Product Description

This highly praised book by the Wolfson History Prize-winning author of SALISBURY tackles six aspects of Churchilliana and uncovers a plethora of disturbing facts about wartime and post-war Britain. His revelations include: - The case for the impeachment of Lord Mountbatten - The Nazi sympathies of Sir Arthur Bryant, hitherto considered a 'patriotic historian' - The British establishment's doubt about Churchill's role after Dunkirk - The appeasement of the trade unions in Churchill's Indian summer - The inside story of black immigration in the early 1950s - The anti-Churchill stance adopted by the Royal Family in 1940

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57693 in Books
• Published on: 1995-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Andrew Roberts took a first in Modern History at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge. He won the Wolfson History prize for his biography, Salisbury: Victorian Titan. He writes and reviews regularly in the press. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Customer Reviews

Wonderfully opinionated
Gung ho and full of spirit and bile - a great read giving lots of insight into the period - the end of Empire and rise of/battle with Fascism and Communism. He certainly takes on where our forebears left off, what with this emulating Strachey's Eminent Victorians; and more recently his History of English Speaking Peoples since 1900, picking up where Churchill left off. What a writer but by no means one in thrall to Guardian readers!

Particularly interesting was the chapter on Mountbatten and the mess he made of Indian independence and partition with Pakistan.

An excellent demolition of underserved reputations
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Andrew Roberts has strong biases but even if one were to disbelieve half of what he writes, the judgement on the various characters arraigned in the dock, so to speak, must be harsh. George VI was at best a naive fool; Mountbatten - the worst of the lot - was a scoundrel, a liar, foolhardy with men's lives; Monckton was a weak man who allowed trade union power to enlarge dangerously; Bryant had dubious political sympathies.

Sometimes such books can be tiresome because the author so obviously wants to show that X or Y had feet of clay. Yet given the scale of the problems facing Britain in 1940-55, the faults of the men portrayed in this book need to be focused on. Mountbatten comes out of this book particularly badly. First class history writing.

Faultless
Excellent book as described and speedy delivery. Thanks