Books

First one-volume edition, first impression, inscribed by the author on the initial blank, "To Major General G. M. Bullock from Winston S. Churchill. Cairo, 6 January 1908". Churchill was then on his return home from his five-month tour of East Africa, which he worked into his 1908 My African Journey. From 3 to 9 January he stayed in Cairo with George Mackworth Bullock (1851-1926), then commander of the British troops in Egypt. Bullock had served in the Boer War and was appointed Governor of Bermuda in 1912. "The River War is a brilliant history of British involvement in the Sudan and the campaign for its reconquest: arresting, insightful, with tremendous narrative and descriptive power" (Langworth, p. 27). The book was first published in two volumes in 1899. For this one-volume edition (the second overall), Churchill shortened the text by a third but added a new preface and chapter on the destruction of the Khalifa and the end of the war. He also extensively revised the book to omit any criticisms of Kitchener and the British Army: "as a Conservative MP, he found it prudent to tone down his questioning of the imperialist adventure" (Rose, p. 61). Provenance: the collection of Steve Forbes. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered and decorated in gilt, black endpapers. Housed in blue quarter morocco solander box. Photogravure portrait frontispiece of Kitchener, 14 coloured maps and plans (6 folding), 8 sketch maps in text. Light wear at extremities, inner hinges neatly repaired. A very good copy. Cohen A2.2; Woods A2(b). Richard M. Langworth, A Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, 1998; Jonathan Rose, The Literary Churchill, 2015.

The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), by Winston Churchill, is a history of the British imperial involvement in the Sudan and the campaign to reconquer the Sudan following the defeat of the revolt led by the Mahdist leader, Muhammad Ahmad.