Winston Churchill is without question one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. Famous as the bulldog who rallied his wavering and war-weary compatriots to lead the Allied resistance to Hitler, he will forever stand as Britain's savior. Unceremoniously thrown out of office after the war, he was considered brilliant, occasionally impolitic, but morally principled by his friends, and fearsome, opportunistic, and an unruly trouble-maker by his enemies. For much of his long political career he was the most detested and mistrusted man in British public life. Yet when he retired he was acclaimed as the "greatest Englishman of all time." Which is the real Churchill?
In the past several years, a wave of revisionist scholars have attacked Churchill's wartime strategy, domestic politics, and private life, and have even claimed that he could have responsibly kept England out of the war. Now Norman Rose, the first historian to be granted access to the Churchill archives since the publication of Churchill's authorized biography, sets the record straight, combining a proper assessment of Churchill's achievements with a legitimate strand of revisionism. Rose's Churchill is impetuous, and capable of disastrous miscalculation -- as in the Dardanelles expedition and the Norwegian campaign of 1940. Yet Rose defends Churchill's place in the pantheon of history, showing that through his story runs a tragic thread -- how the scion of a great aristocratic house, in many ways the quintessential English aristocrat, conservative and imperialist, came to preside over his country's decline. It is this theme, at once dramatic and poignant, that Norman Rose handles with fine understanding andperception in this comprehensive and fully documented account of Churchill's life.
British critics widely hailed Norman Rose's "Churchill" as quite simply the best biography yet written, calling it a "masterpiece." Finally now available to American readers, "Churchill: The Unruly Giant" is a definitive interpretation of one of the twentieth century's greatest leaders.
In the past several years, a wave of revisionist scholars have attacked Churchill's wartime strategy, domestic politics, and private life, and have even claimed that he could have responsibly kept England out of the war. Now Norman Rose, the first historian to be granted access to the Churchill archives since the publication of Churchill's authorized biography, sets the record straight, combining a proper assessment of Churchill's achievements with a legitimate strand of revisionism. Rose's Churchill is impetuous, and capable of disastrous miscalculation -- as in the Dardanelles expedition and the Norwegian campaign of 1940. Yet Rose defends Churchill's place in the pantheon of history, showing that through his story runs a tragic thread -- how the scion of a great aristocratic house, in many ways the quintessential English aristocrat, conservative and imperialist, came to preside over his country's decline. It is this theme, at once dramatic and poignant, that Norman Rose handles with fine understanding andperception in this comprehensive and fully documented account of Churchill's life.
British critics widely hailed Norman Rose's "Churchill" as quite simply the best biography yet written, calling it a "masterpiece." Finally now available to American readers, "Churchill: The Unruly Giant" is a definitive interpretation of one of the twentieth century's greatest leaders.
