From Dr Larry Arnn’s Preface: “We mourn the loss of Sir Martin Gilbert, who passed away on February 3, 2015. Before becoming gravely ill in 2012, Sir Martin had worked on this biography for precisely fifty years, first as research assistant to Randolph Churchill, then from 1968 as the official biographer. I wrote about his contributions to the biography in the preface to volume 17 of The Churchill Documents, and I reassert here the vital and supreme contribution he has made to the study of Churchill and of modern history. He is one of the greatest of modern scholars, and he will be missed not only by his family, friends, and students, of whom I am proud to be one, but by all who wish to know the truth about this dangerous and promising era. His name appears as co-editor of this document volume in honour of his service and in recognition of the foundations he laid and the pattern he set for all the work that remains to be done.”
Book Excerpt:
From Churchill's speech to the US Congress, 19 May 1943:
“I am proud that you have found us good allies, striving forward in comradeship to the accomplishment of our task without grudging or stinting either life or treasure, or, indeed, anything that we have to give. Last time I came at a moment when the United States was aflame with wrath at the treacherous attack upon Pearl Harbour by Japan, and at the subsequent declarations of war upon the United States by Germany and Italy. For my part I say quite frankly that in those days, after our long – and for a whole year lonely – struggle, I could not repress in my heart a sense of relief and comfort that we were all bound together by common peril, by solemn faith and high purpose, to see this fearful quarrel through, at all costs, to the end.”
What the author says
From Dr Arnn's Preface:
“One will see in this volume … how one of the most powerful and significant individuals in history did his work and made his judgements. Churchill writes elsewhere that the challenges facing warriors and statesmen consist not only in the qualitative decisions they must make, but yet more in the quantity of shifting things they must take into account. Here, in context, is the story of how Winston Churchill made those decisions in the first eight months of 1943.”
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- Formats: Hardbound
- ISBN: 978-1-941946-22-0