PORTRAIT OF JAMES LOUIS GARVIN, EDITOR OF THE BRITISH NEWSPAPER THE OBSERVER, INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY HIM.

A head-and shoulders portrait of Garvin seated at a desk with his arms folded over a pile of papers. The photo is inscribed to future Congressman Seymour Halpern, then a young autograph collector.

James Louis Garvin [1868-1947] was a British journalist, editor and author. Garvin, who had always wanted to be an editor, was given a job as a proof reader and occasional contributor at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. In 1908, after years of honing his skills as a journalist at various newspapers and moving to London, he accepted the editorship of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer. He revolutionized Sunday journalism and returned the paper, which was facing financial troubles at the time, to profitability. In 1921, Garvin moved to Beaconsfield, continuing to edit The Observer and starting work on a biography of his hero Joseph Chamberlain. After Churchill, an old friend, became Prime Minister in 1940, Garvin offered him unstinting support. This led to disagreements with the proprietors, the Astor family, who asked him to resign. He continued writing weekly columns, first for the Sunday Express and then the Daily Telegraph until shortly before his death in 1947.

The Queens, New York Republican Congressman Seymour Halpern (1913-1997) started his political career as a campaign aide to New York's powerful mayor Fiorella La Guardia and first served in New York's State Senate for 14 years before seeking a seat in the U.S. Congress. In Albany Halpern sponsored 279 bills that became law, including measures on schools, housing, civil rights, nutrition and mental health. A Liberal, he was something of an anomaly as the lone Republican representative from New York City, and generally garnered support from Labor Unions and endorsement from the Liberal Party. Yet he never even considered switching parties as he considered membership in the Republican Party a family tradition and commitment. While he found ample time for his private pursuits, including painting and collecting autographs, he took his legislative duties very seriously. Of these, he was proudest of his co-sponsorship of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and of the original 1965 Medicare legislation.