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.
The rarest of his post-war speech compilations, The Unwritten Alliance was the last of Churchill’s books published during his lifetime. Most of these speeches took place during the end of his second Premiership—when the illustrious politician and statesman was in his eighties.
Churchill had experienced several strokes by this time, and his health was failing.However, these speeches show that his mind was still clear—and he was still a master of speechcraft. This collection contains his addresses at banquets, award ceremonies, and to the Primrose League—where he had given his first political speech many decades before, in 1897. These speeches demonstrate Churchill’s mental vigor even in his declining years, filled as much with awards and accolades as with continued personal challenge.
More than any other book by Winston Churchill, the wide-ranging THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES allows the contemporary reader to grasp the extraordinary variety and depth of Churchill’s mature thoughts on the questions, both grave and gay, facing modern man.Churchill begins by asking what it would be like to live your life over again and ends by describing his love affair with painting. In between, he touches on subjects as diverse as spies, cartoons, submarines, elections, flying, and the future. Reading these essays—originally dictated late at night in the 1920s in his study, and by which he was able to support his family and live like a lord without inherited wealth—is like being invited to dinner at Churchill’s country seat at Chartwell, where the soup was limpid, Pol Roger Champagne flowed, the pudding had a theme, and Churchill entertained lucky visitors with vivid conversation. With a new introduction and notes by James W. Muller, Academic Chairman of the Churchill Centre, this edition recovers Churchill’s unforgettable table talk for a new generation of readers.
Winston Churchill's reputation still looms large in the canon of twentieth-century history-as a war leader, orator, and pillar of strength for Britain in the years of struggle against Hitler. Churchill's inspiring wartime speeches gave the British hope and comfort during years of bombings, violence, sacrifice, and terror.This compilation, composed of speeches made from 1938 to the end of 1940, contains some of his best. Highlights include "This was Their Finest Hour;" "Never in the Field of Human Conflict Was So Much Owed, By So Many, to So Few;" and "I Have Nothing to Offer but Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat." Even many decades after the end of the war, Churchill's words still have the power to stir the blood-and inspire the heart.
