Best books written about winston churchill
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Yes, there are still things to learn about Churchill, as fine new biography reveals
Is "Churchill: Walking With Destiny" by Andrew Roberts the best Churchill biography of them all?
Who in their right mind would presume to say, short of Winston Churchill himself, who maintained, “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”?
All Churchill biographies stand in the shadow of their subject and on the shoulders of Churchill’s official biographer, the late Sir Martin Gilbert, whose primary research constitutes the bulk of what we truly know.
In this sense, Roberts’ new biography (Viking, 982 pp., ★★★★ out of four) stands tall, re-illuminating the well-etched contours of Churchill’s monumental life with scrupulous scholarship and a flair for unearthing the telling detail; looking twice where most biographers have been content to glance once.
Here are five time-honored Churchillian bio-tropes, reframed and refreshed by Roberts’ keen attention to historical context.
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1. The purported poor judgment of Churchill as Firs •
Churchill: A Biography
June 13, 2020Roy Jenkins' biography of Winston Churchill looks intimidating: clocking in at over 900 pages, and with no breaks contained within chapters, it is a serious read. Fortunately, its subject is one of the most well-known and largest characters of the 20th century. Churchill led such a long (he lived to be 90) and interesting life that one would seriously have to question if a book written about his life could be dull, despite the best efforts of the author to make it so. Fortunately, Jenkins does not attempt to do that, and instead employs full biographical treatment of Churchill, making sure to tally all of the warts and the glory so that Churchill is alive from beginning to end (one pleasant aspect of this book is that, on every other page, Jenkins has the year noted unobtrusively up at the top so the reader always knows exactly what year(s) the storyline is in).
Having said that, the first two hundred pages or so are nothing great. In fact, at times they can be a bit tedious as Jenkins mentions so many names that my head quickly began spinnin •
Book Review: Winston Churchill's Costly Heroism In 'Hero of the Empire'
At some point in the late 1990s a friend sent me a copy of William Manchester’s The Last Lion. A biography of Winston Churchill, it read like a fiction novel so remarkable was the man. Detail after detail of extraordinary wit, bravery, and memory. The last part sounds strange, or out of place, but this real person whose actual life read like a Steven Spielberg film could commit to verbatim memory pages and pages of writing by the greats.
Manchester’s book was unputdownable, I quickly purchased Part II of The Last Lion not long after beginning Part I, and it too was an amazing read. Its subtitle was Alone, and it chronicled Churchill’s time in the proverbial political wilderness. As some may or may not know, Churchill’s deeply held view that Adolf Hitler represented a threat of the existential kind was in no way the consensus in the 1930s. Hopefully this explains the subtitle. The main thing is that both books were spectacular reads. I came away from them eager to read more abo
Churchill: A Biography
Having said that, the first two hundred pages or so are nothing great. In fact, at times they can be a bit tedious as Jenkins mentions so many names that my head quickly began spinnin
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Book Review: Winston Churchill's Costly Heroism In 'Hero of the Empire'
At some point in the late 1990s a friend sent me a copy of William Manchester’s The Last Lion. A biography of Winston Churchill, it read like a fiction novel so remarkable was the man. Detail after detail of extraordinary wit, bravery, and memory. The last part sounds strange, or out of place, but this real person whose actual life read like a Steven Spielberg film could commit to verbatim memory pages and pages of writing by the greats.
Manchester’s book was unputdownable, I quickly purchased Part II of The Last Lion not long after beginning Part I, and it too was an amazing read. Its subtitle was Alone, and it chronicled Churchill’s time in the proverbial political wilderness. As some may or may not know, Churchill’s deeply held view that Adolf Hitler represented a threat of the existential kind was in no way the consensus in the 1930s. Hopefully this explains the subtitle. The main thing is that both books were spectacular reads. I came away from them eager to read more abo
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