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

I had a short hurried conversation yesterday evening with Sir Winston Churchill. I thought he was not looking at all well.¹

He told me that he was not at all dissatisfied with the running of his horse ‘Red Winter’ at the Curragh on the 10th July. He said he had won £500 on the horse and he thought it was something to have got third in an Irish Classic. He said he had hoped to see the horse run in Ireland but that, as I knew, circumstances here had made it impossible for him to get away. He said he was now thinking of bringing over the horse to race here in England in the back-end. He sounded to me as if he had given up all idea of going to Ireland.

I said that, since he was so pleased with the horse’s running last Saturday, I was sorry he hadn’t been able to get away to see the race. He said that he was sorry too and that, as I knew, his idea in leasing the horse was to have occasion for visiting Ireland which he wanted to do. He went on: ‘I think I had established good personal relations with the last Government and that they would have been pleased to see me over there. I don’t know about your new Government’. I said that I was sure there was no difference between their feeling and that of their predecessors. He asked me to tell him something about the members of the new Government and he listened attentively while I did so. At the end he made the comment that he knew that Mr. W.T. Cosgrave² had a son in the new Cabinet but he didn’t know that it included a nephew of Kevin O’Higgins³ also.

As I say, I didn’t think he looked well and he seemed to me to have given up any idea of visiting Ireland for the moment at any rate.