Finest Years

Product Description

Pre-eminent military historian Max Hastings presents Winston Churchill as he has never been seen before. Winston Churchill was the greatest war leader Britain ever had. In 1940 the nation rallied behind him in an extraordinary fashion. But thereafter argues Max Hastings there was a deep divide between what Churchill wanted from the British people & their army & what they were capable of delivering. Himself a hero he expected others to show themselves heroes also & was often disappointed. It is little understood how low his popularity fell in 1942 amid an unbroken succession of battlefield defeats. Some of his closest colleagues joined a clamour for him to abandon his role directing the war machine. Hastings paints a wonderfully vivid image of the Prime Minister in triumph & tragedy. He describes the 'second Dunkirk' in 1940 when Churchill's impulsiveness threatened to lose Britain almost as many troops in north-west France as had been saved from the beaches; his wooing of the Americans & struggles with the Russians. British wartime unity was increasingly tarnished by workers' unrest with many strikes in mines & key industries. By looking at Churchill from the outside in through the eyes of British soldiers civilians & newspapers -- & also those of Russians & Americans -- Hastings provides new perspectives on the greatest Englishman. He condemns as folly Churchill's attempt to promote mass uprisings in occupied Europe & details ' Unthinkable' -- his amazing 1945 plan for an Allied offensive against the Russians to liberate Pol&. Here is an intimate & affectionate portrait of Churchill as Britain's saviour but also an unsparing examination of the wartime nation which he led & the performance of its armed forces.