Churchill

A long overdue reassessment of the part Churchill played in WWII, and how his actions really affected those he led ‘. . . the wonderful thing is that three quarters of the population of this world imagine that Winston Churchill is one of the strategists of history, a second Marlborough, and the other quarter have no conception what a public menace he is and has been throughout the war! It is far better that the world should never know and never suspect the feet of clay on that otherwise superhuman being. Without him England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster time and again . . . Never have I admired and disliked a man simultaneously to the same extent’ Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Churchill has gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known. From the day the Second World War was declared he stood out as the only man wanting to take offensive action. But is this accolade deserved? The first few years of the war were nothing short of disastrous, and author Stephen Napier shows how Churchill’s strategies - and his desire not to be the first British prime minister to surrender the nation - brought the war effort to the brink of ruin and back again. Did his series of retaliatory raids in response to a German accidental bombing help cause the Blitz? Were plans already at large for the US to join the war, with Churchill as the primary puppet master? Napier explores all this and more in a controversial examination of Churchill’s leadership using first-person accounts from his peers and electorate.