Churchill

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, ECONOMIST, DAILY TELEGRAPH, EVENING STANDARD, OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Undoubtedly the best single-volume life of Churchill ever written' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

A magnificently fresh and unexpected biography of Churchill, by one of Britain's most acclaimed historians

Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in twentieth-centuryBritish history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, manythought him to be the greatest man in the world.

There have beenover a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts nowdraws on over forty new sources, including the private diaries of KingGeorge VI, used in no previous Churchill biography to depict him moreintimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors. The book in noway conceals Churchill'sfaults and it allows the reader to appreciatehis virtues and character in full: his titanic capacity for work (anddrink), his ability see the big picture, his willingness to take risksand insistence on being where the action was, his good humour even inthe most desperate circumstances, the breadth and strength of hisfriendships and his extraordinary propensity to burst into tears atunexpected moments. Above all, it shows us the wellsprings of hispersonality - his lifelong desire to please his father (even long afterhis father's death) but aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almosteveryone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history andits connection to the present.

During the Second World War,Churchill summoned a particular scientist to see him several times for technical advice. 'It was the same whenever we met', wrote the youngman, 'I had a feeling of being recharged by a source of living power.'Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's emissary, wrote 'Wherever he was,there was a battlefront.' Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill'sessential partner in strategy and most severe critic in private, wrotein his diary, 'I thank God I was given such an opportunity of working alongside such a man, and of having my eyes opened to the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.'

Reviews

In a single volume, Andrew Roberts has captured the essence of one of the world's most impactful, most memorable statesmen. It is the crowning achievement of his career - and will become the definitive biography of its subject.