Sir Winston S. Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."
Over a 64-year span, Churchill published over 40 books, many multi-volume definitive accounts of historical events to which he was a witness and participant. All are beautifully written and as accessible and relevant today as when first published.
During his fifty-year political career, Churchill served twice as Prime Minister in addition to other prominent positions—including President of the Board of Trade, First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Home Secretary. In the 1930s, Churchill was one of the first to recognize the danger of the rising Nazi power in Germany and to campaign for rearmament in Britain. His leadership and inspired broadcasts and speeches during World War II helped strengthen British resistance to Adolf Hitler—and played an important part in the Allies’ eventual triumph.
One of the most inspiring wartime leaders of modern history, Churchill was also an orator, a historian, a journalist, and an artist. All of these aspects of Churchill are fully represented in this collection of his works.
A disturbingly prophetic account of the events leading up to World War II, this anthology is a collection of Churchill’s reporting for the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard from 1936 to 1939—tracing Hitler’s rise to power, the Nazi invasion of the Rhineland, and other events leading up to the declaration of war.
In the first few years of Nazi ascendance, many European intellectuals and leaders advocated avoiding war and negotiating with Hitler. Churchill is one of the few who understood the scope of the Nazi threat and advocated armament against Germany early on—and his early prescience serves as a fine prediction of his determined stance against Hitler as a World War II leader and statesman.
This second volume in Churchill's five-volume series The World Crisis is by far the most personal-dealing frankly with Churchill's failures as a military leader and his ultimately unsuccessful battle to break the European deadlock. After the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles, Winston Churchill served for several months as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. During this time, he served on one of the most violent stretches of the front lines, making a total of 36 courageous expeditions into No Man's Land. Here, Churchill provides an unflinching narrative of a particularly challenging time in World War I and in his own career-providing fascinating insight into the mental and psychological challenges faced by a major historical leader.
The Sinews of Peace is the lesser-known alternate title of the "Iron Curtain Speech" delivered at Westminster College in 1946—where Churchill championed the idea of a "fraternal association" between people of the English-speaking world to preserve the spirit of military and political cooperation forged during the war. President Truman had been present at that speech, and some believed Churchill was suggesting a formal alliance.
This collection contains the first and perhaps most significant of Churchill’s speeches delivered immediately after the war. Within them, it’s easy to see the common theme of European unity and cooperation Churchill is proposing—including a partnership between Germany and France. Europe did grow toward a more unified whole—a result perhaps influenced in no small amount by the words contained within these pages.
