Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts (English) Paperback Book

Description: Churchill by Andrew Roberts NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEROne of The Wall Street Journals Ten Best Books of 2018One of The Economists Best Books of 2018One of The New York Timess Notable Books of 2018"Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill . . . A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britains savior." —Wall Street JournalIn this landmark biography of Winston Churchill based on extensive new material, the true genius of the man, statesman and leader can finally be fully seen and understood--by the bestselling, award-winning author of Napoleon and The Last King of America.When we seek an example of great leaders with unalloyed courage, the person who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the iconic, visionary war leader immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In Churchill, Andrew Roberts gives readers the full and definitive Winston Churchill, from birth to lasting legacy, as personally revealing as it is compulsively readable.Roberts gained exclusive access to extensive new material: transcripts of War Cabinet meetings, diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs from Churchills contemporaries. The Royal Family permitted Roberts--in a first for a Churchill biographer--to read the detailed notes taken by King George VI in his diary after his weekly meetings with Churchill during World War II. This treasure trove of access allows Roberts to understand the man in revelatory new ways, and to identify the hidden forces fueling Churchills legendary drive.We think of Churchill as a hero who saved civilization from the evils of Nazism and warned of the grave crimes of Soviet communism, but Robertss masterwork reveals that he has as much to teach us about the challenges leaders face today--and the fundamental values of courage, tenacity, leadership and moral conviction. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Andrew Roberts is the bestselling author of The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945, Waterloo: Napoleons Last Gamble and Napoleon: A Life, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and a finalist for the Plutarch Award. He has won many other prizes, including the Wolfson History Prize and the British Army Military Book of the Year, and frequently writes for The Wall Street Journal. He lives in London and often lectures in New York. Review A USA Today Book You Wont Want to MissA Washington Post Book to Read in NovemberA Christian Science Monitor Best Book of NovemberA Mental Floss Best Book of 2018An Octavian Report Essential Read for 2019A New York Post Book That Should Be On Everyones Holiday Gift List A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018A Lit Hub Best Book of 2018Shortlisted for the 2019 Plutarch Award"The best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written. . . . Roberts tells this story with great authority and not a little panache. He writes elegantly, with enjoyable flashes of tartness, and is in complete command both of his sources and the vast historiography."—Richard Aldous, The New York Times "Terrific . . . By drawing on many previously untapped sources, Mr. Roberts has produced a more complete picture of his subject than any previous biography."—The Economist"Even if youve read every other book about the former prime minister and seen all the movies, expect revelations. For example: The royal family permitted the author to read King George VIs diary notes about his wartime meetings with Churchill. Thats a first."—The Washington Post "Brilliant, breathtaking, unputdownable . . . the definitive picture of our greatest political leader. All Robertss 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."—London Evening Standard"Roberts new biography (………… out of four) stands tall, re-illuminating the well-etched contours of Churchills monumental life with scrupulous scholarship and a flair for unearthing the telling detail; looking twice where most biographers have been content to glance once."—USA Today "In this season of giving, get (and give) Andrew Robertss brilliant new biography. . . . A review last month in The Times called it the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written, but its more than that. Its an antidote to the reigning conceits, self-deceptions, half-truths and clichés of our day."—Bret Stephens, The New York Times"The best biography of Winston ever written . . . bursts with character, humour and incident on almost every page."—The Sunday Times "At a time when every fraud and charlatan is taking refuge in spurious fantasies of Churchilliana, it is salutary to read this brilliant, bracing mega-biography of Winston Churchill and be reminded what Britains most famous prime minister was actually like." —The Guardian"Fantastically readable prose, which flows along in a pitch-perfect combination of erudition and eloquence . . . In brightly engaging chapters, Roberts takes readers through all the stages of Churchills adventurous life as a soldier of the empire and then as a professional politician . . . Roberts is a shrewd and experienced biographer."