THOMPSON, Carlos. The Assassination of Winston Churchill. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1969. Special signed issue.
Special signed issue, identified as such on the copyright page. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the original dust jacket. Inscribed by Thompson on the dedication leaf: “Dear Lord Portal, sir, here, at last, the opus. With gratitude and best cordiality, as ever Carlos Thompson. 27.IV.69.”
A highly significant presentation copy to Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Frederick Algernon Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford, KG, GCB, OM, DSO & Bar, MC, DL, Churchill’s wartime Chief of the Air Staff.
The printed dedication is itself central to the book’s purpose: “I dedicate this book to General Wladislaw Sikorski, statesman and humanist, and to the youth of the world, regardless of their creed, who continue to offer their lives for what their leaders choose to call Truth and Justice.” Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile and commander-in-chief of its forces, died when his Liberator crashed shortly after take-off from Gibraltar on 4 July 1943.
Despite its provocative title, Thompson’s book is not concerned with an attempt on Churchill’s life. It is a detailed rebuttal of the allegation, advanced most prominently by Rolf Hochhuth in Soldiers, that Churchill sanctioned, or acquiesced in, Sikorski’s murder. Drawing on witnesses, official records, technical evidence and the wartime political context, Thompson challenges the transformation of an air crash into a conspiracy against Churchill.
The Portal association is exceptionally close. The book reproduces facsimiles of Churchill’s confidential personal minute to the Chief of the Air Staff and Portal’s formal reply of 18 July 1943, written scarcely two weeks after the crash. Churchill asks what information had been conveyed to the Governor of Gibraltar before the Court of Inquiry had reported. Portal replies with the survivor’s account of an apparently normal take-off followed by locked controls, and records the discovery of a fractured elevator-control bracket in the wreckage, while noting that its significance could not yet be determined.
These are not simply relevant illustrations. They are documents exchanged between Churchill and Portal concerning the exact event at the centre of Thompson’s case. Thompson’s presentation of his “opus” to Portal, therefore, places a defence of Churchill before one of the very few senior wartime figures whose own official correspondence is reproduced within it.
A near fine copy in a professionally restored dust jacket, with earlier tears skilfully repaired and stabilised. It now presents extremely well.
