Winston S Churchill, Volume I – Youth, 1874-1900 & Volume II – Young Statesman, 1901-1914 (Two Volumes)

Two volumes.  First editions, first printings, published in 1966 and 1967 respectively.  xxxiv, 608pp, with black and white plate frontispiece, further black and white plate illustrations and folding genealogical table at rear; xxx, 776pp, with black and white plate frontispiece and further black and white plate illustrations.  Both volume uniformly bound in red publisher’s cloth with gilt lettering to the spine.  Top edges sprayed red.  Title pages printed in red and black.  Chunky 8vo.  Cloth slightly rubbed on extreme corners, a little turned in at spine ends.  Some dustiness to text block edges which show some faint and occasional spotting.  Internally a few minor signs of handling else neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original original, heavily shelf worn, rubbed and edge bumped dust wrappers, with that on volume two having a couple of flat creases and more heavily bumped at edges.  Both wrappers are price clipped.  

Winston Churchill designated his son Randolph as his official biographer.  Randolph established a vast research archive and set about planning a sweeping and magisterial eight volume biography of his father.  Randolph however completed only two volumes – the two on offer here – before his sudden death in 1968.  The remaining six volumes in the series were written by prominent historian Martin Gilbert, who had worked as Randolph’s research assistant.  Eventually Gilbert also published a series of ‘companion volumes’, containing primary and other sources, as well but these two volumes remain the only part of the official biography written by Randolph Churchill.