1988 Viscount Kemsley's Luncheons: An Editor's Memories

Description

Author's Presentation Copy, Fine Binding, Leather Binding, Signed, Signed Binding, Very Scarce

A vanishingly scarce privately produced work, in a striking signed morocco binding from Sangorski and Sutcliffe.

Inscribed by the author to the close of the 'Personal' dedication section, with 'I am, dear Lord Kemsley, with all good wishes, Yours ever sincerely W. W. Hadley, New Year's Day 1988'.

William Waite Hadley was a journalist, writer and editor who worked as editor of the Sunday Times between 1932 and 1950, during the period in which it was owned by Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley.

This work, with a four paged typed dedication to the start, is inscribed to Gomer's son, Lionel Berry, 2nd Viscount Kemsley. 

This is an autobiographical work adapted from Hadley's diaries, in which he details the eighty-six luncheons given by the Viscount at the Boardroom at Kemsley House during the Second World War. He explains that 'in the second part of the book (in which this is the only copy) I have drawn on memory and my diary to supplement the vivid pictures given in the Boardroom'.

Luminaries whose private conversations are recorded in this volume include: Anthony Eden; Sir Kingsley Wood, Minister for Air; Leslie Hore-Belisha, Secretary for War; Lord Stamp; Lord Macmillan; Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain; Lord Halifax; Clement Attlee; Lord Beaverbrook; General de Gaulle, and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.

A fascinating record of the private conversations of the men crucial in shaping the outcome of the Second World War.