'The best one-volume study of Churchill yet available.' David Cannadine, Observer 'Magisterial.' Vernon Bogdanor, New Statesman 'A tour de force... A masterly chronicle of Churchill as a domestic figure rather than as the bulldog wartime leader, and one of the most subtle portraits of him as a politician. Addison revises the view of Churchill as uninterested and out of his depth in domestic affairs, painting instead a nuanced picture of a canny parliamentarian. Churchill changed parties twice but managed to accomplish the change, writes Addison, 'with exceptional dexterity', making it appear as if he were maintaining his principles while the parties changed theirs... Addison's most interesting assertion is that the rise of Hitler saved Churchill from drifting into right-wing irrelevance. Most impressively, Addison doesn't settle for easy classifications, admitting that 'Churchill... is a man of whom almost everything that can be said is true in part.'' Kirkus Review
Examining the influential career of Winston Churchill, this new book discusses his career from Secretary of State for War and Air, to British Prime Minster during the Second World War and from 1951-55.
In his day Winston Churchill was one of the most famous human beings who ever lived. In 1945 most people in the world would have seen his name in the headlines, heard the latest news of him on the radio or seen his face beaming or glowering in the newsreels. His funeral in 1965 is said to have been watched on television by 350 million people around the globe. Those days are long gone, and the massed ranks of his contemporaries have been scythed away leaving only a few who remember him as a living presence. But of all the politicians of the 20th century, he is the only one to have inspired an apparently never-ending cascade of books, articles and documentaries. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that his place in our past is still in dispute. He is as controversial today as he was for much of his lifetime, and most of those who study him fall into one of two camps: pro or ante. Neutrality and indifference are rare. In this book Paul Addison, who has been studying Churchill for 40 years, weighs the arguments, looking at both the pro and anti Churchill case, but concluding not only that he was a great man but that his life was one of the most astonishing and fortunate accidents in world history.
The imperial aspect of Churchill's career tends to be airbrushed out, while the battles against Nazism are heavily foregrounded. A charmer and a bully, Winston Churchill was driven by a belief that the English were a superior race, whose goals went beyond individual interests to offer an enduring good to the entire world. No better example exists than Churchill's resolve to stand alone against a more powerful Hitler in 1940 while the world's democracies fell to their knees. But there is also the Churchill who frequently inveighed against human rights, nationalism, and constitutional progress—the imperialist who could celebrate racism and believed India was unsuited to democracy. Drawing on newly released documents and an uncanny ability to separate the facts from the overblown reputation (by mid-career Churchill had become a global brand), Richard Toye provides the first comprehensive analysis of Churchill's relationship with the empire. Instead of locating Churchill's position on a simple left/right spectrum, Toye demonstrates how the statesman evolved and challenges the reader to understand his need to reconcile the demands of conscience with those of political conformity.
