Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Confidential)

As I told the Minister at the time, Mr. Winston Churchill mentioned to me last November that he was thinking of coming to Ireland to see a horse which he had bought, run in the Irish Derby.

When I met him at Buckingham Palace last night, he reverted at once to this conversation. He told me that the horse in question - Canyon Kid - had since died of heart failure so he wouldn't be coming to Ireland after all. He went on: 'I'm sorry. I would have liked to have gone over and I'm sure the people would have given me a good reception - particularly if my horse had won. The Irish are a sporting people. You know I have had many invitations to visit Ulster but I have refused them all. I don't want to go there at all, I would much rather go to Southern Ireland. Maybe I'll buy another horse with an entry in the Irish Derby.'

These are his actual words so far as I can remember them. The conversation was after dinner and Mr. Churchill was in the good humour in which he invariably is at that time of the evening. He referred to the forthcoming election and asked how I thought it was likely to go. When I said that people like myself living outside the country were really in no position to form an idea, he said that, in any case, it was a silly question - nobody ever knew how the elections were going to go. He seemed well informed enough about the situation because he knew, for example, that the Two-Party V. the Multi-Party system of Government was one of the issues.

Of the leaders of the Conservative Party, Mr. Churchill and Lord Salisbury seemed to me the most affable and well disposed when I meet them. I don't get the same impression at all from Mr. Anthony Eden which is regrettable in view of the possibility that the Conservatives may form the next Government and Mr. Eden may be Prime Minister, if not immediately, at least before the end of the next Parliament. Mr. Churchill struck me as having aged considerably since I saw him in Strasbourg last summer.