Brendan Bracken

Josh Ireland begins with potted inaccuracies, but the quickly picks up with a deft, thoughtful account of a short, bittersweet saga.

Historians tend to downplay Horace Wilson’s contribution to British Appeasement policy in the 1930s. Adrian Phillips fills in the blanks.

Despite his encomiums to Joan, Churchill rated Napoleon higher, with Georges Clemenceau a close third—and, a bit farther down, de Gaulle.

Lawrence “was indeed a dweller upon the mountain tops…and where the view on clear days commands all the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” —WSC

Among many close personal friendships that Churchill enjoyed in political and military life, one of the more unlikely was with a former foe, the South African statesman Jan Christian Smuts. Richard Steyn has offered a plethora of new information and insights in a readable account of this important friendship.

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

There was no more enigmatic figure in Churchill’s life than Brendan Bracken, who cloaked his birth and upbringing with mystery while hinting broadly that he was the great man’s illegitimate son. It is well-authenticated that close friendship, not errant fatherhood, encompassed their relationship. But Churchill, with characteristic impishness, apparently never gave the direct lie to Bracken’s implied claim. This annoyed Churchill’s wife and peeved his son, Randolph, who spoke satirically of  “my brother, the bastard.” To quell the noisome rumor Churchill quipped: “I have looked the matter up, but the dates don’t coincide.”

He combined two qualities: generous loyalty to those he loved, and an acid tongue and pen for those he didn’t. Most of the latter, I tend to think, richly deserved what they got. Randolph Churchill’s public persona was based on the latter quality. In the mid-1950s, surgery revealed that a tumor on his lung was benign. His friend Evelyn Waugh burst into the bar at White’s Club: “They’ve cut out the only part of Randolph that isn’t malignant!”

In 1911, a time of great political division, Churchill and F.E. Smith founded The Other Club, a collegial dining group for members of both parties. It's still going strong.