11 Downing Street, London 2014
© Leslie Hossack
For Winston Churchill, 1924 was a milestone year. In 1922, after an appendectomy, he had lost the election in Dundee and found himself “without a seat, without an office, without a party, and without an appendix.” However, in 1924, he was elected in Epping; he was back in the House of Commons and he was back in the cabinet. November 7th 1924, Winston was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin. That same month, he turned 50.
Churchill had not been idle during the two years he was out of Parliament. He had been busy working on his book, The World Crisis, and volumes I and II were published in 1923. He had also been busy renovating his new country home, Chartwell. The family took up residence there in 1924, just months before Winston was appointed to one of Great Britain’s most prestigious cabinet positions. Subsequently, the family moved into the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at 11 Downing Street. In the photograph above, the dark gray building near the end of the right-hand side of the street houses both No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street. The residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the further of the two, its dark facade painted white at ground level.
The image featured above is part of the limited edition collector’s portfolio created by Leslie Hossack to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill. She presents locations that chart Churchill’s personal and political life, from his birth at Blenheim Palace in 1874 until his death in London in 1965. THE CHURCHILL PHOTOGRAPHS are part of Hossack’s larger body of work that explores Nazi architecture in Berlin, Stalinist structures in Moscow, contested sites in Jerusalem, a Cold War bunker in Ottawa, NATO’s Headquarter Camp in Kosovo, and buildings linked to the Japanese Canadian internment during World War II.
To view more photographs, please visit Leslie’s website. lesliehossack.com
HAUTE VITRINE 