June 14, 2010
"I Love Paris"
A SIGNED First French Edition
On this day in 1940, Paris fell to the Nazis. "The news from France is very bad,” Churchill broadcast three days later. "…We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honor. We shall defend our Island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right."
Eight years later, in victory, the first volume of Churchill's war memoirs was published in France, translated, and with a new, emended Foreword in which Churchill charitably exonerated the French "poilu" for their wartime failures. We have an extraordinarily rare SIGNED copy of this first volume. For those of you who love Paris (and even for those who don't) it is certainly well worth a look.