Lord Randolph Churchill, a finely bound presentation copy inscribed by Churchill during his second premiership as a wedding gift to Sir Richard Butler, son of Richard Austen "Rab" Butler, Churchill's Chancellor of the Exchequer and former President of the Board of Education in Churchill's wartime Cabinet.
London: Odhams Press Limited, 1952. Full leather. This presentation copy of Winston Churchill’s biography of his father was finely bound and inscribed by Churchill during his second and final premiership as a wedding gift for Sir Richard Butler. Churchill’s inscription in seven lines in black ink on the front free endpaper reads: “To | Richard Butler | from | Winston S. Churchill | On the occasion of his | marriage | 1952”.
The binding is full dark red Morocco goatskin by Bumpus Ltd. of Oxford St., London and features raised spine bands, gilt spine compartments and spine hubs, gilt ruled covers, edges, and turn ins, and all edges gilt. We know Bumpus to have been used at the time by Churchill for fine binding of inscribed books intended as gifts for significant occasions. Condition is near fine. The elegant binding is square, clean, and tight, showing only incidental scuffing and a barely discernible hint of color shift between the covers and spine. The contents are bright and clean with no spotting or previous ownership marks other than the author’s inscription. The gilt page edges remain bright.
Fittingly, and perhaps not incidentally, Churchill chose to gift this 1952 edition of his biography of his father to the son of one of his close political associates. Sir Richard Butler (1929-2012) was the son of Churchill’s then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Richard Austen “Rab” Butler (1902-1982). Rab Butler had been a pro-appeasement Tory MP before the war, but nonetheless served as Churchill’s wartime President of the Board of Education and, at the time of this inscription, was serving in Churchill’s cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. As Britain's first Minister of Education, he was best known for the Education Act of 1944, which gave every British child a statutory right to free secondary education. Rab Butler would serve as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary after Churchill’s second and final premiership, and became a life peer in 1965, the year Churchill died.
Rab’s son, Richard Butler, became President of the National Farmers’ Union in 1979, during a trying time for British farmers, characterized by falling incomes and land prices and rising EEC food stocks. Richard joined the NFU in 1953, the year after receiving this presentation copy. Butler was knighted in 1981. He married Susan Walker in 1952, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. The provenance of this inscribed volume is by direct family descent followed by being part of the Richard Marsh Churchill collection.
Winston Churchill’s biography of his father focuses on Lord Randolph's career in Parliament after 1880. Lord Randolph died in January 1895 at age 45 following the spectacular collapse of both his health and political career. Winston was 20 years old. When he first contemplated writing his father's biography Winston Churchill was an itinerant soldier and war correspondent who had yet to write his first book. By the time Lord Randolph Churchill was published in 1906, the young Winston Churchill already had half a dozen books to his credit and half a decade in Parliament. By 1906 Churchill had already left his father's political party, prevailed in the same political battle that had terminated his father's career, and was just two years from his first Cabinet post. Churchill was criticized by some reviewers for overplaying his father's accomplishments. Nonetheless, the work was well received both as a frank portrayal of Randolph's extremes and as a showcase for the son's literary talent.
This 1952 single-volume edition contains the full text of the original 1906 two-volume edition plus an interesting new Introduction by the author written specifically for this edition, making it bibliographically important and collectable. Echoing some of the themes of his yet-unpublished essay "The Dream" Churchill summarizes some of the immense changes to Britain and its position in the world and speculates on how his father would have regarded them.
Reference: Cohen A17.5, Woods/ICS A8(c), Langworth p.75. Item #008309
Price: $7,750.00