Winston S. Churchill: 'My Early Life. A Roving Commission.',...

Hammer

£260

Winston S. Churchill: 'My Early Life. A Roving Commission.', London, Thornton Butterworth, 1930, 1st edition, 1st state, with 11 titles by Churchill listed to the verso of the half title as called for, portrait frontis of Lady Randolph Churchill + 28 illustrations and maps (of which many full page plates, folding general map illustrating Churchill's journey during his capture, imprisonment and escape in South Africa/Mozambique during the Boer War, etc), plates collated complete/as called for, bound in navy half morocco gilt, spine with raised bands, gilt ruled in six compartments, gilt lettering and gilt 'lion rampant' motifs in compartments, top edge gilt. Churchill's only volume of sustained autobiography, covering his formative years from his birth in 1874 until his election as MP for Oldham in 1900 - a "witty and elegiac account of his youth shot through with regret at the decline of the social and imperial order in which he had grown up" (ODNB). Among his most widely-read works, it provides a highly entertaining account of his childhood, schooldays at Harrow, military training at Sandhurst, experiences as a war correspondent in Cuba, and service attached to the Malakand Field Force on the North-West Frontier of India, charging with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, and as a POW in South Africa during the Boer War. Cohen A91.1.c; Woods A37(a).