Читать книгу Churchill: History in an Hour - Andrew Mulholland - Страница 4

Few figures from the twentieth century have had more written about them than Sir Winston Churchill. With good reason – for his was a prominent and eventful life. Many will immediately recall images of the cigar and stubborn ‘V’ for victory gesture from the Second World War. Churchill had politics in his blood. Both his father and grandfather had been prominent politicians. As well as serving as Prime Minister during the Second World War, Churchill had also held senior ministerial rank during the First World War and switched parties on two occasions.

Yet he managed to cram his life with so much more. As a soldier, he took part in Britain’s last great cavalry charge in the Sudan and fought in the fierce tribal wars on the Indian frontier. As a journalist, he witnessed the rebellion against the Spanish in Cuba and accompanied Britain’s army in the Second Boer War. His escape from Boer captivity became the stuff of legend. He was a prolific writer, too; at one time the highest paid in the country. His sweeping histories and the personal accounts of his adventures still make riveting reading. Such was his achievement in this field that in 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Churchill’s multiple and overlapping careers would have been enough for ten men. It was politics, though, that really drove him. Here, too, he was at the heart of some of the most important events in Britain’s modern history. As well as his inspired leadership during the Second World War, Churchill played pivotal roles in the disastrous Dardanelles policy, Britain’s return to the Gold Standard in 1925, the Abdication Crisis, Irish independence and the genesis of the Cold War. As such, it is not surprising that he remains a controversial personality.

Churchill’s life is one of huge achievement and huge controversy, lived at full tilt. Love him, hate him, or take a position somewhere in between, there are plenty of reasons why his is a story worthy of study. For clearly, his was one of the most astonishing and important lives of modern times.

This, in an hour, is the story of Sir Winston Churchill.