It was given £10.3m to buy and endow Mar Lodge, a 120-square mile conservation area of international importance in the Cairngorms.Churchill legacy, page 3Leading article, page 18. The fund has also provided £1m to endow the archive and £750,000 for development costs, including exhibition and conservation.The other major beneficiary of yesterday’s awards was the National Trust for Scotland. But under the new arrangement the college has gifted its post-1945 papers to the newly formed Sir Winston Churchill Archive Trust, so that the complete archive, valued at £35m, will be preserved in perpetuity as a unified collection.The grant of £12.5m will enable the trust to acquire its interest in the papers from the Churchill Archive Settlement, established by Sir Winston in 1946. “I don’t think the state has any right to just assume these things should be just given for free,” he said.The decision to use lottery money was also defended by the National Heritage Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, who rejected suggestions of an “establishment stitch-up”.The purchase, however, was criticised by some MPs.

Dennis Canavan, Labour MP for Falkirk West, said there were “other priorities” for spending £13m, while Bernie Grant, MP for Tottenham, said he would table Parliamentary questions on the issue, including why the Government did not claim entitlement to the papers.The archive, which has been held at Churchill College, will continue to be displayed at the specially-built Churchill Archives Centre. It’s surely in the same category of national importance for us as the Declaration of Independence for the people of the US.” Andrew Roberts, author of Eminent Churchillians, applauded the purchase. He added that had the collection been dispersed, “everyone in the country would have minded dreadfully. This behaviour contrasts with that of Sir Winston’s widow, Lady Spencer-Churchill, who donated his post-1945 papers to Churchill College, Cambridge.But although some observers privately criticised the family for selling an archive so peculiarly important to Britain, others said it was unreasonable to expect the Churchills not to realise the value of their inheritance.Lord Rothschild, chairman of the trustees at the Heritage Lottery Fund, commended Mr Churchill’s generosity and it is certain that the family would have got substantially more money if it had broken up the archive and sold it separately. It made private approaches to both Sotheby’s and Christie’s with a view to selling the pre-1945 archive on the open market.But saleroom sources said the MP had fought for as much as £20m for the papers – which include Churchill’s tear-stained letters to his mother as a schoolboy as well as correspondence from every sovereign from Edward VII to the Queen.”They got very stroppy about wanting to get some value for these papers and constantly mentioned much higher figures,” a trade insider said. It has also quashed fears of the papers being dispersed or going abroad.It is understood that the Churchill family had long wanted to realise what was the only valuable asset left when Sir Winston died in 1965. The money has been put up by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is charged with distributing lottery money to preserve the national heritage, in its first round of grants totalling £24.6m.
The deal could make Mr Churchill and members of his direct family multi- millionaires at a stroke, even after tax.

Winston Churchill MP, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, has sold the war leader’s collection of pre-1945 letters and speeches to the nation for £12.5m, it was announced yesterday. The value of management buyouts and buy-ins in the first quarter of this year was £1.01bn, a 7.2 per cent rise on the £942m achieved in the same quarter last year, according to figures from the Centre for Management Buyout Research at Nottingham University

Sharon Wallach is consulting editor for the Law pages. That is the principle of daily hearing fees, and I thing that’s a fairer allocation of court costs.”It might not need to be a very long period, but I’d want to expose that for discussion as to how it should be done.”. Critics have feared that access to justice would be reduced by the introduction of the fees, unless they are set much lower for individuals than for corporate litigants, and are strictly means-tested.
Lord Mackay says: “I think the question of the finances of the court is an important one and it is right that the user should have to pay in accordance with use.”In other words, people who are taking up the time of the court for days and days on end in a hearing should, other things being equal, pay more than a person whose case is disposed of in a morning. Controversial proposals to introduce daily fees of up to £500 day for the use of civil courts will be delayed until after a period of public consultation, but the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay, is still committed to the reform. But he insists that it is not pure nostalgia and is confident that, provided enough people get to hear about it, the record will sell.”I’d like to perform in support of the CD. I’ve got a little band together that does these songs,” he says.And if it does take off? “I’d give up the job at the drop of a hat,” he says, before adding with more than a touch of realism that a well- paid City job is not lightly abandoned..