Marlborough: His Life and Times

Marlborough: His Life and Times is a panegyric biography written by Winston Churchill about John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Churchill was a lineal descendant of the duke. The book comprises four volumes, the first of which appeared in October 1933 (557 pages, 200,000 words) with subsequent volumes in 1934, 1936 and 1938. The publisher was George G. Harrap, who in 1929 agreed an advance of £10,000 for the publishing rights, topping the offer made by Churchill's customary publishers, Thornton Butterworth. American publisher Scribner's paid a £5,000 advance for the United States publishing rights. At that time Churchill envisaged writing between 180,000 and 250,000 words, to be published in no more than two volumes. Cumulative sales of the first volume were 17,000 copies, 15,000 for the second and 10,000 for the third and fourth, which was a respectable though not exceptional performance for such a work.

The historian J. R. Jones stated that Churchill, by studying Marlborough's career and reasons for his success, helped equip for his role as Prime Minister from 1940 onwards. It is also said that the books are "unique in defence literature - for rarely has a future national leader in wartime revealed so much about his approach to war and politics as Churchill did in those works."