Frank Bellamy and Winston Churchill's copy of "The Happy Warrior"

Frank Bellamy's art for "The Happy Warrior"

David Slinn let me know that Churchill's own copy of the leather bound "Happy Warrior" strip is up for sale in the latest Sotheby's auction : Daughter of History: Mary Soames and the Legacy of Churchill 17 December 2014 | 2:00 PM GMT | London

Sotheby’s is proud to offer items from the collection of the late Mary Soames, Winston Churchill’s last surviving child. The sale will include many of the personal possessions that surrounded Lady Soames in her delightful and very personal home in Holland Park. Together, they chart Mary Soames’ fascinating life – from her childhood in Chartwell to her service in the army during World World II and her later public life. The collection chronicles the remarkable relationship Mary enjoyed with her father, allowing for a unique and very moving insight into the private side of Britain’s greatest war-time leader. At the same time, Churchill’s exceptional ability as a painter, extraordinary for an amateur, will be celebrated in the sale through a group of 15 paintings which together represent the most important and personal group of paintings by him ever to come to the market.

Lot #109 states
"Makins, Clifford THE HAPPY WARRIOR. THE LIFE OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL IN PICTURE-STRIP AS TOLD IN EAGLE. LONDON: HULTON PRESS, 1958" 

with a description:

FIRST EDITION, 4to, 48 pages of coloured picture-strip illustrations by Frank Bellamy on thick paper, plain photographic illustrations of Churchill, red leather gilt binding, silk endpapers, gilt edges

The estimate is listed at £500 - £900. This is such a unique item I have no idea how much it could go for. Bellamy himself said in the Skinn/Gibbons interview that three leather-bound copies of “The Happy Warrior” were presented to Sir Winston Churchill, to Clifford Makins, the author and the third to Frank himself.I have never seen any of them and believe Nancy sold her copy at Sothebys circa 1997.

Episode 11 of "The Happy Warrior"

It's a coincidence as I visited Churchill College, Cambridge recently (who have a Churchill Archive) and enquired regarding this item in Churchill's collection.

Dear Norman, 
I'm afraid I have also been unable to find anything relating to this matter in our archives. I have run searches similar to the ones you made, including for 'Happy Warrior' and have looked through the relevant Gifts files. 

I have looked in the relevant section of Martin Gilbert's biography of Churchill but couldn't find any reference to the comic or the leather-bound copy. 

Churchill did not keep a personal diary. 

I would recommend you contact the team at Chartwell, [email protected], to see if it is in Churchill's surviving library there. 

I'm sorry I could not be of any more help on this occasion, but if you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Kind regards, 

Gemma Cook, Archives Assistant, Churchill Archives Centre Churchill College Cambridge CB3 0DS 

Episode #31 of "The Happy Warrior"

I wrote to Chartwell but received no reply and assumed it was another dead end.  But here we now have a copy for sale! Does anyone know what happened to Clifford Makin's copy or indeed the Bellamy copy?


UPDATE: I have been told that the whereabouts of another copy - presumed to be Bellamy's is known


SUMMARY

• WHERE?: Sotheby - Daughter of History: Mary Soames and the Legacy of Churchill
• SELLER:  [Lot # 109]
• STARTING BID:£500-£900
• ENDING PRICE: £3,750  (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)
• END DATE: DECEMBER 17th 2014
• No of bids:Unknown

Frank Bellamy and Winston Churchill - original art

UPDATE: I see the seller has reduced the price to £900 Buy It Now (27 March 2014) - sale ends 4 April

I was searching eBay and tripped over this item for sale for £1400 ('buy it now'). Why don't eBay's search alerts work properly? Seller 'fredy1237' appears as a new identity on eBay and has this rather unique piece for sale: "Frank Bellamy Original Artwork Winston Churchill Coulur [sic]Technique Experiment" . The seller states:


Original rare artwork by Frank Bellamy which is related to the Eagle As far I am unaware this is unpublished, I can provide a letter of provenance detailing how I purchased the artwork from Nancy Bellamy after Franks death. A mounted part page in original folder and mount. Folder size 50cm x 34cm

This is the first I ever heard about this. It's known that Bellamy often did a character outline for a new series and we know that he was nervous about drawing the first living personality to appear on the back page of the Eagle (in the seven year's of this feature). The feature was about Winston Churchill and called "The Happy Warrior". Maybe he felt he needed to show Marcus Morris, the editor, how his likeness of Churchill would look. The seller says this is a colour experiment and this actually lends authenticity as this was Bellamy's first work in colour for the Eagle comic, although this does look faded - particularly when compared to the rich colour used in the published drawings.

