STEP BY STEP

Description

This nearly mint copy of the First English Edition, in dust jacket, is a quintessential presentation copy, inscribed and signed: “To Eddie from Winston, June 1939,” in ink on the front free endpaper, in the month of publication.

Winston Churchill signed with his first name solely for intimates.

EDWARD (“Eddie”) HOWARD MARSH (1872-1953), his long-standing private secretary and dear friend, was someone with whom Churchill shared many of the greatest triumphs and darkest hours of his career. The two were “inseparable,” according to Churchill’s son Randolph. Marsh accepted the post of private secretary in 1905 and went on to accompany Churchill to every government post that he occupied until Marsh’s retirement thirty years later. “Whether Churchill was in or out of office their friendship persisted,” wrote Randolph, “indeed, he became a great family friend and was a constant visitor to Chartwell even in the bleak thirties.”

Perhaps this book was inscribed for Marsh during one of those Chartwell visits. In the last week of June 1939, Churchill sent out to friends and associates fifty-four personal copies of STEP BY STEP, which would be published on June 27. “The most splendid stuff,” wrote Marsh to Churchill, after finishing the book. “They [these articles] preserve in an astonishing manner and with most salutory effect the balance between hope and fear – and they are all prodigious vindication of your foresight.”