A History of the English-Speaking Peoples - Sir Winston Spencer Churchill 1956 - Cassell and Company Ltd, London - First Editions A handsomely bound four volume set of fine first editions published shortly after Sir Winston Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is the author's last great work, only available some twenty years after he wrote the first draft, which then lay dormant whilst he attended to National and Parliamentary matters.

‘The flash and dash of Churchill's zest will render these four volumes readable, humane, exhilarating, memorable and exemplary, few historians, moreover, have been gifted with a style of equal subtlety and vigour, a style at once classical and romantic, precise and imaginative, tolerant yet gently ironical, deeply sensitive to the tragedy of human failure and scornful only of those who are faithless to the virtue within them. These four volumes leave us with enhanced admiration for human character, and an added compassion for human fallibility. They are the legacy of a man of superhuman energy, great intellectual powers and utmost simplicity of soul.’ - Harold Nicolson,
New York Times Book Review, 1958.
  In his preface he remarks that the book 'slumbered peacefully, until 1956, 'when things had quietened down'. Reading reports of the last decade of his life, one is struck by the central interest his history represented in his final years, and how rapidly he sank into decline and depression after the final volume. was published.

References: Woods,
Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill A138(a). Langworth, A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill 315.

Four tall octavo volumes (binding size 25x17cm), pp. [2] xxi [1] 416 [2]; [2] xi [1] 344 [4]; [2] xi [1] 332 [4]; [2] xi [1] 322 [2].
  Finely bound in recent three-quarter green oasis morocco over matching cloth, spines with raised bands and 'lions rampant' tooled in gilt, twin red morocco title labels lettered and ruled in gilt, top edges gilt.   Condition: Fine in fine bindings   Ref: 111655   Price: HK$ 12,000