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In the best biography since 1991, Roberts's witty, fluent, flowing prose captures the adventure, energy, and incessant movement that Churchill produced.

In 1960 General Lord Ismay said that an objective Churchill biography could not be written for fifty years. Andrew Roberts weighs in at year fifty-eight. The delay paid off. Roberts’ book will be “unique even to jaded Churchillians.”

“From midnight till dawn I lay in my bed consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear. There seemed one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses…. Now he was gone. I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.” —WSC

There’s a general rule in biography, as in journalism, that knocking copy ought to be better researched than ordinary writing. But it is not one that Ali observes. He makes so many basic factual errors that Churchill’s reputation emerges unscathed from this onslaught.

"This volume is part of a series aimed, as the publishers assure us, at 'young adults.' At the same time it is intended as a 'reference guide.' After spending some time with the book I have trouble in seeing the value that young adults will gain from it. The book is primarily set out in alphabetic, encyclopedic format, with entries presented two columns to a page, along with an index and a bibliography. The result is a curiously unbalanced mixture."

Churchill was a powerful advocate of the nation-state. The EU is not one, but Ukraine has shown that it is. Day after day, in their streets and suburbs and forests, ordinary Ukrainians are showing that they believe it is a real country. They would not be fighting and dying if they did not believe this.

Anthony Eden shared Free Trade principles, but was at first a Churchill critic. During the Dardanelles Campaign he wrote: “Why can’t W. Churchill look [Navy ships] instead of making strategical plans about which he knows nothing about at all?” Later they became allies, Eden remarking on Churchill’s “masterly performance” as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Churchill saw in Clemenceau the importance of projecting the right mood in a crisis. He remembered the particular words Clemenceau had tried out to him, before exclaiming them in the French parliament: “I will fight in front of Paris; I will fight in Paris; I will fight behind Paris.” In 1940, Churchill adopted the Tiger’s trope: “Clemenceau was quite right. The only thing that mattered was to beat the Germans.

Churchill regarded Paul Reynaud as a fighting Frenchman overwhelmed by circumstance. Reynaud held Churchill his country’s liberator.

Churchill achieved a rare synthesis between the quest for philosophic truth, adherence to Christian teaching, and advancing a particular political community.

For Churchill as for Aristotle, the force he advocated was not for the sake of domination but to maintain freedom and peace.

Moving letters from Mary to her adored father form an immensely evocative image of wartime Britain and an important contribution to history.