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19 CHURCHILL, Winston S. The Story of the Malakand Field Force. London, New York & Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898 an exceptional copy of churchill’s first book First edition, first state without errata slip, home issue in the “apple green cloth” (Woods), which is particularly prone to fading and mottling. This an exceptionally nice copy of Churchill’s first book, Langworth noting that “truly fine copies are extreme rarities, and even those with routine wear and tear are difficult to find”. This copy has an excellent military provenance, coming from the library of Godfrey Charles Morgan, 2nd Baron Tredegar (1830–1913), who as a young captain in the 17th Lancers lead a section in the Charge of the Light Brigade, one of only two officers of the regiment to return unscathed. Churchill himself served as a light cavalryman in the Lancers in India and later, most famously, at Omdurman, the last full-scale cavalry charge in British history. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt within blind panel, front cover lettered in gilt on recessed panel, black endpapers. Half-tone portrait frontispiece with tissue-guard, 6 maps, of which 2 folding and in colour. With 32 pp. publisher’s catalogue at rear (Cohen regards as no significance for priority). Bookplate of Baron Tredegar to front pastedown. Very lightly rubbed, spine ends mildly crumpled, tiny chafed spot on front joint, scatter of foxing to fore edge, free endpaper versos lightly browned, half-title toned through contact, a couple of leaves roughly opened with small chips from head margin, faint offsetting from coloured maps, book block otherwise clean, square and tight. A superior copy. ¶ Cohen A1.1.a; Langworth pp. 12–14; Woods A1a. £8,500 [138593]
20 CHURCHILL, Winston S. Corrected draft typescript, signed, on the Russian threat to peace in Europe. 1931 “is a european war becoming more probable?” Typescript, extensively corrected and signed by Churchill, offering an astute commentary on European Realpolitik, anticipating the Soviet bloc and the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, and highlighting the Russian threat to European peace. This article was one of a number on European affairs commissioned in 1931 for syndication by Hearst newspapers, through their foreign correspondent William Hillman. The article was published in the Milwaukee Sentinel (a Hearst newspaper from 1924) on 23 August 1931, headlined: “Winston Churchill sees Soviet Russia as Gigantic Menace to the Peace of Europe”. This gives a fair sense of Churchill’s handling of his chosen theme. He opens with the assertion that following the First World War the conviction that the “idea of war had become so odious, that we need not worry about it again in our life time, or possibly that of our children” probably still “represents the probabilities” and “certainly should remain the basis for the calculations of prudent and practical men”. However, “the danger point is the Russian Soviet Government . . . All along the frontiers of Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea lies a line of newly-born or re-born states, who owe their existence or aggrandizement to the disaster which Russia suffered in the Great War. Finland, Esthonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Roumania have all carved their fortunes in whole or in part out of the Russian mass . . . All the promptings of the modern Russian heart, nationalist and communist alike, point to
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