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.
This second-to-last volume of Winston Churchill's wartime speeches, broadcasts, public messages, and other communications take readers through the last significant events of the war leading up to Allied victory.From D-Day and the invasion of France to war on the Eastern Front, the fate of Poland and the Allied defense against the Nazis' V2 rockets, this collection displays Churchill's oratory skills in their full power. At once lofty, severe, lyrical, and folksy, he is capable of inspiring, amusing, and exhorting his public through brilliant oratory, fiery passion, scathing wit, and clear resolve.These speeches are fascinating reading even today-both for their historical significance and for the masterful and vastly entertaining writing.
Once the war was over, the story didn't end-not for Churchill, and not for the West. Volume 4 of Churchill's five-volume series The World Crisis documents the fallout of World War I-including the Irish Treaty, the peace conferences between Greece and Turkey; and news articles from noted contemporaries.The period immediately after World War I was extremely chaotic-and it takes a genius of narrative description and organization to accurately and accessibly describe it for us. Churchill manages to accomplish this with evident skill, depicting the international disorganization and anarchy present immediately after the war-with the unique perspective of both a historian and a political insider.
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.
