"May you have a chance of letting off a gun or a revolver or something at the enemy during this fateful year." - Jean: A Memoir by Ian Hamilton, a presentation copy of General Sir Ian Hamilton's extraordinary, privately printed tribute to his late wife, inscribed by Hamilton during the Second World War to a military comrade from the Boer War and First World War Ian Hamilton, with contributions from various others, including Winston S. Churchill Other Non-Fiction,Other Signed & Inscribed

This is a jacketed presentation copy of General Sir Ian Hamilton s extraordinary, privately printed tribute to his late wife, inscribed by Hamilton during the Second World War to an old military comrade from the Boer War and First World War.Hamilton s lengthy inscription, which fills the front free endpaper recto, is dated "Monday, 12th January 1942" and was completed at Hamilton s "1, Hyde Park Gardens London" address. It reads in part: "My Dear Madocks, For long we have seen little of one another but today I had the pleasure of meeting your better half at lunch with Lady Melchett who gave us a top-hole lunch of all sorts of delicacies flavored with violent anti Hitler diatribes So the happy thought came to me that as the Memoir to my "Jean" had just been completed you ought to have it, and here it is! I hope very much you will like it. May you have a chance of letting off a gun or a revolver or something at the enemy during this fateful year Your old friend Ian Hamilton".The book, bound in fragile, decorated paper-covered boards and wrapped in a dust jacket of matching paper, is in very good condition, the jacket very good minus. The binding is square, clean, bright, and tight, though with shelf wear to extremities and short splits at the lower joints. The contents are clean with no spotting, no ownership marks other than Hamilton s inscription, and only mild age-toning. The dust jacket is spine-toned, with light overall soiling, wear to extremities, fractional loss at the spine head, and loss to a depth of one inch at the heel. The jacket is protected beneath clear, removable mylar.General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton (1853-1947) was a decorated soldier whose active service spanned the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1879 to command at Gallipoli in 1915. It was in India that Hamilton met Jean Miller Muir (1861-1941), daughter of a wealthy Scottish entrepreneur, who Hamilton married on 22 February 1887 in St. Paul s Cathedral, Calcutta. They remained faithful companions for the next 54 years until Lady Hamilton s death. The Hamiltons long resided at 1 Hyde Park Gardens the address at the head of this inscription - from 1913 until General Sir Ian s death.Hamilton and Madocks served together during the Boer War in South Africa, more than four decades before Hamilton wrote this inscription. William Robarts Napier Madocks (1870-1946) went on to serve as Brigadier-General in the British Army during the First Word War, and was awarded the CB, CMG, DSO, and Croix de Guerre.Of note, Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, were great friends of the Hamiltons. Churchill first befriended then-Colonel Hamilton in India in 1897. Churchill was in the first year of his Second World War premiership when Jean died, and he contributed to this book. An autograph letter signed by Churchill on his "10, Downing Street, Whitehall" stationery dated "25 Feb 1941" is reproduced in facsimile at pp. 41-42 and transcribed at p.43. The Churchills and Hamiltons were already "firm friends" during the First World War when friendship between their families "was sealed" by the Dardanelles disaster. Then-First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill had recommended Hamilton for high command of the Gallipoli expedition. Given the criticism both men faced in the aftermath, either man might have displaced blame to the other. Instead, "the progenitor of the expedition and its commander, Churchill and Hamilton" worked closely together to encourage a factual, accurate inquiry.It was not just the two men who were friends. "Jean and Winston shared a love of painting." And Jean and Churchill s wife, Clementine, were also close. Towards the end of the First World War, "the pregnant Clementine, worried about her family finances, even offered to give her unborn child to the childless Jean Hamilton. There could hardly be a more graphic example of the closeness of their families and friendship."Sources: Cohen B77.1; ODNB; Auckland Museum; Andrew Roberts