Churchill archive features IOM

A new electronic archive of documents belonging to one of Britain’s most famous Prime Ministers provides a fascinating glimpse into Manx history.

The Churchill Archive was set up by Bloomsbury Publishing and the Churchill Archives Centre, and includes more than 800,000 pages of documents from 1874 to 1965.

And the Isle of Man gets a few mentions – most notably during the two world wars.

But the first mention of the Island in the archives is a letter from the Governor of the Isle of Man George, 3rd Lord Raglan in 1911 about the appointment of a Chief Constable on the Island.

In total, there are eleven documents on the website of Churchill College, Cambridge – four of which are official Cabinet papers from the 1920s.

In 1911, as Britain debated the Parliament Bill – which included home rule for Ireland - Lord Raglan wrote to Churchill about voting on the matter, sparking an exchange of letters with the then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.

The archives also contain a telegram from the Island’s Government Secretary to the Admiralty reporting the sinking of the steamer "Kilcoan" by a German submarine.

And in 1943, Churchill wrote to the Duke of Westminster to reassure him about the treatment of a Polish prince who’d been interned here.

You can find all the documents online at churchillarchive.com