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This British first edition, second printing is inscribed and dated by Churchill in black in three lines on the half title recto: "Inscribed by | Winston S. Churchill | 1946", the year after the end of the Second World War. Great Contemporaries is Churchill's much-praised collection of insightful essays about 21 leading personalities of the day. These 21 include the likes of Lawrence, Shaw, and, most famously, Hitler, who died ignominiously by his own hand in a Berlin bunker the year before Churchill inscribed this copy.This second printing was issued the same month as the first printing and is identical but for the notation of the second printing on the title page verso. Condition of this inscribed copy is very good. The blue cloth binding is square, clean, and tight with sharp corners. Wear is minimal, substantially confined to a little wrinkling at the spine ends. We would grade this copy as near fine if not for customary toning of the spine, which extends slightly onto the boards adjacent to the joints. Fortunately, the spine toning is uniform and the gilt print remains bright and clearly legible. The contents are respectably clean, despite modest age-toning. We find no previous ownership marks other than the author s inscription. Light spotting appears substantially confined to the first and final leaves and page edges. The blue topstain is uniformly dulled but still distinct. The endpapers show transfer browning from the pastedown glue.By the time Churchill signed this volume, in the year following the end of the Second World War, he had arguably proven himself the greatest of his contemporaries. But nine years before he inscribed this copy, Great Contemporaries was published in an almost unrecognizably different pre-war world one in which Churchill s own future was as uncertain as that of his nation.At the time, Churchill was still out of power and out of favor, at odds with both his own Conservative Party leadership and prevailing public sentiment. Neville Chamberlain, perhaps Churchill s most vexing political opponent at the time Great Contemporaries was published, wrote to Churchill on 4 October 1937: "How you can go on throwing off these sparkling sketches with such apparent ease & such sustained brilliance… is a constant source of wonder to me." Naturally, in the course of sketching the character of his contemporaries Churchill necessarily reveals some of his own character and perspective.Churchill's portrait of T.E. Lawrence, published here just a few years before the Second World War, might well have been written about the author rather than by him: "The impression of the personality of Lawrence remains living and vivid upon the minds of his friends, and the sense of his loss is in no way dimmed among his countrymen. All feel the poorer that he has gone from us. In these days dangers and difficulties gather upon Britain and her Empire, and we are also conscious of a lack of outstanding figures with which to overcome them. Here was a man in whom there existed not only an immense capacity for service, but that touch of genius which everyone recognizes and no one can define." (Great Contemporaries, p.164) Churchill's piece about Hitler can be a shock to the modern ear, as it underscores his ability to write a balanced appraisal of his subject while expressing his earnest desire to avoid the war that he would fight with such ferocious resolve only a few years later. There is a reason this book has seen many subsequent editions in the intervening years. It was written with what has been called "penetrating evaluation, humor, and understanding."While some of the subjects of Churchill's sketches have receded into history, many remain well-known and all remain compellingly drawn. This is as engaging a read today as it was in 1937. Reference: Cohen A105.1.c, Woods/ICS A43(b.2), Langworth p.182.
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