August 7, 2013

Finest Hour 120, Autumn 2003

Page 40

RICHARD LANGWORTH • DAVE TURRELL • RONALD I. COHEN

• Eightieth Birthday Tribute to Winston Churchill, by Churchill & Gernshein, 1955 Beaulieu Heritage Limited Edition
• Riconquistare Khartoum, by Winston S. Churchill, 1999 Piemme Edition
• Savrola, by Winston S. Churchill, 1950 Illustrator’s Limited Edition
• Homage to Kipling, by Winston S. Churchill, 1937
• Churchill and Hitler: Secrets of Leadership, by Andrew Roberts, 2003
• India, by Winston S. Churchill, 1991 American Edition

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BEAULIEU HERITAGE FORGERIES

A reader asked us to appraise a limited edition (3000) Eightieth Birthday Tribute to Winston Churchill “personally signed by Churchill.” This was a special full red morocco binding of Randolph Churchill’s and Helmut Gernsheim’s Churchill: His Life in Photographs (1955) published by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, an admirer of Sir Winston.

This was not good news to our reader, but so far as we know, all “inscribed” copies of the Beaulieu edition are forgeries, including copies with both Winston and Clementine Churchill signatures. If the Winston signature matches in style the gilt facsimile signature on the cover, it is one of these.

The present Lord Montagu, son of the publisher, told us that the signatures were faked by an unscrupulous employee of his father’s. They tried to find the culprit for some years without success. The man simply copied the gilt signature, which is an imperfect replica of Churchill’s writing.

The Beaulieu Limited Edition is nevertheless desirable in its own right for its fine full red morocco binding and limited nature; it contains a tipped-in, numbered frontispiece bearing the name of the original subscriber and (in some cases) the signature of Lord Montagu. Knowledgeable collectors tend to pay less for the forgeries than the “uninscribed copies,” which sell in the range of £100/$ 150.— RL

A NEW ITALIAN RIVER WAR

Riconquistare Khartoum was published in 1999 by Piemme in Casale Monferrato, near Milan. It is a one-volume edition, of course, but quite a nice production, quarto size, hardbound in dust jacket. Compared to the abridged text (1902-date) it appears to contain the same chapters, but Chapter 12, “The Battle of the Atbara,” has been omitted, and I suspect that some additional trimming has been done within the chapters, given the font size (generous) and the page count (334).

Given also that it has a foreword by the current Winston Churchill, I suspect this is the text of the Prion (Frontiers and Wars) edition. The publishers have taken the trouble of redrawing many of the original maps and “Italianising” them. There is also an inset section of eight photographs. —DT

SAVROLA PRIVATE LIMITED EDITION

Many are familiar with the most beautiful edition of Savrola, containing Andre Collot’s evocative woodcut illustrations (which are going to be part of a new Savrola published next year by St. Augustine Press in cooperation with the Churchill Centre). Published in Monaco by A La Voile Latin in 1950, the original was limited to 950 copies.

We were surprised and delighted to find last year a copy of the illustrator’s private edition, bearing number 69 from the original press run.

Most Monaco editions were packaged in slipcases with unbound sheets, the idea being that the owner would bind each book to his taste. Thus it was for Andre Collot, who bound this copy in full padded tan pebble grain morocco, all edges gilt, titles gilt on spine and cover, raised spine bands, and protected by a tan leatherette slipcase.

Even more unique was the extras Collot bound-in after the title page: a reproduction of Churchill’s letter of 4 May 1951 thanking Collot for his woodcut illustrations, and Collot’s pen & ink sketch of Churchill in his wide brim painter’s hat, signed in pencil by Collot and numbered 61 of 200. (It seems unlikely that Collot prepared 200 copies in this fashion, since this is the only one we’ve seen in 25 years of Churchill book collecting.)

All Monaco editions are desirable; this one, which sold for $1600, was truly unique. —RL

“HOMAGE TO KIPLING”

Mr. Angus MacNeil ([email protected]) wrote for press run information on “Homage to Kipling” (A43/1 in Woods’s second revised edition), printed by the Hereford Times and based on a toast WSC gave on 17 November 1937. The essay was later reprinted in John O’London’s (Woods C360/1), and in the 1975 Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill. None of these printings was mentioned in the first edition of the Woods bibliography.

While the Kipling item is A106 in my own Sir Winston Churchill: A Bibliography of His Published Writings (I have examined copies of it) and I do provide considerably more information than in Woods’s second revised edition, I simply do not have the details of the number of copies printed by the Hereford Times for the Rudyard Kipling Memorial Fund. It is frequently difficult so long after publication to locate such details, as in this instance.

It may be of interest that the article in John O’London’s (Cohen C559) is actually based on but is not the same text as the proposal of the toast to the Rudyard Kipling Memorial Fund, which can be found in Rhodes James’s Complete Speeches, vol. VI, at pp. 5903-06, under the title “Kipling.” —RIC

MORE CHURCHILL LEADERSHIP

Celia Sandys’s and Jonathan Liftman’s We Shall Not Fail: The Inspiring Leadership of Winston Churchill (page 33) is not the only effort on Churchill’s leadership, a popular subject in the wake of 9/11. Andrew Roberts, the well-known historian and a member of ICS (UK), prepared a four-part television series entitled “Secrets of Leadership,” which investigates the techniques exhibited by four different leaders, the second of whom was Churchill; the series was broadcast by BBC TV in February. It is accompanied by a book entitled Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, which will be reviewed in a forthcoming edition of Finest Hour.

INDIA DISAPPEARS

Some 140 remaining copies of the first American edition of India, a facsimile of the rare first edition published in New Hampshire in 1991, were destroyed in a fire in January and, as a result, the book is “out of print” for the first time since publication.

This edition had a total press run of 2000 copies, including 100 copies of a leather-bound, numbered, limited issue. Its purpose was to relieve the shortage of the original title, which saw only two low printings in 1931 and was one of the few Churchill works never reprinted after World War II. It was a two-track affair: the original text was precisely reproduced from an original, set off by bound-in facsimile orange wrappers; before them came a foreword to the new edition and an erudite appreciation by Manfred Weidhorn, who argued that Churchill’s India speeches were the oratorical equals of his WW2 orations, but in a more controversial cause: “Genius exacts its high price, if we like the way 1940 turned out, we have to comprehend 1931.”

The Editor seeks any and all copies of this edition that may be gathering dust, so that a small supply may be kept in hand for future students and scholars. Another printing is unlikely, since the plates have also been lost. 

“Woods Corner” is a bibliophile’s column named for our late friend and bibliographer of Winston Churchill, Frederick Woods.