Rare poem of Winston Churchill fails to sell at auction

Rare poem of Winston Churchill fails to sell at auction


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LONDON — Despite Winston Churchill winning a Nobel Prize in Literature, his only known poem failed to sell at an auction in London.

Before Churchill became Britain's revered prime minister, he served in the Army as a war correspondent covering the Boer War. During his service, he wrote a 40-line poem, about the conflict on the front lines.

His poem, "Our Modern Watchwords" was discovered by a retired manuscript dealer over 100 years after it was written, according to npr.com. It is the only know poem written by Churchill, and the dealer decided to auction the rare manuscript.

When it went up for auction at Bonhams in London, experts said that it could easily sell for at least $23,000. However, the poem failed to sell with the bidding never getting high enough to even reach the reserve price.

The poem has since been returned to its owner with only an excerpt of the poem being released.

A few specialists had theories of why the poem had a very underwhelming response.

"One of the things that he does, of course, is to use more words than are absolutely necessary," New York Poetry Editor and Princeton University humanities professor Paul Muldoon told NPR.

Muldoon said the poem was obviously "very early on" in Churhill's life because he later became famous for his stirring wartime speeches and later won the Nobel Prize in literature.

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Faith Heaton Jolley

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