As wartime prime minister of Britain, Winston Churchill cultivated a 'bulldog' image of a growling, acerbic, cigar-chomping leader. But previously unpublished letters reveal a different side to his personality.
The letters, to be auctioned by Christie's of London next month, point to a man passionately in love with a beautiful Englishwoman living in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, and devastated when she decided to marry the son of a former Viceroy of India.
Churchill was 22 years old and serving in the British army when he met Pamela Plowden in November 1896. It was apparently love at first sight.
He proposed marriage and, after she initially accepted, Churchill wrote to his mother that 'she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen'.
But he was acutely aware that his lack of money made him an unattractive suitor. In March 1899, after he became a war correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, Churchill wrote to her from Calcutta.
'My dear Miss Pamela ... I have lived all my life seeing the most beautiful women London produces. [But] never have I seen one for whom I would forego the business of life. Then I met you ... Were I a dreamer of dreams I would say ... 'Marry me and I will conquer the world and lay it at your feet'.'