The INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING BOOK OF THE WEEKEND, ECONOMIST, DAILY TELEGRAPH, EVENING STANDARD, OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Undoubtedly, the best single-volume life of Churchill ever written" Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

A wonderfully fresh and unexpected biography of Churchill, by one of Britain's most acclaimed historians.

Winston Churchill stands towering over every other figure in 20th-century British history. By his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many believed he was the greatest person in the world.

There are over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over forty new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, which were not used in any previous biography of Churchill, to portray him more intimately and persuasively than any of his predecessors.

The book does not conceal Churchill's weaknesses at all and allows the reader to appreciate his virtues and character fully: his giant capacity for work (and drink), his ability to see the big picture, his willingness to take risks, his insistence on being where the action was, his good humor even in the most desperate circumstances, the breadth and strength of his friendships, and his remarkable ability to burst into tears at unpredictable moments. Above all, it shows us the sources of his personality – his eternal desire to please his father (even long after his death), but also his aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love for the British Empire, his sense of history, and its connection to the present.

During World War II, Churchill called on a particular scientist to meet him several times for technical advice. "It was the same every time we met," the young man wrote, "I had the feeling that I was being recharged from a source of living force." Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's envoy, wrote, "Wherever he was, there was a front." Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill's fundamental partner in strategy and his most severe critic privately, wrote in his diary, "Thank God I was given such an opportunity to work alongside such a man and to open my eyes to the fact that occasionally such superhumans appear on this earth."

Pages: 1152, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm