THE SECOND WORLD WAR BY WINSTON CHURCHILL 1948-54 SIGNED & INSCRIBED FIRST EDITION SET

THE SECOND WORLD WAR BY WINSTON CHURCHILL 1948-54 SIGNED & INSCRIBED FIRST EDITION SET

£5,500.00

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[CHURCHILL, WINSTON S.]. The Second World War. London: Cassell and Company. Ltd., 1948-54.

First UK editions, first impressions. Signed and inscribed by author. Complete in six volumes. Cloth-bound. Hardcovers. Octavo (215 x 140 mm), pp. xvii, 640; xvii, 684; xvii, 818; xviii, 917; xviii, 673; xviii716. Volume I: The Gathering Storm; Volume II: Their Finest Hour; Volume III: The Grand Alliance; Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate; Volume V:Closing the Ring; Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy. Bound in original black cloth with gilt titles to spines. Top page edges tinted red. Patterned endpapers decorated with a design that alternates a lion rampant with the initials W.S.C. Initial and terminal blanks plus half-titles present. Illustrated with numerous maps and charts, some folding. An index in double columns to rear of each volume. Signed and inscribed verso half-title of volume one by Winston S. Churchill to Major Makgill Crichton Maitland, and dated 14th June, 1949. Condition: GOOD to VERY GOOD. A largely clean and tight set supplied without dust jackets. Some very trivial marks to covers. Volume IV with some marking to bottom page edges. Interiors excellent. Scarce thus.

Notes: First UK editions, first impressions, of Churchill's wonderful masterpiece, perhaps the single most important historical account of the Second World War. It's publication was a major factor in Churchill being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. As Max Beloff observed, there was no statesman of the 20th century "whose retrospective accounts of the great events in which he has taken part have so dominated subsequent historical thinking". The publication date of the UK editions were slightly preceded by the US editions. This set is enhanced by the author's inscription to Major Makgill Crichton Maitland, which is inked verso the half-title page of volume one only. David Makgill Crichton was educated at Eton and, following in his fathers footsteps, was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards in 1944. First attached to the Irish Guards, he subsequently joined 1st Battalion in BAOR in 1945 and in 1946 was granted a commission and joined the newly formed Guards Independent Parachute Company as the first platoon commander of 1 Platoon, responsible for the pathfinding role. Retiring from the army in 1957 he lived out the remainder of his life in Scotland. This set comes from the family.

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