![]() ![]() Roberts captures Churchill’s close working relationship with FDR (“the greatest American friend we have ever known”), his distrust of his chiefs of staff, and his excessive faith in Stalin’s promises in 1945. As first lord of the admiralty during WWI, he was scapegoated for the military fiasco of Gallipoli in 1915 and cast into the political wilderness, which strengthened his nonconformist, independent nature, Roberts writes, helping him when he became prime minister in 1940. He leveraged fame due to an escape from Boer captivity to win an election to British parliament in 1900 at age 25. A resolutely pro-British empire “child of the Victorian era” who was emotionally neglected by his aristocratic father and frivolous American-raised mother, Churchill by his 20s had already reported from, fought in, and sometimes written books about imperial struggles in such places as Cuba, Sudan, India, and South Africa. Roberts ( Napoleon: A Life) serves up an extraordinary biography of Winston Churchill. ![]()
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