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CHURCHILL, Winston S.
The Second World War
[The Gathering Storm; Their Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; Closing the Ring; Triumph and Tragedy.]
First editions, first impressions. Inscribed on the title page of Volume I; "Inscribed for Sam Hammersley by Winston S. Churchill, 1951," initialled by Churchill on the front free endpapers of Volumes II - IV, Hammersley's ownership inscriptions to the last two volumes. The son of a Lancashire cotton spinner, Samuel Schofield Hammersley served in the First World War as a 2nd Lieutenant at Gallipoli, and as Captain in the Tank Corps, 1916-8. He was elected as Conservative member for Stockport, 1924-35, and for East Willesden 1938-45. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Financial Secretary, Treasury, 1927; Member of the Textile Mission to India, 1933; Tank Adviser to the Ministry of Supply, 1940-3; and Chairman of the Parliamentary Palestine Committee, 1943-5. A supporter of Churchill's stand against the Government of India Bill in 1934-5, Hammersley was one of the core group promoting Churchill for the premiership against Halifax in 1940. Churchill's masterpiece, the single most important historical account of the Second World War. As Max Beloff observed, there was no statesman of the twentieth century "whose retrospective accounts of the great events in which he has taken part have so dominated subsequent historical thinking". A man who had always primarily made his living by his pen, Churchill was the only major war leader to give an authoritative account of the conflict, and his ringing phrases seeped into the collective memory. As J. H. Plumb noted: "Churchill the historian lies at the very heart of all historiography of the Second World War, and will always remain there… [we still] move down the broad avenues which he drove through war's confusion and complexity."
6 volumes, octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine gilt, red top-stain, patterned endpapers. With supplied dust jackets. With diagrams and tables throughout the text. The boards of the first and last two volumes damped at the fore-edges, top-stains faded, light toning as usual. Very good.
