Broadcast Addresses

Inscribed to a French diplomat

First edition, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "Inscribed by Winston S. Churchill January 1942"; one of 250 unnumbered copies printed by the Grabhorn Press for Ransohoffs. This copy was inscribed for the Washington-based French diplomat Count André de Limur (1890-1971), during Churchill's visit to Washington in December 1941 to January 1942.

During the visit, soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry to the war, Churchill cemented his relationship with the president and addressed a joint meeting of Congress. Limur served in the French armed forces in the First World War, winning the Croix de Guerre as a cavalry officer, then pilot. He thereafter entered the French diplomatic corps, holding posts in Madrid, London, and Washington. When France fell in 1940, he resigned from the French embassy in Washington, became an American citizen, and joined the US army, landing on D-Day with Army Intelligence. As General Patton's liaison with Free French forces, he accompanied General LeClerc at the liberation of Paris. It is extremely likely that Churchill had met de Limur either when he served as a military attaché in London in the early 1920s, or perhaps when the Churchills were guests of his parents-in-law, the Crockers, in San Francisco in 1929.

The book collects six of Churchill's speeches from 1940 and 1941, of which three are here printed for the first time in book form. It is rare in signed state, with auction records tracing only one such copy (signed by Churchill in 1950, rebound, PBA Galleries, 2001).