This insightful portrait of Winston Churchill delves beyond well-known political moments, incorporating perspectives from various individuals who encountered him throughout his life. From Bletchley Park codebreakers and Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin, through writers as varied as H. G. Wells and P. G. Wodehouse, to the likes of Harold Wilson, Mahatma Gandhi and Queen Elizabeth II, these lesser-known interactions reveal glimpses of the man behind the legend. We meet Churchill the exuberant schoolboy thug with an early mania for bull-dogs, and Churchill the elder statesman shedding a tear in the House of Commons smoking room. Other incidents include a young journalist rudely dismissing a call from Churchill as a prank, and a visiting Dwight D. Eisenhower dreaming of being strangled, only to awake entangled in Churchill’s borrowed nightshirt. The book showcases the profound transformations during Churchill’s lifetime, which ran from Benjamin Disraeli’s premiership to the release of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Route 66’, and the shift from steam to atomic power. Examining controversial aspects of his legacy, this multifaceted portrait challenges preconceived notions, inviting readers to reconsider the complexities of Churchill.

After the Second World War, with much of Europe in ruins, the victorious Winston Churchill swore to build a peace across Europe that would last a generation.Fighting against the new 'Iron Curtain' which had fallen across the world, and battling the personal disappointment of losing the 1945 election in Britain, Churchill dedicated the rest of his life to forging a united Europe. This book, based in part on new evidence, reveals his vision: Britain as a leading member of the European family. Through Churchill's own private papers, Felix Klos unveils Churchill's personal battle to regain his place in world affairs, his confidential conversations with European leaders and the thinking and preparation behind some of his most powerful speeches. A beautifully written history of Europe after the war, and a new glimpse at one of its greatest statesmen.

The “important and engrossing” fifth volume of the official Churchill biography chronicles his visionary leadership in the tense years approaching WWII (Foreign Affairs). This acclaimed biographical masterpiece opens with Winston S. Churchill’s return to Conservatism and to the cabinet in 1924. The narrative unfolds into a vivid and intimate picture of his public life as well as his private world at Chartwell between the wars. With ample access to Churchill’s private papers, Martin Gilbert strips away decades of accumulated myth and innuendo, showing the stateman’s true position on India, his precise role (and private thoughts) during the abdication of Edward VIII, his attitude toward Mussolini, and his profound fears for the future of European democracy. Even before Hitler came to power in Germany, Churchill saw the dangers of a Nazi victory. And despite the unpopularity of his views in official circles, he persevered for six years in sounding the alarm against fascism. This book reveals for the first time the extent senior civil servants, and even serving officers of high rank, came to Churchill with secret information, having despaired at the magnitude of official lethargy and obstruction. Within the Air Ministry, the Foreign Office, and the Intelligence Services, individuals felt drawn to provide Churchill with full disclosures of Britain’s defense weakness, keeping him informed of day-to-day developments from 1934 until the outbreak of war. People of all parties and in all walks of life recognized Churchill’s unique qualities and demanded his inclusion in the government, believing he alone could give a divided nation guidance and inspiration. “A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War “The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

"A delightful and delicious tribute to Churchill's heroic appetite for wining, dining and politicking" - Ben Macintyre, author of Operation Mincemeat. A friend once said of Churchill "He is a man of simple tastes; he is quite easily satisfied with the best of everything." But dinners for Churchill were about more than good food, excellent champagnes and Havana cigars. "Everything" included the opportunity to use the dinner table both as a stage on which to display his brilliant conversational talents, and an intimate setting in which to glean gossip and diplomatic insights, and to argue for the many policies he espoused over a long life. In this riveting, informative and entertaining book Cita Stelzer draws on previously untapped archival material, diaries of guests, and a wide variety of other sources to tell of some of the key dinners at which Churchill presided before, during and after World War II - including the important conferences at which he used his considerable skills to attempt to persuade his allies, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, to fight the war according to his strategic vision. With fascinating new insights into the food he ate, the champagnes he loved, as well as original menus, seating plans and unpublished photographs, Dinner with Churchill is a sumptuous treat. The next best thing to being there yourself.

