Description

This First English edition Presentation set, in dust jackets, is signed, inscribed and dated on the front free endpaper of Volume One for Churchill’s personal secretary: “To Jill Maturin from Winston S. Churchill, Christmas 1957,” with the date inked out by Churchill and corrected in his own hand.

GILLIAN MATURIN (1931-1985) was one of Churchill’s postwar secretaries, a New Zealander who commenced working for him just after his retirement as Prime Minister in 1955 and stayed on for three and a half years. She was notably assigned the additional task of looking after Churchill’s Australian Budgerigar parakeet, Toby, when Churchill holidayed in the South of France.

The books are all in very good condition, very faintly damp-stained (no doubt, courtesy of New Zealand) with light foxing to the fore-edges and prelims, including to the signature page, which is also unevenly toned. The dust jackets are unclipped and uniformly bright, with a small rub to the spine of Volume Two, else fine.

It is most uncommon to come upon signed volumes gifted by Churchill to his secretarial staff. This set comes by direct descent from the family of Gillian Maturin.