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Edition : First Edition., contemporary blue cloth over board, title in gilt on upper board, title in black ink on flat spine, upper board with blind ruling on upper and lower section, lower left part of the upper board with blind stamp., Great Contemporaries is a collection of 25 short biographical essays about famous people, written by Winston Churchill. The original collection was published in 1937 and included 21 essays mainly written between 1928 and 1931. Four were added to the book in the 1939 edition, about Lord Fisher, Charles Stewart Parnell, Lord Baden-Powell and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1941 the essays on Boris Savinkov and Leon Trotsky were removed from editions published at that time, since they had been opponents of Joseph Stalin, who as leader of Russia was now officially an ally of Britain against Germany in World War II, and the article on Roosevelt was removed in 1942 when America also became officially an ally of Britain with Roosevelt as president. The Odhams edition of 1947 reinstated the three essays after the war. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA (1874 ? 1965) was a British politician, army officer, and writer. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led Britain to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill represented five constituencies during his career as a Member of Parliament (MP). Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, for most of his career he was a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955, but from 1904 to 1924 was instead a member of the Liberal Party. Widely considered one of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and Western world, where he is seen as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy from the spread of fascism. Also praised as a social reformer and writer, among his many awards was the Nobel Prize in Literature. Conversely, his imperialist views and comments on race, as well as his sanctioning of human rights abuses in the suppression of anti-imperialist movements seeking independence from the British Empire, have generated considerable controversy. , Size : 8vo,