En dybtgående, veldokumenteret analyse af britisk udenrigspolitik i gennem de første 10 efterkrigsår, herunder bl. a. den engelsk-amerikansk-franske manøvre for at afværge Sovjetunionens bestræbelser for at genforene Tyskland.

“An interesting and at times surprising account of Churchill's tastes as a reader…many of [these] nuggets will be new even to Churchill junkies.”—TheWall Street Journal This strikingly original book introduces a Winston Churchill we haven’t known before. Award-winning author Jonathan Rose explores Churchill’s careers as statesman and author, revealing the profound influence of literature and theater on Churchill’s personal, carefully composed grand story and the decisions he made throughout his political life. In this expansive literary biography, Rose provides an analysis of Churchill’s writings and their reception (he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 and was a best-selling author), and a chronicle of his dealings with publishers, editors, literary agents, and censors. The book also identifies an array of authors who shaped Churchill’s own writings and politics: George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Margaret Mitchell, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, and many more. Rose investigates the effect of Churchill’s passion for theater on his approach to reportage, memoirs, and historical works. Perhaps most remarkably, Rose reveals the unmistakable influence of Churchill’s reading on every important episode of his public life, including his championship of social reform, plans for the Gallipoli invasion, command during the Blitz, crusade for Zionism, and efforts to prevent a nuclear arms race. Finally, Rose traces the significance of Churchill’s writings to later generations of politicians—among them President John F. Kennedy as he struggled to extricate the U.S. from the Cuban Missile Crisis. “Immensely enjoyable…This gracefully written book is an original and textured study of Churchill’s imagination.”—The Washington Post

The seventh volume of the acclaimed, official biography: “An engrossing history of Churchill’s crucial role in the grand alliance of World War II” (Los Angeles Times). This seventh volume in the epic, multivolume biography of Winston S. Churchill takes up the story of “Churchill’s War” with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and carries it on to the triumph of V-E Day, May 8, 1945, the end of the war in Europe. Acclaimed historian Martin Gilbert charts Churchill’s course through the storms of Anglo-American and Anglo-Soviet rivalry, and between the conflicting ambitions of other forces embattled against the common enemy: between General de Gaulle, his compatriots in France, and the French Empire; between Tito and other Yugoslav leaders; between the Greek Communists and monarchists; between the Polish government exiled in London and the Soviet-controlled “Lublin” Poles. Amid all these volatile concerns, Churchill had to find the path of prudence, of British national interest, and, above all, of the earliest possible victory over Nazism. In doing so he was guided by the most secret sources of British Intelligence: the daily interception of the messages of the German High Command. These pages reveal, as never before, the links between this secret information and the resulting moves and successes achieved by the Allies. “A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War “The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of The Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Books of 2018 One of The Economist’s Best Books of 2018 One of The New York Times’s Notable Books of 2018 “Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill . . . A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britain’s savior.” —Wall Street Journal In this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman and leader can finally be fully seen and understood--by the bestselling, award-winning author of Napoleon and The Last King of America. When we seek an example of great leaders with unalloyed courage, the person who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the iconic, visionary war leader immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In Churchill, Andrew Roberts gives readers the full and definitive Winston Churchill, from birth to lasting legacy, as personally revealing as it is compulsively readable. Roberts gained exclusive access to extensive new material: transcripts of War Cabinet meetings, diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs from Churchill's contemporaries. The Royal Family permitted Roberts--in a first for a Churchill biographer--to read the detailed notes taken by King George VI in his diary after his weekly meetings with Churchill during World War II. This treasure trove of access allows Roberts to understand the man in revelatory new ways, and to identify the hidden forces fueling Churchill's legendary drive. We think of Churchill as a hero who saved civilization from the evils of Nazism and warned of the grave crimes of Soviet communism, but Roberts's masterwork reveals that he has as much to teach us about the challenges leaders face today--and the fundamental values of courage, tenacity, leadership and moral conviction.

In 1911, Winston S. Churchill and Robert L. Borden became companions in an attempt to provide naval security for the British Empire as a naval crisis loomed with Germany. Their scheme for Canada to provide battleships for the Royal Navy as part of an Imperial squadron was rejected by the Senate with great implications for the future.