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  • Published: 17 September 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141981253
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1152
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

Churchill

Walking with Destiny




The blockbuster biography of the greatest Briton, by one of Britain's bestselling historians

Winston Churchill towers over every other figure in twentieth-century British history. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world.

There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over forty new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors. The book in no way conceals Churchill's faults and it allows the reader to appreciate his virtues and character in full: his titanic capacity for work (and drink), his ability see the big picture, his willingness to take risks and insistence on being where the action was, his good humour even in the most desperate circumstances, the breadth and strength of his friendships and his extraordinary propensity to burst into tears at unexpected moments. Above all, it shows us the wellsprings of his personality - his lifelong desire to please his father (even long after his father's death) but aristocratic disdain for the opinions of almost everyone else, his love of the British Empire, his sense of history and its connection to the present.

  • Published: 17 September 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141981253
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1152
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:

About the author

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts is the bestselling author of The Storm of War, Masters and CommandersNapoleon and Wellington, and Waterloo. A Fellow of the Napoleonic Institute, he has won many prizes, including the Wolfson History Prize and the British Army Military Book Award, writes frequently for The Wall Street Journal, and has written and presented a number of popular documentaries. He lives in New York City.

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Praise for Churchill

This terrific book, which bursts with character, humour and incident on almost every page ... is undoubtedly the best single-volume life of Churchill ever written

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

The best single-volume life imaginable

Simon Heffer, Sunday Telegraph

Roberts has produced a more complete picture of his subject than any previous biography. His certainly knocks into a cocked hat Boris Johnson's boisterously self-referential effort of a few years ago

Economist

A stupendous achievement: lucid, erudite, intelligent, but also inspiring. Roberts catches the imperishable grandeur of Churchill's life as no other historian has done

Daniel Johnson, Standpoint

Brilliant, breathtaking, unputdownable ... All Roberts's past life has been but a preparation for this hour and this work, and this brilliant book is a fitting crown to his own career

Michael Gove, Evening Standard

As Andrew Roberts reminds us in this epic biography ... Churchill's career provides ample proof that fact can be far more extraordinary than fiction

Nick Rennison, Daily Mail

It's the sort of biography that, one feels, Churchill himself would have wanted. Colossal, energetic, deeply knowledgeable, properly critical, but also sympathetic and, in places, deliciously funny

Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

A heroic biography, appropriately matched to the ambition, egotism and undoubted achievement of the life it describes

John Campbell, Finest Hour

A work of unequalled scholarship. Read it and you will not have to bother with the previous 1,000 biographies

Paul Routledge, Tablet

An original portrait of an all-too-familiar figure ... He enriches the saga with wonderful examples of Churchill's aristocratic eccentricity, glittering oratory and wit

Piers Brendon, Literary Review

In a single volume, Andrew Roberts has captured the essence of one of the world's most impactful, most memorable statesmen. It is the crowning achievement of his career - and will become the definitive biography of its subject.

Henry Kissinger