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.
In 1903, Winston Churchill was at the cusp of a brilliant political career--a newly elected Parliament member with a brash, aggressive style of oration and passionate political convictions. During this time, John Brodrick, the Secretary of State for War, proposed an expansion of Britain's peacetime military--a plan which Churchill strongly opposed.
Churchill attacked Brodrick's plan in six fiery speeches on the subject--speeches that generated strong support and left Brodrick politically isolated. Mr. Brodrick's Army is a compilation of all six of these speeches. With fewer than 20 first editions currently in existence, it is the rarest of Churchill's works--remarkable not only for its historical significance, but for its early display of the oratorical brilliance for which Churchill would become known.
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.
A vibrant account of the people who shaped Britain's early history, The Birth of Britain is the first of Churchill's popular and accessible four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Here, Churchill guides the reader through the establishment of the constitutional monarchy, the parliamentary system, and the people who played lead roles in creating democracy in England.Based on the research of modern historians as well as a wealth of primary source material, this history was respected by scholars as well as the public in its day-a testament both to its integrity as a work of historical nonfiction and its accessibility to laypeople. Churchill used primary sources to masterful effect in this work-quoting directly from ancient and medieval documents to provide valuable insights into the characters of many ancient and medieval figures who played a lead role in early British history.
