Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Winston Churchill gets a lot of biographies so the most obvious question is why has Andrew Roberts written yet another one. Since the last major Churchill biography (by Roy Jenkins in 2001, and light on new archival research) numerous new archives have opened up. Most importantly Andrew Roberts got permission from Buckingham Palace to read the previously unopened wartime diaries of King George VI. These diaries shed new light on the relationship between Churchill and the King and offer and insider's view into Britain during the war. Roberts also has access to the recently-discovered diaries of the Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ivan Maisky and to the papers of Churchill’s children, neither of which were available to previous biographers. Of course, Andrew Roberts is at his best describing the moments when Churchill was at *his* best: the precarious hours in 1940 when France fell to the Nazis and the members of Churchill’s own War Cabinet were seduced by offers of peace. It fell to Churchill to rally a wavering cabinet and an out-gunned nation to defend herself against Hitler at a time when no other nation would. Roberts’ mastery of the detail is near-perfect and his prose is… dare I say it? Churchillian. The reader feels heat of the clashes in the War Cabinet in the spring of 1940, trembles with anticipation during the Battle of Britain (even though we of course know how it all turned out) and savors in the glory of Britain’s (and the world’s) victory in 1945. When it comes to Churchill’s life before the War, there is considerably more information that is already known and Andrew Roberts is excellent here as well. The reader sees how Churchill’s aristocratic confidence in Britain (and unyielding confidence in Winston Churchill) guided him through the controversy over the Dardanelles, the Gold Standard, India, and ultimately appeasement, the one crisis where Churchill is unanimously credited with getting it right when damn near everyone else got it wrong. Finally, Churchill returns to the premiership in 1951, unable to bring the United States and the Soviets together and unwilling to yield to his cabinet’s desire that he stand aside. When he finally does stand aside, the reader can’t help but admire Churchill’s tenacity and desire to stay in politics even when he is clearly too old to stay in the fight. Although Roberts is willing to acknowledge that Churchill was flawed in some ways, the conclusion is that Churchill’s monumental significance outweighs all of those flaws and his victory in a titanic struggle against an unimaginable evil makes those flaws seem like dust. I have my own biases to be sure as I was privileged to advise Andrew on the proofs of the book (spelling, style, fact-checking, etc…), but the work is his own entirely and my praise is my own entirely. This is an extraordinary book and if you are even tangentially interested in history then you would do well to buy it and buy a few more for your friends.