The End of the Beginning

Descripción

This is the British first edition, first printing of the third volume of British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill's war speeches, containing speeches throughout 1942. This year was a low point of the war, full of setbacks and disappointments across the globe for the British. This first edition, first printing is in very good condition in a very good plus dust jacket. The jacket is increasingly elusive thus, not only unfaded, with bright yellow and red hues on both the front face and spine, but also complete except for a neatly price-clipped lower front flap. The jacket has excellent shelf presentation and shows only mild soiling and light shelf wear to extremities. The jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover. The volume beneath has a lovely binding square, clean, tight, and unfaded with sharp corners, bright spine gilt, and only trivial shelf wear confined to extremities. The contents have no previous owner names, though there is both modest age-toning and spotting, primarily confined to the first and final leaves and page edges.Throughout 1942, Churchill's speeches conveyed sober, resolved, and eloquent defiance - with of course an occasional sparkle of Churchillian wit, even in the dark hours of the war. The title of this volume comes from Churchill's 10 November 1942 speech at the Lord Mayor's Day Luncheon in London at a time when fortune finally favored the British with victories in North Africa:"The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end.It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."Few books are as emblematic of Churchill s literary and leadership gifts as his war speeches volumes. During his long public life, Winston Churchill played many roles worthy of note - Member of Parliament for more than half a century, soldier and war correspondent, author of scores of books, ardent social reformer, combative cold warrior, Nobel Prize winner, painter. But Churchill's preeminence as a historical figure owes most to his indispensable leadership during the Second World War, when his soaring and defiant oratory sustained his countrymen and inspired the free world. Of Churchill, Edward R. Murrow said: "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle." When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, it was partly "…for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values." Between 1941 and 1946, Churchill's war speeches were published in seven individual volumes. The British first editions are visually striking, but were printed on cheap "War Economy Standard" paper, bound in coarse cloth, and wrapped in bright, fragile dust jackets. They proved highly susceptible to spotting, soiling, and fading, so the passage of time has been hard on most surviving first editions.Reference: Cohen A183.1.a, Woods/ICS A94(a), Langworth p.218. N° de ref. del artículo 007386

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