—Christian Science Monitor"A tour de force of scrupulous selection and astute appraisal, perhaps the best full-scale biography to date in a field where the competition has been crowded and stiff."—National Review"A stupendous achievement: lucid, erudite, intelligent, but also inspiring. Roberts catches the imperishable grandeur of Churchills life as no other historian has done. Roberts does full justice to Churchills superhuman range of activity."—Standpoint Magazine"The best single-volume life imaginable of a man whose life it would seem technically impossible to get into a single volume."—Daily Telegraph"Roberts brilliantly conjures up one of the most fascinating characters of all time. He enriches the saga with wonderful examples of Churchills aristocratic eccentricities, glittering oratory and wit."—Literary Review"Its 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"Roberts is a master storyteller."—The Weekly Standard"[Robertss] research is outstanding, based on archival and primary sources . . . What emerges in Roberts book is a man full of complexities. . . . Roberts book is full of insights and facts that provide a deeper understanding of Churchill."—Tom Hallman, Jr., The Oregonian"This definitive biography of the storied leader was made possible through unprecedented access to material, including diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs and even the detailed diary notes taken by King George VI."—New York Post"Terrific . . . Churchill probably lived the most variegated life of any political figure of the 20th century. Moreover, he was obnoxious, charming, emotional, selfish and patriotic. Roberts has captured his complexity in a way that few historians have ever imagined."—The Boston Herald"Robertss brilliant new book is not only learned and sagacious but also thrilling and fun. An award-winning historian and biographer, an expert on statecraft, leadership, and the Second World War, Roberts writes with authority and confidence. Enriched by such previously unseen material as King George VIs wartime diaries, [Churchill] should stand as the definitive one-volume Churchill biography." —The City Journal"Andrew Roberts has written the best single-volume biography of Winston Churchill to date."—New York Journal of Books"Widely praised as the best single-volume biography of Winston Churchill ever written, historian and commentator Roberts draws on previously unavailable journals and notes for the robust, engrossing, and nuanced history of the great British leader." —The National Book Review"Roberts writes gripping narrative history without deserting high scholarly standards. . . . Surely the last word for years to come on Churchill."—History Today"Like all of Andrew Robertss histories, Churchill is massively researched and exquisitely written. The authors sharp sense of humor is often in evidence and warmly complements Churchills own. This is a brilliant work, by a very fine historian, on a permanently heroic and always fascinating figure."—The New Criterion"Wonderful, masterly . . . There have been few lives as long, momentous, and wide-ranging as that of Sir Winston Churchill, author, adventurer, orator, wit, painter, animal lover, friend, and politician. Andrew Robertss masterful, supremely readable biography has a text 982 pages long. It could hardly have been shorter and told so extraordinary a story so well."—Commentary"The most superb one-volume biography I have ever read—of anyone. . . . Roberts also manages something I thought impossible. He has given us a new, ground-breaking portrait of the man whom many consider to be the greatest ever Englishman. . . . Robertss brilliance as a biographer was clear from his very first, of Lord Halifax. Re-reading it in tandem with this magnificent Churchill, one sees yet again just how finely history turns on random and uncertain events. . . . This is a simply wonderful book. A living, poetic, stirring yet thought-provoking portrait of a giant, it will be regarded as a classic for generations to come." —The Jewish Chronicle"Terrific. . . . [Roberts] is one of the great historians of his generation and he is stupendously readable. . . . Andrew Roberts has captured [Churchills] complexity in a way that few historians have ever imagined." —The American Spectator"Not only is it the best biography I have read this year; it might well be the best Ive read ever. In terms of Robertss oeuvre, this book will surely stand as his masterpiece. This is biography as art, and a finer example one could scarcely hope to read. Why on earth does the world need another biography of Churchill? Before reading this, it would have been hard to say. Afterwards, very easy indeed—because it needed Andrew Roberts to write it."—The Catholic Herald"Winston Churchill was perhaps the greatest leader of the twentieth century and a person who never ceases to fascinate and inspire. Widely hailed as the best single volume biography of Churchill ever written, historian Roberts magisterial biography captures the unfailing spirit of the man who saved Europe in all his flawed brilliance." —The Octavian Report"In my opinion, the book, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, is the most precious gift of the year 2018—in history, education, knowledge, and literature. . . . If there were a Nobel Prize for historical research, Andrew Roberts would be a perfect candidate."