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This first edition is the author s inscribed presentation copy to Winston S. Churchill. The work is the author s study of naval warfare between Britain and France in the early eighteenth century during the reign of Queen Anne. It was written concurrent to the author s work as a naval history research consultant to Churchill regarding the same period, and is inscribed on the front free endpaper in black ink in five lines: "The Right. Hon: | W. S. Churchill | from | J. H. Owen | 28 April 1938".Condition is very good. The blue cloth binding is square, tight, and sharp-cornered, with light scuffing, mild spine toning, and minor wrinkling to the spine head. The contents retain a crisp feel with quite light spotting primarily confined to the prelims and page edges. The endpapers show transfer browning from the pastedown and mild age-toning to the text block edges.Commander John Hely Owen RN (1890-1970) served in the Royal Navy during Churchill s tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty. Owen became a Lieutenant in 1912 and served as a submariner during the later years of the First World War. He rose to Lieutenant-Commander in 1920, while Churchill was Secretary of State for War and Air. Owen was with the Naval Intelligence Department in 1931 when Churchill first engaged him for research assistance and retired as a Commander in 1934, only to rejoin the Naval Intelligence Division in 1939, the year the Second World War began and Churchill returned to the Admiralty. In addition to authoring this book, Owen was co-editor of four volumes of the Navy Records Society. Owen s papers are held by the University of Cambridge, including letters from Churchill to Owen while Owen was working as Churchill s naval historical adviser and working on this, his own book.The gift of this book to Churchill was more than apropos. Firstly, in April 1938, Churchill was just a few months away from publication of his fourth and final mammoth volume of the history of his great ancestor, John Churchill, who had become Captain-General and first Duke of Marlborough fighting for Queen Anne. Owen had been assisting Churchill with Marlborough in "naval aspects of the work" since the summer of 1931. Owen was among the small group of advisors explicitly credited; In the "August 13, 1938" Preface to the final volume, Churchill wrote "I have been greatly assisted in the necessary researches… again by… Commander J. H. Owen, R.N." Churchill, the former cavalry officer, would play a pivotal role in Britain s Navy in both of the twentieth century s world wars and the Admiralty would play a pivotal role in both imperiling and reviving Churchill s political fortunes.In October 1911, aged 36, Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. He entered the post with the brief to change war strategy and ensure the readiness of the world s most powerful navy. He did both. Even Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener, with whom Churchill had been variously at odds for nearly two decades, told Churchill on his final day as First Lord "Well, there is one thing at any rate they cannot take from you. The Fleet was ready." (The World Crisis: 1915, p.391) Nonetheless, when Churchill advocated successfully for a naval campaign in the Dardanelles that ultimately proved disastrous, he was scapegoated and forced to resign, leaving the Admiralty in May 1915. Churchill spent part of his political exile as a lieutenant colonel leading a battalion in the trenches at the Front. Before war's end, Churchill was exonerated by the Dardanelles Commission and rejoined the Government, but the stigma of the Dardanelles lingered.Churchill spent most of the 1930s out of power and out of favor, warning against the growing Nazi threat and often at odds with both his Party leadership and prevailing public sentiment. As the Second World War approached, Churchill passed into his sixties with his own future as uncertain as that of his nation. In 1938, when Owen inscribed this book to him and he w.
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