[CHURCHILL, WINSTON S.]. Marlborough: His Life and Times. London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1947.
First edition thus. Complete in two volumes. Leather-bound. Hardcover. Thick octavos (220 x 145 mm.), pp. 1050; 1078. Bound in publisher's original quarter morocco. Spines gilt. Top page edges gilt. Initial and terminal blanks plus half-titles present. Hand-marbled endpapers. Both volumes illustrated with numerous maps, plans, facsimile documents and letters. A bibliography, appendix and index in double column to the rear of each volume. Vol. 1: includes sections on Ashe House, The Jovial Times, Arms, Marriage, Sedgemoor, The Invasion, King James's Memoirs, The Tower, the Grand Alliance, The Sunshine Day, The Tory Ferment, Trepanning an Army, The Conquering Hero, The Unfought Waterloo, and The Mortified Adventurer, etc., etc. Vol. 2, includes: The Whig Approach, The War in Spain, The Year of Victory, Abigail, The Morrow of Success, The Home Front, and The Winter Struggle, The Whigs and Peace, Tournai, Mortifications, Dissolution, General Only, Ne Plus Ultra, Exile, At Blenheim Palace, etc., etc., and an index. Condition: Collated complete. Bindings tight and secure with hinges intact. Very slight dulling to spines. Covers and contents largely very clean. Without previous ownership markings. Very good.
Note: This the first two-volume edition which is an entirely new setting (not merely a rearrangement) of the original four-volume edition of 1933-34. It is unabridged and retains all the maps and plans of the first edition, but the illustrations are reduced. Included are 2 portrait frontispieces, 14 facsimiles and 196 maps and plans (a number double-page) in the text. Marlborough His Life and Times is a panegyric biography written by Winston Churchill about John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Churchill was a lineal descendant of the duke and conceived the idea of writing the book by 1929, when the conservative defeat in the general election meant that he was no longer a government minister.
