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INSCRIBED BY CHURCHILL: FIRST EDITION OF ARMS AND THE COVENANT

CHURCHILL, Winston. Arms and the Covenant. Speeches by The Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill. Compiled by Randolph S. Churchill. London, (1938). Octavo, original blue cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box.

First edition of this collection of Churchill’s speeches on foreign affairs and national defense, with a photographic frontispiece portrait, inscribed, “To E.C. Finch from Winston S. Churchill, February 1939.”

All but two of the speeches collected here were delivered by Churchill in the Commons in the years leading up to the Second World War. Collected by Churchill’s son, Randolph, and revised a second time by Churchill, these represent some of the best written by a man who “devoted more time than any other modern orator to the preparation of his speeches” (Langworth, 190). “The finest (and most ominous) pre-war warning of Winston Churchill occurs on [its] penultimate page… Available in no other Churchill book… the last four paragraphs of that famous speech on 24 March 1938… summarize the theme of this volume, a precursor to the official theme of The Gathering Storm: ‘How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to re-arm” (Langworth, 190). Cohen A107. Langworth, 191. Woods A44(a). Book fine. Scattered light foxing and expert restoration to scarce, price-clipped dust jacket. A fine inscribed copy.