This upcoming Saturday, November 30th marks the 145th anniversary of the birth of one of the most significant figures of the 20th century, Sir Winston S. Churchill.
Black and White Rotary Photograph of Winston Churchill, while he was the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; signed by him.
Born in Oxfordshire to a wealthy, aristocratic family, Churchill joined the British Army in 1895 at the age of twenty-one and saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War, and the Second Boer War. He swiftly gained fame as a war correspondent began what would become a prolific writing career with several books about his campaigns including London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) and Ian Hamilton’s March (1900).
First edition of Churchill’s London to Ladysmith Via Pretoria.
First edition of Churchill’s Ian Hamilton’s March.
Churchill was soon elected a member of the British Parliament and swiftly rose through the ranks serving as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty, championing prison reform and workers’ social security. Throughout the majority of his political career, Winston S. Churchill was inseparable from his cigars, there are few informal photographs that show him without one. Churchill’s love of cigar smoking began with a visit to Havana in November of 1895 and led him to develop relationships with a number of regular suppliers of Cuban cigars, his favorites being Romeo y Julieta and the now-defunct La Aroma de Cuba.
Original black and white photograph of Winston S. Churchill inscribed by him and accompanied by an exceptionally rare unsmoked Winston S. Churchill brand La Corona Cigar
During the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli Campaign; the disastrous outcome of which led to a brief resignation from government. He would later write what many historians consider his masterpiece, The World Crisis, a six-volume, 3,261-page account of the Great War, beginning with its origins in 1911 and ending with its repercussions in the 1920s.
First editions of each volume in Churchill’s masterpiece The World Crisis.
In 1917, Churchill returned to government under David Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, then as Secretary of State for War and Air, and finally for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and Britain’s Middle East policy. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government. He soon took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat from Nazi Germany.
Winston S. Churchill Signed Photograph as Secretary of State for the Colonies
At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and in 1940 became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, replacing Neville Chamberlain. By refusing an armistice with Germany, Churchill kept resistance alive in the British Empire and created the basis for the later Allied counter-attacks of 1942–45, with Britain serving as a platform for the supply of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Western Europe.
First editions of Churchill’s World War II masterpiece The Second World War; inscribed by Churchill
Throughout the war, Churchill’s speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled British. On Victory in Europe Day, Churchill broadcast to the nation that Germany had surrendered and that a final ceasefire on all fronts in Europe would come into effect at one minute past midnight that night.
First edition of Into Battle: Winston Churchill’s War Speeches; inscribed by Churchill.
Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an “iron curtain” of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. Re-elected Prime Minister in 1951, his second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, including the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau Uprising, Korean War, and a UK-backed Iranian coup.
The Centenary Limited Edition of Churchill’s Collected Works.
Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” Two of his most famous works, published after his first premiership brought his international fame to new heights, were his six-volume memoir The Second World War and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples; a four-volume history covering the period from Caesar’s invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914).[578]
First British Editions of each volume of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.; Signed by Winston S. Churchill
A number of volumes of Churchill’s speeches were also published. the first of which, Into Battle, was published in the United States under the title Blood, Sweat and Tears, and was included in Life Magazine’s list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944.
First edition of this illustrated compendium of excerpts from Winston S. Churchill’s famed wartime speeches.
In addition to the pieces featured above, our collection currently includes many other first editions, autographed letters signed, and signed photographs of Winston S. Churchill. View the complete collection here.
