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This presentation copy of the first edition of the sixth and final volume of Winston Churchill s history of the Second World War is inscribed by Churchill to his former daughter-in-law Pamela. The notably warm, playful inscription is inked in blue in six lines on the front free endpaper recto: "To | Pamela | from | Winston | by | Winston". Provenance is known. Affixed to the front pastedown, opposite the inscription, is a printed plate certifying provenance from the 1997 Sotheby s sale of the effects of Ambassador Pamela Harriman. This book was acquired from Sotheby s by the Forbes family, becoming part of their legendary Churchill collection, later passing via Christies to the Churchill collection of Richard C. Marsh, from whence it came to us.Condition is very good. First printing of the first edition is confirmed by head and tail bands, yellow-orange topstain, date at the foot of the title page, and title page verso print information. The red cloth binding is square, clean, and tight, modestly spine toned with light shelf wear to extremities, including wrinkling at the spine ends and slightly bruised lower corners. The contents are clean with no spotting and only mild age-toning. We note a trace of finger soiling at the upper fore edges and a cryptic 2717/115" in pencil to the upper right corner of the rear pastedown.Born in England as Pamela Beryl Digby, (1920-1997), Pamela Harriman eventually became a naturalized citizen of the United States and ended her career, and life, as America s Ambassador to France. In 1939, aged 19, Pamela had already "developed the charm and social skills for which she would become well known" when she married Randolph Churchill, the only son of the man soon to be Britain s wartime Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill. "Problems surfaced in the wartime union from the beginning, some perhaps attributable to Pamela s own inclinations, but quite certainly attributable to Randolph s "drinking, carousing, gambling, and generally boorish behavior." Nonetheless, Pamela developed a strong bond with her father in law." Certainly part of that bond, five months after Winston became wartime Prime Minister, Pamela gave birth to her only child, Winston s namesake grandson. Upon meeting Churchill in January 1941, President Roosevelt s trusted advisor, Harry Hopkins, recalled "he showed me with obvious pride the photographs of his beautiful daughter-in-law and grandchild."While her husband served abroad and soused, Pamela had wartime affairs notably with Averell Harriman, President Roosevelt s envoy to England, as well as the war correspondent Edward R. Murrow. But not all of her connections were affairs; through Winston she met the publishing magnate Max Beaverbrook, who hired her as a reporter.Divorce, a move to Paris, and more noteworthy affairs, mostly with prominent, married men, followed the war. One of these, Broadway producer Leland Hayward, divorced and, in May 1960, became Pamela s second husband. In the years that followed, Pamela "made connections in both Hollywood and New York" and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. After Hayward died, Pamela married her former paramour, Averell Harriman, "then seventy-nine, who had served as governor of New York and had run as a Democratic presidential candidate." Pamela threw herself into Democratic Party fundraising and king-making, eventually supporting the presidential aspirations of Bill Clinton, who in turn appointed Pamela U.S. Ambassador to France. Pamela served from 1993 to 1997, dying in Paris just a few months before her planned retirement. "Her memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C, deemed by the New York Times the closest thing to a state funeral Washington has seen in years, was attended by more than 1,200, including President Clinton.References: Cohen A240.1(VI).a; Woods/ICS A123(aa); Langworth p.258; ANB; Gilbert, Vol. VI.
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