Churchill’s gift for words as a speaker and a writer – “we will fight them on the beaches”...”we will not give in”...and most tellingly “history will be kind to me for I intend to write it” has given us a somewhat one sided view of his part as the war leader of the nation. Here Walter Reid shows just how much Churchill was hampered and hemmed in on all sides, as Reid says, if it wasn’t his own Generals or Parliament, it was the Free French and the most daunting of all, the Americans who had to be either confronted or wooed. And its these confrontations and battles that Reid concentrates on in this most revealing history.

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The Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-1945, Max Hastings
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Synopsis

In April 1945 Churchill said to Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 'There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!' When he became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940 Churchill was without allies. Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain saved Britain from immediate defeat, but it was evident that Britain alone could never win the war. Churchill looked to America. He said that until Pearl Harbor 'no lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt'. But would Roosevelt have entered the war if Pearl Harbor had not taken place? Until then his actions were ambivalent, and even afterwards America's policy was largely shaped by self-interest and her idea of what a post-war world should be like. Churchill's account of relations with his allies and associates was sanitised for the historical record and has been accepted uncritically. In reality he had to battle with the generals and the CIGS, Tory backbenchers and the War Cabinet, de Gaulle and the Free French and - above all - the Americans. Even his wife, Clementine, could on occasions be remarkably unsupportive. Walter Reid, the author of several acclaimed works on 20th-century military history, brings together the result of recent research to create a powerful narrative which reveals how much time and energy was devoted to fighting the war that was excluded from the official accounts, the war with the allies.

Reviews

'magnificent' - Sunday Herald

'excellent ... an outstanding account'
British Army Review

About the Author

Walter Reid was educated at Oxford University, where he read history, and Edinburgh University. He is now based in the west of Scotland, but spends part of the year in France. His previous work includes 'To Arras, 1917' (Tuckwell Press), and the critically acclaimed biography of Douglas Haig, 'Architect of Victory' (Birlinn, 2006). More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation