back: “I am ashamed of you for writing such a letter. I return it to you – to burn & forget.”
The two letters were offered together with an estimate of £6,000 to £8,000 and sold for £34,850.