Autograph letter signed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Harold Nicholson 1937

BALDWIN, Stanley, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. Autograph letter signed to Harold Nicolson. 69 Eaton Square, London, 16 November 1937.
 
Single sheet, 125 x 175 mm, written on two sides. Signed "Baldwin of Bewdley". Old horizontal fold, otherwise very good.
 
A post-premiership letter from Stanley Baldwin to Harold Nicolson, thanking him for a book which had been sent to Astley and brought to Baldwin by his younger son. Baldwin writes that he intends to keep it by his bed and read it each night until finished. He then invites Nicolson to visit whenever he wishes, joking that the idea of breakfast would probably give him cold shudders, but adding that his friends are welcome at any hour while his movements remain restricted by arthritis.
 
The book referred to was very likely Nicolson's Small Talk, published in 1937, a collection of essays issued the same year as the letter. Baldwin had retired as Prime Minister only six months earlier, in May 1937, and was created Earl Baldwin of Bewdley shortly afterwards. The letter therefore belongs to the opening months of his retirement and has an unusually relaxed, personal tone. Harold Nicolson was at this time a diplomat, author and Member of Parliament, and would become one of the more prominent political diarists and commentators of the period.