The Story of the Malakand Field Force was Winston Churchill’s first book, a chronicle of true-life military adventures drawn from newspaper dispatches filed by the then-22-year-old correspondent while serving on India’s Afghanistan-bordering Northwest Frontier under Major-General Sir Bindon Blood. Wrenching to read how little has changed in this region since Churchill’s time. The First Edition is easily distinguished by its apple-green cloth binding but Malakand is prized by collectors in almost any edition.
The River War was Winston Churchill’s second book, a brilliant history of British involvement in the Sudan and an account of the fierce campaign for its reconquest that Churchill himself participated in and, in many significant ways, disapproved of. Originally published in two large, lavish and, today, extremely rare volumes, THE RIVER WAR was abridged by Churchill himself for a 1902 one-volume edition. All subsequent editions have been versions of Churchill’s abridgement.
Savrola was Winston Churchill’s first and only novel; a statement of personal and political philosophy delivered as a work of dystopian fiction about dictatorship (with an astonishing relevance to our own dire present moment in time). U.S. publication preceded the British issue by roughly ten days, rendering the American first edition the true first.
London to Ladysmith was the first of two Boer War volumes derived from Winston Churchill’s newspaper dispatches as a war correspondent in South Africa. It features a thrilling account of his escape from the Boers, an escape that would help launch young Churchill’s political career. The First English edition was published elaborately in fawn-colored cloth stamped with a striking cover illustration of the infamous armored train that Churchill was defending when he was captured. The American edition is an unadorned, though still handsome, red cloth binding with gilt lettering.
Ian Hamilton’s March concluded Churchill’s Boer War narrative begun with London to Ladysmith. It features the triumphant liberation of his former-POW campmates in Pretoria, South Africa. The English and American editions were both bound in red cloth but the American edition is a match to the American edition of London to Ladysmith.
Mr. Brodrick’s Army is the holy grail of Churchill book collecting. A 104-page softcover collection of six Parliamentary speeches delivered by the then-28-year-old MP opposing plans for the expansion of England’s peacetime army, Brodrick was published by Arthur L. Humphreys, General Manager of Hatchard’s, the renowned London bookshop that still stands at number 187 Piccadilly. Hatchard’s had a long history even then as a publisher of pamphlets, both political and otherwise. Humphreys and Hatchard’s would go on to issue Churchill’s 1905 speech compendium, For Free Trade, in an identical format to Brodrick, bound in unprepossessing printed red wraps that did not age well. The surviving handful of copies (fewer than 20 accounted for) today constitute the stuff of collectors’ dreams.
Lord Randolph Churchill was Winston Churchill’s first work of biography and an impassioned two-volume defense of his maligned father’s posthumous reputation. It was subsequently issued in an unabridged one-volume edition and is a bulwark of any Churchill collection.
For Free Trade has always been, in tandem with Mr. Brodrick’s Army, the holy grail of Churchill book collecting. A small, 136-page, softcover collection of nine speeches on the title subject delivered by Winston Churchill as a 31-year-old MP for Manchester, For Free Trade was published by Arthur L. Humphreys, General Manager of Hatchard’s, the renowned London bookshop that still stands at number 187 Piccadilly. Hatchard’s had a long history even then as a publisher of pamphlets, both political and otherwise, including Churchill’s earlier 1903 speech compendium, the aforementioned Mr. Brodrick’s Army. Identical in format to Brodrick and just as precious, For Free Trade was produced in very small numbers, bound in unprepossessing red printed wraps that did not age well. The surviving handful of copies (as few as 15-20 accounted for) today constitute the stuff of collectors’ dreams.
My African Journey is Winston Churchill’s travelogue account of his whirlwind tour of Britain’s East-Africa territories as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; his first official government office. The book features eloquent and perceptive observations about Africa, and much big-game hunting, with young Churchill as guide. The first English edition is particularly coveted for its handsome cover woodcut of the author posed beside a trophy rhinoceros. The more plainly-bound American edition, which utilized English first edition sheets, has no woodcut on its brownish-red buckram cover, yet it is the rarer volume.
