CHURCHILL OUT OF HIBERNATION, WEEK 16

We have news! The impending publication of a marvelous new book has inspired us to undertake
an author event at Chartwell Bookseller; scrupulously social distanced, of course. (No guests at all.) 

The book is: THE DAUGHTERS OF YALTA.  The author is Catherine Grace Katz. Her event will stream on our YouTube channel next Friday, October 2, at 5:00pm (cocktail time) and will be available for viewing thereafter at any time that suits you. Signed First Editions will also be available. You may advance order one now by clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, in our ongoing journey through the book-length works of Winston Churchill, we give you: MY EARLY LIFE.

In November 1929, Winston Churchill returned to England from a two-and-a-half-month tour of the United States that had climaxed with the Stock Market crash — which Churchill literally witnessed firsthand on October 24, “Black Thursday,” in New York City; including the sight of a man leaping to his death just below Churchill’s window at the Savoy Plaza hotel.

The dawn of “The Great Crash” brought the utter destruction of Churchill’s own highly-leveraged personal fortune. He was forced to economize upon returning home by largely closing up Chartwell, his home in Kent, leaving only his study there unsealed and accessible. He and his family instead took up a small cottage on the property, built for the butler’s use, as their home-within-their-home.

In an attempt to replenish his severely depleted coffers, Churchill quickly plundered his published magazine work for book projects, beginning with a volume of personal memoirs covering his childhood, wayward school years, army service in India and early career as a young war correspondent.

Titled My Early Life: A Roving Commission in Britain (in the U.S. publisher Charles Scribner oddly opted for “A Roving Commission,” the book’s subtitle, as a more marketable main title), the text was supplemented with new material that Churchill dictated at Chartwell during April, May, and June of 1930.

My Early Life was published in October 1930 to laudatory reviews and strong sales. It remains Churchill’s most delightfully readable book, a revealing window into the man that Winston Churchill grew up to be, overcoming the tribulations of a childhood that was often decidedly painful. As Churchill’s only volume of personal memoirs, My Early Life is a testimony to Churchill’s greatest personal attribute: Resiliency.

“Don’t be content with things as they are. 
‘The earth is yours and the fullness thereof.’
Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities.
…Don’t take No for an answer.
Never submit to failure.” 

MY EARLY LIFE

Safety and health we continue to wish you
and, above all else, resiliency.