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.
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 fourth of Churchill's grandly ambitious four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples begins with the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars-and ends with the Boer War of 1902. In it, Churchill makes an impassioned argument for the crucial role played by the English-speaking people in exporting not just economic benefits, but political freedom.Written in Churchill's characteristically compelling style, this volume is the only one in the series to benefit from Churchill's own personal experience as a soldier and a wartime journalist during the Boer War. It provides fascinating reading for those interested in world history and England's impact on it.
Renowned for his nonfiction accounts of the historical events of which he was both an eyewitness and shaper, Churchill was also an occasional writer of fiction. This is one of his fictional works—a short story in which the ghost of his father, Randolph, pays him a visit. Churchill reveals to his father all the goings-on in the world since his death in 1985, leaving out one crucial detail—his own important part in determining the unfolding of these events.
At once lyrical and nostalgic, The Dream is a fascinating foray into creative narration for Churchill—demonstrating a surprising weightiness of emotion and significance.
