Mary SOames

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.

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!’”

"Several times again I attempted to climb the peak. I came away from my mountain climbing with a little more understanding, perhaps a few more skills. But mostly I came away with a radiant and profound affection for the mountain himself. Playing him was one of the best things that has ever befallen me. I shall never look down from that peak—but as long as I live I shall delight in gazing upwards towards those towering rocks." - Robert Hardy

"My panic was genuine. I felt I had no qualifications whatever to attempt a Titan. Thoughts of the friendliness in Churchill’s voice fled. Robert Hardy was to climb Everest in everyday clothes with an Ordnance Map."

Medical historians find no evidence that Churchill suffered from major depression, but his health was subject to many ailments in his final decade.

Over a century on, it is impossible to say what killed Sir Winston's father. But current evidence argues against the frequent claim of syphilis

Sphinx editors in Brussels were steeped in the war as Churchill described it. Their volumes offer a splendid collection of wartime photographs.

Speaking of Britain and its Empire in 1941, Winston Churchill said: “We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”1 A few weeks earlier he had advised the boys at Harrow School: “Never give in—never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”2 The image he conveyed is one of hardiness and personal toughness, and it galvanized his countrymen. Yet we rarely give thought to where he found the hardiness and resilience he conveyed.