Letters sent by Brendan Bracken, the enigmatic Irishman who founded the modern Financial Times and served in Winston Churchill's war cabinet, to his mother are to be sold at auction in Dublin this month.
Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers say the letters are “highly important correspondence, particularly since Bracken’s personal papers were destroyed, on his instructions, after his death”.
The letters are included in an archive due to go under the hammer in an auction of rare books and manuscripts on December 15th, with a top estimate of €2,500. The archive includes photographs of Bracken as a child, of his mother, and of him with Churchill, along with a card commemorating his first Holy Communion.
The archive has been consigned to auction by an unnamed family descendant.
Bracken was born in Templemore Co Tipperary in 1901. His father died in 1904 and his mother moved the family to Dublin. He moved to England in 1919 where, despite his Irish republican background, he ascended the ranks of the Conservative party, befriended Churchill and was elected MP for the London constituency of North Paddington in 1929. He later served in Churchill’s government during the second World War.
Bracken also pursued a parallel, and extraordinarily successful, media business career, establishing the Financial Times and publishing the Economist magazine*. He was elevated to the peerage as the 1st Viscount Bracken in 1952.He was unmarried and died of throat cancer in 1958, aged 57. He had no children so his hereditary title expired with him.
The first Holy Communion Card confirms Bracken’s childhood Catholic faith but he famously declined the Last Rites and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in London without ceremony.
The auctioneers say the content of the letters provides “an excellent flavour of his personality, his early struggles and his rapid rise”. Although Bracken had fallen out with his family, the letters written in the 1920s, before he became a household name in Britain, are filled with tenderness towards his mother.
In one, dated February 15th, 1923, his 22nd birthday, he wrote: ‘You have had many sorrows & difficulties in life, & for many years you have had to face them alone...But you’ve surmounted them all, which is the great test of life...Anything that I am able to do is altogether due to you”.
In a letter dated March 1925, he wrote: “I am filled with affection and admiration for the remarkable way you battled alone for us after Papa’s death. Your difficulties were immense, but they were less than your courage. The hardest troubles you had to bear came from me, & I am never likely to forget this fact” .
In a separate letter from 1923 Bracken wrote about his efforts to help Churchill in the 1923 general election in the Leicester West constituency (when Churchill stood as a Liberal and lost).
Bracken said: “We are deep in an awful fight at Westminster and I think we are going to win...We are fighting the three great parties...& only Winston could pull it off. A good deal of attention here is directed to the Irish vote which may pull the fat out of the fire — it will I hope be given in Winston’s favour...”.
Bracken’s mother died in 1928 and did not live to see her son become an MP. A telegram, dated May 31st, 1929, to his family in Ireland, contains, simply, the word: “Won”.
Bracken was elected to the House of Commons in the General Election the previous day.
This article was edited on 8th December 2015