—The Jerusalem Report"A page-turner . . . full of new material that has not been previously available to Churchill scholars. Roberts manages to mobilize these tremendous sources into a well-paced narrative that is full of exciting passages—which matches perfectly the venturesome spirit of Winston Churchill."—Law & Liberty"A complex and compelling depiction of one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century, one sure to enlighten and provoke both those familiar with Churchill and those who may know little beyond . . . a tour de force. Roberts has given us a great gift. He presents a Churchill in all of his complexity. What makes this book essential for those who care about reviving and defending liberal democracy in our time is that it reminds us that, even at moments when old hatreds burn bright and few are willing to swim against the current, it is still possible for great leaders to emerge."—American Interest"I didnt think we really needed a new Churchill biography, or, having read so many, that I would find a new one catching up my attention, but Roberts proved me wrong. In addition to new source material, Robertss judgments about Churchill, and his keen selection of the most salient details about Churchill thought and action, are superb."—Claremont Review of Books "A magnificent and carefully nuanced life and times of Winston Churchill, elegantly written, studded with new research, and deeply imagined. Andrew Roberts accomplishes a minor miracle in offering a fresh, empathetic portrait in an authoritative and fast-paced narrative that never flags. Roberts explores Winston Churchills strengths and weaknesses as a leader, his self-centeredness and his generosity, allowing us to feel both Churchills personal vulnerabilities as well as his force as a public figure."—Biographers International Organization"A heroic biography, appropriately matched to the ambition, egotism, and undoubted achievement of the life it describes. It will surely remain the outstanding Churchill biography for many years to come."—International Churchill Society"The newly definitive one-volume biography of its subject . . . Andrew Roberts has brilliantly reconstructed the life of a titanic figure of the twentieth century within the intellectual context of his times. As such, Churchill constitutes a first-rate, authentic work of historical scholarship for our time."—History News Network"Riveting . . . A masterful biography, rich in detail and insight."—Booklist (starred review)"A well-researched and exceptionally well-written biography . . . This compelling book is likely to become a standard text on Churchill and will be difficult to keep on the shelves." —Library Journal (starred review)"This biography is exhaustively researched, beautifully written and paced, deeply admiring but not hagiographic, and empathic and balanced in its judgments—a magnificent achievement."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)"A clear, well-limned view of a complex figure who, in no danger of being forgotten, continues to inspire. The most comprehensive single-volume biography of Churchill that we have in print and a boon for any student of the statesman and his times." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Review Quote A USA Today Book You Wont Want to Miss A Washington Post Book to Read in November A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of November A Mental Floss Best Book of 2018 An Octavian Report Essential Read for 2019 A New York Post Book That Should Be On Everyones Holiday Gift List A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 A Lit Hub Best Book of 2018 Shortlisted for the 2019 Plutarch Award "The best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written. . . . Roberts tells this story with great authority and not a little panache. He writes elegantly, with enjoyable flashes of tartness, and is in complete command both of his sources and the vast historiography." --Richard Aldous, The New York Times "Terrific . . . By drawing on many previously untapped sources, Mr. Roberts has produced a more complete picture of his subject than any previous biography." --The Economist "Even if youve read every other book about the former prime minister and seen all the movies, expect revelations. For example: The royal family permitted the author to read King George VIs diary notes about his wartime meetings with Churchill. Thats a first." --The Washington Post "Brilliant, breathtaking, unputdownable . . . the definitive picture of our greatest political leader. All Robertss 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." --London Evening Standard "Roberts new biography ( out of four) stands tall, re-illuminating the well-etched contours of Churchills monumental life with scrupulous scholarship and a flair for unearthing the telling detail; looking twice where most biographers have been content to glance once." -- USA Today "In this season of giving, get (and give) Andrew Robertss brilliant new biography. . . . A review last month in The Times