A strange and wonderful book

One of the most bizarre books in my collection is Winston S. Churchill's treatise on art, Painting as a Pastime. Subtitled "an instructive and inspiring invitation to the joy of painting," this book represents a pronounced departure from Churchill's preferred medium – enormous magisterial works of exhaustively researched (and depending on with whom you speak, tendentious) history. Churchill, who was by no means a bad painter, provides a brief but compelling argument for the many advantages of artistic activity. The text runs to a mere 25 pages. Perhaps two dozen colour plates follow, each displaying one of the great man's paintings. (His work, incidentally, is not at all bad.) Painting as a Pastime is a remarkable book, both for its strangeness and its insight into the mind of a true polymath.