An oil painting by Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister during World War II, sold at auction for nearly three times its estimate, Sotheby's said."View of Tinherir", painted in 1951 during one of his frequent trips to Morocco after the conflict, made 612,000 pounds (1.2 million dollars) including premium, from an estimate of just 250,000 pounds.

The price tag is a record for a work by Churchill, who was a keen artist.

He gave it to United States General George Marshall, the wartime chief of staff, as a symbol of Anglo-US solidarity in 1953.