To answer fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions, here are the rules gov­ern­ing copy­right to the books, arti­cles, speech­es and papers of Win­ston S. Churchill. (Updat­ed 2024.)

1. Non-Commercial Use

The copy­right in Sir Win­ston Churchill’s papers, lit­er­ary works were not part of the 1995 pur­chase by the British Gov­ern­ment. They remain (under his will) the prop­er­ty of his fam­i­ly, except where sep­a­rate­ly assigned. There is no charge for repro­duc­tion for aca­d­e­m­ic research. Cer­tain edu­ca­tion­al or non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions such as the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project have the right to repro­duce (with acknowl­edge­ment) copy­right mate­r­i­al with­out charge.

2. Commercial Use

In the usu­al way, any use of copy­right mate­r­i­al for com­mer­cial pub­li­ca­tion requires a license. Cur­tis Brown Ltd, the UK lit­er­ary agents, issue this license. They han­dle the copy­right of the Churchill Estate. The fee varies depend­ing on the scale and impor­tance of the pub­li­ca­tion involved. The charge for edu­ca­tion­al use is sub­stan­tial­ly reduced. Cer­tain ear­ly works may now fall into pub­lic domain.

For enquiries regard­ing com­mer­cial use of the Churchill copy­right con­tact Cur­tis Brown Ltd.  Or vis­it to their web­site, fill in the form and send it to the ‘Churchill Per­mis­sions’ email address indi­cat­ed there and above. It takes 4-6 weeks to process requests.

My com­ments on the 1995 acqui­si­tion of the Churchill Papers are here.… (“The Largest Sin­gle Pri­vate Repos­i­to­ry of Recent British History”).

Copyright: related reading

“The Churchill Papers Flap is Back: Old Ker­fuf­fles Die Hard,” 2011

“In April 1995 Boris John­son, then a colum­nist for the Dai­ly Tele­graph, deplored the £12.5 mil­lion pur­chase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lot­tery-sup­port­ed Nation­al Her­itage Memo­r­i­al Fund, said John­son, was frit­ter­ing away mon­ey on point­less projects and ben­e­fit­ing Tory grandees. John­son added: ‘…sel­dom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so lit­tle …’ The Memo­r­i­al Fund replied that a nation­al heir­loom might oth­er­wise be sold out­side the country.”