Description

EXCEPTIONAL CHURCHILL PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY: FIRST EDITION OF CHURCHILL’S SCARCE MARLBOROUGH, INSCRIBED IN THREE VOLUMES, EACH IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION, TO FRIEND AND CONSERVATIVE MP HENRY PAGE CROFT

CHURCHILL, Winston. Marlborough: His Life and Times. London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., (1933-38). Four volumes. Octavo, original plum cloth over beveled boards. 

First trade editions, with hundreds of maps and plans (many folding), plates and document facsimiles, inscribed by Churchill in each of the first three volumes, “To Henry Page Croft from Winston S. Churchill,” and each inscription dated in the year of publication.

Churchill wrote this history of his famous ancestor to refute earlier criticisms of Marlborough by Macaulay. “Though it was a commissioned work, Churchill would not have invested nearly a million words and ten years had it not had special significance for him. For he wrote about a man who was not only his ancestor, an invincible general, the first of what became the Spencer-Churchill dukes of Marlborough, and a maker of modern Britain, but also a supreme example of heroism in the two vocations which mainly interested Churchill and in which ultimate triumph seemed to have eluded him—politics and war making” (Wiedhorn, 110). “It may be his greatest book. To understand the Churchill of the Second World War, the majestic blending of his commanding English with historical precedent, one has to read Marlborough. Only in its pages can one glean an understanding of the root of the speeches which inspired Britain to stand when she had little to stand with” (Langworth, 164). Issued simultaneously with the signed limited edition of 155 copies. Errata slips present in Volumes I-III. Cohen A97.2. Woods A40a. Without original dust jackets.

The recipient of this copy was a Conservative member of the House of Commons, a WWI general who, on Churchill’s recommendation, was made the first Baron Croft in 1940. “He was one of a small group of Churchill’s friends who discussed defense and foreign policy in the years before the [second world] war, although he found himself temporarily estranged from them when he supported the Munich agreement in 1938” (DNB). Churchill later named him joint parliamentary under-secretary for war, answering for the War Office in the House of Lords.

Very light occasional foxing to interiors. Fading to spines of Volumes I to III. Near-fine condition. Inscribed Marlborough sets are extremely scarce, especially with such impeccable provenance.