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Books

“Churchill’s Phoney War” – by Graham T. Clews
26
May
2020
By WILLIAM J. SHEPHERD
Clews paints a loyal but frustrated Churchill who later defined the rule of the Phoney War: “Don’t be unkind to the enemy; you will only make him angry.”
The Terror and Splendor of the Blitz, finely related by Erik Larson
18
Mar
2020
By ANDREW ROBERTS
The Splendid and the Vile is the story of the London Blitz, from the moment that Winston Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940, until the Luftwaffe raid that destroyed the parts of the House of Commons exactly one year later, coincidentally on the same night that Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland.
“Three Most Unlikely Musketeers”*: The Kremlin Letters
05
Mar
2020
By WARREN F. KIMBALL
For non-Russian-reading researchers, this book is indispensable. For aficionados of the history of the Second World War, it is a thought-provoking delight.
The Churchillian Wisdom of Professor Paul Addison
28
Feb
2020
1
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Our grief and loss are deeply felt. Paul was a gentleman scholar: a man of strong convictions, who never let them interfere with his search for truth. Hagiography is fatal. Honesty matters. Those were his cardinal precepts.
Above all, he left a corpus of excellence from which young people will always learn things worth knowing. His work abides, and as Churchill said, a man never dies as long as he is remembered. All who love history will forever remember Paul Addison.
New Views of the “Special Relationship” compiled by Dobson and Marsh
19
Feb
2020
By BRADLEY P. TOLPPANEN
A close Anglo-American partnership was a guiding principle in Churchill’s thinking about international relations. The creation of such a partnership was a central aspect of his long political career. While still a young backbench Member of Parliament, he said, “it ought to be the main end of English statecraft over a long period of years to cultivate good relations with the United States.” In 1918 he declared it his hope that the two countries would “act permanently together.”
1921: A Watershed Year, Brilliantly Recounted by David Stafford
18
Feb
2020
By WILLIAM J. SHEPHERD
Stafford’s description of this critical year is masterful. In 1921 the former “bold, bad man” of British national life rose above his reputation as a war-mongering opportunist. The picture is of a reflective and vulnerable man of character, strengthened by every reverse—a man of vision and, to a few observers, “a prime minister in the making.” Really good books about Churchill are scarce these days, and deserve full appreciation. This one belongs on any list of the top twenty specialized studies.
Tags:
Balfour Declartion,
Cairo Conference,
Chaim Weizmann,
Clare Sheridan,
Clementine Churchill,
David Lloyd George,
David Stafford,
Eddie Marsh,
Ernest Cassel,
F.E. Smith,
Gertrude Bell,
Herbert Lionel Vane-Tempest,
Iraq,
Irish Treaty,
Jordan,
King Faisal,
Lady Randolph Churchill,
Marigold Churchill,
Max Beaverbrook,
Mesopotamia,
Palestine,
Singapore,
T.E. Lawrence,
Two-Power Standard,
Washington Naval Treaty,
Winston S. Churchill,
“A Few Words of My Own”: Thoughts on Completing the Official Biography
30
Dec
2019
By SIR MARTIN GILBERT
Sir Martin’s reflections after finishing the final narrative volume are reprised as Hillsdale completes the final document volume in the Great Biography.
Leo McKinstry on Churchill and Attlee: A Primer on Political Collegiality
29
Nov
2019
2
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
McKinstry is thorough and scrupulously fair. Unlike too many historians today, he goes in with no axes to grind. He simply tells the story, backed by a voluminous bibliography, extensive research and private correspondence. In scope and balance, the book reminds us of Arthur Herman’s Gandhi and Churchill—another elegant account of two contentious figures. Like Herman, McKinstry captures Churchill’s generosity of spirit, and his rival’s greatness of soul.
Tags:
Alfred Duff Cooper,
Anthony Eden,
Arthur Herman,
Clement Attlee,
Clementine Churchill,
David Hunt,
Dresden,
First Quebec Conference,
Gallipoli campaign,
Gestapo,
H.G. Wells,
Harold Laski,
Harold Nicolson,
Horace Wilson,
Hugh Dalton,
India act,
Jock Colville,
King Edward VIII,
Leo McKinstry,
Liberalism and the Social Problem,
Neville Chamberlain,
Potsdam Conference,
Robert Menzies,
Ronald Cohen,
Stanley Baldwin,
The Aftermath,
The Other Club,
Trade Disputes Act,
Violet Attlee,
Wallis Simpson,
Winston S. Churchill,
Yalta Conference,
Marlborough: In its pages, Churchill laid the basis of his own greatness
22
Nov
2019
1
By ANDREW ROBERTS
Churchill told the story of his ancestor in beautiful Augustan Age prose, but also discovered new sources and corrected earlier historians’ errors. Mastering foreign language documents, he produced an outstanding work of history as well as literature, one that appealed to an academic as well as to a popular audience. All this came from someone whose father had said: “He has little [claim] to cleverness, to knowledge or any capacity for settled work.”
Tags:
Alfred Duff Cooper,
Andrew Roberts,
Charles II of Spain,
First Duke of Marlborough,
Franklin Roosevelt,
Glorious Revolution,
Harold Macmillan,
James Roosevelt,
John Churchill,
Louis XIV,
Maurice Ashley,
Napoleon,
National Government,
Stanley Baldwin,
The Other Club,
Thomas Babington Macaulay,
War of the Spanish Succession,
William III,
Winston S. Churchill,
Great Contemporaries: Emery Reves, Sales Dept. for the Production Chief
20
Nov
2019
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
It is a tribute to this book, and those who saw it into print, that a memory of two unforgettable spirits is so eloquently presented.
Bouverie’s Chamberlain: “A Mind Sequestered in its Own Delusions”
31
Oct
2019
By MICHAEL McMENAMIN
Bouverie’s dismissal of the 1938 plot as “probably correctly” a fantasy is quite inexplicable. He lists Meehan’s book in his bibliography along with the memoirs of Erich Kordt, who wrote that swallowing Hitler’s terms at Munich “prevented the coup d’état in Berlin.” Even Henderson, the pro-Chamberlain British ambassador to Germany, thought the Hitler plot genuine. On 6 October, a week after Munich, Henderson wrote Halifax: “By keeping the peace, we have saved Hitler and his regime.”
Tags:
. Hans Oster,
Edward Halifax,
Erich Kordt,
Ernst von Weizacker,
Erwin von Witzleben,
Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin,
Franz Halder,
Hans Gisevius,
Hjalmar Schacht,
Ludwig Beck,
Michael McMenamin,
Nevile Henderson,
Neville Chamberlain,
Robert Vansittart,
Steven Roberts,
Theo Kordt,
Tim Bouverie,
Walter von Brauchitsch,
Walter von Brockdorf,
Wilhelm Canaris,
Winston S. Churchill,
The Churchill Documents vol. 22, “Leader of the Opposition,” 1945-1951
25
Oct
2019
By ANDREW ROBERTS
Volume 22 of the Churchill Documents contains Churchill's documentary record from the 1945 election and his return to the premiership in October 1951. It is a curiously under-examined part of Churchill’s career. Yet it encompassed the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and her subsequent surrender, his Iron Curtain speech in Missouri, the partition of India and the creation of Israel, the Berlin airlift, and the founding of NATO and the European movement. Upon all of these, Churchill took important stances.