Celia Sandys biography
Celia Sandys, the daughter of Sir Winston Churchill's eldest child,Diana and cabinet minister Lord Duncan Sandys, grew up in post-war Britain. As a child she spent a large part of her holidays staying with her grandparents at Chartwell and Chequers and, as a teenager, travelled on a number of occasions with her grandfather in the South of France and on board the Onassis yacht in the Mediterranean.
She has published five books on various aspects of the life of her grandfather. She has made a point of writing about subjects that have not been covered by other authors.
Her first book, From Winston With Love and Kisses, the Young Churchill, was based on the exchange of letters between the young Winston and his family during the first twenty years of his life. Apart from his own account in My Early Life this was the first book to cover Churchill's early years in any depth.
Celia's second book Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive was the result of more than six months research in South Africa covering his thrilling adventures during the Anglo-Boer War. Whereas her first book involved paper research the second gave her the opportunity for living research as she travelled around South Africa discovering and interviewing the children and grandchildren of those, on both sides of the conflict, who had had involvement with the young Winston during the most thrilling period of his life. Celia is planning a feature film based on the book.
We Shall Not Fail, The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill, with co-author Jonathan Littman, has formed the basis of leadership courses and seminars for business leaders and police forces on both sides of the Atlantic.
Churchill, a short biography, originally written to accompany the television series of the same name, was selected as the "official" book of the Churchill Museum when it opened in 2005.
Having travelled with her grandfather in his later years Celia then wrote Chasing Churchill, The Travels of Winston Churchill. Her research for this took her to four continents and even to lunch with Fidel Castro. In 2008 a three part television series, presented and narrated by Celia, was aired on PBS in the US and on Discovery in the UK. For the past ten years Celia has been leading tours Chasing Churchill in Morocco, South Africa, Italy, Malta, the Mediterranean and to other places that her grandfather liked to visit. She has lectured on Churchillian topics on four continents.
How I Found the Agency
I was introduced to Andrew Lownie by Andrew Roberts.
