Early on in his career Churchill took part in the last cavalry charge by the British army, at Omdurman. Churchill was the complete master of his brief at the Admiralty, taking a keen interest in the latest developments in battleship technology and acquiring an almost geeky knowledge and understanding of their guns. As a young home secretary in Asquith’s government he can take credit, with Lloyd George, for laying the foundations of the welfare state, but it was his work in his next post as First Lord of the Admiralty, ensuring that the Royal Navy was prepared for war in 1914, that was the job that really gripped him.

While at Harrow he told a friend that he had had a dream that in his lifetime England would be under attack and that he would play a central role in the defence of the capital.Īfter that, with boundless energy, enthusiasm and courage, Churchill sought out the places where the fighting was thickest, whether on the North-west Frontier, South Africa or the Sudan. He felt it then, but he had presentiments of that moment years before as a school boy. Roberts illustrates throughout this long and thoroughly researched book that was no literary flourish. What Roberts conveys in a way that Jenkins did not is the central place that war and combat played not just in Churchill’s career, but in his whole character, personality and imagination.Ĭhurchill wrote that when he became prime minister, “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”. And yet that was, perhaps, a limitation of sorts. Jenkins brought a unique perspective to Churchill’s life, since, as an MP, former Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer he had stood in the same shoes as Churchill and had had to view the world through the same spectacles. In the two decades since Jenkins published his Churchill, the Churchill industry’s productivity has continued to rise exponentially, with books produced on every aspect of Churchill’s life.

Roy Jenkins produced his widely acclaimed volume less than twenty years ago. One could be forgiven for thinking the ever burgeoning Churchilliana industry hardly needs another.

Foreign Policy & International RelationsĪndrew Roberts is a brave man to publish a new single volume biography of Churchill.

Andrew roberts churchill book