In the Spring of 1899, I became conscious of the fact that there was another Winston Churchill, who also wrote books; apparently he wrote novels, and very good novels, too ... I received from many quarters congratulations on my skill as a writer of fiction. I thought at first that this was due to a belated appreciated of the merits of Savrola.

I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it.

Do not turn the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts .... We must not be ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy, then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be recon- ciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

It even looked as though his pen might bring him an active role in the movie world and, during his ‘Wilderness Years’ in the 1930s, he acted as consultant and screenwriter...

Churchill counted among his acquaintances such luminaries of the film world as Vivienne Leigh and Charlie Chaplin, whom he met while in the US and who later came to visit him...

In 2004 it was claimed that a blue and yellow macaw that had belonged to Churchill was still alive – aged 104 ‘Charlie’ was said to have been born in 1899,...

In the later years of his life, when it became known he liked animals, he was given them as presents: among the more exotic gifts were kangaroos, a platypus (which arrived...

Churchill was very fond of cats – ‘Mickey’ and ‘Tango’ who lived at Chartwell, ‘Nelson’, who would accompany Churchill at Chequers, among others For his eighty-eighth birthday, Sir John ‘Jock’ Colville,...