There is another Winston...

The death yesterday of Winston Churchill, a rather less high-achieving MP than his grandfather, reminds me of the story about yet another Winston Churchill - the world is full of them - who was an American novelist born around the same time as the Winston Churchill.

The American Churchill tasted success in his career much earlier than the British (well, half-American through his mother) Churchill, with a series of historical novels, the most famous being The Celebrity and Richard Carvel, which you can read online at Project Gutenberg.


He did so well that our Churchill wrote to their Churchill in the 1890s and offered to publish all his writings under the name Winston S. Churchill so as not to avoid confusion.
 
WSC also suggested to the plain WC that they should both go into politics. "I intend to be Prime Minister one day and it would be a splendid lark if you were President of the United States at the same time," he wrote. Alas, his American namesake got no further than being elected to the New Hampshire state legislature, although he did have a couple of unsuccessful runs for governor.