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The series—a collection of twenty-eight original pieces—attempts to depict the many facets of Churchill’s complex character. The series covers Churchill’s early childhood all the way through his second term as prime minister in the 1950s. Diving into both the public and private side of Churchill’s life, the series balances Churchill’s professional years as a soldier and war correspondent, a writer, a rhetorician, and a statesman with his private interests as a painter, aviation enthusiast, horseman, father, and husband. Hooper offers a complete, yet often overlooked, picture of the national and international icon.

A delightful happenstance came my way in Australia recently. My company builds and runs prisons under contract to various governments. I  was visiting a new prison we are building in New South Wales, near a town called Grafton on the Clarence River. Whilst touring this new and rather wonderful facility, I was stopped by the project manager. He asked if I were aware of the connection between Grafton and my grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill. I confessed I was not aware of any, so he took me down to the River Clarence, and showed me the broken hulk of a ship called Induna. She was the coaster that transported young Winston Churchill from Lourenço Marques, Portuguese East Africa (now Maputo, Mozambique) to Durban, South Africa after his dramatic escape from the Boers in December 1899.

He died in 1965 and Clare followed him five years later. Their relationship has been side-lined or ignored by many biographers more interested in politics than in Churchill’s private life. But the bust made by the “Obstreperous Anarchist” forever stands in the hallway of Chartwell. It is mute testimony to a family friendship that endured through tempestuous times.

Churchill was an early and steady supporter of a Channel Tunnel, which was first proposed in 1751. For most of his life he joined in lively and almost continuous discussion of  “a fixed link with the Continent.” Indeed, during the 1924-1929 Conservative government, Churchill was seen as “the leading political advocate of a tunnel.”

Only a statesman with the broad tolerance of Winston Churchill could laugh off Shaw’s politics while acknowledging his literary genius.

“Low is the greatest of our modern cartoonists,” wrote Winston Churchill in his delightful essay “Cartoons and Cartoonists.” He praised “the vividness of his political conceptions,” and declared Low a singular artist: “He possesses what few cartoonists have—a grand technique of draughtsmanship. Low is a master of black and white. He is the Charlie Chaplin of caricature, and tragedy and comedy are the same to him.”

We all benefit from Hillsdale’s twenty-three volumes of The Churchill Documents, Robert Rhodes James’s Complete Speeches and the 332 Churchill articles in the Collected Essays. Vital as these contributions are, they do not capture everything Churchill wrote or said. There is far more. The task I set myself, all those years ago, was to find everything else, too. - Ronald Cohen

Christmas, 1941: “By our sacrifice…these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance…. And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.”

Churchill offers thoughtful ideas on when representative government may be supplemented by a national vote. Above all, he thought the referendum must be rare. Only eleven times in his long career was there a call for a referendum. Only six times did he support it.

Christmas at Chartwell: “No matter how humble the gift, he accepted with surprise and pleasure. ‘For me?’ he'd ask, his eyes lighting up. ‘How very kind!’”

No evidence exists that Churchill wished to commit a million Allied troops. The British contingent he envisioned was small, and made up of volunteers. Above all, Churchill wanted decision, not hesitation, which he abhorred all his life.

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.