- Hardcover: 516 pages
- Publisher: The Free Press; 1st American Ed edition (1 May 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0028740092
- ISBN-13: 978-0028740096
- Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 16.4 x 4.4 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,970,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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"Daily Telegraph" Professor Rose's "Churchill" is the best to date...Although Rose does ample justice to his subject's manifest weaknesses, he never loses sight of Churchill's grandeur.
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Winston Churchill is without question one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. Famous as the bulldog who rallied his wavering and war-weary compatriots to lead the Allied resistance to Hitler, he will forever stand as Britain's savior. Unceremoniously thrown out of office after the war, he was considered brilliant, occasionally impolitic, but morally principled by his friends, and fearsome, opportunistic, and an unruly trouble-maker by his enemies. For much of his long political career he was the most detested and mistrusted man in British public life. Yet when he retired he was acclaimed as the "greatest Englishman of all time." Which is the real Churchill?
In the past several years, a wave of revisionist scholars have attacked Churchill's wartime strategy, domestic politics, and private life, and have even claimed that he could have responsibly kept England out of the war. Now Norman Rose, the first historian to be granted access to the Churchill archives since the publication of Churchill's authorized biography, sets the record straight, combining a proper assessment of Churchill's achievements with a legitimate strand of revisionism. Rose's Churchill is impetuous, and capable of disastrous miscalculation -- as in the Dardanelles expedition and the Norwegian campaign of 1940. Yet Rose defends Churchill's place in the pantheon of history, showing that through his story runs a tragic thread -- how the scion of a great aristocratic house, in many ways the quintessential English aristocrat, conservative and imperialist, came to preside over his country's decline. It is this theme, at once dramatic and poignant, that Norman Rose handles with fine understanding andperception in this comprehensive and fully documented account of Churchill's life.
British critics widely hailed Norman Rose's "Churchill" as quite simply the best biography yet written, calling it a "masterpiece." Finally now available to American readers, "Churchill: The Unruly Giant" is a definitive interpretation of one of the twentieth century's greatest leaders.
In the past several years, a wave of revisionist scholars have attacked Churchill's wartime strategy, domestic politics, and private life, and have even claimed that he could have responsibly kept England out of the war. Now Norman Rose, the first historian to be granted access to the Churchill archives since the publication of Churchill's authorized biography, sets the record straight, combining a proper assessment of Churchill's achievements with a legitimate strand of revisionism. Rose's Churchill is impetuous, and capable of disastrous miscalculation -- as in the Dardanelles expedition and the Norwegian campaign of 1940. Yet Rose defends Churchill's place in the pantheon of history, showing that through his story runs a tragic thread -- how the scion of a great aristocratic house, in many ways the quintessential English aristocrat, conservative and imperialist, came to preside over his country's decline. It is this theme, at once dramatic and poignant, that Norman Rose handles with fine understanding andperception in this comprehensive and fully documented account of Churchill's life.
British critics widely hailed Norman Rose's "Churchill" as quite simply the best biography yet written, calling it a "masterpiece." Finally now available to American readers, "Churchill: The Unruly Giant" is a definitive interpretation of one of the twentieth century's greatest leaders.
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First Sentence
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, first child to Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill, was born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace, the Churchill family seat near Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, first child to Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill, was born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace, the Churchill family seat near Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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3 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Excellent short volume
21 April 2000
Format:Hardcover
I am a great fan of Churchill and am always expanding my collection of books about and by the great man. I purchased this book shortly after its publication. I was impressed by Rose's crisp narrative and ability to describe the salient points of Churchill's life. He is able to do this in one volume - not easy to do when the offical biography runs 8 volumes! The only negative about this work is the length to which Rose goes to remain as impartial as possible. I say this is a negative because oftentimes there is much enjoyment to be gotten by reading a book about Churchill where the author's bias is clear. (Since most Churchill biographies are written by obvious admirers - like the yet incomplete William Manchester series; or evident detractors like Charmley.) This work is, sometimes painfully, without bias. This attribute makes "Churchill: The Unruly Giant" a fine introductory work for any reader wanting to learn more about Churchill; and form their own opinion on the greatest man of the 20th Century.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Good But Not Great
29 Aug 2001
Format:Hardcover
Rose does a good job of providing a one volume biography of Churchill. However, it was obvious to me that he was neither as familiar with Churchill as Martin Gilbert nor as talented a writer as Manchester. His strength is in his objectivity which yields a fair view of the giant.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A good quick read
2 May 2008
Format:Hardcover
This book is an easy to read competant one-volume biography of Churchill. Neither as detailed or as erudite as Manchester's (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940), but Manchester never finished his. It is also not as exhaustive as Mr. Gilbert's, but that is ok because Churchill deserves an accesible one volume biography. He was a legend in his own time several times over. In India, the Boer War, Cuba and then in the government in the First World War he became deeply interested in non-conventional assaults on the Central Powers through such places as Gallipoli. After the war he was instrumental in the intervention against Bolshevism and in the creation of Iraq and the support of the British Mandate in Palestine. But then he fell fromf avor over India and his support of the King. He was 'alone' in the 1930s and derided as a war-monger because he dared to warn of the coming war. Brought in in 1939 and 1940 by the government as a last gasp with many feeling that he would be left to sue for peace he instead delivered victory. Dropped in 1945 he returned one last time and helped warn the world of the danger of Communism.
This is a nice biography and a fair one as well, not hagiographic.
Seth J. Frantzman
This is a nice biography and a fair one as well, not hagiographic.
Seth J. Frantzman
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