A Speech by The Prime Minister in the House of Commons, August 20th, 1940. de CHURCHILL, Winston S - 1940

[London:] The Baynard Press [for His Majesty's Stationery Office,], 1940. First edition, sole impression, of one of Churchill's best-known speeches, containing the phrase, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few". Churchill delivered his oration "in the midst of the Battle of Britain and, unknown to the Prime Minister, just before its most intense period was to begin. While it was a general appraisal of the state of war, it is best known for Churchill's famous encomium to the RAF, then stubbornly resisting the German onslaught in the south of England" (Cohen). "If the Gettysburg Address is one of the most moving statements of democracy confronted by tragedy, Churchill's historic exhortations are its equal in their ringing assertion of democracy confronting the seemingly irresistible forces of tyranny... At the time when Great Britain stood alone against the weight of Nazi and Fascist aggression, her allies either prostrate or yet to join her, the gap between destruction and survival seemed a very narrow one. In it stood nothing much but the resolution of the islanders and the indomitable figure of their Prime Minister... He himself maintained that it was the people of Britain who had the lion's heart; that he was merely privileged to make it roar" (PMM). Provenance: the collection of Steve Forbes. Octavo, pp. 16. Original grey wrappers, wire-stitched as issued, front cover lettered in dark red. Housed in a custom red half morocco solander box. Spine repaired with archival tape, wrappers spotted, chip to head of rear wrapper, contents a little toned with running crease at upper outer corner: a good copy. Cohen A131.1; Printing and the Mind of Man 424; Woods A60(a).