The World Crisis 1911-1914; The World Crisis 1915; The World Crisis 1916-1918 Part One and Part Two; The World Crisis. The Aftermath; The World Crisis. The Eastern Front. (6 volumes complete) by Churchill, Winston S - 1923

London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. First British editions of Churchill's definitive history of World War I. Octavo, six volumes, bound in full light blue leather, gilt to spine with red and mauve labels, Illustrated throughout with maps and charts. Errata slips to volumes I and IV bound in at content page. Internals sparkling new, some wear to external hinges here and there (some tiny splits in surface of leather) but all volumes firmly bound. Inscribed in 1923, the year of publication, on the free front endpaper. "Sir Charles Darling from Winston Churchill 11 May 1923". Sir (later Baron) Charles Darling (1849 - 1936), barrister, was early in his career, like Churchill Member of Parliament, but spent his career as judge. Darling figures into Churchill's career, as he was the judge who tried Chruchill's famous libel case against Blackwell's Magazine in 1912 (see Randolph Churchill's "Winston S. Churchill Youth 1874 -1900, page 485). He appears later in Martin Gelbert's "Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth" (footnote, page 478) as a notable from the bench who was privately advocating Churchill to join the New Commonwealth Society to promote Britain's rearmament in the 1930s. Churchill presumably held Darling in some regard and the two enjoyed some degree of mutual association as Darling was the subject of one of Churchill's portraits in 1925.