Through the documents in these pages, Martin Gilbert takes the reader on a fascinating journey, covering a wide range of domestic and international problems. Churchill's vivid personality is evident as each controversy unfolds--traced through private letters and secret Cabinet records. Martin Gilbert's explanatory notes, never obtrusive, illuminate both the individuals and the events of two and a half dramatic years.
Covering every aspect of Churchill's life when he was successively Minister of Munitions and Secretary of State for War, Martin Gilbert has also drawn material from the Churchill Papers, now at Churchill College, Cambridge, and from many other archival sources, both private and public.
For Churchill, the period was dominated first by the need to defeat Germany; then by the post-war settlement and the Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks in Russia; and by a growing personal awareness of the strong forces of disruption and chaos with which the early years of the twentieth century were being threatened. The many private letters published here show the range of Churchill's moods and the extent of his fears. His wife Clementine is an ever-present influence.
About the Author: Sir Martin Gilbert was born in England in 1936. He is a graduate of Oxford University, from which he holds a Doctorate of Letters, and is an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. In 1962 he began work as one of Randolph Churchill's research assistants, and in 1968, after Randolph Churchill's death, he became the official biographer of Winston Churchill. Since then he has published six volumes of the Churchill biography, and has edited - to date - twelve volumes of Churchill documents. As a Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College, Michigan, he is currently completing the Churchill document volumes.
During forty-eight years of research and writing, Sir Martin has published eighty books, including The First World War, The Second World War, The Somme: The Heroism and Horror of War, D-Day, The Day the War Ended, and a three-volume History of the Twentieth Century. He has also written, as part of his series of ten historical atlases, Atlas of the First World War, and, most recently, Atlas of the Second World War.
Sir Martin's film and television work has included a documentary series on the life of Winston Churchill. His other published works include Churchill: A Photographic Portrait, In Search of Churchill, Churchill and America, and the single volume Churchill, A Life.