No statesman shaped the twentieth century more than Winston Churchill. To know the full Churchill is to understand the combination of boldness and caution, of assertiveness and humility, that defines statesmanship at its best. With fresh perspective and insights based on decades of studying and teaching Churchill, Larry P. Arnn explores the greatest challenges faced by Churchill over the course of his extraordinary career, both in war and peace—and always in the context of Churchill’s abiding dedication to constitutionalism. Churchill’s Trial is organized around the three great challenges to liberty that Churchill faced: Nazism, Soviet communism, and his own nation’s slide toward socialism. Churchill knew that stable free government, long enduring, is rare, and hangs upon the balance of many factors ever at risk. Combining meticulous scholarship with an engrossing narrative arc, this book holds timely lessons for today. Arnn says, “Churchill’s trial is also our trial. We have a better chance to meet it because we had in him a true statesman.” In a scholarly, timely, and highly erudite way, Larry Arnn puts the case for Winston Churchill continuing to be seen as statesman from whom the modern world can learn important lessons. In an age when social and political morality seems all too often to be in a state of flux, Churchill’s Trial reminds us of the enduring power of the concepts of courage, duty, and honor. --Andrew Roberts, New York Times bestselling author of Napoleon: A Life and The Storm of War Larry Arnn has spent a lifetime studying the life and accomplishments of Winston Churchill. In his lively Churchill’s Trial, Arnn artfully reminds us that Churchill was not just the greatest statesman and war leader of the twentieth century, but also a pragmatic and circumspect thinker whose wisdom resonates on every issue of our times. --Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University In absorbing, gracefully written historical and biographical narration, Larry Arnn shows that Churchill, often perceived as inconsistent and opportunistic, was in fact philosophically rigorous and consistent at levels of organization higher and deeper than his detractors are capable of imagining. In Churchill’s Trial Arnn has rendered great service not only to an incomparable statesman but to us, for the magnificent currents that carried Churchill through his trials are as admirable, useful, and powerful in our times as they were in his. --Mark Helprin, New York Times bestselling author of Winter’s Tale and In Sunlight and in Shadow Churchill’s Trial, a masterpiece of political philosophy and practical statesmanship, is the one book on Winston Churchill that every undergraduate, every graduate student, every professional historian, and every member of the literate general public should read on this greatest statesman of the twentieth century. The book is beautifully written, divided into three parts–war, empire, peace–and thus covers the extraordinary life of Winston Churchill and the topics which define the era of his statesmanship. --Lewis E. Lehrman, cofounder of the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute at Gettysburg College and distinguished director of the Abraham Lincoln Association
For many people throughout the English-speaking world and beyond, Winston Churchill was the greatest statesman of the twentieth century: the saviour of his country and a staunch defender of democracy in the face of totalitarianism. By writing history, as well as by making it, Churchill influenced our whole view of the twentieth century and his role in it. But how does he look now, in a new century, with a different agenda and when few can remember him? This book confronts and addresses this question; partly by including the reminiscences and recollections of four people who still vividly remember Churchill (Tony Benn, Lord Carrington, Lord Deedes and Lady Soames); but primarily by bringing together a group of historians (David Cannadine, Roland Quinault, Paul Addison, Chris Wrigley, Stuart Ball, David Reynolds, John Charmley, David Carlton, John W. Young and Peter Hennessy), who explore the complexities and ambiguities of this extraordinary man.
From London’s inimitable mayor, Boris Johnson, the New York Times–bestselling story of how Churchill’s eccentric genius shaped not only his world but our own. On the fiftieth anniversary of Churchill’s death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays—with characteristic wit and passion—a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity. Fearless on the battlefield, Churchill had to be ordered by the king to stay out of action on D-day; he pioneered aerial bombing and few could match his experience in organizing violence on a colossal scale, yet he hated war and scorned politicians who had not experienced its horrors. He was the most famous journalist of his time and perhaps the greatest orator of all time, despite a lisp and the chronic depression he kept at bay by painting. His maneuvering positioned America for entry into World War II, even as it ushered in England’s postwar decline. His open-mindedness made him a trailblazer in health care, education, and social welfare, though he remained incorrigibly politically incorrect. Most of all, he was a rebuttal to the idea that history is the story of vast and impersonal forces; he is proof that one person—intrepid, ingenious, determined—can make all the difference.
In Distilling the Frenzy, the UK's leading contemporary historian examines the special considerations that apply to writing the history of one's own times, and revisits the grand themes running through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He looks at Britain's persistent impulse to punch well above its weight in the world; at the sustenance of the nuclear weapons policy which has accompanied that impulse; and at the intelligence operations which underpin it. For the human perspective on these huge issues, he applies his trademark blend of scholarship and wit to assess the contrasting styles and achievements of post-war prime ministers from Clement Attlee to David Cameron. As one of Britain's foremost constitutional experts (and now a cross-bench peer) Peter Hennessy brings a unique perspective to the question of reform of the House of Lords, that irritation to the body politic once again at the very forefront of political debate. Shot through with a thread of autobiography that gives the book an especial immediacy, Distilling the Frenzy is a major work of contemporary history.