Liberalism and the Social Problem was Winston Churchill’s first widely-published hardcover collection of political speeches, an expression of “radical” liberal views that were quite advanced for his time, prefiguring the modern social safety net that Churchill and David Lloyd George would soon set in motion. Though the burgundy clothbound English edition was handsomely produced, with Churchill’s signature in gilt across the front board, the American edition, similarly bound but without the gilt signature, is rarer. However, it is increasingly scarce in either edition.
The People’s Rights collects six Churchill speeches from the 1910 General Election rebuking the Tories for their rejection of “The People’s Budget.” Originally published in simultaneous hard and softcover editions, the book is now rarely encountered in either format. In fact, this is probably the third rarest Churchill book after Mr. Brodrick’s Army and For Free Trade. It was reprinted twice in the 1970s, though even these reprints are scarce today.
The World Crisis is Churchill’s highly subjective history of the First World War. Comprising five volumes (in six books) written over eight years, the initial titles were first published in the U.S. (by a matter of days), making the American edition the true first edition. Volume I (1911-1914) and Volume II (1915) were published in 1923. Volume III (1916-1918 ) was published in two parts in 1927 (hence the five/in six volumes ultimate format). Volume IV (The Aftermath 1918-1928) was published in 1929; and Volume V (The Unknown War/The Eastern Front) in 1931. A one-volume abridgment by the author was soon issued. Most subsequent re-issues have been incomplete, abridged, or otherwise condensed versions of the original text.
My Early Life is the only volume of personal memoirs that Churchill ever wrote. It is, arguably, his most entertaining book and an excellent entry point into his writing; a vivacious memoir of youth and wayward school boyhood. Published in the U.S. under the title A Roving Commission, the book has been endlessly re-issued in a variety of editions. True first editions, however, remain quite rare.
India is a slender compendium of Churchill’s speeches about Gandhi and “Our Duty in India.” It was simultaneously published in especially handsome hardcover and softcover editions, both much prized today by collectors.
Thoughts and Adventures is a terrific anthology of Churchill essays and magazine articles from the 1920s and early 1930s on a wide variety of subjects, including, especially, his much-loved essay “Painting as a Pastime.” It was issued in the U.S. under the title Amid These Storms.
Marlborough is Winston Churchill’s majestic biography of John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough; soldier, statesmen, hard-headed Churchillian ancestor. Initially published in England as a lush four-volume set and then as a somewhat less deluxe six-volume set in America, it was subsequently issued in an unabridged two-volume edition and a single-volume abridgment.
Great Contemporaries comprises twenty-one penetrating profiles of political and literary luminaries. An utter delight to read, beautifully written and brutally opinionated (Hitler comes off just a bit better than George Bernard Shaw), the ensuing “Revised” edition (and most future reprints) added four new profiles: Lord Fisher, Charles Stewart Parnell, Lord Baden-Powell and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Arms and the Covenant captures Churchill’s initial alarms against Hitler and the Nazis in forty-one prophetic pre-war speeches delivered from 1928-1938, edited by his son Randolph. Published in the U.S. under the title While England Slept, the book, according to FDR, sat on his White House nightstand in 1938.
Step by Step is a chilling anthology of Churchill’s prescient newspaper pieces about the rising Nazi threat, written for the Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph, commencing in 1936 with Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, through the final months before the declaration of war in 1939.
The War Speeches of Winston Churchill were first preserved in seven individual speech compilation volumes, collected and published yearly in the U.K. and in the U.S., beginning in 1941, under the following titles: Into Battle (1938-1940 speeches; published in the U.S. as Blood, Sweat and Tears), The Unrelenting Struggle (1940-1941), The End of the Beginning (1942), Onwards to Victory (1943), The Dawn of Liberation (1944), Victory (1945), and Secret Session Speeches (Various Dates). Unlike the English editions, which were all published by one publisher (Cassell), the American series was initiated by G.P. Putnam with Blood, Sweat and Tears, then carried on by Little, Brown, up till the final volume, Secret Session Speeches, which was published by Simon and Schuster.
