My Early Life

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Winston revered his father as a great statesman. The feelings of respect and affection were not reciprocated. Lord Randolph frequently expressed harsh disappointment in Winston.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” Churchill told the House of Commons in his first speech as prime minister. As well as elegiac and filial, Churchill is also funny. His account of learning the Latin noun mensa is a classic: Winston was deeply distressed when she left the household, even though he was then a young man, a budding Army officer, and the household had no further need for a nanny. Double, Double Toil and Trouble [Macbeth, 4:1] Hardcover. This is the first edition, first printing, first state, of Churchill's autobiography. My Early Life sold very well at the time and has seen a great many editions since, many of them collectible in their own right, but of course a premium attaches to first editions. The challenge for collectors is that the plum-colored binding of this edition proved especially vulnerable to fading, soiling, and wear; nearly all copies are considerably spine faded. Moreover, the contents proved quite susceptible to spotting. Two states of the first edition, first printing are identified, with a list of either 11 or 12 Churchill titles in the boxed list of "Works by the same Author" on the half-title verso. With 11 titles on the half title verso, this copy is definitively first state. There were also a number of first edition binding states, bound in either a coarse or a smooth plum colored cloth, with the title stamped on the front cover in either three or five lines. This first edition, first printing, first state is the second binding state, denoted by five lines on the front cover. Per Cohen (A91.1.b, Vol. I, p.330) and our own experience, first state copies with a five-line front cover and smooth cloth are less common than those bound in coarse cloth. This is such a copy, bound in the smooth cloth. This copy is in very good overall condition, notable for especially bright, clean contents remarkably clean for the edition. We find no spotting, no previous ownership marks, and no appreciable age-toning. We note only mild dust soiling to the top edges. The plum cloth binding remains tight and square, with flaws endemic to the edition, but nonetheless sound, complete, presentable, and unrestored. The spine is sunned as usual, but nonetheless retains a good amount of its plum hue and clearly legible gilt print. The binding is also cleaner than typical, with only minor blemishes. The corners remain sharp, despite mild shelf wear to extremities. The spine ends show wrinkling and there is a short, cosmetic split to the spine cloth at the lower rear joint.My Early Life covers the years from Churchill s birth in 1874 to his first few years in Parliament. One can hardly ask for more adventurous content. These momentous and formative years for Churchill included his time as an itinerant war correspondent and cavalry officer in theaters ranging from Cuba, to northwest India, to sub-Saharan and southern Africa. Churchill also recounts his capture and escape during the Boer War, which made him a celebrity and helped launch his political career.Herein Churchill says: "Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don't be content with things as they are as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. (p.60)By the end of his own twenty-fifth year, Churchill had been one of the world s highest paid war correspondents, published five books, made his first lecture tour of North America, braved and breasted both battlefields and the hustings, and been elected to Parliament, where he would take his first seat only weeks after the end of Queen Victoria s reign.My Early Life remains one of the most popular and widely read of all Churchill's books. An original 1930 review likened it to a "beaker of Champagne." That effervescent charm endures; a more recent writer called it "a racy, humorous, self-deprecating classic of autobiography." To be sure, Churchill takes some liberties with facts and perhaps unduly lightens or over-simplifies certain events. Nonetheless, the factual experiences of Churchill s early life compete with any fiction, and any liberties taken are eminently forgivable, in keeping with the wit, pace, and engaging style that characterizes the book. Reference: Cohen A91.1.b, Woods/ICS A37(aa), Langworth p.131. First edition, first printing, first state, second binding state.

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Between 1922 and 1924 Churchill left the Liberal Party and, after some hesitation, rejoined the Conservatives. Anyone could “rat”, he remarked complacently, but it took a certain ingenuity to “re-rat”. To his surprise, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin, an office in which he served from 1924 to 1929. He was an ebullient if increasingly anachronistic figure, returning Britain to the Gold Standard and taking an aggressive part in opposing the General Strike of 1926.

Lord Randolph Churchill's political career was meteoric. In 1886, at age thirty-seven, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the youngest to hold the office in over a hundred years. In less than six months, he resigned from the Cabinet over a matter of principle - his insistence on reducing defense spending. He never held high office again. "One could not grow up in my father's house... without understanding that there had been a great political disaster," said Winston. Such was my introduction to the classics, from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit. The book begins by describing his childhood and schooldays, and provides context for the earlier published accounts of events in his early life. He describes his large collection of toy soldiers, his usually unsuccessful experiences in school, and how his family decided his path in life was to join the army as an officer. The life of Sarah, the Churchills’ third child, born in 1914, was no happier than that of her elder siblings. Amateur dramatics at Chartwell led her to take up a career on the stage which flourished for a time. Sarah’s charm and vitality were also apparent in her private life, but her first two marriages proved unsuccessful and she was widowed soon after her third. Her first husband was a music hall artist called Vic Oliver whom she married against her parents’ wishes. Her second was Anthony Beauchamp but this marriage did not last and after their separation he committed suicide. After passing out of Sandhurst and gaining his commission in the 4th Hussars’ in February 1895, Churchill saw his first shots fired in anger during a semi-official expedition to Cuba later that year. He enjoyed the experience which coincided with his 21st birthday.That same year, Winston Churchill joined the House of Commons as a Conservative. Four years later, he “crossed the chamber” and became a Liberal. In 1895, within six months, first Winston's father, then Mrs. Everest, died. Winston now faced the world without his idolized father and without his primary emotional support and mother figure. Likewise, the British government ignored Churchill’s warnings and did all it could to stay out of Hitler’s way. In 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even signed an agreement giving Germany a chunk of Czechoslovakia – “throwing a small state to the wolves,” Churchill scolded – in exchange for a promise of peace. Did you know? Sir Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six-volume history of World War II.

He needed to support himself financially and learned he could earn money as a reporter of the scenes of war he witnessed as a soldier, and after he left the army. He wrote books on the major military campaigns, earning money from the sales. His first attempt to stand for election as a member of parliament failed; events in South Africa drew him there, gaining him a reputation that let him win a seat once he returned to England at age 26. His dramatic escape from being a prisoner of war gained him fame, and his subsequent newspaper accounts of later battles secured his generally favorable reputation. He describes his program to broaden his education as an officer in India with much spare time on his hands, especially in the heat of midday. His mother shipped books to him, and he read widely in history, philosophy, and ethics, at the moment when he was ready to absorb the information and keep it in his memory. He describes the effect of one incident in travelling by ship to his first posting in India that dislocated his shoulder, an injury that affected him the rest of his life, limiting his activity in sports and a few times in battle. One example of this was his reliance on a pistol instead of his cavalry sword in battle, with at least one situation where his injured shoulder would have led to him being a casualty instead of the victor.

My Early Life

It means what it says. Mensa, a table. Mensa is a noun of the First Declension. There are five declensions. You have learnt the singular of the First Declension.' For young gentlemen of Winston's social class only certain professions were considered suitable. The university was the gatekeeper to all but the military, and Winston's poor performance at school closed the university's doors to him. However, Churchill could not be kept out of power for long and Lloyd George, anxious to draw on his talents and to spike his critical guns, soon re-appointed him to high office. Their relationship was not always a comfortable one, particularly when Churchill tried to involve Britain in a crusade against the Bolsheviks in Russia after the Great War. As Churchill tried to forge an alliance with the United States, Hitler made him the gift of another powerful ally – the Soviet Union. Despite his intense hatred of the Communists, Churchill had no hesitation in sending aid to Russia and defending Stalin in public. “If Hitler invaded Hell,” he once remarked, “I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”