COLE, Percy Frederick.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

"Four Decades in the Press Gallery": original typescript of his memoir of parliament from 1907 to 1947. The original typescript of Cole's memoir, hand-corrected for publication but, despite reports to the contrary, never actually published. Percy Frederick Cole (1882-1968), following a lengthy career as a journalist in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, was chairman of the gallery from 1944 to 1945 and editor of Hansard from 1944 to his retirement in 1947. The "notice for book jacket", which opens the typescript, summarizes the book: "In this memoir a former Editor of the Official Report of the Debates in the House of Commons gives an unofficial report of what he saw and heard in the Press Gallery from 1907 to 1947... Here are word-portraits of the great actors on the stage at Westminster for forty years... Permeating the book is the author's warm admiration for Sir Winston Churchill, with whom he was privileged to have a number of personal contacts and of whom he tells some highly interesting stories".Cole has corrected the manuscript throughout and signed it on the dedication page. Lord Boothby provides the introduction. Cole includes "an unpublished Churchill speech", delivered at a gallery luncheon, where Cole hosted Churchill, on 23 April 1945.Who's Who and Cole's Times obituary (27 August 1968) reported that Four Decades in the Press Gallery was published in 1966. We could find no evidence of publication in library listings or newspaper reports, under that title or any ot

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