I don’t have the knowledge necessary, and it would be impossible to do this book justice, any more than he would say that the book does its subject justice.īut I have come away, humble and struck. Roberts is astute on Churchill’s need to win the approval of his dead father, and the dysfunctional nature of his relationships with most of his own children.īut the best reasoner this book is that Roberts can write like a dream, and he had superb form as a wonderful biographer of Napoleon, which I raved about here. Readers will be uneasy about a number of his views and actions which have not stood the test of time well.ĭo we need a new biography? I guess the official reason is that Roberts has had access to more of the papers than even Sir Martin Gilbert saw, and there is space for some fine tuning. But to quote Roberts, ‘Churchill said those words not in 1931, 1921, 1911 or even 1901, but in 1891, when he was only sixteen years old’ (p975).Īnd still controversial.

You can probably hear the growling voice and the familiar cadences and falls. I repeat-London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital and save the Empire.” This country will be subjected somehow, to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster.…dreams of the future are blurred but the main objective is clear. “I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world great upheavals, terrible struggles wars such as one cannot imagine and I tell you London will be in danger-London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London. If you don’t know them, guess when he said these words: There are not many individuals in global history who stand at the hinge of history like that. the entire course of western civilisation would have changed, terminally. Its that if he hadn’t said and done what he did, in the 1930s and 1940s, well, not to overstate it. It’s not just that the man was honoured alongside the likes of Wellington and Nelson. When I was off sick a while back, I spent a morning watching a replay of his funeral, as it had been broadcast. Repeatedly, you’re awestruck at how much the man experienced and lived through – and then you discover that he was doing something else as well. He lived an extraordinary life, and Andrew Roberts has done a brilliant work in summarising it.

Churchill walking with destiny review