The year is 1938, and you’re looking for a suitably seasonal picture for the front of your Christmas cards. A festive image which will convey seasonal goodwill to all humanity.
What could better symbolise those eternal truths than an international peace treaty signed by the two major European powers which had once been at war? And so it came to pass that this Christmas card was produced and exchanged some seven decades ago:
And here’s what it said inside:
Even reproducing that infamous piece of paper which proclaimed ‘peace in our time’:
In the circumstances, I think Churchill’s choice of Christmas card was more appropriate.
Images courtesy of the official Conservative Party Archive held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
The card was found amongst the papers of Percy Cohen, a prominent Jewish Conservative believed to be a former member of the Conservative Research Department. The signatory of the card, RJ Rosie, may well have been physician to King George VI and HM The Queen. It is not known if the card was an official one or personally commissioned.
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At least Neville Chamberlain didn’t quite do to Hitler what Gerald Scarfe had Harold Wilson do to Lyndon Johnson.
Just look at the body language in that photo.
But all the time Nev was quietly organising the building of planes and tanks and setting up the Emergency Medical Service to care for war casualties, war workers and evacuated children and other preparatory measures.
But yes, with Hitler he did try too hard!