Churchill Defiant: Fighting On: 1945-1955 - Hardcover

Leaming, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061337587 ISBN 13: 9780061337581

Publisher: Harper, 2010

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling biographer Barbara Leaming has written a riveting political dramaof the last ten years of Winston Churchill's public life.

In Churchill Defiant, Leaming tells the tumultuous behind-the-scenes story of Churchill's refusal to retire after his 1945 electoral defeat, and the bare-knuckled political and personal battles that ensued. Her ground-breaking biography Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman, was the first to detail Churchill's extraordinary influence on Kennedy's thinking. Now in Churchill Defiant, Leaming gives us a vivid and compelling narrative that sheds fresh light on both the human dimension of Winston Churchill and on the struggles and achievements of his final years. At last, in Leaming's eloquent account, we understand the tangled web of personal relationships and rivalries, the intricate interplay of past and present, the looming sense of history that makes the story of these years as fascinating as anything in the extraordinary century-long saga of Winston Churchill's life.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Winston Churchill rages against time and his own mortality in this tumultuous political drama of his last ten years of public life. Here is Churchill at his most outrageous, maddening, and devious—but also at his most human, courageous, and defiant.

"I am an obstinate pig." This was how Winston Churchill described himself.

At the end of July 1945, Winston Churchill was a defeated man—hurled from power by the British people at the end of the war in which he had just saved his country.

Churchill Defiant is the story of how, when it seemed impossible, Churchill fought his way back over the next six years to the center of great events—the only place he ever wanted to be. In 1951, at last prime minister once more, he was ready to begin his dash to win "the last prize I seek": the enduring peace that had eluded the world after Hitler's defeat.

But Churchill's battles were just beginning. He would have to wage war with both his closest colleagues and his most indispensable allies, the Americans, to get where none of them wanted him to go: the negotiating table with the Soviets.

Barbara Leaming has written a gripping, fast-paced narrative of bare-knuckle politics, of life-and-death decisions, of old grudges and fresh blame. It is the story of how, between 1945 and 1955, Churchill simultaneously fought to prevent a third world war and to defy his own mortality as the clock ticked away and time threatened to run out for him.

This is Winston Churchill in close-up—a compelling, vivid, and deeply poignant portrait of the great man at a time when almost no one wanted him to remain on the public stage and when he was willing to do absolutely anything to stay there.

About the Author:

Barbara Leaming is a New York Times bestselling author. Her biography of John F. Kennedy was the first to detail the extraordinary influence of Winston Churchill on President Kennedy’s intellectual formation and political strategies. She lives in Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0061337587
• ISBN 13: 9780061337581
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368