CHURCHILL (WINSTON)Autograph letter signed ('Winston S. Churchill') to Rev. John Willis ('My dear Sir'), regretting he can not accept his invitation '...to open your Bazaar at Eccles in December. My engagements this autumn are already too numerous I fear...', on 105 Mount Street headed paper, one page on a bifolium, dust-staining, some foxing particularly at margins, creased at folds, 8vo (202 x 127mm.), Tours, 25 September [no year]Footnotes:Whilst undated, the present letter can be dated to the period 1901-1905 when Churchill resided at 105 Mount Street in Mayfair and he was acting as MP for Oldham, a position he held from October 1900 to 1906. It may have been written during the autumn of 1904 when he withdrew from politics in order to complete the biography of his father, perhaps en route to Sir Ernest Cassel's villa in Switzerland where he stayed for three weeks (Martin Gilbert, Churchill, A Life, 2000, p.169). The recipient of our letter is likely to be the Rev. John Willis (1864-1936) who held the living of St Mary, Eccles in Lancashire during the same period, replacing his father-in-law Frederic Daustini Cremer (1848-1927) who had held the post from 1898 to 1901. The letter is part of a collection deriving from the family of Frederic Daustini Cremer. Provenance: Rev. John Willis (1864-1936); thence by descent to the present owner.