Whereas Hitler was famously known as an artist manqué, Churchill “came at every issue with a painter’s eye,” whether developing a battle plan for the invasion of Italy or “parsing geopolitical matters such as continental hegemony.” The great-man theory of history, too, may be passé in academia, but Manchester/Reid gladly subscribe to it, with an account of the friendship of Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt (and rivalry with Josef Stalin) that is both searching and unsentimental. Manchester also saw patterns that may not have been apparent to most other writers. The documentation would not pass a professional historian’s muster, but Manchester never wrote for historians, and general readers, as always, will be taken by his boundless abilities as a storyteller.

Just before Manchester ( A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance-Portrait of an Age, 1992, etc.) died in 2004, he handed over the task of finishing his Churchill biography to Reid, who retains Manchester’s habit of writing at extreme length, and it’s clear where Manchester left off in his own primary research: Though the book spans the years 1940 to Churchill’s death in 1965, roughly only one-tenth of it covers the “lion’s” last 20 years, while the vast bulk is given over-fittingly enough-to Churchill’s leadership as British prime minister during World War II.

Throughout, Churchill learned the lessons that would prepare him for the storm to come, and as the 1930's began, he readied himself for the coming battle against Nazism-an evil the world had never before seen.A (very) posthumous study of the late, great British leader by the late, great popular historian, aided by journalist Reid. Yet, as Chancellor of the Exchequer he plunged England into economic crisis, and his fruitless attempt to suppress Gandhi's quest for Indian independence brought political chaos to Britain. In Parliament he was the prime force behind the creation of Iraq and Jordan, laid the groundwork for the birth of Israel, and negotiated the independence of the Irish Free State. He sought glory on the battlefields of Cuba, Sudan, India, South Africa and the trenches of France. Born of an American mother and the gifted but unstable son of a duke, his childhood was one of wretched neglect. In this, the first volume, Manchester follows Churchill from his birth to 1932, when he began to warn against the re-militarization of Germany. The Last Lion: Visions of Glory follows the first fifty-eight years of Churchill's life-the years that mold him into the man who will become one of the most influential politicians of the twentieth century.

The first volume in William Manchester's masterful, magnum opus account of Winston Churchill's life.

The last lion churchill book