Roberts is far more illuminating, accurate and up to date. No one will ever reach the lyrical heights of Horatius at the Gate, like Manchester did. Roberts, to quote his subject, “left no cutlet uncooked.” This is the first biography I’ve proofed since Manchester’s The Last Lion, so I am perhaps qualified to compare. With Hillsdale’s help, we checked unpublished parts of Sir Martin Gilbert’s “wodges.” These are documents, clippings and letters, compiled by Sir Martin, for almost every day of Churchill’s life. We ran down facts and factoids, arguing out every conclusion. Together with the tenacious Paul Courtenay, we tackled every question. Our emails, as he kindly notes, reached four figures. * * *įull disclosure: This writer labored for over a year as one of Roberts’ readers, sifting every word of his manuscript. With his gift for separating wheat from chaff, this accomplished historian boils the saga down to digestible size. He quotes diarists like Ivan Maisky, Stalin’s ambassador to Britain. Roberts researched the Royal Archives at Windsor, the private papers of Churchill’s family. Not least of these are The Churchill Documents-invaluable papers in print through World War II.

Roberts was able to access sources only recently available. Andrew Roberts weighs in at year fifty-eight.

In 1960 General Lord Ismay, the devoted “Pug,” said an objective biography could not be written for fifty years. It peers into every aspect of a career six decades long, and not, as he once quipped, “entirely without incident.” The vision “of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me,” he said in 1952. (Yes, and the not so middle-aged, too.) Most of all, Winston Churchill would love this noble book. He would revel in the assaults of his detractors, the ripostes of his defenders.

He lies at Bladon in English earth, “which in his finest hour he held inviolate.” He would enjoy the controversy he still stirs today, in media he never dreamed of. For a list of and notes on books about Churchill from 1905 currently through 1995, visit Hillsdale’s annotated bibliography. For Hillsdale reviews of Churchill works since 2014, click here. New York, Viking, 2018, 1152 pages, $40, Amazon $25.47, Kindle $17.99. Also published by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny.

Roberts churchill