The Second World War, also known as Winston Churchill’s War Memoirs, won Churchill the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. Published in six volumes that appeared over six years, the books each came out first in the U.S. under the following titles: THE GATHERING STORM (Volume I/1948), THEIR FINEST HOUR (Volume II/1949), THE GRAND ALLIANCE (Volume III/1950), THE HINGE OF FATE (Volume IV/1950), CLOSING THE RING (Volume V/1951) and TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY (Volume VI/1953).
The ensuing English editions, issued within months of the American, contained numerous corrections and even a few additional maps. The English edition is therefore considered more definitive, though today the American edition may be rarer. The set was simultaneously published by the Book-of-the-Month-Club in America, printed on the same presses as the first editions, and thus can easily be confused with them. An excellent one-volume abridgment was published in 1959; largely the work of Churchill’s research assistant, Denis Kelly, though Churchill did contribute an interesting epilogue covering the years 1945-1957.
The Postwar Speeches of Winston Churchill were published beginning in 1948 with The Sinews of Peace, which collected late-1945-1946 speeches, including Churchill’s historic Fulton, Missouri “Iron Curtain” speech. This was followed by Europe Unite in 1950 (1947-1948 speeches), In the Balance in 1951 (1949-1950 speeches), Stemming the Tide in 1953 (1951-1952 speeches), and The Unwritten Alliance in 1961 (1953-1959 speeches). The Unwritten Alliance appeared in England only and is thus the rarest of the postwar speech volumes.
Painting as a Pastime is Winston Churchill’s marvelous essay celebrating his favorite hobby. It first appeared in the Strand magazine over two issues in December 1921 and January 1922. It was then anthologized in Churchill’s 1932 book, Thoughts and Adventures, before being published on its own as this delightful little volume, which has since been endlessly re-issued in a variety of English and American editions.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples was Winston Churchill’s last great work; a sweeping, four-volume history of England, her colonies, and the language that Churchill so venerated and ennobled in his own writings. Published nearly twenty years after Churchill composed his first draft in the late-1930s, the books were released after the war simultaneously in Britain, the U.S., and Canada over a period of three years. The original English edition was handsomely printed, the American and Canadian editions less so. Subsequent re-issues and abridgments abound.
Frontiers and Wars is a one-volume abridgment of Churchill’s first four books (Malakand, The River War, London to Ladysmith, and Ian Hamilton’s March), which were all derived from his newspaper dispatches covering various colonial wars. Although Frontiers and Wars appeared in Churchill’s lifetime, he had nothing to do with its preparation, nor did it contain new material, though it is, in and of itself, a new text and a fascinating distillation.
Young Winston’s Wars constitutes a thorough documentation of Winston Churchill the war correspondent, reprinting the texts of his original newspaper dispatches from colonial wars in India, the Sudan and South Africa, 1897-1900.
If I Lived My Life Again is a heavily abridged but nevertheless well-chosen compilation of Churchill’s writings and speeches assembled by journalist Jack Fishman, who wrote the first biography of Churchill’s wife, My Darling Clementine, published in 1963.
Six major posthumous works have been issued reprinting Churchill’s writings and speeches in significant new formats, The Collected Works of Sir Winston Churchill, The Major Works of Sir Winston Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, The Great Republic, and Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches.
Two contemporary publications by the International Churchill Society preserved between covers for the first time a pair of fascinating Churchill obscurities.
The Dream was issued leatherbound in book form by the International Churchill Society in 1987. It is an ethereal short story — one of Winston Churchill’s few works of fiction — first published in The Daily Telegraph in 1966. In The Dream the ghost of his father, Randolph, visits Churchill in 1947. The son reviews for his father all that has happened to the world since Randolph Churchill died in 1895 without ever revealing the great role that he himself played in these events.
The Chartwell Bulletins were issued as a handsome paberback by the International Churchill Society in 1989, collected and edited by Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert. They are a lovely curiousity: twelve unexpectedly tender letters written by Winston Churchill to his wife Clementine during her absence from Chartwell on a South Seas voyage between January and April 1935.
We are also pleased to share
A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill by the eminent Churchill bibliophile Richard M. Langworth.
All thirty-seven books published by Winston Churchill during his lifetime are detailed with bibliographic particulars for identifying all editions, issues, and impressions.
Just click HERE.
