Q: Who is the artist?

Can you please tell me who the artist is who cre­at­ed the love­ly image of Win­ston Churchill on your book Churchill by Him­self?  —M.D., London 

A: Richard Deane Taylor, a great man

With plea­sure. He is Richard Deane Tay­lor, who paint­ed the orig­i­nal for a Collier’s cov­er in 1951 after Churchill had returned to Down­ing Street fol­low­ing the Gen­er­al Election.

Mr. Tay­lor, who died a few years ago, gave per­mis­sion to use it on the jack­et of the British edi­tion of Churchill by Him­self, which came to pass. (For a spe­cial mem­o­ry, please click here.)

The pub­lish­ers did make good efforts to light­en WSC’s eyes (which in life were very light blue). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they cropped the top of WSC’s head, incur­ring the ire of Lady Soames and this writer, and some­what spoil­ing the effect. They promised to fix this in the sec­ond edi­tion, and they did so, hap­pi­ly for all, not the least Richard Deane Tay­lor himself.

Update, 2023

Churchill by Him­self  is now in its 4th edi­tion, the lat­est text being that of Rosetta’s e-book from 2016. We are now work­ing on the 5th (and I trust the final) revised, extend­ed edi­tion, to be pub­lished by Hills­dale Col­lege Press,  in deluxe leather­bound form by Eas­t­on Press, and a Roset­ta e-book.

The new edi­tion will be worth hav­ing, because it adds close to 1100 new quo­ta­tions to the orig­i­nal 4400. From the orig­i­nal 350,000 words, it is now approach­ing half a mil­lion. That is 0.4% of Sir Win­ston Churchill’s total out­put, but, we hope, the most mem­o­rable parts of it.