The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory, 1874-1932.

MANCHESTER, William.

Item Number: 140691

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1983.

First edition of the first of the author’s three volumes on Winston Churchill. Octavo, original cloth, cartographic endpapers, illustrated. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “For Robert Haft, With all good wishes. William Manchester.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket, owner inscription to the second endpaper and half-title. Jacket photograph courtesy of Imperial Was Museum. Author photograph of William Manchester and Lady Soames (Mary Churchill) at Chartwell.

A trilogy of biographies covering the life of Winston Churchill, William Manchester's The Last Lion was published in three volumes: two in the 1980s, and the third posthumously as Manchester died while in the process of writing it. Before his death, Manchester selected Paul Reid to complete the final volume which was published in November 2012. The first volume in the series, Visions of Glory 1874-1932 was published in 1983 and in 2011, the book was placed on Time magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923.