called it the best single-volume biography of Churchill yet written, but its more than that. Its an antidote to the reigning conceits, self-deceptions, half-truths and clich Excerpt from Book Introduction On Thursday, 20 December 1945, the editor of the Sunday Dispatch , Charles Eade, lunched with Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine at their new home in Knightsbridge in London. Eade was editing the former Prime Ministers wartime speeches for publication, and they were due to discuss the latest volume. Before lunch, Eade had waited in what he later described as a beautiful room with bookshelves let into the wall and carrying superbly bound volumes of French and English books, which Churchill called his snob library. The walls were adorned with pictures of Churchills great ancestor, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, and a portrait of Churchill painted by Sir John Lavery during the First World War. The lunch reflected post-war British rationing: an egg dish, cold turkey and salad, plum pudding and coffee. They drank a bottle of claret that the Mayor of Bordeaux had just sent over. Churchill told the trusted journalist, who had lunched with him several times during the war, that he had got very drunk at a dinner at the French Embassy the previous night, adding with a chuckle, drunker than usual. Over several glasses of brandy and a cigar - whose band Eade took away as a souvenir - Churchill got down to discussing the best way to publish the wartime speeches he had delivered when the House of Commons had been in secret session during the war. In the course of their hour-long talk, he showed Eade the sixty-eight volumes of minutes, messages and memoranda that he had sent to various Cabinet ministers and the Chiefs of Staff between 1940 and 1945, allowing him to open them at random. When Eade naturally expressed surprise at the sheer volume of work that Churchill had managed to get through as prime minister, He explained to me that he was able to handle all these affairs at the centre, because his whole life had been a training for the high office he had filled during the war. It was a sentiment that Churchill had expressed two years earlier to the Canadian Prime Minister, William Mackenzie King, during the Quebec Conference in August 1943. When King told Churchill that no one else could have saved the British Empire in 1940, he replied that he had had very exceptional training, having been through a previous war, and having had large experience in government. King rejoined, Yes, it almost confirmed the old Presbyterian idea of pre-destination or pre-ordination; of his having been the man selected for this task. This idea was reiterated by the Conservative politician Lord Hailsham, who had been a junior minister in Churchills wartime government, when he said, The one case in which I think I can see the finger of God in contemporary history is Churchills arrival at the premiership at that precise moment in 1940. Churchill put his remarks to King and Eade far more poetically three years later in the final lines of his book The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his war memoirs. Recalling the evening of Friday, 10 May 1940, when he had become prime minister only hours after Adolf Hitler had unleashed his Blitzkrieg on the West, Churchill wrote, I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial ... I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. He had believed in his own destiny since at least the age of sixteen, when he told a friend that he would save Britain from a foreign invasion. His lifelong admiration of Napoleon and his own ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, coloured his belief that he too was a man of destiny. His aristocratic birth, as the holder of the two famous names of Spencer and Churchill, gave him a tremendous self-confidence that meant that he was not personally hurt by criticism. In the courageous and often lonely stands he was to take against the twin totalitarian threats of Fascism and Communism, he cared far more for what he imagined would have been the good opinion of his fallen comrades of the Great War than for what was said by his living colleagues on the benches of the House of Commons. The memory of his friends killed in war or by accidents (such as Lawrence of Arabia) or alcoholism (such as F. E. Smith) very often moved Churchill to tears, but so did many other things, as this book will relate. Churchills passions and emotions often mastered him, and he never minded crying in public, even as prime minister, in an age that admired the stiff upper lip. This was just one phenomenon of many that made him a profoundly unusual person. This book explores the extraordinary degree to which in 1940 Churchills past life had indeed been but a preparation for his leadership in the Second World War. It investigates the myriad lessons that he learned in the sixty-five years before he became prime minister - years of error and tragedy as well as of hard work and inspiring leadership - then it looks at the ways that he put those lessons to use during civilizations most testing hour and trial. For although he was indeed walking with destiny in May 