David Lloyd George

Churchill’s imagination in engaging with science and its potential consequences enabled him to confront vast change between the Victorian and Atomic eras.

The Churchill Project provides descriptions of the twelve most significant locations in Whitehall, London as they relate to Winston Churchill.

Early in the 20th century, Armenian peoples suffered the greatest and bloodiest of all the great mass-slaughters which till then there was record.

Prudence, Aristotle’s primary quality of statesmen was well demonstrated by Churchill at the Admiralty in the years leading up to the First World War.

Throwback to vanished age, Sassoon served his country in war and peace, and entertained the glitterati at his palatial mansions. He died too young.

“In my mind’s eye I invest him with the robes of Caesar…. The lives of the great are an inspiration to their posterity.” —Lewis Broad

Historical close calls, during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-21, remind us of the role of illness and chance in the fate of nations and their leaders.

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.”

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.

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.

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.