It is reasonable to assume that Bellamy was nervous about this commission, especially as he learned that Churchill was to get final approval (and before the comic was delivered the front cover 'Dan Dare' was removed as Churchill didn't like space adventures). Bellamy used references from the Imperial War Museum to get accuracy in weapons, uniforms etc. and found it "a real punishing job".

But if you look at the whole run of the story (from 4 October 1957 to the last episode which is often missed in the reprints, of Churchill's full face portrait (6 September 1958), you'll see Bellamy's confidence growing and his beautiful shaped panels becoming more and more like graphic designs and less like comic panels.

Episode 32

Episode 38

A recent reprint is available - I haven't yet seen a copy - of the whole Churchill saga and other repints have appeared since the first near-complete hardback reprint in 1958. Have a look at the website listing

Frank Bellamy and Winston Churchill reprint

The Happy Warrior: The Life Story of Sir Winston Churchill as Told Through the Eagle Comic of the 1950's (Eagle Comics) is due to be published in March/April by Unicorn Press

Paperback published by Unicorn Press

I previously wrote about the hardback American edition. David Britton, a great supporter of the Eagle Society, let me know he bought a copy of the American edition.

"The original [reprint in 1958 published shortly after the original series finished] had 64 pages with black & white photographs, which apart from the final page, only deals with Churchill. 
There is a lot more about Eagle in this version than in earlier versions. It is about 100 pages long, has the preface by the publishers "The Eagle That Dared", a slight pun, as it makes significant references to Dan Dare and presents the cover of the copy of Eagle when the story started and appears to have been written by Colin Frewin. It covers the origins and history of Eagle over 8 pages. Then the article by Richard M. Langworth (14 pages) "The Lion Still Roars" is a synopsis of Churchill's life followed by the strip, broken up into sections. Finally there is the epilogue and bibliography under "Why the Happy Warrior?". Overall it is a much more sophisticated book than the earlier [1958] version, perhaps to appeal to a wider and possibly an adult American audience."

To read a bit more go to the Unicorn Press site  - Amazon states it's a paperback of 96 pages so it does look similar (23.5 x 19 x 0.8 cm)
Let's hope they haven't made the same mistake that the 1981 reprint "High Command" and the 1958 reprint did, of omitting the final portrait that appeared in Eagle Vol 9:36 (6 September 1958)!

Thanks to Lew Stringer and John Freeman for spotting this and David for his permission to use his information 

REPRINT: The Happy Warrior (USA edition)

I thought I'd quickly add a note, thanks to Brian for the alert, that a new reprint of the Winston Churchill biography has appeared in the USA.

The price on the Levenger website is a very reasonable $38 plus shipping, which, after several emails I have found to be, for a single copy, $68.32. So by current reckoning that's a total of £64 in UK money for this book!

If you get a copy please do contact me with more information about it. Perhaps you have a kind friend in the US who might send it to you. But at that price, I shall be hanging onto my copy of the 1958 and 1981 reprints, as well as my original Eagle comics. But I'm here as a public service, so just letting you know.

Thanks again Brian - who incidentally said he saw this whilst in the USA recently, so presumably it's in stores! Maybe a wholesaler over here might consider looking into it....are you listening Geoff?

WEBLINK: "Happy Warrior" story

Run, do not walk, to ComicsUK and click on the Daily Page link on the opening page for a page-by-page reprint of, what some consider Bellamy's finest strip, The Happy Warrior.

Bellamy said he was intimidated by this commission as this was the first time the back page of Eagle was taken up with a living person's biography and the subject, Winston Churchill, would approve pages before publication. If you follow the strip day by day, as Alan Notton, the site's creator/moderator intends. you will see Bellamy start out in standrad panel formats, but later experiment with the panels style he later was loved and remembered for.