1940, it was a destiny that he had consciously spent a lifetime shaping. Part One The Preparation 1 A Famous Name, November 1874-January 1895 It is said that famous men are usually the product of unhappy childhood. The stern compression of circumstances, the twinges of adversity, the spur of slights and taunts in early years, are needed to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit without which great actions are seldom accomplished. Churchill, Marlborough Half English aristocrat and half American gambler. Harold Macmillan on Churchill Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born in a small ground-floor room, the nearest bedroom to the main entrance of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, at 1.30 a.m. on Monday, 30 November 1874. It was a worrying birth as the baby was at least six weeks premature, and his mother, the beautiful American socialite Jennie Jerome, had suffered a fall a few days earlier. She had also been shaken by a pony-cart the day before the birth, following which her labour-pains started. In the event there were no abnormalities, and the babys father, Lord Randolph Churchill, the younger son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, was soon describing him as wonderfully pretty with dark eyes and hair and very healthy. (The hair soon went strawberry blond, and great tresses of it from when he was five can be seen in the birth room at the Palace today; thereafter Churchill was red-headed.) The name Winston recalled both Sir Winston Churchill, the childs ancestor who had fought for King Charles I in the English Civil War, and Lord Randolphs elder brother, who had died aged four. Leonard honoured the babys maternal grandfather, a risk-taking American financier and railway-owner who had already made and lost two great fortunes on Wall Street. Spencer had been hyphenated with Churchill since 1817, the result of a marital alliance with the rich Spencer family of Althorp, Northamptonshire, who at that time held the earldom of Sunderland and were later to become the Earls Spencer. Proud of his Spencer forebears, he signed himself Winston S. Churchill, and in 1942 told an American trade unionist that of course his real name was Spencer-Churchill and it is in this way that he is described, for example, in Court Circulars when he goes to see the King. The childs paternal grandfather was John Winston Spencer-Churchill, owner of Blenheim Palace, which has been described both as the English Versailles and as the greatest war memorial ever built. Named after the most glorious of the battles won by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, in the War of Spanish Succession in 1704, its magnificent structure, tapestries, busts, paintings and furnishings commemorated a victory in a conflict that had saved Britain from domination by a European superpower - in this case, the France of Louis XIV - a message that the young Winston did not fail to imbibe. We have nothing to equal this, King George III admitted when he visited Blenheim Palace in 1786. We shape our buildings, Winston Churchill was later to say, and afterwards our buildings shape us. Although he never lived at Blenheim, he was profoundly influenced by the splendour of the Palaces 500-foot frontage, its 7 acres of rooms and its 2,700-acre estate. He absorbed its magnificence during the many holidays and weekends he stayed there with his cousins. The Palace was - still is - pervaded with the spirit of the 1st Duke, the greatest soldier-statesman in British history, who, as Churchill was to describe him in his biography of his ancestor, was a duke in days when dukes were dukes. For his late Victorian contemporaries, the young Winston Churchills name conjured up two images: the splendour of the 1st Dukes military reputation and Palace of course, but also the adventurous career of Lord Randolph Churchill, the childs father. Lord Randolph had been elected a Member of Parliament nine months before Churchill was born, and was one of the leaders of the Conservative Party from the childs sixth birthday onwards. He was controversial, mercurial, opportunistic, politically ruthless, a brilliant speaker both on public platforms and in the House of Commons, and was marked out as a future prime minister - as long as his inherent tendency to recklessness did not get the better of him. In politics, he followed the precepts of the Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli, which combined imperialism abroad with a progressive programme of social reform at home. Lord Randolph was to call his version Tory Democracy, a Details ISBN1101981008 Author Andrew Roberts Short Title CHURCHILL Pages 1152 Language English ISBN-10 1101981008 ISBN-13 9781101981009 Format Paperback DEWEY B Year 2019 Media Book Publication Date 2019-10-15 Subtitle Walking with Destiny Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2019-10-15 NZ Release Date 2019-10-15 US Release Date 2019-10-15 UK Release Date 2019-10-15 Illustrations 2 16-PAGE, 4-COLOR INSERTS; 14 B&W MAPS Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Imprint Penguin USA Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:125928789;

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