An interesting personal letter written in October 1906 by Winston Churchill whilst he was serving in his first ministerial post as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies - The letter written to his old mathematics teacher at Harrow, Charles Mayo

The whole letter handwritten in black ink by Winston Churchill on folded four-sided official Colonial Office letter-headed paper and signed: “Winston Churchill”, contained in the original Colonial Office sending envelope, with sender’s and receiver’s stamps, again addressed in Churchill’s own hand: “Personal - C. M. P. Mayo, Esq., Harrow School, Harrow on the Hill” and signed “W. Churchill” to lower left corner, good condition £6,000-£8,000

The full text of the letter reads as follows:

“Private

18 Oct 1906

My Dear Mr Mayo,

I am much pleased to get your kind letter and to know that you were interested in my life of my father [’Lord Randolph Churchill’, published 1906]. It was a labour of love to me & I am glad to think that it has been so well received upon all sides.

Let me thank you for your kind expressions about my political work. You were the only person who ever succeeded in teaching me mathematics or indeed - let me add - in making me work at anything that did not excite my interest.

I regard my work at mathematics under your care as the most salutary mental discipline I ever received. It is a detestable subject & I rejoice to think I have never since had the occasion to pursue it further than the simplest forms of addition & subtraction. But while I have often found it easy to assimilate ideas & group them in new combinations, upon subjects which commanded my interest & pleased my mind, I do not remember ever having to face such a dead uphill pull as I had to under your instruction for my Sandhurst examinations.

Certainly that effort was wholly successful & although the knowledge is gone, the faculty no doubt remains in a greater power of appreciation than I should otherwise have developed. The memory of those exertions & of your kindness & care, makes your praise & interest especially valuable to me.

Yours sincerely

Winston Churchill”

Charles Henry Powell Mayo (1859-1929) was Winston Churchill’s mathematics master for his last year at Harrow and in just six months managed to teach him enough to pass his exam.

At his first attempt, out of 2,500 marks, Churchill obtained a score of 500. At his second attempt he scored nearly 2,000, which remarkable improvement Churchill attributed to: “the very kindly interest taken by the much respected Harrow master, Mr. C.H.P. Mayo, who convinced me that mathematics was not a hopeless bog of nonsense, and there were meanings and rhythms behind the comical hieroglyphics.”

Few lives have been documented in such detail as Winston Churchill and it is also fortunate that Charles Mayo published his own detailed autobiography, Reminiscences of a Harrow Master, in 1928 shortly before he died. In his book he writes glowingly of the young Churchill and gives his insight into life at Harrow, including his views on ‘fagging’ , the common system of the day at public schools whereby younger boys carried out duties for the seniors, to which Churchill was himself subjected in his time at Harrow. Mayo endorsed the practice in the following terms: "Those who hope to rule must first learn to obey... to learn to obey as a fag is part of the routine that is the essence of the English Public School system... the wonder of other countries”.

Winston Churchill maintained a deep affection for Harrow throughout his life and often referred to his time there and his gratitude to his mathematics teacher Charles Mayo who helped him pass his exams for Sandhurst. Charles Mayo was amongst the guests at Winston Churchill's wedding in 1908.

In 1941 Churchill delivered one of his most famous speeches of the Second World War in the familiar surroundings of his old school, when he uttered the immortal line: “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”