Product Description

Churchill fought the war twice over – as Prime Minister and again as its premier historian. In 1948-54 he published six volumes of memoirs which secured his reputation and shaped our understanding of the conflict to this day. Using the drafts and correspondence for The Second World War, David Reynolds opens our eyes to Churchill the author and to the research ‘syndicate’ on whom he depended. We see how the memoirs were censored by Whitehall to conceal secrets such as the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, and how Churchill himself censored them to avoid offending current world leaders. This book forces us to reconsider much received wisdom about the war and illuminates an unjustly neglected period of his life – the Second Wilderness Years of 1945-51, when Churchill, now over seventy, wrote himself into history, politicked himself back into Downing Street and delivered some of the most important speeches of his career.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #235237 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Review
John F. Kennedy once said that Winston Churchill mobilised the English language and sent it into battle. This book tells how he did it. In fact it tells two stories - how Churchill led Britain through the Second World War, and then how with hindsight he chronicled his actions in six volumes between 1948 and 1954. Both these public faces of Churchill are well known but historian Reynolds delves beneath the surface to reveal facts about the great man that Churchill would have preferred others not to know. For instance he did not always get on too well with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he made the gross misjudgment of believing that Stalin was a man to be trusted. He was less than enthusiastic about the D-Day enterprise despite what his memoirs said, and he considered going to war against Russia in 1945. Packed with anecdote and little-known fact, this is a book that reveals all sides of the greatest Briton. (Kirkus UK)

Frank McLynn, Independent
'fluent, incisive and brilliant'

Richard Overy, Literary Review
‘fascinating...perceptive...remarkable...the stuff of a literary thriller’