Dedicated to Brendan Bracken Gibbings (Robert) Coming Down ...

Hammer

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Dedicated to Brendan Bracken

Gibbings (Robert) Coming Down the Wye, 8vo L. (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.) 1942, Signed 'To Brendan Bracken from Robert Gibbings, Dec. 1942, (with bookplate for 'The Viscount Bracken of Christ Church P.C.,) blue cloth d.j. Nice Association. (1)

Note: Bracken was Winston Churchill's closest confidante.
In Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel, Brideshead Revisited, Bracken served as a model for the character of Rex Mottram. It has been suggested that Bracken may have been the inspiration for Big Brother and / or O'Brien in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, as George Orwell worked at the Ministry of Information under Bracken's term as Minister of Information.
When Neville Chamberlain prepared to resign in May 1940, the candidates to succeed him were Churchill or Lord Halifax. The political issue at stake at the time was which potential successor would the Labour Party accept in the formation of a National Government. Churchill's view was that the Labour Party would not support him and so agreed with Chamberlain to nominate Halifax. When Bracken became aware of Churchill's agreement to nominate Halifax, he convinced Churchill that the Labour Party would indeed support him as Chamberlain's successor and Lord Halifax's appointment would hand certain victory to Hitler. Bracken advised Churchill tactically to say nothing when the three met to arrange the succession. After a deafening silence when Churchill was expected to nominate Halifax, the latter obligingly ruled himself out, and Churchill was put forward as Britain's wartime Prime Minister, having avoided any appearance of disloyalty to Chamberlain.