In Peace: Goodwill
CHURCHILL, Sir Winston. The Second World War, 6 vols. London: Cassell & Co. 1948-54.
8vo. 6 vols.; original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in original dust-jackets; decorative endpapers; top edges red, illustrated with maps and diagrams, some folding; a few light, minimal marks to boards; slight chipping to edges of wrappers, especially vol 1; light even toning to spines of wrappers; very good.
First editions of all six volumes. With errata note in Vol I as called for.
The set covers the period from the end of the First World War to July 1945. Throughout the course of the war, Churchill had kept regular minutes and memoranda which proved highly useful to him as he began the mammoth task of setting all his thoughts onto paper. Unknown to many at the time, he had also agreed to a deal with Clement Atlee's Labour government, which allowed him and his assistants on the project access to all necessary documents, provided that no official secrets were revealed, such as the work of the code breakers at Bletchley Park, or the planning of the atomic bomb. In this way the work is a comprehensive, although biased and in part incomplete memoir. Churchill labelled the "moral of the work" as follows: "In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill".
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