INTO BATTLE
-Signed Leatherbround Presentation Copy to his Wartime Private Secretary John Peck-
1941
First English Edition (Sixth Printing)
Cassell and Co. [London]
Biblio: Cohen A 142.1.e) (Woods A66a)
8vo (313 pages, 47 speeches, photo frontis)
Leatherbound [Navy Blue leather]
Item Number: 214171
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Collector's Guide
Into Battle is the first volume of Winston Churchill’s collected World War II speeches (covering May 1938-November 9, 1940). Here are many of Churchill’s most notable oratorical flourishes of the war, including “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” “their finest hour,” and “never was so much owed by so many to so few.” Churchill’s speeches were collected and published yearly throughout the war beginning with this one in 1941. Into Battle was published in the U.S. and Canada under the title: Blood, Sweat and Tears. The U.S. (and Book-of-the-Month-Club) editions added four speeches that do not appear in the English edition, those of December 19 and 23, 1940 and January 9 and February 9, 1941.
Description
This First English edition was rebound at Winston Churchill’s direction in full-navy blue morocco for presentation to John Peck, his only Private Secretary to serve without interruption for the duration of Churchill’s wartime Prime Ministership, May 1940 to July 1945.
The book is signed in ink on the second front free endpaper: “To John Peck from Winston S. Churchill 1946.”
Sir JOHN HOWARD PECK (1913-1995) joined the Civil Service in 1936. Appointed Assistant Private Secretary to Winston Churchill when Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939, Peck followed him to No. 10 Downing Street as one of four Private Secretaries. Following Churchill’s defeat in the 1945 General Election, Peck served Clement Attlee briefly, then transferred to the Foreign Office in 1946. He later held a number of positions within the Civil Service before his final appointment as British Ambassador to Dublin 1970-1973.
The book is the Sixth wartime printing of the First English edition, issued April, 1941 (Churchill was not choosy about presentation editions). The leather here exhibits a touch of shelf-wear at the spine with some rubs at the head and tail and two faint dents in the lower edge of the rear board. The upper fore-edge gilt is still bright. There is a very light stain on the center fore-edge. The contents are fine and unfoxed.