Churchill

About this book

A stirring war leader an orator unequaled as the rallier of a nation under siege a powerful writer - Winston Churchill was all these and more. By now he has become a figure of almost mythic proportions. To find the man within the legend is the task to which twenty-nine renowned British and American historians and political leaders dedicate themselves in this volume. It may be the last assessment possible of Churchills life and career by those who for the most part came of age during the Churchill era. From his youth in the landed aristocracy through his early experiences of war to service in Parliament over seven storm-tossed decades Churchill takes us far beyond the surface of events. Here is Winston Churchill surprisingly a founder of the modern welfare state when he became a principal driving force behind the Liberal welfare reforms of 1908-11. In the 1920s we find him astonished to be offered the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer (after accepting he reflected that "I should have...answered Will the bloody duck swim?"). His concern with domestic affairs bracketed the years of the First World War which saw him initially as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill tasted failure in the disastrous defeat of the Dardanelles expedition in 1915. There followed two years "in the wilderness" during which he took a battalion command on the western front. "He hankered after brilliant coups heroic adventure on a small but decisive scale" but he had learned a crucial lesson for his later years as war leader of Britain: "against an adversary as formidable as the Germans there was no substitute for the massive organization and skillful application of force on the largest possible scale backed up by...science and technology...." Appointed Colonial Secretary Churchill had to deal with some regions that were to remain trouble spots to the centurys end: Palestine and Southern Africa among them. A staunch defender of the Empire he believed that Britis